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Looks good. Just looked it up on the store and I actually also own it. I honestly don't remember buying it as it's not my usual genre. Unless I thought it could be modified or I wanted certain props for something.
It was released as a golden ticket or something like that so you may have bought it then.
Well it's a 1950s/1960s style American diner with a lot of nice touches, and it would fit into many contemporary or Sci-Fi scenes too. People will always have to eat and many like to eat out, so it has a strong appeal for storytellers. Very flexible. As it was a Golden Ticket item for $3.99 you might have bought it just to get something else cheaper though, even if you didn't think of it as useful to you personally.
@FireAngel,
Nice work with Galaxy Diner. What did you use to make the “other world” signage on the diner’s front and inside?
The modelling was all done inside Blender, using an OpenType font. The text on the menus and signs was done with variations on the same typeface, in Affinity Photo. The typeface was one I designed some years ago when I was working for a web design company. One of their workstations had two font editors on it and while I was there I designed a number of alien and fantasy fonts for use in texturing projects. So far I am the only person with access to those, though I have considered the possibility of selling a package containing some of them for texture artists. If I do this I will keep a few of them for my own exclusive use, just because it is great to have some typefaces that nobody else has.
Aaaand I got a bit carried away again. As the Galaxy Diner is made using modules it wasn't a lot of work to make it bigger. The old version had just seven tables plus the five stools along the counter. Assuming four people at a table that means seating for thirty-three people. Now it has fifteen tables, so seating for sixty-five. An eating establishment with more seats would be much easier to run profitably, so I could not resist making it bigger once I realised that the modular construction made it a relatively easy modification. And since these were rendered I also made the back of the building a little bigger so there is room back there for a decent sized kitchen. The door to the kitchen is at the back though there is nothing through there but a short passageway, but it always bothered me that the back of the building was not big enough to contain a sensibly-sized kitchen, even if the kitchen wasn't modelled. Another mod, fairly obvious, was to improve the lit signage text.
I also replaced the croissant on table 1 with a more convincing one that I had in my model collection.
OK. Thanks much for your feedback.
Do get carried away more often! It was a pleasure to look at and well done!
Well here's another Stonemason set that I made a minor addition to. In most nations fire hydrants are hidden beneath the pavement but in the USA they are usually very visible. So I modelled a US style fire hydrant and added a few of them to the Main Street USA set. I modelled the fire hydrant after downloading some images and blueprints from the web site of a manufacturer of fire hydrants in Texas. The software that imports DAZ Studio sets to Blender does a pretty good job but is not perfect, so there is still manual correction needed to some of the materials shown.
The fire hydrants are not major elements of the composition but they do add an extra touch of realism.
That looks great! Nicely done.
Thank you! I'm having fun here, because even with Stonemason sets which are always superb as they are, I cannot resist customising them even if it is in small ways.
The elementary school in Main Street USA had the text on the walls built into the model. To fill gaps around the edge of the product this building was instanced in several places but rotated so that the text over the entrance and on the long wall could not be seen. I extracted the text in Blender so it became a separate object and then added it as a prop to the school, so it looks the same. However the instances now don't have text on them so they can be rotated into positions that allow the entrances to be seen. I can of course add signs to them to make them into something else, so now Main Street USA has a Police station:
And another addition:
I always thought Joe's Garage lacked the space to do the larger jobs, and the garage beside the shop has room for just one vehicle, so now in addition to his little shop in the centre of town he has a big workshop further out.
The new building was made from parts of the school building. The signs are a separate mesh parented to the building, so I can use the building elsewhere with different signs on it. Maybe the town needs a fire station, for example, or an ice cream factory. Oh, and the roll-up door is rigged so it can be opened, though there is nothing inside but a big concrete floor space and blank walls. EDIT: Oh, and there are lights on the ceiling inside. To be safe to work in a workshop should be well lit.
Damn! I wish I knew how to use Blender.
Well Blender is free and there are a ton of YouTube tutorials. If you want to learn start with the Andrew Price (Blender Guru) donut tutorial. It sounds silly, but he uses modelling, mapping and texturing a donut to teach a surprising amount about how Blender works. Try that and if you don't get on with it just delete it, you lost no money just some time.
