Looking for "Lovecraftian University" environment pieces
helloamy92
Posts: 2
in The Commons
Hi there, hope this is the right place to ask this. I apologize if not, please let me know where it'd be better asked!
I'm currently working on a graphic novel story where Lovecraftian and other Mythos-inspired characters attend a university. I'm imagining it as a gloomy stone building on a foggy island, but not medieval/fantasy style, more like a eccentric 1920s mad scientist mansion that's being used as a university campus.
(Miskatonic University is an inspiration but I don't intend on using that for this institution in the story, it'll be a separate entity)
I have what I need for my characters, but I need more environment assets and feel a bit overwhelmed with choices. Anyone have recommendations for products with rooms, furnishings, etc, for this kind of aesthetic?
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maybe this thread with more creepy props
https://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/708706/looking-for-harry-potter-knock-offs
are also a few asylums one could use as the campus
If we exclude medieval castles, I think Victorian architecture would be quite suitable, even though this one isn't a stone building. Of course, it might be a bit small for a university...
https://www.daz3d.com/old-victorian-house-bundle
or
https://www.daz3d.com/the-black-house-base
Or some Gothic building kits, Most products were selected based on impressions of Bloodborne.
https://www.daz3d.com/mick-2-gothic-pack
https://www.daz3d.com/staircase-dark
https://www.daz3d.com/mb-european-architecture
https://www.daz3d.com/the-orangery
Or perhaps find a suitable building from among PW Productions' many estates.
https://www.daz3d.com/pw-castle-restaurant-bar
https://www.daz3d.com/pw-chateau-de-dampierre
There are many bizarre buildings to search for in Jack Tomalin, but collecting them is not easy.
https://www.daz3d.com/purgation
To get help in finding what you're looking for, I suggest trying to find some images of the style of architecture you're after. "Eccentric 1920s mad scientist mansion" probably means something very specific to you, but it's not so clear to me.
Art Deco is the other predominantly 1920s style if considering that for a mansion
https://www.daz3d.com/magix-101 has many Art Deco houses
some of their Andoria or Shantaria buildings may even work for a mansion
but Tudor revival was popular at that time which is a fake medieval style
Considering the most of the Cthulhu mythos stories were based out of New Enland, try finding images and sets based around the older Ivy League universities. A couple examples.
Gothic Courtyard | Daz 3D
The Gothic Library | Daz 3D
There are several Miskatonic University building props at Renderosity, sold by Meshbox. They are designed for Poser so I'm not sure how well they would work is DAZ Studio.
It really depends upon the kind of college you're wanting to portray... a classical Institutional feel or something in a more modern, brutalist style as was used in the Reanimator films. For the latter, one of the undisputed masters is FIrst Bastion, though a lot of their product has migrated to Renderosity in rencent years. Ten Rooms Three Halls - Ubiquitous Interior is a sprawling maze of interconnected rooms and dark, windowless hallways that perfectly fits the image of the basement floor of a building where all the secrets are kept, but https://www.daz3d.com/1stbastion-buildings-police-station and, now at Rendo, 1stB Emergency Hospital iRay & 3DL , are the real finds, both of which I've redresseed many times to appear as college buildings and other "paid for by your taxes" type structures.
EDIT - As mentioned above, for the former, classic Lovecraft look, there are actually some very old but accurate to the books models of many of the key HPL books that were made by Meshbox over at Renderosity, including the Miskatonic U science building, the Pickman Freshman dorm, and multiple structures from the Dagon and Innsmouth sycles.. I can confirm that while these are definitely not up to closeup level detail by any means, they do look surprsingly good when converted to Iray and are great for background buildings. Better yet, they're also very cheap as they often go on sale for less than $5.
Another moldy-oldie that Irays-up quite well is the Anatomy Theatre , because what HPL story isn't better with a disection scene? Plus it comes with a stand to hang your skeleton from, and it's now a DAZ original.
