Estadio Bragantino construction diary part 2

July 27: Redesigning the wheelchair spaces. This design affords more level room for wheelchairs to move around and turn.

July 27: The space in practice.

July 30: Building the videoboards. I wanted it to cut right into the stand like this to reduce the capacity. A couple of hundred seats were removed to make way for the videoboards, so it was a success.

July 31: Adding the walls around the scoreboard.

July 31: Installing the basis of the stairs to the upper deck.

July 31: Installing the trusses to support the upper decks. I had always wanted to use this style of truss system. It was at this point that I noticed their shape resembled a palm tree. From there, the design ideas for the site started flowing.

August 1: Modelling work on the ticket gates.

August 1: Work on the change rooms.

August 1: All of the facilities in place. The benefits of having standardised components.

August 1: Another view inside of the change rooms.

August 1: A view of the site during the day.

August 1: The same view using shadow techniques to simulate nighttime.

August 2: Work on the balustrades around the stairwells. I was actually surprised that this was completed so quickly - it usually is one of the last things I do.

August 2: Adding the seating pattern to the northern and southern stand. It's really generic - just spelling out the club name, with some stripes on the sides similar to the existing site.

August 2: A view with the rest of the stadium.

August 2: The eastern stand at this point was just textured with the black and white stripes. It would be a while before I finalised that section.

August 2: I stumbled upon this view while installing TV sets in the VIP boxes. I liked the northern stand just sticking out through the window.

August 3: Installation of the rails for the rail seats in the northern and southern stands.

Estadio Bragantino construction diary part 1

23 July: Stage one of the design process. I imported my pitch model and started mapping out the stands. I'd already done plenty of site research, but even that couldn't prepare me for just how narrow that site is. I originally envisaged the south stand being purely temporary, with the full-sized north stand remaining in phase 2. I ended up abandoning that idea pretty quickly, going to the more uniform bowl size I wound up using. The Bombonera-esque VIP stand was already locked into the design, but there was no overarching design philosophy, no real roof or facade ideas, at this point. One idea I did have was to have two levels of concourse. At the northern end, fans would enter the stand through the top of the lower tier, while at the southern end, fans would enter through vomitories at the bottom of the tier. This would mean that the concourses lined up more naturally with the existing topography. I'm not really sure why I didn't implement it - it's an idea I'll have to use in a future project.

23 July: It didn't take me long to map out the basic shape of the stands. I remember spending a lot of time moving the stands up and down to get the terrain levels just right for me.

24 July: It really didn't take long for me to get all of the seats into the stadium. I was actually a little unsure as to what the capacity would come out to - I ended up being about 1000 over the maximum capacity. Good problem to have - that capacity will come down as vomitories, disabled spaces, and video screens are installed. It's a lot easier to take seats out than to cram them in at the end.

24 July: Looking at the northwestern corner, where the stand has been tapered. The roof pillars and elevators are located right behind that, so it made sense to taper the stand. I think it looks cool too.

24 July: Main stand complete - I opted for a large number of open-air corporate boxes with a small number of general seats at either end. Given how small the stand is, it made sense.

24 July: The VIP box - this actually came together really quickly, but I was happy with it. I ended up making a few adjustments to the design over the coming months, but the majority remained.

25 July: The VIP box from the front. I thought it looked nice. Wood was chosen for the walls as I'm a big fan of wooden walls.

25 July: Inserting the main stand VIP boxes. There wasn't really much of a thought regarding how many there was - I only made sure it was about the same height as the north and south stands. That was important to me.

25 July: Working on the elevator shaft and stairwells.

25 July: Inserting the LED panels on the main stand. I was happy with them.

25 July: An overview of the site. I was pretty pleased with how it looked at this point, but still really had no clue what to do going forward.

26 July: Modelling the footpath. Just one of those formalities that need to happen.

26 July: Modelling the main stand floorplates. The site is wider at the northern end than the southern end. Combined with the pitch running parallel to the eastern road, that means that the main stand isn't parallel to the western road. As you'll see later on, that would create a nice opportunity.

26 July: Another overview image. I'm not really sure what I was demonstrating.

26 July: Stairs are installed around the stadium.

27 July: Looking at the main stand

27 July: Working on the vomitories and disabled seating. I would end up redesigning the disabled seating area, making the actual platform wider.

27 July: I modelled the floorplate and installed it into the stadium - and found out that the vomitories are the wrong height. I'd end up having to redo the vomitories. I'm a moron sometimes.

Seaside Stadium

A view from a ground level corner.

Looking back towards the corner in the image above. The blue stand was an attempt at designing a low-cost small stand for community clubs. Each module has 86 seats, 0.5m rise per row, and requires 22.67m3 of concrete at 1m row depth, and 18.13m3 at 0.8m row depth, to build the stands.

An early overview of the site. The beach model is just a generic warehouse component.

View from the lower part of the main stand. I imported a model of Tsuyama Castle from the warehouse, retextured the front facing wall and added some trees in front of it. I loved the look of the stadium sitting at the foot of a castle.

 

Looking down at the site. You can see a train running along a rail line there in the foreground.

Low-angled view of the site.

View from the TV gantry. That would be a fun view.

View from the main stand concourse.

An early progress view

Seaside Stadium is a ~5000 seat stadium nestled between a beach and a castle. I've wanted to play around with this sort of site for a while, and now seemed the perfect time to do it. I had a lot of fun making this.

TUTORIAL: How to populate scenes with a crowd

So this is the scene that I want to populate. I copied it out of my main model for the purposes of working on the crowd. It has three small temporary stands, designed to sit around a basketball or volleyball court.

To start with, you'll need to build up your components. Get a bunch of cutout people from any one of the free sites out there. Import it into a rectangle 1.75m tall and the appropriate width. Make the rectangle into a face-me component with the axis point at the bottom centre of the rectangle. Repeat this for all of the other cutouts - I have a collection of 21 varied models I use for my project. 

Delete all of the seats and the back faces of the stands, until you're left with just the faces on each row. This will be used to define the area people might be standing.

Repeat that for the remaining stands.

Select all of the faces and use the "Component Spray" plugin. Pick 8 of the cutouts, spray on Selected Faces, lower the pressure and adjust the scaling, and then spray. Repeat the process until the cutouts have all been sprayed.

This should be roughly what you see. Make the selected faces into a group, and then make all of the cutouts into a group.

Copy and paste the cutouts group back over the top of the stand. Open it and delete all of the cutouts situated over the top of the aisles.

Finished. As you can see, the process is rough, but it accomplishes the end result quickly.