Michele Puliga came across the Friedrichshain´s public library designed by Peter W. Schmidt Architekten, by chance, almost a year ago and has been fascinated with it ever since. After several visits to the building, with its peculiar wooden envelope affected by different light conditions and seasons, he finally decided to do what we all do when we admire an architectural marvel - reproduce in 3ds Max! Here are a few words from Michele on how it was created:
"Railclone was my chosen tool to create the wooden cladding. I was able to take advantage of this plugin to cover the entire facade using only three different boards. I modelled a single plank, modifying its dimension to fit the different heights required by the project, and unwrapping them for better control in texturing. The array of objects was created using several generators linked to simple splines, to achieve a different 45° orientation for the boards depending on the floor, or straight planks in the corners of the building.
"Using various transform inputs I was able to make slight modifications on the pattern: some planks are more rotated than others, their height is scaled and there is a minor shift in their position. The purpose of this technique was to break up the pattern a bit, avoiding the "cg-perfect" look and getting more towards a more realistic one instead. For the same reason, I used the UV randomize input inside of Railclone; in this way it was possible to create a main wood texture in square format, and randomize the position of each plank in U and V, avoiding the repetition of the exact same pattern in different elements. I have also used Railclone to distribute all the books on the shelf for the night and closeup shots.
"The vegetation surrounding the building was created using Forest Pack, and took advantage of the Forest Color feature to achieve a more realistic result."
Railclone was my chosen tool to create the wooden cladding. I was able to take advantage of this plugin to cover the entire facade using only three different boards!
