United States Capitol Building discussion

[GEHFileBot]

This is a discussion thread for the following file:

United States Capitol Building

United States Capitol in 3D (GE4 version)

[SpiderX22]

It looks absolutely amazing!

[jw_n_mo]

Thanks Spider. Be sure to leave a comment and rating on the Warehouse page Currently working on some more models around Capitol Hill.

[jw_n_mo]

Constructing Capitol Hill

[SpiderX22]

Nice!!
How long does it generally take you to complete a model like the capitol building?

[jw_n_mo]

Surprisingly the Capitol only took one weekend to complete. I spent over a week on the Supreme Court building which is fairly simple but finding adequate photographs was difficult. The same with the Library of Congress. I'll start off on one particular part of the building with a photo-texture but as I move to various other parts of the building I find that the other photos I use don't match the texture of the first one. Some are taken early morning with the sun turning the marble a tan color, others on a bright day with the marble bleach white and yet others on a cloudy day with the marble looking dull and grey. I spend most of my time editing photographs, clipping out parts here and there, mixing them together, matching the colors and sometimes even creating my own features to make a texture that matches those on the rest of the building.

I'm still learning to use SketchUp and at the same time Jasc Paint Shop Pro 7 so I can spend weeks sometimes just trying to make one model. I'm still having difficulty keeping my file sizes down because I'm putting too many faces in my models. The detail looks nicer but loading too many of these models at once in GE can slow it down.

One particular thing I just learned on the Library of Congress (LOC) model is that photo-textures will show on the reverse face instead of defaulting to black as they did in older versions of GE. I started out on the roof giving all the railings a thickness which used three faces but later learned there was no need so the railings on the staircase are now just a flat 2d surface with textures applied to each side.

Until recently I didn't know much about grouping and making components either so hopefully this will help to reduce load time. I also use to leave hidden faces in the models not thinking that they add to the file size tremendously.

Recently I found this link with useful video tips for modeling in SketchUp. Note the videos take a few minutes to load.

[SpiderX22]

Streetview:
http://www.gearthhacks.com/streetvie...hp?fileid=2955