modeling the Hajj Terminal, for OEJN

[hamzaalloush]

originally inspired by gsagostinho's regional textures changes to the middle east area, i wanted more improvements, so until now i had two buildings done for my local airport, OEJN - King Abdulaziz International Airport, and i thought to share my progress here before i publish to the scenery database, i also plan to improve the layout. but let's start...

the Hajj Terminal, is a building accommodating pilgrims coming over to Mecca for the Hajj ritual, it supported 6.2 million people in 2010, the building is split over two separate but identical halves(East and West, excluding the East Terminal shown in the picture below), each halve represent 5 adjacent "Modules", it covers an area of 465,000 square meters. Each module is arranged into a 3x7 "Tent Unit" arrangement, each fibreglass fabric "Tent Unit" is supported on all 4 corners by steel columns 45 meter high.



i managed to model this structure to scale using Blender:











here is my first aircraft livery, alongside my first 3d model ever!



my model vs reality:

1 - missing east Terminal Building, choice between old and new design.

2 - inner help and support buildings.

3 - Saudi flag on the face of the south western quad column of the 1st eastern Module, and on the south eastern quad column of the 1st western Module.

4 - tensioned support cables.

5 - "Tent Unit" fabric texture.

6 - Red Beacons at the top of the columns.

7 - Jetways A-1 to A-10 of the East Terminal.

took me a month to do it

edit(2015-12-21): download link, http://www.mediafire.com/download/a3u7vs59bmevyza/alhajj_terminal.zip

[VicMar]

Hi hamzaalloush,

Your model looks good. Please remember the maximum file size for models in the scenery data base is 2MB.

You're including a lot of detail and it might be necessary to split the finished model into 2, or 3, or even 4 parts, each with their own textures.

I thought I'd put my 2 pennorth in before you got too far.

Cheers,

Vic

[gsagostinho]

Looking good!

[hamzaalloush]

Thanks Vicmar,

that feedback from you is exactly what i was aiming for by posting it here first

i understand that's 2mb per .ac model? not including textures?

right now one halve of the Hajj Terminal structure is 12.9 mb(totalling 25.8 mb for the whole thing), that's about 2.58 mb for each module. (we have 10 seperate modules, 5 west and 5 east), the problem is, it gets hard placing each module to it's coordinate rather than taking the coordinate of one corner of the whole thing, so what do you suggest?

am i allowed to seperate one halve to five equal modules, five equal .ac files?

regarding the level of detail, i think it's normal to have such high faces count(right now at 99 thousand) considering the conical shape of the tents, and the area the model covers(i think what's more imprortant is the face count per area covered), i managed to lower the detail just enough to maintain the sophistication of the shape and to provide good nice contrast and shading across the faces of the tents with different lighting conditions, example:



here's an example of what the FSX alhajj terminal looks like with a low polygon, four square face count per "Tent Unit". I'm using a circle shaped cone with 32 vertices IIRC, including the outer square for each "Tent Unit".

but rules are rules, so i'll try decrease the face count of the columns first, i'm also already using a low poly design for the lower face of the structure with flipped normals, i guess it's worth a try if we want it in Terrasync.

edit: re-upload photos

[hamzaalloush]

Thanks gsagostinho, you basically started this whole thing for me i'm glad you like it

[VicMar]

Hi again hamzaalloush,

Your detail is very strong, have you tried to simplify things by having less faces in each circle? I can do this in SketchUp but don't know how you'd do it in Blender.

For instance: If your column starts as a circle which you then extrude, make the original circle with less sides - 16 instead of 24 or something like that. With the number of columns in your model, the face saving would be huge. It might mean almost starting again, but just think of the satisfaction you'll get.

Something similar could be done with the tent shapes.

On the other hand, you could keep the level of detail and issue the model as Custom Scenery. That way only users with computers which can handle it will download it.

Whatever you decide to do, keep up the good work.

Cheers,

Vic

[hamzaalloush]

hello again Vicmar!

in Blender there is something called modifiers, modifiers are applied per object, so the original vertex count for the base of the column 32, just seperating the columns as a seperate object and applying Modifiers > Decimate > Un-Subdivide, i managed to lower the base vertices to 24, therefore losing 6000 faces, bringing the count to 84k faces, from 90k the original number.

here's what it looks like now,



for all intents and purposes it looks the same, the conical shape of the tents might require more work, but it's worth it, as my original plan is to include this in Terrasync. although i plan to offer the high-detailed as part of a custom scenery also.

i'll stop when each module has a size of less than 2mb, is that ok?

[gsagostinho]

Here is an idea to diminish the poly count even more: why not transform each one of these rectangular 3D shapes into a simple rectangular 2D face? Would that make too much difference for you?

Alternatively, you can keep the 24 sided faces and 3D rectangular shapes only where the planes park (since this is the only position you can see it so detailed) and then change all other columns to 16 or even less sides per base and use the 2D rectangles I mentioned above.

Of course these are only my personal suggestions, so take them with a grain of salt.

[gsagostinho]

Oh, and by the way, let me know if you need a hand with the textures. Also, there are some very nice ways to optimize a png in order to make it extremely small.

[hamzaalloush]

hello gsagostinho,

do you mean the inner x-shaped support bars for the quad columns? i use these to maintain the original shape, and also i cannot convert to a simple 2d plane, because that would not allow to see from all sides, since the face normal have only one direction, it require double sides. but offcourse, i can also remove the innerx-shaped support bars for the quad completly, i'll think about it... we will have to see how much we can squeeze out of this thing

i'll try to decimate the single inner columns between the tents more.

edit: sure, i'll let you know when i need the fabric textures for the lower face of the tents, as well with the other buildings, as this one currently uses only materials but it looks good. thanks

[gsagostinho]

I wouldn't remove the X shaped structure completely since they appear only in the four corners of each module (am I correct on this?). As for the visibility issue, I think you need to create two 2D planes to be able to see it from both directions, but I am no 3D modeller at all. And okay then, let me know about the textures later!

[hamzaalloush]

yes, i can remove the top and buttom of the x-shaped support(my estimation is that would get rid of 10 faces for each quad column).

these "Modules" (each consists of the 3x7 "Tent Unit" arrangement) are with 4 quad column on corners . these are the original terms used by the engineers for the structure.

to read more detail about the Hajj Terminal structure, here's a publicly released overview of the project by The Aga Khan Award for Architecture. http://www.akdn.org/architecture/pdf/0274_Sau.pdf

edit: you can see the fabric textures for the lower face of the tents, these are what i intend to paint, but looks like a difficult job.

[hamzaalloush]

alright, just done applying decimation for low poly model.

before:



after



1.9 mb for one module, not bad...

[gsagostinho]

Not bad at all! Really, your work is looking so good, very happy about it. Also, if you feel the need to have some special landclasses around the airport please let me know.

[pommesschranke]

if you feel the need to have some special landclasses around the airport please let me know.

are you talking about custom scenery or the official shapefiles that we use ?

A landclass for car parking areas would be nice for most medium or big airports.