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Optimizing Architectural Models for Display Online

Difficulty Level: Intermediate to Advanced

This workshop for designers is paired with an interactive history animation about the construction of Notre-Dame of Paris. You will learn how to create highly detailed but low-polygon-count models of any building you desire. These visually and geometrically complex models will have a small enough file size to load in your web browser. They can be viewed by clients, possible employers, and others online, with no need for them to download files or own specific software. Based on the content delivered in this six-part tutorial, you will be able to create similar models of any other building, real or proposed. You will be able to share these models online in a virtual reality format through Sketchfab.
1.  Introduction
2.  How much detail does a model need?
3.  How can strategic use of components save on time and polygon count?
4.  How can any image be transformed into a seamless texture?
5.  How can custom image textures reduce polygon count?
6.  How can models be uploaded and optimized for online views?

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The Model:

Please allow a minute or so to load. Model is 500,000 polygons.

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1. Introduction

8.5 minutes. Optimizing computer models of architecture for interaction online.

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2. How much detail does a model need?

3.0 minutes. Determining the right level of detail a model needs.

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3. How can strategic use of components save on time and polygon count?

6.0 minutes. Creating complex geometric forms from simple component building blocks.

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4. How can any image be transformed into a seamless texture?

7.5 minutes. Creating your own seamless image textures in Photoshop.

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5. How can custom image textures reduce polygon count?

7.5 minutes. Editing custom image textures to create visual complexity from geometric simplicity.

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6. How can models be uploaded and optimized for online views?

4.5 minutes. Finishing touches.

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Historical Reconstruction of Ford Model T Assembly Line

As featured on Kottke.org
This digital model and film show, for the first time, the entire Model T being assembled from start to finish in a single time-lapse shot of the Ford factory in Highland Park, Michigan. Numerous photos were taken and some films were made in the 1910s and 1920s, but no film from the time tracks the entire car’s assembly from start to finish. There were many types of Model Ts produced, but the specific car shown here is the 1915 Model T Runabout. Watch the film and see as the various car components are hoisted over and bolted into place. Or walk across the factory floor in the virtual reality computer model.

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The film’s audio replicates the sound of Model T production. The accompanying music at start and end is from the 1936 film Modern Times, where comedian Charlie Chaplin parodies Ford’s assembly line production methods.

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Explore Model T assembly in virtual reality.
Give thirty seconds for browser to load. Link opens in new window.

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Henry Ford did not invent the car, nor he did invent the assembly line to produce the car. For years before Ford, cars were being built in small numbers at local workshops. For centuries before Ford, assembly line production was being used to make all manner of goods like pins, fabrics, and steel. At the same time as Ford, others were making cars and building assembly lines.
Ford was not the first, but his car and moving assembly line were certainly the most successful and memorable. After creating his version of the automobile in 1896, Ford moved workshops first to Mack Avenue and later to Piquette Avenue in Detroit. These first two factories were small-scale structures for limited car production. Only in 1913 at Ford’s third factory at Highland Park did mass-production begin on a truly large scale. As shown in this film, here Ford applied assembly line methods throughout the factory to all aspects of car production.

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Final Stage of Model T Assembly in Highland Park c.1915, David Kimble’s illustration for National Geographic

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Between when the first Model T rolled off the assembly line in 1913 and when the fifteen millionth rolled off in 1927, the car’s appearance did not change significantly. The car chassis, motor, and color-scheme in 1927 were almost identical to 1913. Despite variations in the number of seats and exterior of car, the motor and chassis beneath were consistent and unchanging over time. Henry Ford liked it that way to bring down costs and to produce the greatest variety of car types with as few variations as possible to the car’s internal structure.
However, although Ford resisted changes to his car design, he was always redesigning the factory floor and assembly line to produce the greatest number of cars with the least amount of human labor. In this same period from 1913 to 1927, the Highland Park factory was constantly redesigned and expanded. Few records survive of all changes to the factory. However, the 1915 book Ford Methods and the Ford Shops includes detailed plans and photos of the factory at one point in time. Ford was still tinkering with the assembly line, as Model T production had begun just over a year before this book was printed. Within a few months of these photos, assembly line methods had improved once again as Ford redesigned the factory floor shown in this film. Rather than documenting Ford production for all time, this film captures Ford production the way it looked in the months it started.

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Assembly line flowchart of River Rouge c.1941, showing Ford’s production methods applied to the design of an entire complex. The ideas in embryo at Highland Park become fully visible at River Rouge.

