I’ve blogged extensively about my love of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater, and my attempt to develop a personal interpretation in Second Life. At the time, I was rather pleased with the result, even though elements of the build had to be altered in order for it to fit into a 1/4 sim space – the house really requires an entire region, and that’s not something I’m prepared to invest in within SL; the tier is simply too high.

However, I recently joined Kitely, and as a part of that process gained an entire region for myself, and 100,000 prims to play with – and the perfect opportunity to reproduce Fallingwater in a location more in keeping with the original.

The work is still ongoing, but I’m already well pleased with what I’ve achieved so far. The recent updates to Kitely have been a joy; not only have I been able to rapidly zap between worlds to grab fixtures and fittings I didn’t want to get caught-up with making, the fixes to the scripting end of Kitely mean I can now employ my usual scripted lighting. This may add a little to the processing overhead, but I hope it gives a much greater depth to the build – as I hope the night shots I’ve taken demonstrate.

Related Links

• Fallingwater at wright-house.com
• My Fallingwater blog post saga
• Fallingwater in Second Life  – my video
• Flying High in Kitely

ETA: should have said: all daytime images taken using Firestorm, with deferred rendering enabled and lighting & shadows on, Windlight set to Dynamic Richness. Night images taken with Sun set to Midnight, deferred enabled and lighting & shadows enabled. 

Scripted lighting effects produce best results with deferred rendering active.  

Note: The build has now been taken down from Eagle Acres. A “replacement” build is now available on a region of its own in Kitely. 

Well, I had to go and do it. Temptation got the better of me. After putting in all the effort on the build…and no-doubt causing many rolled eyes with my obsession, I managed to secure 1/4 of a homestead region for a week at a reasonable cost – just so I could try to fit the build together sort-of in-situ.

The result isn’t perfect – even with some adjustments to the build, a 1/4 sim in terms of land size is actually too small for all of it (it really does need an entire homestead size-wise. Primarily, I had to lose a parking bay in the garage (from 4 to 3) and reduce the size of the arc of the footpath linking guest wing to main house (which actually improves the build, I think).  I’ve also compromised a little on the positioning: as there are others on the sim, I didn’t want them to feel disturbed as part of the build suddenly appeared over the tops of the hills dividing the parcels and thinking they had some kind of pixel voyeur on their doorstep. I also had to do with phantom sculpts to represent the “far bank” of the Bear Run, and Linden Water is representing the stretch of river directly below the first set of falls. Sadly, compromises left me with no room for the rest…

Other than that, however, the house fitted fine… :), so I thought I’d share a little video and a couple of images:

(You might want to view it on the YouTube page given the way WordPress squishes things in this page layout.)

As the house is up until March 2nd, it can be seen at Eagle Acres Ranch (SLurl), if anyone is interested.

(As an aside, I was asked the other day when I use stills rather than “pure” machinima. The answers are simple: I’ve not mastered camera manipulation to achieve the effects I want (no space navigator or anything like it), and when I’ve tried to run SL and capture video, I end up with something that is jumpier than a cat stoned on catnip…)

Related Links

• Return to Fallingwater 3: Guest House and all
• Return to Fallingwater 2: Progress
• Return to Fallingwater 1: Why I’m so quiet

Note: this is a personal project only. The finished model is not intended for sale or profit in any way.

My obsession with Fallingwater has continued through the week, with attention turning to the guest house / staff wing. These are a curious mix, as they form an L-shaped building existing on two-and-a-half levels, due to the lay of the land. Facing south (in the original) and overlooking Fallingwater itself, is the single-floor guest house. Linked to this, but facing west, is the estate’s garaging, the floor level of which is raised slightly above the guest house level, with the staff bedrooms over the top.

Reproducing these in-world has been interesting, working from unscaled drawings and a plethora of photos. As the latter don’t show all sides of the building, I’ve made some guesses as to how various parts look as a result, but then, this isn’t supposed to be a 100% accurate replica, so I have my excuse if there are inaccuracies :). That said, however, the overall simplicity of both wings of the building do lend themselves to being reproduced in-world quite well.

Prim count isn’t particularly light on the build: 305 prims – although this includes some of the interior fittings in the guest house itself and the covered foot path linking the wing to the main house.

I’m not sure I’ve scaled the footpath looping up from Fallingwater to the guest house correctly – it makes the overall build pretty huge given there has to be space in front of the house for the river and falls – but I’ll tackle that problem if I ever end up opting to take-up a parcel or land of a suitable size for the place.

