WIP - Pennsylvania Station (sort of)

[R Reynolds]

The ALT snap bias aim feature is such a pleasure to use, I've regained my enthusiasm for an architectural  model I set aside in 2009. It's my version of a Hollywood set of the grand old Pennsylvania Station built in New York in 1910 and demolished in 1963. I'm calling it a Hollywood version for three reasons.

1. Since my reference images from books and the Net only have a few readable dimensions I have to make a lot of "looks good to me" guesses.

2. The amount of detailing required for a 100% accurate copy is too staggering so I've simplified it while trying maintain a similar look.

3. The section of the building where people board a train is called the Concourse. While it was a spectacular work of architecture, it was essentially a large room where passengers would congregate before descending down stairs to tunnels in the lowest level to board coaches pulled by electric locomotives. To me that's a subway station not a rail station. So my Concourse will be a complete fiction but it will have steam locomotives.

Here's four views of the real thing.

 

[R Reynolds]

Keep in mind that this is a WIP and I have a long way to go (including getting the lighting right but I'm still pleased with the result.

Here's two views of my arcade taken from the street entrance end and showing the concourse archway in the distance.

 

 

 

 

 

[R Reynolds]

A view of the arcade from the floor of the waiting room.

 

[R Reynolds]

The main waiting room.

 

[R Reynolds]

The archway to the concourse.

 

[robcat2075]

Great models!

These would sing with radiosity!

[itsjustme]

Incredible, as usual, Rodger!

[Xtaz]

Superb !!!! As always...

 

[Fuchur]

Looks VERY detailled and very nice :).
Just great – can't wait for a fly through when you are done :).

Best regards
*Fuchur*

[R Reynolds]

I've practically spent the last quarter of 2021 on the arched concourse that can be seen through the archway in the last image. As I said at the beginning of this thread, the real N.Y. Penn Station concourse was an elaborate waiting room for travelers using the stairways to the trains in basement tunnels.

Great architecture but I wanted something more along the line of what the Pennsylvania Railroad built in Pittsburgh, a large train shed.

Basically a structure built to accommodate multiple, entire passenger trains. But I couldn't imagine the amount of my time and computer RAM it would take to model that intricate array of beams and girders so I decided to go with a complete fantasy design of riveted box arches.

This design means far fewer patches and the rivets and stamped patterns can be faked using normal maps.

And here's a short camera move shooting inside, near a painfully under-modeled lounge/observation car which is here mostly to give a sense of the scale of the building.

 

I'm beginning to get the feeling that I may never get to the end of the line on this project but I'm having a blast during the trip.

[itsjustme]

Looks fantastic, Rodger!

[R Reynolds]

Now that I've finally optimized the settings for klieg lights as window skylights, I'm getting closer to having an interior light level that's believable. I'm still tweaking intensities to get good exposure levels from full sun to inside the archway but this is an improvement on the lighting in the Oct. 1 image of this arch since we can now see the spill light from the concourse beyond the doors.

[itsjustme]

Great stuff, Rodger!

[R Reynolds]

Here's my observation car entering the concourse at too high a speed with a too abrupt stop. I have a low opinion of moving your virtual camera through a glass window but the reason for this test shot was to check that the car's interior ambient light rig balanced well with that of the concourse.

[robcat2075]

Wonderful work, again, Roger!

 

On 6/4/2022 at 8:42 PM, R Reynolds said:

 I have a low opinion of moving your virtual camera through a glass window

That door couldn't be opened?

 

 

Compression question...

Your evening walk-around shot is 16 seconds long, 12 MB and is 29.97 fps

This clip is 30 seconds long, 131 MB and QuickTime shows 240 frames per second. Indeed, when I step through it frame-by-frame I have to do eight clicks for every visible frame advance.

Some compression parameter is set differently between these two clips and is creating an excessive file size in this one?

 

[R Reynolds]

Quote

That door couldn't be opened?

Well I could say that it's only a WIP so the door has no hinge bones. But I also didn't I think of it.😄

Quote

Compression question...

I'm still on the learning curve of PowerDirector. Every time I convert  a new AVI, I sometimes test a different compression setting just to see what happens. Thanks for the info.

[R Reynolds]

In my post from Feb. 6, I noted that I had more believable interior light levels, but this resulted in the 16 ft. (4.9 m) diameter, brass clock over the concourse entrance to be poorly lit.