Beyond that, there are some very Lovecraft-ish sets in the WestPark and Parkside series by Jack Tomalin, almost all of which are DAZ Originals and mostly PC+ items, and while they all load well in Iray as-is, the specific Iray add-on texture upgrades are very well done. The base versions are very grunged up, but cleaned-up versions are usually available as add-ons.. https://www.daz3d.com/west-park-committed-iray-addon https://www.daz3d.com/west-park-day-room-iray-addon and https://www.daz3d.com/parkside-loading-bay-clean are just few examples.
Finally, TruForm at Rendo has some fantastic sets with Lovecraftian overtones, with Dreary Room https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/124735/dreary-room , TruForm's Library https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/113718/truforms-library and https://www.renderosity.com/marketplace/products/168118/classical-foyer all being both grand and yet also somehow oppressive.
Hi there, helloamy92! Check out 3dshards.com, you will find all the Lovecraftian stuff you could ever want. Search for Cultist, and Mythos I and II, Witch Room and Covenant. There are many other steampunk and art deco outfits and props.
https://www.daz3d.com/darkwood-asylum
Go over to renderosity and search for the merchant "Meshbox". In their store you can search for "university" and that will turn up many results. They have whole sets of Miskatonic university, Innsmuth, etc.
A word of warning though, the sets are old and meant for Poser but they are useable in DAZ. They will take some tweaking to get stuff looking nice.
These have been mentioned twice already, but yeah, while they do work in DS, they're really not detailed enough for more than background buildings even though most of them have full interiors. On the plus side, they're still pretty light to load compared to most modern sets. The Poser versions of most of them also show up in the poser libraries under the product name rather than in the Meshbox folder that later products from the same vendor often show up in... a holdover from early days of Poser when a lot of things were placed in bizare ways. Buying the Object versions might work better, but I've never bothered purchasing and trying one of those.
EDIT - FWIW, here's a really quick and dirty render of the Pickman's Library model by Meshbox, loaded without the interior props and a basic Iray conversion, plus interior illumination added by the uber-simple process of placing a plane with an emmisive surface inside the building.
I have that one (I own around ten asylums/mental hospitals for some inexplicable reason) and it would be a good choice for a college, but would need some changes/additions to be a bit more beliveable in that role. The big thing to me is that the front entrance is way too small, just a small set of double doors, and beyond that there's only a set of stairs coming up from a basement, and I suspect that even the minions of Cthulu are subject to visits from the fire marshall. The other thing is the lack of any real kind of parking areas for students and faculty. Even if all of the student body is staying there in dorms, one would think that there have to be some provision for more than a handfull of motor vehicles.
On the subject of Lovecraft, years ago (1993, IIRC, I was a guest at the Icon sci-fi convention in Stony Brook NY, and a translator I knew showed up wearing what is easily the greatest Cthulu T-shirt I'd ever seen... a rendering of the Peanuts Gang with the caption "It's The Great Old Ones, Charlie Brown. Well, I've looked for a copy of that shirt ever since with no luck, but eventually I DID come across a brilliant 11 page comic of the same name by Evan Dorkin (Milk And Cheese) and Derek Charm (Squirrel Girl)... one that was actually approved of and published as part of an official Peanuts collection back in 2015... which does an amazing job of integrating HLP with some of the weird idosyncracies of SHultz's work... things like the disappearance of original main characdters like Shermy, Patty, and Violet, the kite-eating tree, the way Linus and Sally both started off as babies and then suddenly aged up to be the same age as the other kids, the mysteries of what's inside Snoopy's doghouse, and, of course, the Great Pumpkin. There's a reddit page at https://www.reddit.com/r/peanuts/comments/1r02lvc/its_the_great_old_ones_charlie_brown_a_weird/ if you want to read more but here's one page that totally nails both source materials perfectly -
Does Cthulu love you? Yes, he do!
Boiled, broiled, or in a stew.
Pickled in brine, or served straight raw,
Everything goes in his gaping maw.
One big gulp and then you're done,
Now you're part of a Great Old One!