Mont Saint Michel in 3D

yes it is this one :wink:

I’m intrigued with this Houdini… it looks that it does do magic :slight_smile: …it generates an entire house form cubes!? Or you make one house and it replaces the cubes by that houses?

Really nice approach!

yup it’s really amazing :slight_smile: It’s procedural modeling, basically the same process as with modeling in blender but every step is saved in nodes, so you can always go back and make changes or simply get different variations from using different values.
Of course it tends to take much more time than ordinary modeling to make one object, but if you want 100s of individualized objects (as is the case with the walls and houses here) you can create one setup that generates it all pretty quickly, and you can continue to add or adjust things at any point.

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I wish you’ve done this in Blender instead of houdini for those like me who don’t have it, and expose your workflow :slight_smile:

The result is really amazing ! and as an open-world builder i’m really seduced by anything that is proceduarl :stuck_out_tongue:

Happy blending !

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Well that would have been an insane amount of work or plain instancing of only a few house variations.
For this type of project I think you have to go procedural, still I’m modeling a large portion of the scene manually.

If you’re interested in using Houdini yourself you can just use the free apprentice version (has pretty much all the features). I only bought a license to get proper alembic export but it’s not necessary.

Reeeeeeeally liking this stuff!

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Now it won’t be long until the model of the abbey is finished =)
Here’s a preview of most of it with the first materials I made:


I managed to place well over 200 windows with many variations within a few hours thanks to my procedural tools, and the pipeline for topology/uvs/masking also seems to hold up pretty well :slight_smile:

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aaand I added the missing parts :slight_smile:

also forgot to put the last turntable as a post
turntable_01_clay (1-60)_1

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that’s just incredible, probably you answered this question before but, how did you manage to create all those houses? I think you mentioned Houdini or procedural tools but, what exactly are those? I am really curious about it, cheers and good job!

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I experimented a little with vegetation. It makes a huge difference in balancing the scene and integrating the structures into the terrain, so I’m also adjusting the layout of the city to leave more space for trees and gardens. Considering how much time I’ve already invested into this project I really want to be sure everything is in the right spot :smiley:




It’s going slow but I’m pretty happy with the results I’m getting so far :slight_smile:

@Raikuzu Houdini is a software that does procedural modeling really well. Maybe one way to think of it is like this:
Capture
This little window with all the settings that pops up when you do stuff in edit mode, imagine if for every action you perform you could always come back to it and change the values later on. Sort of like modifiers, but much more complex. Hope that makes sense :smiley:

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Finishing up all the manual parts is taking a little longer than anticipated, so here’s just a ‘close-up’ on a few of the gardens:




And here is also the basis for the surrounding area:


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wow 8-O
Really beautyfull !!!
<3
thanks for this and happy blending ! :slight_smile:

EDIT: i got a lil question:
where did you get the mount global map that we can see on one of your screenshots ?

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thanks :slight_smile:

There is an addon that imports satellite data directly from inside blender, but in my case I used this tool: https://tangrams.github.io/heightmapper/ It’s super easy and fast to use.

I tried the original mont saint michel location but the data isn’t that great there (I’m assuming because of the tides), so I just grabbed a random spot of the canadian coast, and sculpted a bit more, also to get detail underneath the high tide line, and then put some erosion filters on it with world creator

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You can use qgis for elevation maps it’s an open source Tools for scientific map creation really powerfull . howto
You can register also on Japanese satellite data site to find other raster files. I dont remember actually the name but all registration are free.

Hi @Jasper and @skuax :slight_smile:

Thanks for the info :smiley:

There are many DEM databases all over the world.
I didn’t know about the tangrams one…
The Japanese DEM DB is IMHO the best one in a matter of covering and resolution.
TOPO30 is 1KM square…

Far too big for modeling accurate things like Carcassonne or Mount St Michel…
I once found a DB having 15m square ( not sure wether it’s the japanese one and can’t check ) and i grabbed my city DEM and around from it.
The japanese online data seemed today link-dead but finally works…

I finished with using a geoportail elev texture ( kinda hacked ) for Carcassonne and i had to rework/interpolate in it with my homemade U3D planet DEM tool :confused:

Anyway @Jasper i was asking for the map we can see on your pic here:


I hardly need those and if you found a website that hosts those kind of maps am really interrested :stuck_out_tongue:

Thanks again and happy blending !

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That particular pic you can find here: https://histoire-image.org/fr/etudes/restauration-mont-saint-michel but the website isn’t specifically for architecture.

For finding more I would probably take one of these maps and throw them in similar image search, so if you’re lucky you find more similar maps but not necessarily of the same place :smiley:

Or maybe also search for the names of people who made them. There are also a lot of orthographic view drawings. I think Viollet le Duc did a lot of those including some carcassonne but you probably already know those :slight_smile:

and for old maps in general I think you have to look at archives (of course best to search in the language of the place you’re going for)

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I’m kinda running out of steam at the moment because of the scope of the project (and terrible performance at times) :confused: but here’s a little update with a few more details placed. I also started making some birds which you can see in pic 3.





Still on my list:
finish up all the edges, especially around the floors
make the mainland background look good (would also love a low-tide version)
integrate the island better into those surroundings
rework all of the materials for more variation and detail
add people walking/standing around
birds
smoke

and then set up a couple of scenes with different moods, lighting, etc.
aaand of course comp
+breakdowns

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I’m out of words ^^

This is stunning ! <3

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Love this piece. Terrific work!

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did a little wonky test render :smiley:
not sure if it displays here

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