Exterior moldings-how do I do them?

[SD50]

I am looking at making an older building, probably in Google Sketchup. It's an old brick building and has the more ornate features that modern buildings don't have. A am wondering if anyone had any suggestions on how to model the crown moldings (or whatever they're called) around the top of the outside of the building? These can get rather ornate, and I'm wondering if anyone has suggestions to simplify it, both to make it easier, and to reduce poly count.

[REISCOOL]

make a basic shape, then texture it with a picture of the molding

[CARex]

SD50,

You probably don’t want to get overly detailed with architectural trim. It adds excessive poly’s to the model. Ultimately effecting your frame rate relative to the density of you building.

As REISCOOL has mentioned, let the photo texture do most of the work. Chances are, the structure will be far enough away from the track that the detail wouldn’t be noticed anyway.

However, you can create ‘some’ structural interest by extruding portions of the building. I often recess the doors a few (scale) feet and often times extrude forward the details between the first and second floors of older commercial buildings. Also usually at the top of the building there are architectural reliefs and details that you can make interesting.

Attached are some examples of SU created buildings. If you do a search of my ‘user name’ you may turn up a few more examples.

Have a sparkling evening,
Bob

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/121151.jpg

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/120232.jpg

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/111499.jpg

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/110402.jpg

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/109326.jpg

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/124354.jpg

[SD50]

Thanks Bob. That's what I was wondering about. Looks like I need to make a unique building, which has architectural features similar to your buildings pictured here. And I wanted to keep the poly count in check.

[ED_4]

http://forums.flightsim.com/vbts/up1/124354.jpg
"Dewey, Cheatem and Howe" LOL That got me laughing. :D

As in "Do we cheat 'em and how?" I'm surprised no one here got that.

[ChrisS68]

Doctor Howard, Doctor Fine, Doctor Howard! :D