Hayward

Actually.......The buildings are being replicated brick for brick, and they will be placed in the game as large city blocks, so the density will be similar to the actual village.

Looks like someone hit up simtropolis hard. I haven't opened the game in 4 years. In fact I lent the game to someone last summer. However, I'm making buildings for the game and I've started modeling the German Village in Columbus as well as many blocks of buildings in Harlem.

I wish parks had pianos that the public could play. Here at U of M, they place a few around campus in the lobbies of busy public areas. You can walk right up and start playing if you like, but you have to be very good, that's the only rule. It's really nice around this time, especially when students play holiday music. And they are always very talented. It feels like a department store rather than a campus building. I guess pianos in the park might be a bad idea since they'd probably be vandalized. Here's one I found in an abandoned highrise in Detroit. I wonder why it's out of tune? hmmmm In the Detroit photography world, I shouldn't have posted this. It's an incredibly cliche photo for people who have visited Detroit's vacant structures. Just go to flickr and search "piano abandoned detroit"

I eat Marco's pizza every other day since we provide it to students where I work and charge by the slice. Must explain why I have the graduate student 15

I have Comcast. "It's Comcastic!" I'm actually shocked I've had no problems with internet or television.

^ Whores. There were two

I like this. Dig the rows of contrasting brick

Another benefit of texting I noticed is that txt messages seem to reach somebody in an area of poor coverage since calling doesn't work at all. When I'm working an all day shift buried deep within a building of concrete and steel, I get alot of complaints from people who say I don't answer my phone. I don't get good service, but I have just enough to receive and send text messages.

I'm glad text messages were invented. It's cut down on the number people who talk loud on their phones at bus stops, office environments, when waiting in line, or even in public restrooms. Furthermore, if you are in a car with a bunch of people, it's a silent way of communication where you don't have to turn down the music, or deal with everyone on their phone at once. I do get annoyed when someone sends me a ton of text messages, expecting me to respond after every one. This girl once told me "It's just like sending instant messages, it's no different." Sure... at least when I IM, I'm at at computer at all times whereas if you reach by texting, I'm probably in the middle of something else like picking up groceries, watching a movie, or driving.

My post was only a tease of Kardinal Offishall, who in reality I have nothing against. He's a talented artist, but overplayed in Toronto (especially because of home airplay rules) as Lil Wayne is the U.S. I realize there are plenty of other artists. I basically intended a response from Colday and David, which it did. Sorry it produced a rant considering my first post is just me saying b.s. Regardless, I do appreciate your response as it is informative.

So today, I went to various malls to do some Christmas shopping. I really hate the way people walk down mall concourses, particularly when I was at the Westfield in Toledo. I usually go there because it's bigger than Briarwood in Ann Arbor, but it's also more crowded. Parents should never let their children push strollers. One kid was all over the place, and he created a huge backup of people because this family wouldn't get out of the way. Then you have the people that just stand there in huge group, so that you are forced to walk towards the retail carts in the center where you immediately become heckled by some salesperson. I really like being in places with a lot of people, but I don't like them when they are dysfunctional and you a forced to change movement way to many times. But maybe if people realized, there others around them, crowd movement would be a lot more efficient. I deal with a lot of people on a daily basis on sidewalks, but more some reason it's the most annoying at shopping malls.

I continue to spend as I've always have, actually probably more. And I have a lot of reasons to be very concerned how much I'm spending, but screw it, it's the holiday season and I like buying for other people and myself. But you can definitely tell retailers were nervous. I kind of laughed because I returned something to best buy that I bought 100 days ago. The lady was like "Well, it's been past 30 days, actually way past 30 days, so is store credit fine?" I said absolutely, and I could hear her say "Oh thank, god." I know retail sales have slumped a bit, but think people might be overreacting to prediction of devastating retail sales. Malls are still packed, and I'm sure people will continue to buy, maybe not quite as much, but they'll still buy.

Oh okay. At the Scarborough Town Center?? Had to be there...just had to.

Listen everyone. When all is said and done in this thread, the only bad thing about Canada is their only hip-hop artist Kardinal Offishall. Offishally Kanadian needs to stop invading the US airwaves, but let our own artists infiltrate Canadian society by cutting Kardinal out of all the 30% home airplay slots they play non-stop in Toronto. In his place, we'll dump more T.I., Lil Wayne, and and as a bonus we'll ship all our Akon tracks to you as well, since Canadian hip-hop radio stations already love Akon's music so much.

I think his intention was to die and haunt the new development.

