Indiana Jones show building details

There aren't any huge changes in this render—just a lot of small details that (I hope) help the realism and accuracy of the model. These changes include:

• Aerial-photo-based roof textures for the various smaller protrusions from the main show building, as well as the numerous slats that cover these roofs.
  
• Detailing on some of the HVAC units on the roof.
  
• Some equipment near the PhotoPass building at the bottom left.
  
• Gravel textures on the surface below the railroad tracks along the berm.
  
• The addition of the original snake animatronic, which sits under a tarp in an alcove of the show building. You can see it above and to the right of center, though it's hard to see even in the full-sized version.
  

Note also the path leading up from the elephant doors in the Indy queue to the back of the elephant bathing pool in the Jungle Cruise, down at the bottom right.

Jungle Cruise progress

The Jungle Cruise is surrounded on all but the north side by berms, or manmade walls of earth. These help keep the area visually isolated from the rest of the park. I've been adding the south side, upon which the railroad tracks sit, and the east side, which stops right behind the buildings of the west side of Main Street.

Also newly visible is the service road at the bottom right, which leads from the backstage areas next to the PhotoPass building and Indiana Jones to the area behind Main Street, passing below the railroad tracks in the process. Additionally, you can see some additions I've made to the Indiana Jones show building at the bottom left, such as the planter area in front of it. The handrail I've added to the short steps from the various doorways are tragically difficult to see.

Indiana Jones exit cave

I've now more or less finished the mouth of the cave through which guests exit Indiana Jones. As you can see, it's located back beyond the left side of the entrance temple, sandwiched between the queue structure on the right and rear and the berm on the left The design of all this is rather subtly clever—it prevents guests in line from focusing on all the people exiting the attraction, who've apparently survived the perils within. That would have been a problem if the exit were simply at the side of the temple, with people exiting right next to the entrance. But this design quietly reroutes people back out to where they got in line to avoid confusion and avoid bringing the incoming guests' focus to them.

You can also barely see the newly added stone snakes at the front of the temple, on the right side of the image, to the left of the colonnade.

Don't be fooled by the gap in the roof directly behind the cave, by the way. I just don't have enough information about that area yet. There will indeed be a very flat, very utilitarian, and very hidden roof covering that whole area.

You can see part of my process for building this cave in the following YouTube video, albeit sped up by more than four times and without any audio.

Overview of the Jungle Cruise

Here's a wider shot of the whole river as it currently exists in my model. If you'd like specific explanations of which area is which, feel free to click the image. That'll take you to a larger version, and then you can click Back to the Flickr photo page to see the version with "notes" floating over the image. Put your mouse over them to see explanations.

The Jungle Cruise begins

I've begun work on the World-Famous Jungle Cruise! The river is more or less completely formed, but I still need to work on developing the land around it. You can see the berm (not "The Berm") that hides part of the Indiana Jones queue, with the first Pirates of the Caribbean show building on the far side of it. Part of the Haunted Mansion facility is visible in the background, too.

I'm accomplishing the contours of the Jungle Cruise with the same technique I've been using for all such complex, smoothly curved land shapes. It's called SubSurf, for "subdivision surface", and it allows me to create a relatively small number of points to represent the earth's surface. For those who haven't worked on 3D models—curved shapes have to be approximated on the computer with lots of small, flat faces. The smaller the individual faces, the smoother the shape can appear. But handling lots of small faces is hard, so SubSurf is nice in that I can manipulate a small number of points that control a much larger number of faces. Anyway, the land is SubSurfed, but the water is just a flat, transparent, reflective plane that passes through that area. Where the land dips low enough, you can thus see the water, but the land goes over the water once it goes above that level. It's not an entirely accurate way of representing the real world, but it looks right as long as you're not trying to view it from underground...which wouldn't make sense in the first place. =P

Snake colonnade in front of Indiana Jones

I've now added the snake colonnade through which the outdoor queue for Indiana Jones winds. (Click for the full-resolution version!) This is proving killer for render times, since I've got a combination of numerous texture images, rather complex geometry, and ambient occlusion (a time-consuming form of lighting). Placing the camera close to the subject and setting the size of the render image rather large...well, those don't help, either. So what you're seeing is a total of over 10 hours of rendering. (Not to be confused with the modeling process, which is the part that I'm responsible for. The computer does the rendering.) I need to work on ways to keep the time down, because this model on a whole is just going to keep getting more and more complex.

Next step will be to crumble and erode some of the bowls at the tops of the pillars, since they're "damaged" in real life, much like the temple itself.

Improved Indiana Jones queue temple

I gotta say, I'm really rather proud of how this part of the model is progressing. Trust me, you're going to want to click the image for the full-sized render; lots of detail is visible here. Three major modifications are visible in this render:

1. The wooden ladders used by Indy's archeological team. A big THANK YOU goes to "Trader Sam", who inspired me to add these. I'm also hoping to add some of the other crates and such later on. Notice the use of forced perspective—the intentional shrinkage of faraway objects to increase the perceived distance. Not only does the temple itself taper, but the ladders at the top are a lot smaller than the ones closer to ground level.

2. Aged, crumbling areas. The real structure at Disneyland has some spots that look as if they've deteriorated over time, with broken embellishments lying in heaps of rubble and so forth. Naturally, it's all done intentionally by the Imagineers, but the illusion is convincing. I wasn't originally going to do this; I figured I'd keep things simple and leave my model of the temple "perfect", as if it had just been built by Mara's followers. But Trader Sam inspired me yet again—and offered some choice advice on how to actually do this—so I went ahead. Thanks, Robert!

3. Stone brick textures. The temple already looked like it was made of stone, but I hadn't added the bricklike look until now. It's definitely an improvement in accuracy and overall coolness.

Note that the exterior of the flooded maze and bamboo canyon in the Indy queue is visible behind the temple and to the left; this are hidden in real life by a berm that covers the exterior wall, which would otherwise be visible from the Jungle Cruise. (I'll add that berm later.) Behind the queue is the first show building for Pirates; the area you're seeing corresponds to the end of the loading area and beginning of the bayou scene. Way in the background on the far left is the Indiana Jone show building itself, and similarly distant on the far right is the train tunnel behind the Haunted Mansion.