Overall, I’m pleased with the way the build has come out; I still have a few nips and tucks to take care of: the guest house would benefit perhaps from some lighting effects, and there are a couple of small details by way of handrails that need to be added, and I’ll add these shortly.

If ever I do get to the point were I again have land large enough to rez the house with a decent amount of landscaping, I’ll doubtless follow-up with another piece on my obsession. For now though, I think this marks the end of renovations and updates for Fallingwater where I’m concerned…

Of Prims and Pieces

As people have asked, both on previous articles about the build and directly, here’s a broad breakdown on the build:

• Total prims, main house, excluding faux landscaping: 428
  • House shell sections (3): 301
  • Additional house segments: 11
  • Doors and opening windows: 38
  • Stairs:8
  • Furnishings: 15
  • Lighting & fires: 11
  • Window frames & interior fixtures (light details, etc): 44
• Total prims guest house: 305
  • House shell sections (3): 251
  • Window frames: 15
  • Doors: 14
  • Furnishings: 19
  • Stairs: 4
  • Fire: 2

Of the total count, the builds are designed specifically so that the shell sections (552 prims in total) can be converted to convex hull physics shapes, reducing their overall impact by 50%  – these sections are entirely without sculpts, complex prims or script-carrying elements (once the root rezzing scripts have been removed). This can bring the combined build’s overall Land Impact cost from 733 to 453.

Now, if only I could design and create the house using mesh…..

Related Links

• Return to Fallingwater 1: Why I’m so quiet
• Return to Fallingwater 2: Progress
• Return to Fallingwater 4: the video

Note: this is a personal project only. The finished model is not intended for sale or profit in any way.

Some more snaps of the ongoing Fallingwater rebuild project, with some temporary landscaping added to the build platform for effect.

And if you’re wondering why no pictures from the more famous side of the house….it seemed a bit OTT to build waterfalls on the build platform for the sake of photos…so I haven’t (yet!).

Still to be done: a few more internal bits – units around the dinning area, perhaps, plus at some point I’m determined to tackle the guest house as well. The bridge over the rear drive is already in, as is the start of the path going up to the guest house…

ETA…

Prim count to date:

• Complete build (excluding “landscaping”): 424 prims
• Main house structure: 272 (which can be reduced to a Land Impact of 136 using convex hull)
• Remaining prims: scripted and sculpt elelments (doors, functioning windows, fountain water, sculpted window frames, scripted furniture, fires, lighting)

Related Links

• Return to Fallingwater 1: Why I’m so quiet
• Return to Fallingwater 3: Guest House and all
• Return to Fallingwater 4: the video

Blogging-wise, I’ve been a little quiet over the last week. I haven’t gone away or given up, I’m just primarily focused on an in-world project where SL is concerned and not out there exploring my landmarks or trawling through forums, blogs, and the likes for news and info. However, things will pick up again!

The project itself is a return to an old theme of mine – Fallingwate. My first attempt at a build modelled after Frank Lloyd Wright’s famous house captured the look if not the spirit (so to speak and if I say so myself). Over the years it has been variously patched and re-patch with things like sculpts and mega prims, etc…but has for too longer looked rather shabby.

So I’m rebuilding it almost from the ground up. I’ll be blogging more on the project (if anyone is interested!) in the future… For now, however, a quick peek as the main house nears completion.

The “grass” area at the back is purely a reference-board I used to denote for mark “ground level” around the area of the driveway and carport trellis. The rocks around the house and at the back also have yet to be properly textured and are more “placeholders” for marking how the land forms around the west tower and terrace of the house and are used at the rear of the property for the car port trellis and the bridge to the guest house.

I’ll take some better pictures once the house is nearer completion and I’ve got shadows, etc al, enabled!

Related Links

• Return to Fallingwater 2: Progress
• Return to Fallingwater 3: Guest House and all
• Return to Fallingwater 4: the video

Fallingwater is back!!

We’re no longer on our own sim (nor can I ever see myself trusting Linden Lab sufficiently to actually run the risk of “buying” land in SL ever again) – we have found a home for the house in a sim run by a very good friend our ours.

As you can see from the picture, the tropical environment is a little odd for the house, but with a few small tweaks to the place, we’ve found that it actually fits in quite nicely – certain, it blends-in well with the other builds on the sim, such as the tropical-styled house behind our parcel.

We’ve also been able it incorporate one of the waterfalls that gives the place its name!

We’ve grabbed a seafront view, on the north side of the sim, which gives us a nice uninterrupted outlook & adds to the feeling of homeliness about the place.

Ohiophella is still missed, but it is really wonderful to have Fallingwater back, at least!