Originally posted here.
For my final SketchUp project, I had chosen to recreate Carleton College’s art building – Boliou Hall. The process was overall a trying one, however, I’m pleased with my results.
Now, if you remember my first attempt at recreating my home with SketchUp, I had described it as frustrating. Alas, my description did not change much in terms of Boliou’s recreation. It was frustrating, to the point where I had to leave the room I was sitting and grab something to eat/drink to appease my inner turmoil. Dramatic? Yeah, but not untrue.
In class, we were taught to use PhotoMatch which is such an amazing concept. However, I ran into problems when I could not find more than one usable picture of Boliou; the others I found were not from a good angle and were low quality. At this point, I had probably lost 2 years off of my life.
Lonesome blocks. Not even close to how big Boliou actually is.
PhotoMatch.
Then, Austin mentioned this concept of photo matching but from a birds-eye view. Using this tutorial, I was able to get a more general building foundation and shape. I then had to go back to PhotoMatching, but I had a lot more peace of mind knowing that I actually had some semblance of a building and not just a singular block.
Since I could not find any pictures of Boliou’s backside (which is spectacular, by the way), I went on a small excursion to the islands and took my own pictures. This was probably my favorite part of this entire project because A) I miss using my camera B) I didn’t know Boliou was literally so cool!
Some of the photos I took myself.
Overall, I was able to figure everything out and I learned new things about SketchUp, Boliou, and myself. I’d like to believe that if Boliou were a person, it would appreciate my rendition of it.
I also ran into a similar problem with photo matching. I wasn’t able to obtain any high quality, usable photos, so I had to also use the photo matching concept from the birds-eye-view. It seemed that the process was frustrating at times but your end result turned out very well! I especially like how accurately you recreated the backside of Boliou.
Just like you, I also had to take pictures of Evans Hall to complete the model of my building. Not every building has all of the views available however, I didn’t venture down to the first floor of the library to see what else they had. It was a good idea to use the location feature in SketchUp to get an outline of the building. I thought that the model of Boliou turned out accurate and that you did a great job!
Maya,
Your creative problem solving to get around issues of lack of archival photos is commendable and the results of your expeditions paid off — your model looks great. My only concern is that the modern photos capture the state of the building in 2015, and I’m not positive that the current state of things (especially the back side) represents what the building looked like in the 60s. That said, based on the information you were able to find, this is a great model and a very accurate rendering. Well done.