shinjuku street scene
 

Hello - This is a project that I have been working on for the last couple of weeks. I am basically trying to recreate, as best I can, a photograph of a street in shinjuku which I found on the web.

Still a ton to do - I need to do a lot more work on those taxis (1st time building a car!) and I am not sure how I am going to deal with the people - I guess make a low poly man and woman and then duplicate and deform...

Thought I would post my progress so far as I am sort of stalled at the moment, so some feedback would be good...
:beer:

here is the photo that I am working from...

and here is a view from another angle.

and here is one more. As you can see there is a lot of extra pieces and geometry that I will eventually get rid of, as the final scene will be viewed from a fixed camera angle.

Looking awesome so far! Were you going to try and texture the ads and signs on the walls/windows in the pic into your scene, or were you going to make your own? Seems like it'll be a fun project.

nice work man its looking really good.

apart from the taxis as you said, everything else looks really cool.

keep it up - good choise of photo

edit : the scooter needs some work aswell

Arran, very ambitous project. How much detail do you want to have on each object.

Looks damm good dude!

You could do the easy option and camera map it!

Looks great so far man, looking forward to some updates

Wow! Thanks everyone for all the great responses. As always it's much appreciated and really helpful. Cheers! :beer: :beer:

erictacti: I was thinking about doing my own signs, but then I figured I can't speak or read Japanese, so I'll probably do something stupid. I am going to try and keep it fairly close to the original image, without worrying too much if I have to change the odd detail here or there. The blue and white 3D signs were made by cutting out the signs from the original image, messing with the perspective in PS until they looked flat, projecting them onto a plane in maya and then literally cutting them out with the split poly tool. I wanted to try and use the create text tool, but I couldn't figure out how to write japanese in maya or PS.

younglion: Thanks mate. might have to have another look over your car thread to work out how to make my taxis.:beer:

tweetytunes: ha ha - yeah, I think pretty much everything in my scene needs a bit more work. Have you seen that seat on my scooter?! And I still need to make some handle bars!

Minstrel: cheers mate! I probably won't do too much detail - only on the objects and buildings in the foreground. I am trying to keep everything to the bare minimum if possible.

Gster: Thanks for the good words. Camera map? I haven't heard of that before. Care to explain?

Thanks again everyone!

thats lookin pretty cool man the taxis as you say need work but the rest is great

keep it up:bow:

ii desu.

just ok, eh? oh well, better than saying it's crap! ;)

subarashii ;) (gosh some people want praise don't they?)

oops.. yeah, sorry about about that! my girlfriend is learning japanese and informed me that I may have mistranslated your first post!:blush:

arigatoo gozaimasu ! :beer:

lookin sweet arran! :)

hey arran, haha love the idea of this project alot. looking good soo far, keep up the work dude :) looks like your struggling on the "takushi"taxi... but i know you will pull it off like usual ;)

"watashi wa, marlon des..." i think i said, my name is marlon. as you know already but im bored atm, 4:44am here in australia lol...

cheers arran, marlon

Hey Arran, Camera mapping is where you project an image onto a 3d scene, so you can move the camera and have the 2d projection lookinbg like its 3D (via the 3D objects)

Its a bit hard to describe, this shows it better than I can describe (as well as having a tutorial on it too!)

http://www.digitalartform.com/archiv...rojecti_1.html

Sorry for the late reply

Cheers

Steve

Hey MattTheMan - thanks for the comments mate - always good to get nice feedback. :beer:

marlonjohn - cheers dude - and thanks for the takushi tip - it helped me find some more pictures.

gster - mate you are a star - Thanks for the cool tutorial. That looks very interesting.

Well, here is a small update - let's see, I added some windows and basic interiors to the matsumoto building, did some more work on the escalator, added the mannequins, added some lights on the far right, made some more signs and did some general jiggling of the various bits and pieces.

Almost finished the modelling of the buildings and then I can get stuck into the crappy taxis...

how are you doing all the Japanese?

The blue and white 3D signs were made by cutting out the signs from the original, flattenning them out in photoshop and then projecting them on to a poly plane in maya. I then cut them out using the split poly tool. As for the rest or the signs, I am planning to just take what I can from the original and anything else I will just make up.

nanno kotobaga shiritaidesuka?

hi mate, hope you are still doing this, looks great. My wife is here and if you need any words or written Japanese she is happy to write it and i can scan it in for you to copy.

good work and looks like difficult work must be heavy on the processior, how long does this scene take to render??

thanks mirek - yeah, still working on this, doing the odd bit every now and again. I need to get the taxis done and have been trying to decide whether to keep working on them in polygons or start again using nurbs, which always make my head hurt. At the moment, as it's just the model, it takes two seconds to render.

thanks for the offer with the translating - i'll keep it in mind. Not sure what your sentence meant though...

nurbs.., uuggghh, my head hurts too!!

the sentance means 'what words do you need?'.., nothing special mate, simply that!

anyway, as i said if you need any Japanese words i can scan them to a Jpeg for you, Ryoko has been to Sinjuku many times but she doesn't like it, i think it is 'the seedy side of town' .., sounds good to me though lol.

M :)

Man, this is coming along swimmingly! It's looking damn good thus far, arran! Have you thought of adding in your own touches to the street, such as scooters, mechs, or some other Japanese type stuff? That'd be cool.

On a side note, that tute rocks, gster!! I didn't know stuff like that could be done with Maya! Thanks!

Hey - thanks erictacti - I like that idea a lot! I got a mobile suit gundam for Xmas so I might have to get him to destroy a few buildings!

Not much progress on this at the moment, as I have started on the challenge, but I am still working on this and will post when I have something to show.

small update - have been bevelling and adding details here and there, such as the jayro sign and other bits...

Looking good. And, I can't wait to see it detroyed by the Mech!

j/k:p

hey arran!!!
i love it, i'm sure it was a lot of effort and sweat lol
i don't have any bad comment to give you, i think it is pretty good
keep up the good effort and keep updating us about your fantastic work

Hey - thanks for the great comments guys :beer:

It may be a while before i next update as I am stuck into this month's challenge, but I am still working on this.

welcome to simply maya migonsa - looking forward to seeing some of your work. :)

So cool - i'm jealous! :)

Can't wait to see you texture it.

Are you going to texture this? Good luck if you do.

thanks echo red. Yeah - i'm definitely going to come back to this. I made a start on a new taxi, but at the moment I am just finishing up my challenge entry.

well, it's been a while since i lasted posted, but here is an update.

I have been working on and off on the taxi. still pretty new to nurbs and I don't quite have the right refs, but I don't think it's looking too bad at the moment.

Arran, looks like a god start. I've pretty much never touched nurbs, have to learn that too, since some things in hard surface modeling are way too much hazzle to do in polys (and doesn't get the same accuracy as nurbs would). I want a good tutorial that covers more complex hard surface modeling with beveled edges etc. haven't found any though. Have you?

yeah - I really don't feel very confident using them just yet, but they do seem to be better for certain things.

I have been using this tutorial to help make my car.

http://67.15.36.49/team/Tutorials/ju...l_part1_01.asp

it's a bit vague but it's definitely helped.

bit more. I haven't attached any of the pieces yet, so it's a bit sharp and bumpy at the moment. :)

are modeling with nurbs?

yes.

I dig the incomplete car! Could you imagine driving around in something like that? Cool! Looks good so far! I'm excited to see some skinned pictures! KUTGW

Sparticus