I was up on the roof of my apartment building today getting some shots when I decided to walk around town for some more. This thread will feature pictures of Ann Arbor's 4th Ward as well as the State & Liberty Commercial Districts that adjoin the University of Michigan. I'll post U of M and downtown Ann Arbor pictures in a separate thread. These photos are cold and somewhat depressing so I've mixed in some from late September to heat it back up Looking South Toward the University over Cornwell Place neighborhood Looking Northwest over the Huron River Valley. In the center of the photo you can see a train pulling into town from Chicago. It's been really convenient having the Amtrak Station a couple blocks form my house as well as cheap daily trips to Chicago. The east end of the 4th ward is flanked by ugly parking structures and research buildings. Permanent residents have feared the specter of highrise development invading their neighborhood from almost every direction. Proposed buildings from 5 to 45 stories have all been shot down one by one. Based on the architecture of some of these buildings that rose in the 60's, you'll understand why. Uh oh. I'd be less concerned about height of buildings and more about these paint schemes. I thought this was a "historic district." University of Michigan's North Quad student housing rising. It's an R AM Stern building, so I trust it will be done right. Getting too cold? Let's move back to September Nickel's Arcade. Ann Arbor's earliest "shopping mall." Switch back to the holidays I'm happy to say this remains a successful retail arcade to this day. Looking toward campus. More of this in a thread to come. Ann Arbor's tallest, and not exactly the most attractive. This city has a really odd skyline, and most of the taller buildings remain close to campus as opposed to downtown. Looking back down State Street. Burton Memorial Bell Tower and Hill Auditorium. The acoustics are so good that apparently you can hear someone speak without a microphone on stage all the way up on the third level due to the auditorium's spherical shape. During my undergraduate years, a group of us went backstage of a Ludacris concert via underground tunnels from a neighboring building. The edge of campus looking toward town. Now from above Borders Store #1, the first Borders Book Store started here...actually in a neighboring building. This particular location was formerly a department store. After Borders outgrew their first location they moved down the block, and a well known American retail chain was born. Interesting story about this alley. Murals used to cover the walls, but over time they became covered with graffiti. It was tolerated both by authorities and even the artist, so the paint has changed over time. However, a couple months ago someone paint rolled all the walls white (not the owners). The police were called and are seeking out who covered up all the graffiti with white paint. If found, they could face vandalism charges. However, the problem has recently begun to go away, and graffiti has returned covering up the roller vandal's white rectangle. That is bubble gum on that wall. Our newest private student housing project. Another 18 story one is to rise on the low brown building on the right. If you are wondering what rents are in this area, a resident in this new building will pay about $1000/month I believe. Apartments around my neighborhood range from $750-$1200/month for a one bedroom. So it's a relatively attractive housing option being so close to the business areas and campus. South of campus in the "student ghetto" rents are much lower. Later this week....Downtown

Damnit! My walls are flooding. My apartment building is ancient. I was fast asleep and woke up around 2:00 am to the pipes making a pounding sound in the wall. They do that once and awhile because superheated water is pumped through them for the radiators and they expand and contract causing some friction.. Except now I woke up to the sound of a steady stream of water falling somewhere in the room. I walked over to the area and could hear it in the wall, then discovered all the plaster is beginning to blister from the floor on up to about 4 feet high. The wall also feels extremely hot and there's an electrical panel that I cannot open on the offending wall. So far nothing feels wet, not even the carpet along the baseboard, but the blistering plaster does feel slightly damp. Do you think I should break a hole in the plaster to release the water? I have huge industrial sized bucket to at least manage it for the time being. Now I have to take care of this tomorrow errrr today and I'm busy. And my landlord and his crew are somewhere I don't know :mrgreen:

I'll begin to debunk some parts of this video [That was removed!], although a lot of it is using common sense and can be explained by things we see in life everyday. Photo expert. Remember this is TV drama, they are clearly clipping parts of the interview to make him appear as though he doesn't believe there was a moon landing when in fact if you watch closely his attitudes are somewhat neutral. They hand him a photo that he can't explain. So what, I can't explain everything I see in photos either. He also mentions that the cameras are indeed hard to use, which is absolutely true. But remember that NASA actually cropped the photo and lightened them to present to the public. The astronauts never had to use view finders, simply point the camera somewhat in the correct direction and hit the shutter. The originals are actually terrible looking if you do some searching on the net. The public wanted to see good images, just like we choose to see decent exposures here on u/o. Shadows. This conspiracy I'll prove false on my own. This is a matter of surface terrain and visual perspective. We all know that terrain and physical structures manipulate shadows. You can actually see in the video that the terrain slightly dips where the rock is in the background. Because of perspective, the shadow also appears more shallow. It's merely a visual effect of perspective and terrain. Shadows are technically all 5 o'clock in this video, but if there is a change in elevation, there will be distortion to the shadows. The video fails to consider this. Next time you are in a park with some dynamic terrain and lots of trees, take note of this and you will see some good examples. Astronaut Illumination. I'll debunk this on my own too based on experience using lighting systems in photorealistic 3d modeling. The only thing that should be cast in complete shadow is the ground, simply because it's low, somewhat flat, and blocked by the spacecraft. The astronauts are however tall 6' foot bodies. They are actually only blocked from direct sunlight, but not indirect sunlight. Light is also bouncing off the ground outside the shadow, and back up onto them. Next time it's really sunny out, walk near the exit of a building, but don't go outside, stand inside where it's dark but look at the concrete. If it's covered in snow, and bright and sunny, it's probably very bright and you squint. Yet you are inside a dark building. That's light bouncing off the pavement and up onto you. Same goes for the spacecraft, and it's very reflective. It's interesting that when I look at the saucepan on my stove, the bottom of it is most illuminated, yet the only thing on in my apartment is the overhead kitchen light! How could that be, wouldn't the top be illuminated the most? Light is bouncing, the curved edge at the bottom of the saucepan is receiving reflections of light from my almond colored stovetop. But there's also some photo editing imagery at play here you see in some of the photos. See "photo expert part" I've watched up to 4:00 minutes, but now I have to get some sleep. I'll watch the rest tomorrow. EDIT! Damnit david, I spend a whole bunch of time composing this and you pull the video! put it back up!

In my opinion we did land. Here's a good website I found awhile ago that explains the conspiracies and answers to them. http://www.braeunig.us/space/hoax.htm The conspiracy theories that I've read are pretty weak, mostly because the people who write them do not have complete scientific expertise on the subject they are discussing. What I mean is they are valid questions to ask, but there are facts and reasons for everything that can answer these questions. IMO, it's similar to the world trade center steel conspiracy theory. People who do not have an architectural or engineering degree have no right to talk when after taking a intro to structures class, that conspiracy falls flat on its face.

BTW, go ahead and use the textures on the model if you'd like. The copyright stuff was put on all of our models to prevent it from being used for commercial purposes or having the house uploaded to the 3d warehouse.

Looks like people were really inspired by the Ferris wheel after the World Columbian Exposition. This is hilarious.

Our group actually had a lot of talent. nofunk here on urbanohio was a member of the group and did many of the buildings as well. Here's a sample of one of our buildings http://www.umich.edu/~ifmuth/local/820TREMAINEST.skp

There are ways to make your city perform better on any computer. 1. Use components whenever possible. Make windows and doors components so that they become instances when you multiply them throughout your model. It also shrinks your model size and eases the workload when your computer renders out the model every time you shift the viewport. When I build my models, almost everything is a component, but that maybe a problem if you intend your model to be presentable in sketchup instead of using photo realistic rendering programs like kerkythea (free) or 3ds Max (several thousand $) 2. Use layers. Make the buildings on each block a layer. While you work, make blocks "not visible" that you don't intend to touch while you work on other buildings. It's useless to have them display and drag the whole system down when you aren't editing them specifically. Only display them when you intend to see an overview of your work, or plan to take screenshots. 3. Avoid using a lot of arcs. Circles are awful for some reason. I realize they create lots of little faces, but it never seems like enough to kill your processing speed. Regardless, sketchup seems to hate having a lot of them. 4. Know your limits. At some point, your city may simply become too huge. So huge that it becomes an operating failure. Save your model as different names as you move along so that when you hit the tipping point, you can at least step back to the last file and say "I'm done." and move onto something else. This issue is caused by all your memory being maxed out. I was able to save one of my projects by opening it up at a rendering farm, deleting some buildings and resaving it. Here's one of my projects form last year. This was as big as I could get. The file was also 450 Mb and contained very highly detailed buildings. In fact we modeled the gutters and downspouts on the houses way in the back. Not pictured above was the freeway which had curves, grades, overpasses, and hillsides fully modeled. That was a major part of the problem. None of the terrain in this model was flat, so our file was big and slow before we even put the buildings on it. In fact buildings accounted for about 5% of the overall "lag" to the model. So maybe you won't encounter as many problems as we had. Also, DO NOT ever use 3d Trees DO NOT ever use 3d Trees DO NOT ever use 3d Trees!

DJ, that sketchup city is awesome! You should post it over there, it would put 90% of them to shame. Great scale and detail. BTW, I have realistic, good resolution, tileable brick textures that look good and don't create a "patterned look" if you'd like them. I can post them here in this thread for everyone to take.

Well, thats what I was thinking of. They are overly concerned with whimsical geometries and huge masses on superblocks, also note how 50% of them are on a landform that represents Manhattan. Staunton is pretty sweet though, and has some nice street level perspectives as well as CityCity version whatever.