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After Ford stopped producing Model Ts in 1927, newer models started production at the new and larger factory at River Rouge, where Ford makes cars to this day. The Highland Park factory switched to producing other goods like tractors and later tanks for WWII. Within a few years, production methods had so quickly improved under Ford that Highland Park became too small and obsolete. The factory was largely demolished, and with its demolition the initial appearance of Ford’s first and greatest invention was lost for all time: the moving assembly line.
Some of the factory buildings still stand, and the specific part of the factory shown in this film still exists. But the buildings were all cleared of their original machinery, and the most impressive part of Ford’s invention was not the factory itself but instead the equipment and processes within that factory that are no longer visible. The buildings themselves were simply functional warehouses designed with large open spaces to allow the easy movement of machinery.
The entire complex covered many acres, and the other factories that supplied the Highland Park factory with materials and components created a web of trade that spanned the globe. Instead of filming the entire process, this film focuses on the final and most important stage of production where finished parts from all over the world and factory complex came together for final testing and assembly.

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Sources

Main reference text: Fay Leone Faurote and Horace Lucian Arnold. Ford Methods and the Ford Shops. New York, Engineering Magazine Company: 1915. See esp. Chapter V on “Chassis-Assembling Lines” that includes factory floor plan and photos from pages 131-57. Also see pages 142-150 that describe the 45 steps required for chassis assembly. Link.
Main reference photo: David Kimble. “Exploring the Model T Factory.” Motor1.com. September 1, 2017. Link. Kimble’s image originally published in June 1987 National Geographic centerfold.
Animation opening image: Postcard of Highland Park in 1917. Link.
Animation opening music: Factory Scene from Modern Times, directed by Charlie Chaplin in 1936. Link.
Model T shown in film can be downloaded as a computer model at this link.

Notre-Dame of Paris Construction Sequence

Created with architectural historian Stephen Murray
As featured in:
1. Notre Dame’s official website
2. Open Culture, May 2021
2. Rebuilding a Legacy, hosted April 2021 by the French Embassy, view recording
3. Restoring a Gothic Masterpiece, hosted May 2021 by the Los Angeles World Affairs Council and Town Hall, view recording

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1. Construction time-lapse

This construction time-lapse illustrates the history of Notre-Dame from c.1060 to the present day, following ten centuries of construction and reconstruction. Model is based on actual measurements of the cathedral and was peer reviewed for accuracy by scholars at Columbia University’s art history department and at the Friends of Notre-Dame of Paris.
The film was created in the computer modeling software SketchUp, based on hand-drawn image textures. The ink drawings of nineteenth-century architect Viollet-le-Duc were scanned and applied to the model surfaces, so as to transform the two-dimensional artwork into the three-dimensional digital. I believe computer models should preserve a certain handmade quality.

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Music: Pérotin, Viderunt Omnes

View animation with music only.

Read text of Stephen Murray’s audio narration.

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2. Virtual reality computer model

Explore the interior and exterior of Notre-Dame in virtual reality.
Give thirty seconds for browser to load. Link opens in new window.
Complete model of Notre-Dame inside and out. Download includes simulation of cathedral construction sequence.

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Fire on 15 April 2019

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3. Research method and work flow

Learn how this model was created – and how to create similar models of your own – with my series of online tutorials shared to this page.

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4. Computer model and construction sequence sources

– Dany Sandron and Andrew Tallon. Notre-Dame Cathedral: nine centuries of history.
– Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. Drawings of Notre-Dame. From Wikimedia Commons.
J. Clemente. Spire of Notre-Dame. From SketchUp 3D Warehouse.
– Eugène Viollet-le-Duc and Ferdinand de Guilhermy. Notre-Dame de Paris. From BnF Gallica.
– Caroline Bruzelius. “The Construction of Notre-Dame in Paris” in The Art Bulletin. From JSTOR.
– Michael Davis. “Splendor and Peril: The Cathedral of Paris” in The Art Bulletin. From JSTOR.

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5. Exterior still images from model

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6. Interior still images

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7. Dynamic angles

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Computer Model of Jeremy Bentham’s Panopticon

Created at the University of Cambridge: Department of Architecture
As part of my Master’s thesis in Architecture and Urban Studies, as featured by:
– Special Collections department at University College London
– Open Culture
– Tomorrow City
– Aeon: a world of ideas
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To say all in one word, it [the panopticon] will be found applicable, I think, without exception, to all establishments whatsoever, in which, within a space not too large to be covered or commanded by buildings, a number of persons are meant to be kept under inspection.
– Jeremy Bentham
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Since the 1790s, Jeremy Bentham’s panopticon remains an influential building and representation of power relations. Yet no structure was ever built to the exact dimensions Bentham indicates in his panopticon letters. Seeking to translate Bentham into the digital age, I followed his directions and descriptions to construct an exact model in virtual reality. What would this building have looked like if it were built? Would it have been as all-seeing and all-powerful as Bentham claims?
Explore Bentham’s panopticon in the animation above or in virtual reality below
based on Bentham’s drawings at University College London:

