The challenge of Tomorrow entry by 3dNinja

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Hey everybody! I want to thank Ronen Bekerman, Tomorrow, and all the judges for organizing this competition again. I had a blast working on this project and I’m really excited to showcase the images I created for it!

I’ve titled my collection “2040: The Lessons We Have Learned”. It wasn’t until a worldwide pandemic affected me personally, that I knew where I wanted to go with this project. I was laid off from my job due to economic issues but was lucky enough to get called to a position selling beer to-go for a local craft brewery. After a month of our taproom being closed due to quarantine, we reopened for service. It was ultimately my observations of the general public that sparked the idea for “The Lessons We’ve Learned”. The way we interact with each other has changed and I was inspired to see how that will impact us in the future. New York has been hit especially hard by Covid-19 and we keep seeing images of deserted streets and hearing news of lock-down and infection rates. I needed to show a bright future for New York City with people interacting with each other and their city. By 2040 we have learned from the events of 2020 and we implemented measures to help curb future health crises. With this in mind, I’ve shown an active city with bustling crowds and recreational activity. I placed the new automated city sanitation robots and revolutionary no-contact drone delivery in most scenes. The scenes are lively and bright suggesting better days on the horizon. I’ve done my best to give you a thriving, optimistic city twenty years in the future improved by the lessons we have learned from today.

“The Lessons We Have Learned” is also a reference to my experience working on this competition. Scale-wise, this is the largest project I’ve worked on and there were some hurdles I had to navigate. With dozens of background buildings and hundreds of assets, I had to find a way to keep myself on track and efficient. Rigid asset organization became essential to keep my view-port running smoothly and make multi matting easier. Proxying everything helped conserve RAM during rendering. I also installed an additional 64GB of RAM to my machine to cope with memory availability during render, this allowed me to efficiently work in Photoshop while rendering frames in Max. I wanted to make a fully 3D scene because I hope to come back to this project later and play with weather conditions, animations, and new views. While I have tinkered on original residential projects, I’ve definitely never designed a skyscraper from scratch. I spent a lot of time looking at photos of the existing/planned buildings for Hudson Yards and other large scale towers. Some of my buildings are completely original concepts, and some take cues from other modern architecture. I didn’t expect to have so much fun sketching out concept buildings!

I knew from the beginning that I would be creating a series of skyscrapers in the Hudson Yards neighborhood to fill out the empty blocks on the west side. We were provided with a good conceptual site plan so I used that to layout my buildings. I didn’t want to interfere with the subway depot that is currently there, so I lifted the neighborhood onto an elevated platform. I also added subway terminals, a large ramp, stairs, and sidewalk level elevators to make Hudson Yards easily accessible. I designed the new buildings so that they are distinctive, but fit in with the existing architecture and currently planned structures to make this neighborhood stand out even from a distance.

I’m proud of the work that I’ve done in the competition this year, and I hope everybody enjoys it!

The challenge of Tomorrow entry by 3dNinja

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So at long last I finished designing and modeling eight buildings for the west side of Hudson Yards. For the most part each building is a completely unique design, but I did draw on some existing buildings for inspiration on a couple of them. I spent a lot of time looking at modern skyscrapers! I wanted to elevate the neighborhood while maintaining a transportation hub underneath it. To do this, I imagined the buildings being built on top of a plaza. Not only would this elevate the neighborhood from the street level hustle and bustle, it allows room for two levels of parking over the subway depot. I’m also adding access points to underneath the parking deck to provide easy access to the subway line from the neighborhood. A large gently sloping ramp on either side of the neighborhood provides easy access for everybody to the plaza level. There is also stair access via a set of stairs designed to emulate the look of The Vessel. I’ve also put in large elevators to access the plaza from the street level. I wanted to make sure that the neighborhood was easily accessible by all, because I don’t want it to feel like it’s cut off from the rest of Manhattan, but rather a separate new and vibrant neighborhood.

Now let’s talk concepts for the plaza neighborhood itself! The first thing that inspired me was Tomorrow’s statement that Hudson Yards “is where the latest, highest, and most interesting architecture is being built.” I loved this idea and knew that I needed to come up with some cool, tall buildings! I also wanted to be respectful to the existing designs on the east side of Hudson Yards. As such, I intentionally made sure none of my buildings were taller than 30 Hudson Yards. Furthermore, only one of my designs is taller than 10 Hudson Yards, which would make it only the 5th tallest building among the officially designed buildings so far. I also tried to echo some of the design concepts of the existing buildings. I used largely glass facades and played with geometric shapes and stepped profiles to pay homage to the current designs. I also tried to make my buildings distinct at the same time, specifically by playing with framing the glass facades. I’m particularly happy with the building with the staggered vertical paneling. With everybody shut away right now, especially in NYC,the other thing really important to me is making this project feel alive and warm. I’m making the plaza as large and open as possible. I basically want these buildings to reside in a large park designed for interaction. There will be meandering paths, volleyball courts, picnic areas and more to really give people a place to congregate.

At this point in the project, I’m beginning to focus on camera angles and lighting which is much easier now that I know the scope and layout of the neighborhood. I’ll use these camera angles to come up with a narrative for the images.

The challenge of Tomorrow entry by 3dNinja

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I’ve been working hard over the last several weeks blocking in the neighborhood, modeling the existing Hudson Yards buildings, and bringing in some additional assets like cars and plants. I’ve decided to put eight sets of high-rise buildings based on the site plan, and I’ve designed and modeled four so far! As these buildings have been put in the model I’ve been able to set up some preliminary views. I’ve also been able to begin brainstorming some story ideas. I want to illustrate Hudson Yards from three viewpoints for my main three images, so these images will be more narrative in nature. The first test view I’ve been playing with is called “The Visitor”. The Visitor will be an image shown as I believe a visitor to this neighborhood would see it. I want a street level view for this one, it will help to illustrate the scale of this neighborhood and make the buildings soar into the sky. It will also tie the neighborhood in with the surrounding environment. I’ve decided that I’d like to risk a non-traditional view point for this one, using three point perspective to firstly simulate a person photographing this view, and secondly to emphasize the scale of these buildings.

The challenge of Tomorrow entry by 3dNinja

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I’m currently continuing to set up the surrounding areas of my scene, but I needed a break, so I thought it would be fun to do a quick test rendering! So far I have five of the Hudson Park East buildings modeled and textured to mid-detail, and since I’ve decided to focus my images on the not-yet-built west side, these buildings will probably only get refined a little bit more. I’ve completely modeled the whole buildings from scratch using the provided massing as a guide. This test render serves me basically as a QA test of the models so far. I’ve noticed a couple issues that need to be resolved with them, but as a whole I’m pretty excited about how it’s coming along!

The challenge of Tomorrow entry by 3dNinja

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I began this project by prepping the massing file that was provided. There were many adjustments I needed to make to the file, just so I could streamline my workflow.
I knew when I saw that the project was going to be a neighborhood in NYC that this was going to be a big undertaking, so I needed to get things set up so I could work as quickly as possible. I decided that I would mainly be focusing on the west section of the neighborhood. This would allow me to use pre-existing building assets for the blocks surrounding the Hudson Yard development, and it will save me some time because I won’t need to model the east side to full detail. I’m also feeling out some possible camera angles so I don’t waste time setting up blocks that aren’t likely to be seen. It also gives me the opportunity to really get creative with the design for the neighborhood that is yet to be built. I’m really excited about getting to get imaginative with the buildings because I’ve never really designed large scale buildings from scratch like this! It is also becoming clear to me at this point that this is going to be an absolutely massive undertaking, so I’m pretty pumped to be challenging myself so hard for this!