Hi All.
Just to put things into context, I’m a semi-retired geologist who moved to Portugal 3 years ago. I have only been working with Blender for the past 6 months and am using it for some underground mine workings and an old Roman gold mine that is close by. Both are a work in progress but I thought of something else to work on in my spare time and also give back to my new country. I live in Porto, Portugal and there used to be a building in the city called the Crystal Palace. It was originally built in the 1860’s and housed a lot of exhibitions but eventually went into disrepair and was demolished, a great loss. It looked similar to the Crystal Palace in London, lots of glass and steel.
I want to recreate this building in Blender but only have very few pictures and paintings. My question to the group is how does one proceed with modeling a building just by pictures? Where does one start and how can I get scale from just pictures? I have a few ideas where I can mirror and array some portions of the building since it has symmetry. Scale is my problem though. I’ve attached a picture to show what the building looked like.
…well. essentially it’s: guessing… after retrieveign some data like lenght, width height… maybe espeicallu for some specifi part… for example there might be an example of that big lights at the steps standing still in this place and there might be some informatin about them and so this might be used to scale the whole thing…
or the data from wikipedia…
…it was 150 metres long and 72 metres wide and was divided into three sections: a central nave (150 metres long and 25 metres wide), and two side aisles (each 100 metres long and 9 metres wide), …
Hi and welcome to BA,
you have to deduce (roughly) some certain measure (stair step height? bench height? human figure like 1.75 cm?) and then develop the rest around it. My suggestion is to use some perspective images with ‘fspy’ (or something similar) to do a camera match also (you can use the main measure from wikipedia too as Okidoki said). Then everything will be easier.
Blueprint data, if available, model with blueprint data
Create a rough blueprint based on images and use it for modeling
※ The way to find the size in the picture is to find the object that can be the reference and adjust it to fit the dimensions.
In this image, it seems that it can be used as a reference to the height of the door X width or the height of the stairs.
Alternatively, you can adjust the scheduling by using it as the default dimensions for human body modeling.
Another thing that can help is searching for books/text with descriptions of it.
I did a model of a lighthouse that was destroyed in 1669 (also rebuilt a few times before that.) I found a fair amount of info, even measurements, from text.
I always use a human sized figure as a reference for scale, a simple mannequin will do, or even an appropriately sized cube. (mine is 5’ 10" tall, because i am ).
Then, get a standard size for something like a door, there are good sites for that. Once you have that, just import an image as a reference, scale it, then start building the walls and addinging detail bit by bit.
I’ve just built a whole western street scene doing this, once you have repeated the process a few times, it starts to make sense.
Thanks everyone for taking time and replying. All the comments are really good, especially DNorman’s comment on books. Right near the new Crystal Palace there is a Public Library. I’m hoping they will have something on the old building. I’m going to walk around the new building tomorrow looking for anything resembling objects that were possibly left from the old building. The library may not be open since tomorrow is a holiday here in Porto.
I’ll keep the this updating this post on my progress. Thanks everyone.
Over the weekend I visited the site of the old Crystal Palace. I was surprised to see that there were a few features still standing that were also in some of the photos. The main one was the stairs in front. They are still there and I was able to get dimensions from Google Earth. Also, some of the landscaping appears to have been kept over the years. On top of that, the nearby library has some books that hopefully be helpful. I have yet to pick them up though. I’ve already georeferenced a picture in my Blender project scaled to the right dimensions using the stairs. Now, I just need time to work on it.
Thanks again everyone for the comments. I’ll keep this post updated with my progress. Cheers.
One thing I like to do is to very my search parameters to get info from different sources… For instance just adding Crystal Palace, Porto Portugal… will give only limited information since it age and since it no longer exists… since you know the architect you will also know he was the creator of the Crystal Palace for the Exhibition of 1851 in London…
So since the buildings are quite similar add the 1851 version for your search to understand the process of its build… a nice reference was from Project Guttenberg… Crystal Palace 1852
Tie all of the info gleaned into a search in images and you get this…
Thanks Midan. Your church looks great. I am in the same boat as you when you started your project, just learning Blender and using a project to learn it. I will definitely hit you up for some pointers and how you made different meshes.
or the data from wikipedia…
).
