41 Varick Street

Trucks were blocking my path and I was unable to photograph the whole facade…

…until today.

52 inches long 12 inches high, 240 DPI

Montebello Specialty Food

I saw this yellow building fabricated (won't call it built, maybe "assembled") I think it's a bunch of panels over a steel frame. It will blow away in a storm I feel. It's got a nice yellow color though that stands out in the landscape. It's nearly as simple as a model can get, but large enough and with enough interference from trucks and powerlines to keep me from working on it for some time. It's finished and uploaded, awaiting review.

CAL'N YOUR MOM (details)

before fire escape detail

Who's Laughing Now?

The Big Announcement from Google Today is the release of the 3D imagery, and this post explains what it means to my project of 3D Bushwick:

https://groups.google.com/forum/#!msg/3dwh/-GQj7OlZshA/Cw9pv_M_kqUJ

I am looking forward to seeing the graveyards in 3D though, that will be awesome.


Also they use the term "irregardless" in their post, which isn't a word, is it?

CAL'N YOUR MOM

This is what has made my project special — no satellite imagery available for the location.
It made it impossible for anyone to model this place without a heroic amount of effort
and considerable skill, commitment and time.

1300 Flushing and 49 Bogart uploaded to GE.

I feel like I'm going to get busted for "entourage" with these two — the roof features of Flushing and the stairs/fire escape of Bogart are kind of ornamental. But they're, again to me, essential to the character of the buildings. I didn't build the rear fire escape of Bogart. So I'm not flaunting my disgegard for the laws. Much.

Nightmare on Flushing Street

49 Bogart — Swallow Cafe, Brooklyn's Natural — 3/4 complete

One side remains unfinished, I will go out tomorrow and photograph it. The street view of that side is from a few years ago, it's washed out, and also the camera is facing the sun. I have to wait until the evening (or maybe go in the AM ) to get the shot.

I've added the stairs and some other tiny features to the model — I may model the fire escape on the back side. There is also a fire escape on the unfinished side, which ascends in a long diagonal.

According to some maps I found, this building was sometime around the turn of the 1900, a cork factory and also a fur dyeing… place.

Completed Stitching of 49 Bogart

Fog in Sketchup

I went back to make a few small additions to 55 Wyckoff.  There is a stairwell skylight in the main tower, the parapet along the maintower was too high, and I called BS on an image I used to cover the side of one of the roof huts. i replaced it with an accurate one which I captured from my rooftop, blocks away.

Welcome to Morgantown

Thanks to Marina Chetner I was able to restore the banner to it's original state.
I searched the web for "Morgantown Mural" and variations, and found
 a big photo of the banner, but only the banner on her blog.

Stitching together the Facade of 49 Bogart.

Normally I can't get far enough away from a building to get a facade without any keystone effect— with this building now I can get a sense of how much distortion I cause when stitching in new pieces.

I took more close-up shots, in front of the cars and around trees to get the detail of the murals.

The next step will be blending these together, filling in the gaps and retouching/color correction. 

These shots were taken in the morning light on a cloudy day.

55 Wyckoff Cheap Storage

There is not a filter for this kind of retouching.

"Hey Buddy, I need you to take out those power lines and check the proportion of all the windows — make sure they're accurate."

"You're a real bastard, Mr. Sears. That's a ton of work."

"That's good. You can take out the man and the car next."

Cheap Storage

Geo-Locating the Model in Google Earth —
the footprint of the building is the foundation for the model.

The massing of the model, using photos for reference.

The finished geometry of the model. This is quite a few polygons, a lot of detail.

It may be rejected as unnecessarily complex.

Retouching out powerlines.

Aligning the tower, eliminating the keystone perspective.
I also combined another photo of the lower level to remove the fence in the foreground.

I found the best solution to keeping the wrap of the art around the tower was to make one piece.
 I tried every other way first, using individual parts , it just wasn't working tonight. 

Comparing the height of the model to the photo — unless I have specific

measurement of the building, this is eyeball work. However I can use features such as doors 

and windows to make a good guess. Most standard doors are about 7 feet high.
Note the power lines have been removed in the model.