Stadionul Silviu Ploesteanu construction process

Stage 1: Removal of the existing light tower and installation of the new roof. The main reason the roof is installed first is to maintain lighting on the site. At this point, support pillars for the upper tier stands should be installed to minimise crane requirements later.

Stage 2: The pitch is relocated to its final position, and the eastern lower stand is constructed in the empty space.

Stage 3: Addition of the southern and southeastern stands.

Stage 4: Replacement of the main stand.

View from the other end.

Stage 5: Filling in the northeastern corner, and the construction of the upper eastern stand.

Stage 6: Replacement of the western lower stand.

Stage 7: Construction of the western upper stand.

Stage 8: Work on the western stand structure and final streetscaping works.

Just a hypothetical demonstration of the construction process on the site.

Stadionul Silviu Ploesteanu Final Presentation images

Firstly, happy new year to all of my followers.

The opening cover image. This was the first picture I rendered and there was some technique changes I made afterwards.

The edited version of this render.

The raw version of the render. As I mentioned in the last post, I was really not happy with the lighting.

The footpath outside of the stadium. Much nicer than what is there now.

The view along the main stand facade. The space is quite tight.

A view of the structure in the western corner and western stand.

TV box

A view from the southeastern corner of the stadium.

A view of the TV cameras overlooking the southern stand and Tampa Mountain

Raw image of the concourse at the eastern end.

A view inside the VIP box. I wanted to add more detailing in post-production, but never got the time.

A view inside the hotel room. It came out darker than I wanted. I should have fixed that.

Restaurant and bar. Also a bit darker than I wanted.

Changing room. This render took literally hours and ended with me cancelling it and just saving what was done. Pro-tip to you all - don't use glossy materials EVER. Fake it in post.

A view of the half-court. I regret rendering the crowd separately here - I didn't bring it in to Photoshop properly. Still, this was one of my favourite renders.

The bar along the main stand. It was one of the last renders I did, and probably the most frustrating. The lights kept breaking, and sometimes Sketchup would just crash. This was like the tenth version of this shot, and to be frank, it was rubbish anyway. I should have added more in post and fixed the lighting.

The concourse looking towards the west. Another shot that needed more time in post.

A full house.

A smaller full house. I love this view.

A wide angled shot. Not so fun fact - the shot was supposed to be slightly higher, but Sketchup crashed every time I tried to render that shot. As a result, this is the shot I went with.

Concert view.

A view of the mountains and the home fans. I never actually planned to render this shot, but while I was scrolling through to the wide-angled shot, I stumbled onto this view.

Master plan.

Stadionul Silviu Ploesteanu Construction images part seven

September 26: With my dissatisfaction with the previous crowd model, I decided to redo it and make it more dense. I'm still not happy with how it turned out, but oh well.

September 26: Texturing around the scoreboard. Nearly done at this point.

September 26: The final bit of work on the texturing is completed - I'm about to start the rendering phase.

September 30: My very first rendering on the project. As you can see, a lot of the lights weren't set up right, some of the textures were wrong, and a bunch of other issues. That being said, I absolutely loved the ambiance of the lighting in the atmospheric fog. Looked so good.

September 30: More setting up renderings - at this point I was fixing a bunch of the gamma values on the textures, as well as correcting the sun lighting. That's why everything looks like a harshly painted model.

October 1: Trying to fix up the concert stage and correct the lighting. Fixed some problems, created a heap of new ones. I was experimenting with a couple of differing IES lighting profiles when I made this render, hence the very harsh lighting.

October 1: Checking the effectiveness of backgrounds added to a test render in Photoshop. It came out cleanly enough.

October 2: A test rendering on the background model. This came out beautifully - I'm quite disappointed it never came out this good again when I rendered it from the proper angle. I love the atmospheric effect again.

October 3: Test night render from the southeast. The background is switched off, which is why there is no dark sky behind the venue.

October 3: Another test rendering of the eastern concourse. Needed more lighting on this one.

October 6: Well into rendering the venue for real now. This is one of the real renders, with a fake backdrop on it. As I'll explain later on, I was never happy with this.

October 8: A test composition in Photoshop from the TV studio. I had a few things I knew I would need to fix up in post as a result of doing this - particularly the balustrades. As the balustrades were made of transparent material, they should show the legs of the crowd standing behind them. I, moronically, rendered the balustrates with the base model, as opposed to adding it to the crowd layer render. If I rendered the balustrade with the crowd behind it, I could have done a much better job. I'd end up having to fake it in post.

October 12: Work on the half-court setup. I would end up redoing this render to fix some of the lighting issues, but I absolutely loved this one.

October 14: Getting the concert stage to render. The hardest part of this was the atmospheric fog to the sides of the concert stage - I had a really tough time getting that to work well.

October 15: A screengrab from the actual rendering - still not as good as I wanted, but I needed to get on with it. Unfortunately, not long after finishing this render, I lost my internet connection. This lasted for two weeks, and made it impossible for me to do pretty much anything on the project. With the deadline a week away at this point, this meant I was out. Fortunately, the deadline would be pushed back and I would get back online three days before it. That meant a lot of last minute work on everything for my presentation.

November 2: So I mentioned earlier that I was never really happy with this shot. Many of the shadows turned out way harsher than they should have, and I wasn't able to fix it in post. I also had my computer BSOD when I was rendering the crowd for this shot, meaning I lost my exact position in the model. To mask some of the issues, I added some rain to the scene and set it in a passing rain shower.

November 2: An overhead view of the site for use on the master plan

November 2: An overhead view of the site without the roof, for demonstrating points of detail on the master plan.