Monday, September 14, 2009

"Hang In There, Baby" With Milo Minderbinder

Today's "Hang In There, Baby" column focuses on the work of MILO Minderbinder, whose main area of interest is Art Deco architecture in Miami, Florida (USA).

The purpose of this column is to give some encouragement (hang in there, baby!)-- particularly when you feel your first version of a model is not so great. Today MILO shares with us a model he made called "Colony Hotel" and a before and after illustration of the work he did on it.

MILO writes:


I edited this model because the old version was not correctly located, and therefore not accepted into Google Earth.

But there were more things wrong with it. One of the main things I changed was the aerial imagery because it wasn't up to date. After that, I changed the overall texturing (only the front was completely textured, but in the new version I collected more data about the different facades). 
Then, the polygon count had to go down. For example, the eyebrows (architectural term for the overhangs above windows of Art Deco buildings) had rounded corners which counted about 12 faces each; now the eyebrows are all square and I deleted the lower surface, because nobody would ever notice it. 
The detail was taken down a notch (because in the old version all of the windows were Push/Pulled into the building), and I improved the description. 
The new model was almost immediately accepted into GE, so I think I did a good job! Almost all of my early models have these problems (or at least some of these I just summed up), so I think this will be my new project next to my other new project of taking Molenhoek (Holland) to GE.

Thanks, MILO Minderbinder!


Before



After