The Street – 3D Realisation

As part of my 3D Realisation module I was tasked with researching a typical high street and designing, and modelling, a building that could be found there; the model is to be used with Unreal Tournament 4 so player accessibility has to be taken into account. I have already posted about my research, you can find the main post HERE.

The design of my building is based on two separate buildings, both of which are located around the city centre in Hull (my home town). The first building is located on Humber street named “The Warehouse”. Its architecture is from the mid 1900’s and has been used for many different purposes over the years; I chose this building because of it’s simplistic architecture, but mainly because I knew I could make an interior with it.

The second building is located near the train station. I chose this building because of its derelict and abandoned façade.

I liked the idea of having a run-down garage type building and decided to mash the two together (kind of like a Frankenstein’s Monster but in building form; just imagine lightning cracking behind me when I drew the image below).

Originally my design was to supposed have a tree that wound through the middle of the building, however this proved too difficult for the player to climb so I scrapped the idea and went with boxes instead. The exterior of the building was subject to some change over the modelling period, adding things like bins and rubble to make the scene a little busier.

The model itself is to scale of a 2 story building in height, and twice as wide as a typical store front (roughly 10 meters).

Another issue I had with my model was that I was only supposed to use 2 materials for the whole building; I, however, used 24…. This is an issue I’m going to have to resolve for future projects. Because of the large amount of materials the model broke when I put it into Unreal Engine 4, causing the lighting to break over the entire model; I have tried to rectify this issue, however, it was unsuccessful, so this is something I’m going have to keep in mind when I model in the future.

Below are renders of my final building, they show both the exterior and interior of the model:

Street Brief – Artist Research: Caroline Miousse

Caroline Miousse is an assistant art director at Ubisoft Montreal. She was responsible for the design and 3D building of the amazingly accurate and beautifully detailed Notre-Dame in Assassins Creed: Unity. Miousse also worked on Assassins Creed II (Florence/Firenze map), Assassins Creed: Brotherhood, Assassins Creed III and Prince of Persia.

Here is her Linked-In Bio.

Below are some examples of her work from Assassins Creeds II and Unity:

Below is the topology data Miousse used to accurately model Notre-Dame

Street Brief – Artist Research: Gary Palma

Gary Jamroz-Palma

Gary Palma is a concept artist based in Paris, France. He has worked freelance on Projects like the Fantastic Four animated series, various comic books and a few advertisement projects. He currently works at DONTNOD studios, working as a senior concept artist. Since starting at DONTNOD he has created concept art and character designs for the studios first project: Remember Me. A lot of his environment art for Remember Me features interesting and stylised versions of high streets, that is why I have chosen his work to research.

Gary’s blog, which features most of his work can be found HERE.

Typical Urban High Street – 3D Research

The “High Street” is a metonym for the area in a city that is used primarily for business and/or commercial purposes. It’s usually the most populated area of the city during peak times, making it a prime spot for food vendors, restaurants and coffee shops. A High Street is different from a town/city centre and can be distinguished by the name, usually it’s named after it’s location or city.

Stores and other establishments on a high street are typically called “High Street Shops”, this is to differentiate them from the more specialized and expensive outlets. Typically, the establishments found on a High Street consist of banks, multiple types of stores and food vendors.

During the middle ages the word “high” was used as a metaphorical way of describing people and places of a higher or superior class. It was also used to describe roads that were improved for more efficient and comfortable travel. Eventually, the term High Street adopted a more focused meaning; to describe roads/streets that have a high consistency of retail in villages or towns. Over the years the increase of things like industrial estates and shopping centres, in the UK, has reduced the amount of business typical high street shops get. This has led to some high streets being pedestrianised. Late last year an article published to the BBC News website claims that the High Street saw a collapse of around 964 store chains early last year; this could be due to the increase in popularity for online shopping, and its ease of use.

The term used for a high street in countries like the U.S, Canada and Australia is Main Street. It’s use is similar to that of the U.K equivalent, Main Street is usually the area most populated by commercial stores and food vendors, and usually accumulates the most foot traffic in the area.

Depending on the laws of the area, it’s quite common to find buskers and beggars along high streets; this is because they are densely populated areas, during the day, where the chances of getting spare change off passers by are high. Buskers are often hired by the local council to play/perform around the high streets as they can be advertised as local tourist attractions, leading to more income for the establishments on the high streets.

I recently visited a high street that is local to me, Hall Gate in Cottingham, and did some observational drawings from a bench mid-way down. I intend to visit and sketch more high streets that are somewhat local to me, places like Jameson St., Whitefriargate, and the Marina in Hull. I think I will also visit Humber St. near the Marina, it seems to be the most interesting form of high street as it isn’t particularly used anymore and has a lot of creative aesthetics, like; graffiti, run-down buildings, new buildings, etc.