1920s - 1940s cityscape

CWR63

Preferably American style city (since it's more generic, or rather, eclectic) so there would be no plastic (garbage cans or bags, traffic cones, or trash) no freeway or highway stuff, no spraypaint graphitti, no dumpsters (they didn't actually come into widespread use until the 1950s), no curtain glass buildings, etc. Currently when you try to make an urban environment for any time between Victorian and Film Noir, so much modern stuff needs be removed that scarely any assets are left - and the extreme repetition of said assets to fill out the background is painfully obvious. Docks and railroad stations are more prevalent, airfields rather than airports, more industrial - more neon, but less well-lit at night with shorter streetlamps. Ballparks, but no multi-sport stadiums. Pre-fast food, except for White Castle. Phone booths, police call boxes, newstands, trolley or cable cars rather than buses. I'll stop listing stuff now.

frankrblow

Something to whet your apetite. though it's not a city, but an excellent town: https://www.daz3d.com/mountain-valley

I agree about the city; have you checked out some of Stonemason's older sets?

 

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

Hehe, yeah, saw that Mountain Valley package earlier myself.  Clearly its that town from the Back to the Future movies with the serial numbers shaved off, though.  >>giggles<<  Great for kit-bashing I bet, though.

frankrblow

Absolutely. And, for such a huge "set" it's not hard to navigate. Good for fairly close up renders, too.

 

nomad-ads_8ecd56922e

If you're okay with using recognizable film-legend structures that fall into that period (well, sorta, the MOVIE was from the 1920s, but was set in the 2020s), its interesting that 'Rocity has a very nice replica of the iconic skyscraper from Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" as an OBJ file.  Search for Metropolis, it is the first item that comes up.  Also the 7th, if you want the Extended License versiom.  They also have several other, real life citiscapes, such as one of Los Angeles, but those are probably too recent in time for your needs.

CWR63

Unfortunately, Mountain Valley (ne Hill Valley) is more town than city - but for an example of my suggestion, play the game L.A. Noire. Even the first Urban Sprawl by Stonemason had the beginning of a freeway, and lacked much in the way of believable structures (a lot of tiling textures, proportions of roadside objects and street to sidewalk width to building height ratios are off - somewhat 1990s videogame feel), all of which are no longer present in current SM products. Since Mountain Valley is circa 1955 it has elements that weren't present before 1950, as mentioned in the initial post. Assembling various period buildings into a hodge-podge city ends up looking like exactly that, with mismatched texture scales and resolution, and uneven levels of detail. Just pointing out a hole in the marketplace...

escrandall

Have you checked out Dreamland  Models on Rendo?  His Movie Sets series are sort of 50s .. arguably a bit older  They're for Poser, but are OK is Iray converting the surfaces  You can put togteher some largeish areas.

 

EightiesIsEnough

I did learn that some of the Dreamland models on Renderosity are being adapted to DAZ Studio, but with IRay textures.  Some products now have DAZ Studio versions, so I wouldn't be shocked if the City blocks sets and districts become available for DAZ Studio in iRay textures.

And by the way, the versions that were designed for Poser do work in DAZ Studio.

EightiesIsEnough

CWR63 said:

Unfortunately, Mountain Valley (ne Hill Valley) is more town than city - but for an example of my suggestion, play the game L.A. Noire. Even the first Urban Sprawl by Stonemason had the beginning of a freeway, and lacked much in the way of believable structures (a lot of tiling textures, proportions of roadside objects and street to sidewalk width to building height ratios are off - somewhat 1990s videogame feel), all of which are no longer present in current SM products. Since Mountain Valley is circa 1955 it has elements that weren't present before 1950, as mentioned in the initial post. Assembling various period buildings into a hodge-podge city ends up looking like exactly that, with mismatched texture scales and resolution, and uneven levels of detail. Just pointing out a hole in the marketplace...

I always thought the Mountain Valley set is more of a Town Square than anything else?

sjaammons

Definitely could use some historical cityscape love in Daz. There's a huge untapped niche for 20s/30s gangster and noir products or World War II 40s products few seem keen on tapping into.