Hello, everybody!
This is my first post on this forum. I've been a skyscraper fan as long as I can remember and last spring when I found Sketchup, I finally had a tool to realize my dreams of modeling imagenary cities.
The city I'm going to introduce here is called Rocane. It is my second sketchup city. Rocane is a fictional city somewhere in the Midwestern United States. It lies on the banks of Rocane River - a imagenary tributary of the Mississippi River. My idea for Rocane was to make different models of the city to follow its development from late 19th century to near future. When modeling buildings for each era I've tried to use architectural styles common for that era - for example art deco in 1930's and modernism for 50's to 70's. For each era-model I modeled a few unique buildings and a bunch of generic era-style buildings to fill the rest of the city.
About modeling principles: I wanted Rocane to be quite a large city, but still small enough sizewise for 3d Warehouse. Therefore I decided to use texturing instead of geography. I know there are fans of both techniques on this forum. For performance reasons the city lacks non-building detail. Trees, streets and sidewalks were the only detail I added in addition to buildings.
The textures are handmade using Sketchup and Photoshop. I chose this technique to get a unified yet still unique look for the city. The texture modeling was very time consuming. Luckily I had a very long vacation last summer!
The city is actually already finished and all the models from 1880 to 2020 can be found on 3d warehouse. The purpose for these posts is to introduce the buildings.
The images are Sketchup renders, because I think Rocanes textures look better rendered with Sketchup than with Kerkythea.
Well, enough with the backround, let's see some pictures.
This first picture shows couple of Rocanes oldest buildings: St.Matthews Church (built in 1854) on the left and the City Courthouse (built in 1872) on the right. St.Matthews Church, designed in Gothic Revival style, was for a long time the tallest structure in Rocane. With its central location at the corner of Main Street and Market Street, it still remains one of the favorite buildings of Rocane residents.
The main thoroughfares in downtown Rocane are Main Street (running parallel to the river) and Market street (running east from the riverfront). This view shows Market Street in 1880 looking down to the river (westwards). The back of St.Matthews church is on the left. The western bank of Rocane river can be seen on the horizon.
Here is Rocanes skyline in 1880 seen from across the river. The bell tower of St.Matthews church can be seen rising above other buildings.
