[Genma Saotome]

The New York Life Insurance building, 29 S Lasalle is one of the oldest (perhaps the oldest) early "skyscraper" still standing in Chicago. Built in 1894 it has 13 stories and a fair amount of eye appeal.



My version is almost done -- in portrait orientation (click on image for full size).


I have a little bit left to do, mostly textures for street level stuff and a few more LOD's (45% of the faces disappear at 500m), Lot of fun to make.

Oh, the street cars run parallel to those awnings, maybe 25 feet away from the windows.

[Amtrak115]

Dave, looks great. curious what tool are you using?

Barry

[pwillard]

Nice. New York Life is my employer and is 176 years old just a few days ago.

[timmuir]

Looks very impressive, Dave. You certainly captured the look of the building. Hard to believe it's 176 years old, looks to be in good condition.

It would be fun to ride the streetcar through your concrete and steel canyons!

[Genma Saotome]

Amtrak115, on 19 April 2021 - 07:00 AM, said:

Dave, looks great. curious what tool are you using?

Barry

I've been using Sketchup for at least 12 years. It's exactly like a route editor with a whole bunch of orientation and positioning aids. Designed for architects. it's extremely well suited to those situations where you can type exact dimensions. It's not very good at all for trying to place by eye (no 3 or 4 window axis view portals). It's exactly like a route editor with a whole bunch of orientation and positioning aids.

Unfortunately the useful free version was depreciated in 2018 and the vendors web replacement isn't worth shite. You can still finds the older version for download (various archive sites). I use SU 2016.

[torri91]

Very nice building! How much time did it take to model it?

[eric from trainsim]

I'm still running SKU 8.0... didn't see any advantages in upgrading to the newer Trimble versions (8 is branded as Trimble and essentially Sketchup 2012...)

[Genma Saotome]

torri91, on 21 April 2021 - 02:42 AM, said:

Very nice building! How much time did it take to model it?

I don't know but it was more than I expected. The difficulty is not in making the parts, they're all very simple. Positioning copies is trivial in SU so that too goes very fast.

The difficulty comes in figuring out the symmetry. I know what the basic dimensions of the buildings are but I don't know things like the width of windows. When there is ordinary masonry I count the bricks -- in the U.S. you know a brick and the cement it needs will be 3x8 inches but when the building is stucco, or in this case cut stone or terra cotta, I've got nothing to go by besides my experience of doing this for many years. On the long wall there are 33 areas to fill -- corners, pilasters, and windows. The wall is 233 feet long and given the mix of elements there are many different successful ways to fill that 233 foot distance correctly. But most of those won't look right and while it can be easy to throw those answers out it's still possible to have 5 or 6 correct answers to evaluate more carefully. I just jump in a use trial and error, initially on a spreadsheet but when i think I have a good answer I fire up Sketchup. In this case it was the 4th, or maybe the 5th SU trial than worked and that's where the time went. FWIW there are still two spots that are off.

I have a large collection of textures and none you see here were created specifically for this building. They've all been used elsewhere already.