Project Progress - Dome and Interiors

We had to decide how to create a virtual solar system/night sky on the inside of the dome. The domes "punctured holes" were working but because of our light textures, it failed to create that impact of a night sky. We will try to create a voxel to block out some of the light, but light will still reflect off the white marble interiors.

Introducing the problem to my team mates, we decided to change the materials to allow for the dome to have a dark night-like hue, so that sunlight may fully accentuate a look like that of stars on the inside of the dome. We came up with a design pictured below, whicch seemed to work and still retain the look and concepts associated with the original design.

However when we continued on with the project, we realised that as we were placing the hedges that surround the tiers of the building, the blue slabs and dome hid the classical look of the circular hedges. The dark plants and the dark blue materials were far too similar and so the hedges were invisible to anyone. The hedges play an important role in the overall design and without them the building surely loses its integrity and exterior as a monumental piece of architecture. The hedges also importantly allow for the building to integrate with the surrounding parklife environment. Its as the building, wants to fuse into the natural location, yet still makes a statement with its size and structural shapes.

Fig 1.) Our draft design incorporating a dark coloured marble material

Fig 2.) Another image of this design concept

Fig 3.) The dark colour of the dome contrasting that to the bright lights illuminating through the holes

I then devised a plan to create another smaller dome inside of the larger dome. The dome would still have the same position holes to still allow for the sunlight to penetrate through the building, but permit for another texture to be allocated only to the interior face of the dome. Leaving the exterior of the building to retain its white marble material, we intended from the beginning. We had previosuly tried to have different textures of either side of the face, but because the sphere was group and exported together with some slabs, that would mean other materials would have these same material properties.

This seemed like the probable solution and so I went ahead and created this mini dome that would lie directly underneath the outer dome. I used the original sphere and copied and scaled it exactly to fit the outer dome in 3dsmax.

Fig 4.) Creating the mini dome in 3dsmax


Fig 5.) Shaping the dome exactly so that the holes align with the larger dome

During the process of exporting the 3dsmax mini dome to Crysis, my dome did not import correctly and the scale sizes were all wrong for some reason. This time Pui Pui tried and remodelled in 3dsmax and we imported and installed the new object successfully. These images below are the result of this work and how we then texturised the inner dome to a material mimicking that of a starry night. The photos also illustrate how the holes in the roof still allow for light penetration and hence depict stars in the sky.

Fig 6.) The mini dome

Fig 7.) Close up image of the aligned punctured holes

Fig 8.) How the applied texture of the dome really does represent a night sky effectively