The Forts

adam

The Thames Estuary Army Forts were constructed in 1942 to a design by Guy Maunsell, following the successful construction and deployment of the Naval Sea Forts. Their purpose was to provide anti-aircraft fire within the Thames Estuary area. Each fort consisted of a group of seven towers with a walkway connecting them all to the central control tower. The fort, when viewed as a whole, comprised one Bofors tower, a control tower, four gun towers and a searchlight tower. They were arranged in a very specific way, with the control tower at the centre, the Bofors and gun towers arranged in a semi-circular fashion around it and the searchlight tower positioned further away, but still linked directly to the control tower via a walkway. All the forts followed this plan and, in order of grounding, were called the Nore Army Fort, the Red Sands Army Fort and finally the Shivering Sands Army Fort. All three forts were in place by late 1943, but Nore is no longer standing.

To this day they can still be seen, explored, and looked upon in wonder.


Large.

Overall.
Wire shot 1.
Wire shot 2.
Wire shot 3 & Silhouette.

Huge thanks to gauss and malcolm, they were both a huge help with doing this project and I really couldn't have done it without them.

Phobos

Looks great adam.

I still think the lighting is a little saturated or maybe the water needs a hint or orange reflection in it.

sexeh

Zwebbie

Kickass design, and kickass models and textures. Though, I think the models are too sharp to fit with the background in your beauty shot.

ebagg

Verrrrrry cool, could we see some of the photo refs you worked off of?

gauss

great to see this finally posted. the forts were such a natural choice for a modeling project, glad somebody did it!

i just love the mood and composition of that beauty render. where do you get such great ideas?

Ferg

ah this came out great... good to see it finished. And as gauss said, excellent choice for a modeling project.

I have but one suggestion, just a random thought that occured to me when I saw that sexy beauty render. The model doesn't seem to convey the epic/ancient feel quite as well as the structure it's based on. So I took it into photoshop for a few minutes and played around distorting it a little. Make it look like it's slowly been settling on itself and the mud below the water. I dont know if the result was better or worse but I figured you'd appreciate the angle

---> click here to see the before/after pic <---

hope that helps. Sometimes a little random distortion on a finished model can really add a lot of subtle character.

Either way, great job.

GLandolina

I really like this, 5 stars
any tips on how you lit it for the final shot?

motives

very nice. I remember seeing that in the WIp thread and thought "wtf is that"

how bout some flats?

Ryno

Very nice. Lighting and crispness for the model doesn't quite match the softer, darker water/background, but it's still a sweet little piece.

Daz

Came out sweet as Adam. Looks great. I'd tend to agree though that the difference between the models and the backrgouund in terms of sharpness is noticeable.

malcolm

Hurray, excellent model. Please render out the close up shots.

hawken

for such an over cast day with a slightly blurry photo, your models look suprisingly sharp with stark lighting / shadows.

Ferg
these are based on a real world structure, which doesn't look like your photoshop job

Ferg

I'm aware of that but there's a lot of subtlety and variation in the real things that you can't really put in a 3d model, so sometimes it helps to compensate.

Same with animation, you cant just mocap a realistic character and leave it at that or they look wierd and alien (final fantasy movie anyone?), because there's a lot of subtlety in human movement that you cant capture or emulate with 3d yet, so in order to make them look "right" you often have to add exaggerations that a real person wouldn't normally do.

So whenever I model a realistic object, I usually try to play with slight variations like that after the model is "done" to add another layer of personality. It doesn't always help, and it's not always needed, but the habit has definitely been useful, and worth trying at least.

adam

Hey guys, thanks for the kind words!

I wasn't going for a beauty shot that was as realistic as possible. I wanted exaggerated lighting on the bulk of the towers that just wasn't happening anywhere else to help create the overall mood. The water helps create the mood, but isn't the focal point of the render (nor the area I'm trying to showcase) so I purposely made sure the towers were sharper than the background. Imagine that the sun is breaking through the clouds over the viewers right shoulder just enough to shine on the towers.

Again, big thanks to gauss for his artistic direction and malcolm for his technical know-how. Needles to say both my socks had been rocked.

Steakhouse

I still say they're creepy as hell. Nice work man, and a very interesting idea.

SHEPEIRO

adam nice model nice render.

what you said about the shaft of sunlight is interesting, but its not quite conveyed in the scene, but could be.

first id say add very subtle "streaks" of light coming from right hand side.

then render out scene again, with background image projected onto a plane (using a Matte material if your using max) where the sea is, to give you nice shadows on the water.

actually you could do one better by re rednering the scene with all materials as black except for the sea which you could use a neutral grey with a sea based spec map. then overlay this onto current image in PS with some editing.

would help tie it in a bit

also add some lighting to the bird

Ninjas

The thing that really bugs me is the tower shadows on the water. They are all too tall and don't really agree with the perspective, and are blurry, when they should be rough (on account of the waves)

adam

Hey guys, thanks for the kind words :P

SHEP: Those are good suggestions, but I think for the amount of mood I was hoping for the added features you mentioned might look a little too obnoxious (re: in your face) for my liking. I'll keep it mind for the future.

Ninjas: Don't really know what to say, I like how they look. Eek.

I agree about the difference in clarity between the building and the background. I should have added some (more) noise to them to match the image - I just didn't want to lose that sharp clarity you get on the large image.

Thanks everyone!

Reference: http://www.undergroundkent.co.uk/maunsell_towers.htm

I'll post flats once I feel up to opening the files again (glad to be taking a break from these big bitches).

Warhawk

Great stuff Adam. When I first saw your model in WIP section, I thought wtf is that. Now I know:)) I never thought this things exsisted.

I like the overall feel of the image. You did a good composition. Birds are nice touch for sense of scale. It really helps to show the scale of those towers. Texturing is very sharp and realistic. One thing that others mentioned is the bleding between towers and background. The sky doesen't match the light. It should be right the opposite. I would alsso suggest to add some yellow lightning onto the sea. For a more real look I would use sutable DOF to create more depth and focus to the first building. Also the reflection in the water shouldn't be so clear and under this angle. Becouse the sea is very rough and destorted. I am looking forward to your work and see the flats of towers. Keep it up.

Spacey

These turned out fantastic! My nitpick is that the ladders underneath look out of proportion (not enough rungs/too wide).

Eh, best examples I could find...
http://www.ecastles.co.uk/redsand2.jpg
http://images.google.com/url?q=http://ww...0Forts00019.jpg

adam

Warhawk, awesome man - thank you :P. If you check out the large version of the render there is DoF going on, I just didn't want to overdue it, next time I'll adjust it for the 'regualar' sized render.

Spacey, whoops!

adam

Here's some samples of the textures. I planned ahead of time of doing the renders with ambient occlusion so a lot of the shadows weren't baked in to the colour maps.

ScrotcH

Not shiny enough.

adam

You registered just to say that?
Haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaate!
Damn you Shannon.

adam

Did this for one of the students that goes to the college I've spoken at:


It's quick and brief, but figured I'd put it up here aswell.

malcolm

Something is wrong with the bottom deck it's all black in your ao render. Also for future reference turn up the number of rays to get rid of some of that grain in the ao as well crank the ao distance so the object can self occlude better, there are a lot of pure white spots. Nice job with the white dots on the textures.

adam

Ah cool, thanks man.