Trying to create Laird Stadium: Sketch-up

  • Cap 2015-10-20 23-30-57-186

 

In the beginning, I chose Laird Stadium because I wanted to design something special. A stadium where athletes practice and have games every week looked like a great building to design. However, I was wrong. The house I designed last time was designed based on free form modeling, simply forming shapes and drawing some and pulling them out at a certain height. Then I would simply color them. It was challenging, but I was able to figure it out eventually. On the other hand, this process with photo matching was a lot more difficult. Because the stands were in a triangular shape, the origin were placed differently than they were with rectangular building. Although it was nice to have constant reference back to the model, having a actual picture of the building to draw on, it took more time and effort to come up with a basic structure of the building.

Frustration? A lot. The photo matching was such a detailed process. With three dimensions, a simple mistake would make my building hover in air, right on top of the human example in the program. As I mentioned in my other post, drawing at an appropriate angle was very difficult. After I thought I finished on drawing lines for the stands, I turn my angle to find lines all at a different dimension. When I pulled on a wall, or move a line to make the rectangle slightly bigger, the entire building would deform, giving me panic attacks. It took a long time to get all the drawings at a same dimension. Sketch-up really made me feel stupid…

The triumph I enjoyed was that I knew how to do certain things. From my experience of building a house, I knew which tools were which. I was able to actively use push and pull tool at a right situation. I felt a little more comfortable using the program.

I realized that a lot can be shown through designing a building in 3D. Even though the design was not exactly uniform with the building in picture, it displayed certain details. It was very interesting to see how technology could be used to reincarnate past buildings. Photo matching was definitely a new process that opened a new door for me. More designing at a higher level can be done with more ease. I was also surprised to find myself more skilled at designing models in 3D. In my entire life, I was never a student good at art. So to see myself designing a legitimate building, I’m amazed at myself.

I hope this exercise will make a contribution to the scholarship because it will provide new experience to people on how the old Laird stadium looked like. However, because Laird stadium did not go through a major change, it might not make a big contribution.

songj2

2 Comments

  1. I like your evaluation of the your process towards the end of the post, especially how it pertains to scholarship and your personal feelings towards it. I can relate to the frustration for sure! One tip I would have is that it would’ve helped to put a couple more pictures in throughout the post so that the audience could have a visual for your descriptions along the way.

  2. I appreciate your focus on the process rather than the first-try end product. Your optimism shines through as well as your thoughtful pondering on the greater meaning of 3D modeling, both of which I enjoyed. I would have eloped to see your first shot at modeling the stadium, but look forward to seeing the finished product as well.

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