MODELS GALORE

Picking up on my previous post where I commented on a model shown of French TV, I am prompted to wonder how many independent teams have be asked to make a model, by whom and for what purposes?  Clearly there is great public interest in the Notre Dame story, and 3d animations are stock in trade for the media these days.


An article in the NY Times popped up in my LinkedIn feed which features yet another model (I don’t think it’s the same one)  I would hazard a guess that any number of media studios would be willing to knock up a quick animated model of Notre Dame without needing to think too deeply about the spatial configuration or the technicalities of construction.  If the aim is simply to highlight the location of various events, there is no need to take a BIM approach or to puzzle your way through the finer details of its complex geometry.   So well done to all concerned: a fascinating story, well presented.


https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/07/16/world/europe/notre-dame.html

But it’s interesting for me to spot the simplifications and omissions in these models.  Once again, the the subtleties of the triforium gallery have eluded the modeling team.  The roof at both ends should pop up to a higher level (a memory of the original design when the clerestory windows were much smaller)  

Where the galleries abut the transept they should turn the corner, all 4 corner in fact.  This is difficult to spot at first because of the stair towers and buttresses that adorn these corner, each one slightly different in configuration.  Quite why these difference occur is beyond me at present, as are many other small anomalies and inconsistencies that continue to arise as we delve deeper and strive for greater accuracy and understanding.

Meanwhile, Dinos has taken our model into Twin Motion and created a quick executable which is quite interesting as a supplement to those we have been producing with Enscape3d.  I think I prefer the architectural qualities of the Enscape visuals, but there are some positives in Twin Motion, the animated people and the ability to vary the weather, for example.  


I’ve taken advantage of some of the dramatic weather effects to generate some atmospheric views, with a bit of jiggery pokery in PIXLR.

I’m not sure where the sky box came from but it’s very effective.  Glimpses of a suitably European skyline on the horizon.  However, I find myself wondering now what we want to do with imagery of this sort.  What kind of story do we want to tell about Our Lady?  Is it sufficient to interweave these atmospherics with more technical views, or do we have to add diagrams and animations? 

Certainly we can explain the subtleties of the Triforium Gallery and tell the story of the insertion of larger clerestory windows in the 60 central bays of the nave, a century or so after the original construction.

We can also describe the offset centre-point of the apse curvature and some of the subtleties of the resulting geometry.  We can talk our audience through the many varieties of rib-vault found when scrutinising the reflected ceiling plans (how the geometry works, how to build them in Revit). 

Perhaps we can look more closely at certain typical details.  Show how the individual stones are shaped and fitted together.

But what else?

What tales of faith, passion, blood and passion can we tell to rival the tales of Victor Hugo, the figure of Quasimodo?  How do we tell the story of all the stone carvings and sculptural embellishments?  Do we extract these mechanically from a point cloud, or invite digital sculptors to create their own versions?  Who are those figures in the gallery of kings stretching across the west façade?  Are they mythical, historical, or a mixture of the two and what morals are we intended to draw from their inclusion in such a prominent location?


Time will tell.  Maybe you have some ideas.