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c.1791 plans of panopticon, drawn by architect Willey Reveley for Jeremy Bentham

Creative Commons image credit: Bentham MS Box 119a 121, UCL Special Collections

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Panopticon: Theory vs. Reality

Central to Bentham’s proposed building was a hierarchy of: (1) the principal guard and his family; (2) the assisting superintendents; and (3) the hundreds of inmates. The hierarchy between them mapped onto the building’s design. The panopticon thus became a spatial and visual representation of the prison’s power relations. As architectural historian Robin Evans describes: “Thus a hierarchy of three stages was designed for, a secular simile of God, angels and man.”

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Author’s images from computer model

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To his credit, Bentham recognized that an inspector on the ground floor could not see all inmates on the upper floors. The angle of view was too steep and obstructed by stairs and walkways. To this end, Bentham proposed that a covered inspection gallery be erected between every two floors of cells.
By proposing these three inspection galleries, Bentham addressed the problem of inspecting all inmates. However, he created a new problem: From no central point was it now be possible to see all activity, as the floor plans below show. The panoramic view below shows the superintendent’s actual field of view, from which he could see into no more than four complete cells at a time. The view from the center was not, in fact, all-seeing. Guards would have to walk a continuous circuit round-and-round, as if on a treadmill. They, too, are prisoners to the architecture.

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Author’s images from computer model

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The intervening stairwells and inspection corridors between the perimeter cells and the central tower might have allowed inspectors to see into the cells. Yet these same architectural features would also have impeded the inmates’ view toward the central rotunda. Bentham claimed this rotunda could become a chapel, and that inmates could hear the sermon and view the religious ceremonies without ever needing to leave their cells. The blinds, normally closed, could be opened up for viewing the chapel.

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Bentham’s suggestion was problematic. The two cross sections above show that, although some of the inmates could see the chapel from their cells, most would be unable to do so.
In spite of all these obvious faults in panopticon design, Bentham still claimed that all inmates and activities were visible and controlled from a single central point. When the superintendent or visitor arrives, no sooner is he announced that “the whole scene opens instantaneously to his view,” Bentham wrote.

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Despite Bentham’s claims to have invented a perfect and all-powerful building, the real panopticon would have been flawed were it built as this data visualization helps illustrate. Although the circular form with central tower was chosen to facilitate easier surveillance, the realities and details of this design illustrate that constant surveillance was not possible. That the British public and Parliament rejected Bentham’s twenty year effort to build a real panopticon should be no surprise.
However flawed the architecture, Bentham remained ahead of his time. He envisioned an idealistic and rational, even utopian, surveillance society. Without the necessary (digital) technology to create this society, Bentham fell back on architecture to make this society possible. The failure of this architecture and its obvious shortcomings do not invalidate Bentham’s project. Instead, these flaws with architecture indicate that Bentham envisioned an institution and society that would only become possible through new technologies invented hundreds of years later.

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Related Projects

My computer model is available here in virtual reality.
Read my research on Eastern State Penitentiary, a radial prison descended from Bentham’s panopticon

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Credits

Supervised by Max Sternberg at Cambridge, advised by Philip Schofield at UCL
The archives and publications of UCL special collections, Bentham MS Box 119a 121

Audio narration by Tamsin Morton
Audio credits from Freesound
panopticon interior ambiance
panopticon exterior ambiance
prison door closing
low-pitched bell sound
high-pitched bell sound

You may reuse content and images from this article, according to the Creative Commons license.

Computer Model of the Kaaba in Mecca

Developed with input from James White,
historian of Islamic literature at the University of Oxford
The Kaaba (Arabic: ٱلْـكَـعْـبَـة “The Cube”) is a building at the center of Islam’s most important mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. This is the most sacred site in Islam. Muslims consider it the “House of God.” Wherever they are in the world, Muslims are expected to face the Kaaba when performing prayer. One of the Five Pillars of Islam requires every Muslim to perform the Hajj and visit the Kaaba.
In 2018, I was unhappy with the available quality of 3D digital models of this important building for Muslim culture. I could find no models that were detailed or accurate enough. I created this accurate-to-the-inch model based on architects’ drawings and photos.

