WIP: City Section 1

[alienwar9]

Section 1 High Contrast (half done)

Here is the first of 11 sections of my city project. At this stage, I am doing a "high contrast" rework of the city. In other words, I am putting all the details into the city.

For this section, I had to learn how to set up a few things. I had to make the supports for the raised buildings and roads, fit the subway underneath the city, and level everything on the city ground so that curbs looked good, and no height bugs were left.

I also had to rebuild most of it, since the first build used giant pieces, unstable "fast" constructions, and ugly areas. I also had to put finishing touches on the subway.

As always, the entire process was a pain!

But its always worth it, and I think it worked out pretty well (considering it fell exactly on my estimated budget almost). EDIT:(Ok, maybe way off. But my budget was way off too )

The buildings are finished and posted below. (building: 24/25, 26/27/28, 29)

I hope you all like it!

TOTAL PIECE COUNT: 39,043

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As I've noted, the file is huge. 21,000 complex pieces. It works fine with graphics down, but when I turned the graphical settings all the way up, it error loaded, and then crashed when i tried to move it. BE CAREFUL

Edited April 12, 2011 by alienwar9

[ManitobaMoe]

looks good. i am amazed on how much work people put into their layouts

[XimenaPaulina]

Wow, all I can say is you sure have an heck of a powerful computer alienwar to create these ultra massive LDD builds. You had the 13,000-piece Hidden Mountain Base, 14,000-piece Humvee Army, and now this 21,000-piece City, and it's still a WIP? Can't wait for the completion of this project, but so far it looks great.

[alienwar9]

@ KielDaMan: I'm guessing you haven't seen the rest of my city WIP? In any case, here is a link to the post. I probably should have included it, huh?

Anyway, the largest running savable model of the city has 39,926 pieces

(though technically the first version of the city had somewhere like 51,000 pieces, but that doesn't count since it was a very simple construction).

I've been asking around if anyone knows where I can get access to a super powerful computer to put the city all together, but no luck. So....does anyone know where I can get access to a pretty powerful computer?

The difference between all my other models and this one? = this one I'm trying to build in real life

[DLuders]

Edited March 23, 2011 by DLuders

[AndyC]

I've been asking around if anyone knows where I can get access to a super powerful computer to put the city all together, but no luck. So....does anyone know where I can get access to a pretty powerful computer?

I'm not sure how much a 'pretty powerful computer' will actually help. I'm running LDD on a Quad Core i7 with 16GB of RAM and whilst it barely puts any pressure on the machine, LDD itself struggles to cope with your model. A better graphics card might help a little, but I think you're just pushing the limits of how LDD was written.

[alienwar9]

ah fooey

I was afraid that would be true. Well, I guess the current divisions will have to suffice. Thanks for the tip!

[legolijntje]

You can also make a "part 2".

[alienwar9]

Well, I've been working on this section for a while now, and thought it would be a good time to update. Here is building number 24 (city hall) and building number 25 (bank). You may notice similarities with other people's buildings, and I definitely got a lot of inspiration from pictures, melding multiple favorite designs and color schemes. (by the way, the reason the sidewalks are so plain is because there are just so many sidewalks in the whole model, it would be piece hell to make really nice detailed sidewalks ).

The bank is split in 2 because of the subway that goes underneath half the building. It was the easiest way to allow separation.

Here you can see how the building is taken apart just life corner cafe buildings. Once I test it in real life, I will see if I need some technic connections to further stabilize the floors.

Hope you guys enjoy!

Finally, sorry that there is no LXF this time . I decided I am going to upload everything BUT the final builds. I hope you guys can understand, within the context of this entire project. To make up for it, I'll have plenty of pictures, and put up (almost) any asked for!

[alienwar9]

Well, once again updating. Looks like I'm getting into a good groove with this project. One little tiny problem...it crashed again. LDD 4.0 hit the size limit and I still have 1 more building to go (the white one). I had to transfer the work to LDD 3.0, and I had to do extensive excel/LDD manager work to find the deleted parts. And some parts are not in the old library anyway

I just hope this section is the largest and I don't have the problem with other ones. On the bright side, this is really the only section that HAD to be together (because of the subway), so if a section is too big, I can split it...again

Enough about my issues. Here is building 26 (federal building), 27 (police station), and 28 (glass office building).

Notes:

the police station was a pretty direct inspiration from someone's building, so I had to modify it a lot. I kept the color scheme and the general design, but I added my own spin to the detailing, turning it into a older castle/classical style. This is the first of 7 buildings I am going to have to do that to, plus the corner cafe buildings.

The glass building is made using 1x2 trans-blue tiles...a lot of them.

All buildings are still separable into floors, which actually helped in building the glass building...kinda

And the backside of the buildings, with bus station, subway entrance, and a pretty water fountain (I want to add water trails with pieces in real life).

And here are the buildings within Section 1. I love roof shots

The pictures with the whole section were taken in LDD 3.0. Oh, and I guess I made a mistake in assuming 2x4 tiles came in light gray I'm changing them to 2x2 as I post this.

[prateek]

Oh my goodness, Alienwar, you have blown me away. This is the best digital city I've ever seen. I just love that trans blue building!

Also, you may have answered this before, but what are your computer specs? They seem to be amazing

Edited April 3, 2011 by prateek

[alienwar9]

Actually, my computer is 3 years old, but with some added/replaced parts.

Windows Vista 32-bit (I really want to change)

Intel Core 2 extreme QX6700 2.66Ghz (clocked to 3.2Ghz, quad core)

4Gb DDR2 6400 RAM (800 MHz)

Nvidia EVGA GTX 460 1024mb (overclocked, new part. My old one fried because of LDD actually )

150GB 10,000 rpm hard-drive

2TB total extra hard-drive space

Creative Soundblaster X-Fi sound card (old part)

and a nice sharp 30-in 1080p tv

...I'm a pc gamer

[alienwar9]

Here is the last building from Section 1, building 29 (hospital). I decided to include the LXF just because its really hard to see the details in pictures and I'm proud By the way, its 10,060 pieces so with graphics off its not THAT bad

And a little garden in the back (I love the way it came out. It originally looked terrible, and I almost left it that way )

Note that the complete section 1 pictures are from LDD 3.0. It actually saved too!

A nice "street view" and obligatory roof shot

I think that this is the final part of section 1. I can actually start buying pieces based off of this, and I almost have enough $ to do it!

TOTAL PIECE COUNT: 39,043

initial low contrast count: 13,000 + 4,500 (subway)

it seems the model is growing more than I had anticipated, and I might once again be over budget

Edited April 13, 2011 by alienwar9

[XimenaPaulina]

Wow, your massive digital designing is really at its peak with this ultra-creation alienwar! I'd love to include this in the Index, but I would have to put a stern "possible-PC-crashing" warning on the ridiculous piece count of the LXF. Anyway, really an excellent job on this one!

[Brickdoctor]

I'm obviously not going to attempt to take a closer look at this ( ), but from what I see, this is most impressive. Not to mention massive.