[Genma Saotome]

In 1872 Aaron Montgomery Ward started a retail business in his home town of Chicago. The addition of catalog sales created a huge amount of wealth for him which was turned into retail stores in downtown Chicago and eventually nation-wide. When I was at my university I worked at a Wards store. By then it was a cheap version of Sears (for Europeans: this is a severe put-down).

Headquarters, warehouses, and a retail store were located directly on the MILW Kingsbury St line. Their size has proved to be a bit of a modeling challenge -- and opportunity to explore a few new things.

This is a work-in-progress... click on any image to exp[and to full size.


The view from across the river where the C&NW yard was located. These days I'm working on the building on the right. The buildings are still there... if you use Google maps go to 600 W Chicago Ave, Chicago and you'll drop in right between the two.




Checking out the reflectivity of the glass. This is using LOSHINE which I'm told means reflection over a wider angle.




Checking out the 3d detail.




Checking out the windows. Prior to this I always used a dark gray interior located a few feet behind the glass. This time I'm trying a light brown. I think it might be better than what I was doing before. Eventually I will remove the "interior" and make a stand alone model of it (I'm speaking of, oh, 8-12 polys), place it at the same coordinates of the building, and set the .sd file for night illumination.
That way I don't have to figure out how properly darken the exterior walls, something that has always frustrated me when I've tried to do it in the past. It never looks like a nighttime view of the daytime texture.

Next step is to replicate this side on the far wall.

[timmuir]

:thumbup3: :thumbup3:

Impressive execution of such a challenging (and large) subject!

[Genma Saotome]

The (much) larger building is actually next door. I think it's going to drive me over the edge... there are only two 90d corners and working on obtuse angles is a real PITA.







Yes, there are tracks nearby:


SU has a feature called components where you build something once and then you place n copies in your model. Any edit to one is automatically applied to all the other instances of the same definition. I've placed almost 700 instances so far, all the horizontal ones run around the entire building... and I know I've got a lot more to go before this beast is done.

[lineman]

what an amazing work!

[conductorchris]

It really is amazing work. Urban scenery is something special.
You are duplicating history.

[R H Steele]

Painstaking work, skillfully done. The urban realism will be noteworthy, wonderful. I love the glass reflectivity in some of the older images.

[Genma Saotome]

I'm still experimenting with the right color for the glass and background... right now it's slightly green glass and 3ft behind it is a sky blue "sheet". The glass material is loshine which gives a wider angle of reflection of the sun. I will eventually move the blue sheet out into its own model so I can set the .sd file for it to have night illumination. I'll leave the blue specified for daytime and will do something else for interior lighting as the night texture.

What I cannot do is place any curtains or blinds, something I would like to have done as half these windows are full on west and in 1947 few buildings had air conditioning. The problem is there is no material type that I know of that will reflect the sky dome colors so there isn't anything I can put close enough to the glass to show the reflection of the sky AND have curtains behind it.