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Audio: the call to prayer, recorded in Istanbul

 

New York City in a Box

As featured in this article from Live Auctioneers

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Inspired by the Stettheimer Dollhouse at the Museum of the City of New York, this pop up model in a recycled metal box (measuring 8 inches wide by 15.5 long and 2.5 deep) reveals a miniature world of New York City architecture and landmarks within. About 30 buildings made from hand cut paper and tin are spread across a flat ground of painted streets. Each building is made from a single sheet of paper that is cut and folded like origami to create different shapes and sizes. A hand cranked lever operates a mechanism of chains and gears hidden beneath the  paper surface of the city streets. These gears move the magnetized trains and airplanes through the city.

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Hand-crank and music box recording from Freesound

The University of Oxford in a Box

 

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Music: Minuet in G Minor by Bach

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This paper model of Oxford folds out of a leather suitcase. This is a souvenir of my Oxford experience.
Half the model features university’s main buildings: The Radcliffe Camera, Bodleian Library, Sheldonian Theatre, University Church, and the Clarendon Building. The other half is the campus of Saint Catherine’s College in Oxford.
Attaining precision in a small model is difficult and took about two weeks to build. It is made from paper cutouts, which were folded into various shapes. Below are two of the cutouts before assembly. Dimensions: 7 by 14 inches and 1.5 inches deep.
Below is the image of one of these cutouts before assembly, and the ground plan of the campus before the paper buildings were mounted on cardboard.

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Computer models of world heritage sites

Through digital models, architecture’s audience can expand beyond in-person visitors. Here are a few of my creations that can be explored in virtual reality. The need for models to load in the web browser imposes a creative limit on file size and numbers of polygons and textures model can contain. Too many textures or too much geometry and a model will not load. This process therefore requires me to be economical and to get the most amount of detail with the least amount of file size. All models featured below are about the size of a word document or email attachment.

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Models reveal aspects of construction and design that are otherwise invisible. Amiens Cathedral and the Kaaba in Mecca are illustrated from below as if the ground were invisible. The view of the Kaaba from above is only possible through computer models, due to religious restrictions on flying above the Kaaba. When viewed below, the cathedral appears to float in the air as if it were an image of heaven, as its medieval masons in fact intended when they built vaults and towers that reached so high.
I can also strip away later changes or decay to restore a building to its original, imagined, or ideal appearance. Jerusalem’s Dome of the Rock and Al-Aqsa Mosque (which are surrounded by trees and Roman-era walls) or Amiens Cathedral (surrounded by the modern city) appear more complete in my models than they are in reality. To quote from Viollet-le-Duc, the restorer of French cathedrals like Notre-Dame of Paris:
“To restore a building is not to preserve it, to repair, or rebuild it; it is to reinstate it in a condition of completeness which could never have existed at any given time.”

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The Kaaba

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Plan of Al-Aqsa Mosque

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Plan of Amiens Cathedral

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Section of Amiens Cathedral, based on a drawing by Eugène Viollet-le-Duc.

Columbia University Artwork

Featured in:
The Columbia Daily Spectator in September 2016
The Columbia student newspaper in October 2016
The 2018-19 edition of the Asia Pacific Affairs Council journal
– And the Columbia College alumni magazine in spring 2020

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A map of campus

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This ink and watercolor drawing shows every building, window, and architectural detail on campus. The number of windows on each façade are faithful to reality. There are at least 2,000 windows. The perspective was formed from Google Earth satellite and street view images. The image measures 26 by 40 inches and is framed in my dorm room. I wanted to create a souvenir of my four years at Columbia. Years from now, I will look at this image and remember.
The scan below is suitable for viewing but not for large-format printing. Please request access to the full-size scan at ~300dpi
View more artwork like this about my experiences walking in New York City.

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Columbia Campus

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Ink sketches of campus

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Columbia in a Box

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Before my first year at Columbia University, I assembled this tiny model of the campus out of painted and folded paper. Each building was measured out on a flat sheet of paper, decorated, painted, cut out, and then folded. Each building is made with no more than one sheet of paper. This creation folds out of a vintage cigar-box. Dimensions: 5 inches wide, 9 inches long, and 3 inches deep.

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Music: Columbia University Fight Song

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Timelapses of Morningside

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This project features six time-lapse sequences of Columbia University’s campus. I mounted a camera above my desk as I drew and painted each watercolor.

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Music: Columbia University Fight Song performed by Justin Zhao

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Eiffel Tower Construction Sequence

As featured by Open Culture

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Music: Carnival of the Animals by Camille Saint-Saëns, 1886

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The Eiffel Tower was built over 18 months – from August 1887 to March 1889. This film shows the construction sequence, starting with the foundations and ending with the cupola.

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Sources

Model created in SketchUp and shared here for free download.
Or view the Eiffel Tower in virtual reality from Sketchfab

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Further Reading

Gustave Eiffel’s original plans and drawings for the tower were first published in 1900 and re-published in 2008 by Taschen.

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