Stonemason stuff has some excellent quality and is certainly a base for great renders in Blender.
Just upgraded to 5.2 LTS and in the process of setting up a new workflow for Daz content.
OK, I got a case of obsessive compulsive tweak disorder here, though I suppose it was worth it. This looks much better to me, what do others think?
I improved the sloped part of the pavement and changed the metal sign to a bold painted one. The signpainter has also been painting on the door panes.
Improved it how? All I can see is you removed the imperfections that make the prior image look "lived in". (I don't know how much you have modified either image from Stonemason's original asset.)
This buildng did not exist in the original Main Street USA. If you look above in the thread you will see the elementary school, that's the building I used as the basis to make this workshop. And it represents a thriving, popular business that maintains the building properly, so the painted signs look just as they should. They may even have been painted or repainted recently, how would you know? In real life there ARE places that are well kept and yes, even garages are like that if well run. The tendency to grunge everything up in 3D is greatly overdone nowadays. So yes, this version looks better with the large painted sign above the main door than it did with the rusty old metal one. If I were Joe I'd be much happier to see that last image than the one before it. THAT is why I consider it to be an improvement.
I wish I could do the same. I cannot use any version of Blender later than 4.2 LTS until I get new hardware. I'm saving and may have the money sooner than expected due to a recent surprise financial boost, but for now it's 4.2 and that's it. I am not too upset as Blender 4.2 is very capable and even if I have to wait a year I will still be using a fantastic 3D application to do my 3D renders, so it's not really a hardship to wait, just a minor irritation.
I was asking about improving the slope as seen between your first post and second post of this new building.
Well originally there was no slope, just a standard kerb because the workshop didn't exist. If heavy trucks were serviced there then the paving would certainly end up cracked and uneven, but if it's cars, vans and light trucks then reasonably frequent maintenance would keep the paving in order. Some of the pavements where I live are relaid every five or six years to keep the paving stones even, and if the council get a report of a damaged pavement during those intervals they have it repaired, so again having it the way it was seems less like reality. Of course it depends on the financial position of the local council, but my imaginary town and county of Tamanrac is a prosperous place.
OK, a little more progress on the Joe's Garage larger workshop. I made the building deeper so it is big enough to work on a number of cars and I have put a few low res props inside; more will be added. I will not be kitting it out so that convincing renders can be made with cameras placed inside, but I do want to have the option of rendering the place with the door open and still having it look convincing.
If you fancy kitbashing that interior, there are a couple of really nice garages on sale at the time of writing.
https://www.daz3d.com/servico-vintage-gas-station - This set is older and isn't really suitable for close-up 1k+ renders these days but it would suit your purposes nicely. Period correct if you intended your town or garage to be set in the 1950s/1960s or thereabouts.
https://www.daz3d.com/kuj-vehicle-repair-plant - Fairly recent, this one, but obviously the props will be heavier on your VRAM. Possibly more suitable if your town is set in more modern times but has preserved its original charm.
There are some really nice sets buried in the Daz back catalogue that are perfect for this kind of work, and really good value, but the store search seems to require very specific terms to show them.
Thanks for the links, but I already have some 1960s Texaco pumps, and anything else I need to fill out the workshop and exterior area will either be modelled by me in a very low polygon count version or will come from the extensive collection of free stuff I have found over the years. I downloaded a complete small car repair garage recently that was free and very well equipped. There was only room for one car inside, but I can kidnap all the tools and racking from it and put them in Joe's workshop along with some other odds and end that I have downloaded or modelled myself. Joe will end up with a very well equipped garage and fuel stop without me needing to spend one cent.
I still appreciate the attempt to help out though, so thanks again for that post.
OK, I am laughing at myself now.
Joe's workshop has moved. The building I created for it remains but has the signs removed, as you can see. The new building uses an instance of it with the signs and props added and is now accompanied by a large forecourt area where I will put some vintage 1960s gas pumps, as shown below. The red one I bought, the others are the same pump retextured by me to represent the colour coding sometimes used at many Texaco stations in the 1950s through to the middle or late 1970s.
Eventually I will put signs on the other building to make it into either a fire station or an ice cream factory. I'm leaning more towards the ice cream factory though, after all we have to get our priorities straight...