This is my tutorial on how to add many, many floors to a skyscraper that may have a somewhat awkward shape. I recently added 205 floors to one of my skyscrapers. In this tutorial I will show you how to save a boat load of time when it comes to not only adding bulk quantities of floors, but also adding textures.
First let's start by making a shape. I chose an awkward shape to demonstrate how flexible these floors can be.
Next up, we will make a very large square that
exceeds the width and length of the skyscraper. Notice that I made this piece about two feet thick.
This thickness will be the thickness of the finished floor, so you can input any thickness you want or need.
You can't see it in my Kerky render, but I decided to create some construction lines from which to site my pillars. You don't need to put all the floors in at the same time, so you could gradually put in a dozen floors at a time with different pillar setups if you choose. Pillars can be swapped out for any other support depending upon what you want.
One important thing to consider is that the height of these pillars will represent the amount of space between floors.
Because the glass I have coated the building with is reflective (and thus hard to see unless I cluttered the model with something to reflect against), I have moved to an un-rendered view to show texture.
Now is a good time to add textures to at least the floors and optionally the tower itself.
Before moving on, select the floor and make it a
component. After that, do the same thing to the tower.
Using construction lines to accurately place the floor, put the floor component directly into the skyscraper, ensuring that the pillars are located were they would provide the most support and be the most aesthetically pleasing.
Using the move command, one can hold control to copy floor components and move them up to make the actual floors with the desired space (defined by the pillars) between each floor. The very top floor can be right clicked and made unique so you can go in and delete the pillars of just that specific component instead of editing all of the floors. This way nothing juts out of the top of the skyscraper.
Select everything. Right click>explode to make all the components return to being regular models.
Do not de-select. Everything should still be selected.
Right click>intersect>intersect with model.
DON'T PANIC.
Your computer might freeze up for a minute because intersecting geometry can be pretty intense for some reason. Take your hands off the keyboard and let it just sit there until it either finishes intersecting or crashes. I only learned about this when I was building my 205 story, 8 sided giant and left it alone after it froze up to go eat food, only to return thirty minutes later to discover that it had done the job. Hopefully it works, but the important thing is patience.
Hopefully you have made it to this point. Delete all the extra floor space. Texture in the
sides of the floors, depending on the size and complexity of the shape, putting textures on the sides might be the most tedious thing.
Start adding additional details like doors and rooving. Using this intersecting method, one could also add thickness to the walls of the skyscraper beforehand. Try different things and tell me what you think.