Modeling a LARGE thing

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I am posting this in offtopic right now because I don’t really know where this will end up, nor do I have a WIP (not entirely true, see below). This is a basically a question so I can find out what questions I need to ask, then I can move forward.

Preamble aside.

I have an HTC Vive and I have created a few environments (the starting area, think Holodeck).

I have modeled a few rooms in my house and, while neat, they feel very small. Considering the medium, I want to think much, much larger.

The inspiration I have is creating the Ringworld (Novel by Larry Niven). The Ring World as described in the novel is a ring encircling a star roughly the diameter of Earth’s orbit (~93 million miles or 150 million km) Radius, a width of 1 million miles (1.6 million km) and walls that are 1,000 miles (1,600km) high. The ring spins at 770km/sec so people/air/things are held on the inside of the ring at roughly 1g due to the centripetal force generated by the spinning ring. Think of Halo but more huge’r’er.

I mocked a Ring world up in Blender which is roughly 10 million times smaller having a 15km radius.

This got me thinking that I had better start asking questions before I continue any further.

The effect I want is of standing on a vast open landscape and have the arch come up in the distance, eventually disappearing behind the sun and have shadow disks (and their corresponding shadows) visible.

So. All of that above being said, I’d like to discuss different ways of achieving the effect. Can Blender model something that big? I don’t know, draw distance limitations in Blender? Is there a more efficient or completely different way of achieving this? I don’t know.

Maybe I should have a flat plane and then a skybox which holds a drawn texture of the “arch”?

My problem is I don’t know enough to know what questions I have to ask.

I am welcoming any input or suggestions

Thanks, I appreciate it.

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hmmm… well, blender doesnt work with numbers that large. I think this is going to be a dud. It may have to be artistic vs model’d

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You could always just model the large object on a small scale and then render it at a high resolution with a transparent background layer. You can then add a plane in the small scene with the rendered large object as a texture, you can then scale it up as much as you want and use compositing to mix the 2 renders or make it look more believable.

4

Scaling and compositing are pretty much the only way to achieve these kinds of space-based mega-structures in Blender as far as I’ve found.
One of my projects involves a 6000km long construct - to some extent it will render in 1:1 scale with adaptive displacements for the terrain, but going in for closer city sized or even person sized renders is incredibly difficult.
Not only that but things in Cycles can get screwy the further out you go from the origin point - so making different scenes to scale is a must.
Look into how the Halo games have achieved the massive scale of Forerunner structures seen from characters perspective scale. Matte painting everywhere and composited scenes where ships are involved.
I think even the latest Halo wars 2 trailer uses matte paintings of the Ark as seen from the bridge of the UNSC ship.

5

Ringwoeld was a great book.

You may have to adjust your vision a bit when you consider the incredible size of such an object. The ring would be so big that you would lose the feeling of ‘ringness’ due to perspective and atmosphere visibility. You would never feel like you were on a ring.

In other words, you’re going to have to take a more artistic approach and not worry about a to scale model.

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I would create a ring of a “normal size” but with the right proportions (1:100). A cylinder (without caps) with a radius of 10BU and a height of 2 BU should be good enough. Then place the camera at on of the inner sides. The result can act as background image. You can even render a skybox from it.

primitive example (cylinder with 128 vertices):


The camera lens width will determine the proportions of the ring (here it is 35mm).

The foreground image can be any landscape even a flat one. It should at least cover the lower half of the screen as the background image would not fill it (the camera is exactly at the ring face). [To be sure you can complete the background image with any ring style material.]

Be aware the thickness can’t be visible from inside the ring.
The ring walls will not be noticeable unless the camera is pretty near to them. If you need them in your image you might introduce another background image that shows medium distance details.