Creating a City Centre Map in 3D Graphics

Creating a city centre may using with 3D graphics 

by Ashley Taylor

Here's the story on one of my latest projects, a 3D map of a city centre showing an existing tramline and a proposed new line, using Maxon's Cinema 4D. Mile after mile of busy, built-up cityscape with the tram route clear at the centre of it.

It was quite a challenge, so much so that the finished map is just too big for this blog! But fear not, you can see the extent of my hard work with an animation, a helicopter style fly-through of the map. Please click play to watch the animation, and then read about the key challenges of creating a 3D illustration of this size that needs to be highly accurate yet visually clear and simple.

So how did I create this 3D city scape?

My source material was printed plans of the proposed route: five sheets of A4 I stitched together using a highly technical process… sticky tape.

I combined the printed map with screen grabs from Google Maps, about 25 of them in total, which I imported into my Cinema 4D software so I could overlay the 3D onto the Google map as I created it, to make sure it was accurate geographically, and in scale, throughout.

I also constantly referred to Google Streetview to ensure that landmark buildings were visually accurate from a human perspective. Key buildings were shown with a glassy finish. Curved walls were seen as curved, even when from the aerial view those curves were hidden by straight roofs.

Key buildings with glassy surfaces and curved walls to reflect what could be seen from street level

One of the biggest challenges was what to leave out. A busy city centre is full of details but for this map it would be confusing to record every post box and parking space. It had to be simple enough to be easily understood, but complex enough to be recognisable to residents and visitors.

The map’s initial use was for internal consultation in the public sector, so it needed to work at a meeting room, to enable people to discuss the project. In the future it may be used by the public as a guide to the tram route.

For the animation I set up several effects to actually reduce the pristine perfection of the 3D and simulate a real camera lens with all its impurities.

These effects include chromatic aberration, which gives a subtle colour shift in the corners, vignette to darken the corner of each frame, ‘noise’ which essentially makes the image more grainy and distortion of each frame to make it look slightly rounded. Although subtle it does have the effect of making it look more realistic feel.

A challenge I really enjoyed, and I’m very pleased with the result.

If you’ve any questions or thoughts about this 3D project, please use the form below to post your comment.

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