POST 37: THE BASIC REBUILT CHURCH

   I actually still don't know exactly what colors and textures will work best for the walls and ceilings, and that will evolve with time as I add 3D architectural detail: columns, arches, pediments, altar, niches, pulpit, balcony, organ, etc...
  So I used the same fairly basic irregular red ochre texture and friezes top and bottom all around the church, and the same blue vaulted ceilings, except for the Altar wall which I want to be different to give a sense of orientation within the church:

     The first thing I want to do is add arches and flat columns. So I created patterns in Photoshop that will be bent using Ray Tracing in AE and fit to the inside curve of the arches adjusting x,y,z scales separately:

     The first try using column textures matching the walls doesn't please me because they blend into the wall too much, so I will design columns matching the arches geometric patterns instead:

  Also, if I use the green/red/purple/yellow color scheme, which I like, the blue ceiling will have to turn purple or go, and I will probably custom design slightly different ones to fit the nave, the transepts and the choir. The walls will be eventually redone too with more geometric patterns on the frieze and wainscot

Post 36: REBUILDING THE CHURCH

   I enlarged the transept to match the nave and found a better Labyrinth to use as a Rosace at the center.
    On that footprint, I rebuilt with simple red ochre weathered walls and a more muted friese around the bottom. I used the same blue ceiling image, but customized it to fit the nave, the transepts, and the choir.
    Fitting the octogonal tower was still difficult, and I found that the straight line cut in the ceiling was wrong. I ended up creating a mask by trial and error so the opening seen from the top matched an octagonal template. Once I had the mask for the nave, I copied it to the transept and choir vaults:

    I then had to erase the texture I used for each half of the tower until it fit:

     Next came the hardest part, the dome... I need 8 triangular slices which will be curved using Ray Tracing. Instead of a solid texture, I chose to try an image I had by Anderea del Castanio:

   It is incomplete and distorted, but with a little Copying, pasting and cloning, I got a nice perfectly triangular slice:

   It turns out that once put in place around the 8 sides of the tower and curved in AE,  there is a gap between the slices, and they are a bit too long:

   So I used the Edit>Transform>Warp in Photoshop to shorten it and curve the sides out progressively until they touch:

POST 35: LESSONS FROM THE CHURCH TEST

    I am not going to push the test any further and build a dome which will need to be redone. I have learned enough to get to building the final church.
   First, in order to fit the octogonal tower properly and get clean edges with the vaults, I have to make the Transept the same width as the Nave. The only way I found  to do it  was to erase/clone part of the images in 2D until they more or less fit together in 3D. I tried masking, but the intersection between the octogone and the half cylindrical vaults was a double curve and I couldn't make it work. But I figured out that if I made the widths the same, the cuts in the vaults images would be a simple V shape instead of an empirical odd curved V:

 and I should get a perfect fit with regular curved cuts in the half tower images(I made a half octagon using ray tracing with a 4 segments setting in the geometric Options:

Post 34: Building a Test Churh

   I always like the idea of the "den/lab" of our strange "mad scientist/inventor" being in an old abandoned church with decaying frescoed walls and a vaulted ceiling.
  Seeing Terry Gilliam's "Zero Theorem" a couple of months ago confirmed my choice, and oriented my search for images and textures. The high vaults and the large cross shaped space will allow interesting camera moves, and can provide very dramatic images, and wonderful multicolored abstract backgrounds for close ups.
   Since I am working in After Effects, and am limited to single curves, the shapes have to remain simple.
I will use the basic cross shape:

    I cannot make a spherical dome over the crossing, but can fit in an octagonal tower with a dome in eight single curved sections:

   I decided to build a large test church just to see how it worked, and how AE handled the rendering on my faster solid state machine. That will also allow me to try different colors and textures. I started with a 6000 x 10,000 pixels canvas, which I had to eventually enlarge to 8000 x 10,000. THAT IS BIG!
   I placed wide angle virtual cameras at the four end of the cross to see what I was doing in space.
   I built the walls in Phoshop mixing textures, frieses, fresco fragments, paintings, and architectural details, imported them in AE, and put them in place.
   I used Ray Tracing to vault the ceilings and adjusted them to fit the width of the nave and the narrower transept:

   Here are various camera views of the space:

     A view down the nave from the door looking at the altar:

     A view down the nave from the Altar:

       A view of the Transept toward the right:

         A View of the Transept toward the left:

      A bird's eye view from the dome:

 A view from the floor looking up to the dome:

    A view of down the Altar from the nave vault:

       A view down the Transept from floor level:

Post 33: Time does fly doing "grunt work"

   I cannot believe my last post is dated October 11. It has been more than two months spent mostly collecting images to build my virtual 3D Steampunk World... I have not worked on the Spaceship at all.
   I have gone out and photographed old buildings downtown Birmingham. I have been scouring the Internet for thousands of images of old weathered buildings, outside walls(brick, stucco, stone, metal), inside walls(plaster, painted, stucco, frescoes), architectural details(cornices, pediments, columns, etc...), storefronts, doors, windows, signs, floors, chimneys, streets, roads, churches, frescoes, graffiti, paintings, water towers, interior spaces. My purpose is not to use the images as they are, but to cut them up in different elements, straighten them up, and build a collection of 2D building Parts. 
  For example, facades:

  Side walls:

   Architectural details:

   Tileable floor textures:

 Old storefronts:

 Large and small wall textures:

  Tileable street textures:

  Church and Roman frescoes:

  Tileable decorative frieses:

Post 32: Thinking of the Storyboard

   I am starting to think in terms of a "semi photographic" storyboard. Several virtual cameras in AE will let us try all kinds of shots very easily. When we get further along, we will need to shoot a bunch of stills of the final characters in different positions and build a bank of images from which to do the Storyboard. Every shot should be designed and rehearsed virtually before we even start shooting video of action. The great thing is that most of the time, each character can be shot individually in front of the green screen, and composited with the background in AE.

    We can shoot through the door towards the front of the ship:

or do a wide shot from the opposite side:

      We can have cameras outside the Spaceship looking in trough the portholes:  

or showing the outside City Scape:

Post 31: Adding a Room

  I first built the partition with two heavy metal doors, a communications center using a turn of the Century Blickendorsfer, two speaker horns and an old microphone, and various props. The old tower clock mechanism is just a placeholder for some kind of mechanical geared contraption to be constructed at a later stage. Then I added walls following the shape of the hull, extended floor and ceiling, and put a door to the engine room. This is a view of the partition looking into the new room:

     Next is a view through the arched door showing the empty new room:

    I am thinking of making it the private Cabin for "The Magnate", sort of a cabinet of curiosities with a bed and a desk.