This is fairly prototypical because, as can be seen by the photo on the left, the only way the photographer could get any light within the arch was by seriously overexposing the skylight coming through the windows. As such, for rotoscoping purposes, I found the best photo of the clock was taken during demolition of the station, as seen at right.

Since I didn't want to lose this detail in the dark and this is a "Hollywood set" version of the station, I installed a pair of 1950's vintage theatrical spotlights on the nearby ledges. It may not be prototypical, but it is believable. Now I can do a crane down shot starting on a close-up of the clock with the light reflecting from the brass.

[R Reynolds]

Here we walk from the main waiting room, through the arch between the men's and women's waiting rooms and enter the concourse/train shed where an unfinished observation car is magically arriving on its own.

[Wildsided]

That's some pretty stuff there Roger. 

 

[itsjustme]

Great stuff, Rodger!

[R Reynolds]

I've finally finished the waiting room's large floor lamps, shown here.

 

I didn't have good reference photos for the details in the cast iron base and columns so I had to get creative with the normal decals.

 

The large marble bases doubled as heating vents with an interesting cover grate design that I wanted to use but I didn't want that many patches (times four) in the model. So I took a chance and built the grate but only used it to generate a normal and cookie cut decal. It turned out far better than I expected.

 

It's believable when you get quite close, even at an angle. The frame is modeled but the grate itself is just four patches.

[robcat2075]

That's a good-looking lamp, Rodger!

And the walk-thru vid above that I had missed earlier.

For the grate on the lamp... did you consider a displacement map?

 

Suggestion for man at end of  walk-thru...

[itsjustme]

Fantastic work as usual, Rodger!

[detbear]

Nice work Rodger!!

[R Reynolds]

Quote

did you consider a displacement map

I gave it a thought but as I understand displacement maps, their depth resolution is dependent on the patch resolution so to get sufficient detail I'd still need way, way more than just four patches (times four) for each side.

Quote

Suggestion for man at end of  walk-thru

Great suggestion, Robert! Thanks. I'm currently rendering a different camera move showcasing the lamps. I'll work on the pose of him leaning against the marble base for the end of the shot.

Here's a still of the lamps installed in the waiting room.

[robcat2075]

Quote

I gave it a thought but as I understand displacement maps, their depth resolution is dependent on the patch resolution so to get sufficient detail I'd still need way, way more than just four patches (times four) for each side.

 

The old "Fractal" maps required dense meshes but displacement maps are mesh independent. You can look at my Gremlin thread for examples of that.

They do have anti-aliasing problems sometimes.

[R Reynolds]

Here's my first pass at the business man reading a newspaper. I'm going to have to make the newspaper much more patch heavy so it can crush more convincingly in his hand and not pass through his wrist.

[robcat2075]

That is a "hard news" newspaper.

[R Reynolds]

His paper is now a bit more floppy and crushable.  And I tried to imply multiple pages with a simple stair-step bump decal applied to the edges.

[R Reynolds]

Quote

...did you consider a displacement map...have anti-aliasing problems sometimes

So I did a head to head comparison of a displacement map (top grate) and a normal map (bottom) grate. Both models used the identical cookie cut decal.  I'll grant you that the displacement map does look more 3D but the problems occurring near the top of the arches and the distortions at low camera angles (and this is with it applied at 30%) make normal maps the obvious winner for this application.

I might have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for the cookie cut to form the grate. Here's a comparison 9 pass screen render of the grate at a 67 deg. viewing angle with the cookie cut turned off on the left. The cut out edge really accentuate the antialiasing problems at the edges.

[robcat2075]

 

[R Reynolds]

Installed the lamps in the waiting room and composed a 50 sec. crane down/dolly right shot that seems to ask the question "Why is there only one person waiting in this huge room?".

 

 

[robcat2075]

18 hours ago, R Reynolds said:

Installed the lamps in the waiting room and composed a 50 sec. crane down/dolly right shot that seems to ask the question "Why is there only one person waiting in this huge room?"

Headline on the man's paper should read "PLAGUE EMPTIES CITY"

[R Reynolds]

After finally settling on a reasonable facsimile of white marble material, I installed the waiting room floor

and the first of four ticket window kiosks.

[Wildsided]

Damn, they don't make 'em like this anymore. Looking great Rodger.

[Rodney]

Great sense of scale in all of these models @R Reynolds