Tuesday, December 31, 2013

Ederleigh FC

First off, a merry Christmas and happy New Years to each of you, I love you all.

Ederleigh FC's stadium, still to be named, is a concept for a ~10,000 seat stadium, suitable for a League Two team. I envisage it as an older ground, with bleacher-style seating surrounding three sides and a somewhat more modern main grandstand. Work is (slowly) ongoing, but I am having a lot of fun with it which is something that's been missing.

Anyway, the pics.

First grandstand, running along the length of the pitch. Capacity 2184.

Zoomed in

With three sides and two corners.

Focussed on the corner. One of the scoreboards up on the roof.

Main grandstand in position.

A view of how it looks now. One can see the open boxes with yellow seats and behind that media seating.
Stay tuned for 2014, too, as it promises to have more updates and a slightly new focus.

Tuesday, November 19, 2013

TUTORIAL: The perfect stadium corner section!

I apologise for the title.

Truth be told, there is no such thing as a perfect stadium corner. Next time you're at the game - take a look at the corner sections. There are seats sticking out in every direction. It's unavoidable. But for a modeller, who often will not include representations of a crowd which mask this effect, it's ghastly. So I am going to show you a few techniques to make it look slightly less bad.

I recently received another request to write this tutorial. The individual brought up an old model of mine from 5 years ago - and the corner section uploaded here. How can one make a smooth corner like that?



First, I will start by teaching you how to make the corner section like that in the link above. Start by making the section shown on the left in the above image. There are two key factors to making this effect work here. Firstly, you need to maintain a constant row depth - it looks disjointed otherwise. Secondly, you need to make sure that the length of each row is EQUAL to the row in front of it plus the length of a seat. In this example, row 1 is 0.5m wide, row 2 is 1m wide, row 5 is 2.5m wide and so on, for a 0.5m seat. It sounds really more complex than it is.

Repeat this process for the entire length of the section. In this example, this section runs as an extension to the main stand - you'll see an example of what I mean later. Next, repeat the process on the other side of the corner, as shown on the right in the above image. This will produce a mirror image on the other side. Now, just connect the two sections you have at the moment to make the central section, and the basis of your corner is complete. Check your model looks something like what is shown below.
 OK, so now we start adding the seats. Once you get the hang of it, you can add the seats at the same time but for this tutorial it is better to repeat the process and learn it. Start by placing one seat in row 1 of the left section.
 On the next row back, two seats.
 And repeat until you reach the back of the stand.
 Repeat on the other side.
 Now we fill in the central section. The key here is to ensure that you centre the seats so that there is a bit of a gap on either side. For example, if you can fit 9 seats in a row, the middle of the fifth seat should sit on the midpoint of the row. In this example though, my stadium features n-1 seats per row, where n is the row number. That means that on row 1, there are no seats, row 2 has 1 seat, row 10 has 9 seats. You may find this works for you, but in most cases it wont.
 A top-down view of the stand.
 It's far more likely that you will end up with something looking like this image above when you make corners. It's ghastly, yes. So here are two tricks that help mask it.
 Firstly, where there is a lot of space between seats in the corner, straighten out the corner and add an extra seat there. As you'll see above, I positioned a seat in the corner and extended the row behind it to line up with the back of the seat.
 You'll see several examples in the image above. Better already.
 This next technique is time-consuming but realistic and produces good results. For this tutorial I did only a few rows and coloured the seats yellow so you can see what I did. To do this, work out the distance between the edge of the seat next to the step there, and the corner. In the example above, the seats are 0.5m wide, there are 4 seats and the distance is 2.154m. Delete all the seats in the row except the one next to the stairs. Now, get the calculator out and divide that distance by the number of seats in the row. For this example, it is 0.538. Select the seat that is still remaining, and hit the shift key and move it along the row 0.538m, before hitting x3 and enter to create 3 additional copies (remember this technique?). Repeat the process for each additional row.
A view of how it looks zoomed out, in comparison  to how it looked before.

Making corner sections pains many modellers - some even go out of their way to avoid using them. But with some practice, you can make them look reasonably good.

Happy modelling!

Friday, November 1, 2013

Bankstown Hockey Stadium






My apologies for another long delay between posts. Unfortunately I have been very busy lately. However, here is one of my 1 hour projects, Bankstown Hockey Stadium. It seats 2260.

More stuff will be coming soon, so please remain patient.

Friday, September 20, 2013

Borac Banja Luka Stadion updated

Rear videoboard structure in position

Day render

Night exterior render

Night facade test

Day facade test

Saturday, September 7, 2013

Borac Banja Luka Stadion

View from an upper tier corner seat

Corporate boxes

An idea of how the stadium might look post-tournament

Early site work
Borac Banja Luka Stadion is a 35,000 seat stadium in Banja Luka, Bosnia and Herzegovina. The stadium is designed to host the Euro football tournament. The stadium is still in its infancy so keep checking back.

Saturday, August 17, 2013

Thailand International Raceway







The circuit is nearly finished (some finishing touches tomorrow, plus some trees IF I can get the model working). Hopefully some of my followers will go and vote for my design when the competition voting opens. It would mean a lot to me.

Tuesday, August 13, 2013

Challenge: Thailand International Raceway plus teaser

A site overview showing the undulations on the track.

Another angle

Main Grandstand installed

As the circuit looked ten minutes ago. Several of the smaller grandstands have been added along with fencing.

A view of the circuit layout. Starting on the pit straight, the F1 layout sees the cars turn right on a tight blind-apex turn 1. They head back down into a 90 degree right hander before braking into the hairpin. Up the straight, then a 90 degree left hander which should carry some speed. Up the hill and into a right-hander before another long right into the chicane. After this cars head down the long back straight before throwing the car left and right around a 180 degree turn. Down the hill and into a hard braking zone before a similar turn to the previous one and another right hander. Cars then line up for a final right hander before rejoining the pit straight.
 The Thailand International Raceway is a 5300m long circuit designed to accompany Thailand's bid for a Formula 1 race. Capable of many configurations, the circuit is located on undulating terrain specially designed to make for challenging racing. The design is part of SketchUp 3D Challenge #184, which is the development of a racetrack. I am a big fan of this contest as it really pushes competitors to display their skills and not the placement of 3d warehouse components. The track will be ready by the deadline of Monday. 


 As I am sure many people will be aware, I have been rather inactive over the best part of the last year. Rest assured though, I have been working (part-time) on a massive project which I will be bringing to you in 2014. To celebrate, I thought a teaser image was in order. Is that the Veles e Vents building?
 

Thursday, August 1, 2013

Wrestlemania XXX: now from Cowboys Stadium!

So I have worked on a model for Wrestlemania XXX a few weeks ago. Unfortunately there are no usable models of the Mercedes Benz Superdome, so the venue for Wrestlemania XXX (until said model is available) is Cowboys Stadium. The set will feature a ridiculous amount of lights in reality, most of which were not included in this model as Cowboys Stadium doesn't lend itself to what I had in mind. Expect lights to hang from the rafters between the stage and the ring lighting, for example. Anyway, the images. If you can't tell, I am a massive fan of Curtis Axel.
Initial light test of the base stage

Differing angle

Your current reigning and defending Intercontinental Champion, Curtis Axel!

Inside Cowboys Stadium. While the massive video screens make for a key part of the set, they are a pain in the rectum to work around. Going to lead to some obstructed views of the set once it and the lighting rig is set up.

And speak of the devil - the lighting rig.

More of the lighting behind the set installed.

And the rear video boards

With all the seating added - Welcome to Wrestlemania!

I will inevitably make a set once the model of the Mercedes Benz Superdome is available.