Cloud City

Step 4 – The Dome

The next model created will be another dome shaped building. The model consists of 17 cylinders, one sphere, eight cubes, and 18 tori. Aligning objects and grouping as well as boolean operations are once again used and can be seen in the diagram. The neutral objects appear as orange, the positive objects as pink, and the negative ones as blue.

(click on image for a larger version)

Create a cylinder and increase the height by a third of its original size through the Y-axis (one-third of 20.48 is 6.83, so 20.48+6.83 is 27.31 Y-size). Set the cylinder to Positive and rename it at the same time. If you entered the Y-size of the cylinder through the Object Attributes, you'll need to move the cylinder so it is resting on the ground. Make sure the Edit palette is active and choose Snap to Ground from the Align menu.

Create a sphere and squash it down through the Y-axis:.

Align the two objects to create a “dome structure” by moving the squashed sphere to the top of the cylinder. The center of the sphere should line up with the top of the cylinder. Since the cylinder is 27.31 units high, the sphere Y-origin should be 27.31 to match. Select the cylinder and sphere and group them together. Move them out of camera view so you can move on to the next step without them interfering with the workspace.

Create a torus and click on the button to access the Object Attributes. In the Rotate category enter the value of 90 in the “X” column and click on the checkmark to accept the changes.

(click on image for a larger view)

Click the button to edit the thickness of the torus and enter the value of 50 in the radius box and click on the checkmark to accept the changes.

(click on image for a larger view)

The next step can be done in one of two ways, by duplication or mult-replication.

Duplication: Duplicate the torus and sit the new one on top of the original. Repeat this process until you have 18 altogether, then group them together and reduce the scale very slightly. This is so when the whole model is complete they will sit inside the dome structure.

(click on image for a larger view)

Multi-replication: Select the first torus and click on the button to access the Object Attributes. Note down the Z-axis size of the torus, which is 1. Close the Object Attributes and choose Edit : Multi-Replicate from the menu. Since you want 18 total tori when done, enter 17 in the Quantity field. Enter -1 in the Z-offset field as we want the duplicates to go above the original torus and offset them by the height of the original torus. Click on the checkmark to accept the changes.

You'll get the same result as duplicating but with less work. Select all the tori, group them together, and name the group. Reduce the size slightly so that it will fit inside the dome structure.

Next we will make a simple “window” that will cut into the side of the positive cylinder of the dome. Create a cylinder. Enter the attributes for the cylinder and rotate it 90 degrees through the X-axis.

Next, create a cube and align it with the cylinder like so (the cube is 20.48 units high, so move the cylinder up on the Y-axis to 20.48 units):

Select the cube and increase the height through the bottom Y-axis so that the height is about double (approximately 41 units). If you resize the cube through the Object Attributes, you'll need to drop the cube down to re-line it up with the cylinder. Select the cylinder then make sure the Edit menu is active and select "Snap To World Center" from the Align menu.

If you don't see the part of the cube that is now under the ground plane, you can either delete the ground plane or turn off the Wireframe Underground. To do this, click on the Wireframe Underground On/Off button in the right-hand menu:

Select the cylinder and duplicate it by pressing Ctrl-D on the keyboard, then align it so it sits symmetrical to the other at the bottom of the cube (set the Y-origin to -20.48). Select all three objects and press "N" to set them to negative, then group them together (don't worry about naming the group as we'll be ungrouping them later. These will be used to cut into the side of the positive cylinder used in the dome structure from above.

With the objects grouped resize the scale so it is roughly the same height as the group of tori created above.

Adjust the depth of the group through the z-axis and the “window” is complete:

The final size of the window should be close to the following:

Switch the camera view to top and reintroduce the dome structure into the center of the workspace (select it and change the X and Z-origins to 0). You might want to move the tori group out of the way as well. Align the window at the edge of the structure at the 12 o’clock position. From the front the window should also be center to the cylinder as in the example.

Using the top view duplicate the window by pressing Ctrl-D on the keyboard and align the duplicate at the 6 o’clock position (change the Z-origin to -10.24).

Select both windows and press Ctrl-D to duplicate them so you have four windows. With the two new ones selected group them together and enter the Object Attributes by clicking the button next to the bounding box. In the rotate row, enter the value of 90 in the Y column and click on the checkmark to accept the changes. You should now have these at the 3 and 9 o’clock positions. With these two windows selected press Ctrl-U one time to ungroup.

Following the process above, select and duplicate all four windows, group them, and access the Object Attributes. This time, enter 45 in the Y-rotate field and click on the checkmark to accept the changes. You should now have eight windows in total, all symmetrically placed around the edge of the dome structure.

Select the group of tori that was created earlier and place them inside of the dome structure, making sure the alignment along the y-axis matches that of the windows. In the example, for viewing purposes we can see the dome structure as green, the windows as blue, and the tori as purple.

Select all objects and click the button by the bounding box until it disappears, then click the button to group all objects together to complete the model.

Do a test render and you should have something looking like this:

Apply the Polished Pewter material from the Master Series Cloud City Material Presets sub-library. Save the model to your Object Presets Library for later use. If you copied the included Presets folder into the Bryce 5 main folder, select the Master Series library and save the dome to the Cloud City sub-library. Name it something like "dome" or "Dome 1".

Step 5   The Structure