Interactive Exhibit – Back to the Digital Model

It’s been a few weeks since I’ve last updated this so I thought I had better show what I have been up to!

With the physical model complete, the next step was to work on my digital model. Using my existing model as a base, I wanted to add more detail in order to make the camp a little more exciting and realistic. I also finally found a better picture of the style of building used for the kitchen and mess hall so I had to build that one again from scratch.

One of the first steps was to adjust the terrain. Google does provide data for terrain but due to the rather large scale used, it represents a very general representation of elevation. Because of this, my buildings would have one door in line with the ground while another would be three feet above the ground. Luckily, you can fiddle with that in Sketchup.

Terrain is usually hidden but once you turn on “Hidden Geometry,” you can start fiddling with the ground contours. As you can see from the image below, the ground is structured in a series of triangles. You can, however, add detail so that the triangles are smaller and only alter a specific section.

Once this was completed, my buildings were now in line with the terrain!

Another of Sketchup’s tools is the ability to add fog and shadows. Fairly self-explanatory, fog helps hide the boundaries of the area that I’m working on while I’ve found shadows to help provide a little more of a realistic feel to the model.