Scenes of Scheme’s San Francisco
So I want to be clear about what has just transpired:
- Some number of months ago, I sat at a cafe down the street and made some stuff up. It involved quantum computers and alternate San Franciscos.
- After publishing that stuff in book form, I asked other people to remix and reimagine it.
- Together, we picked some winners.
- And now, Emily Cooper has finished her beautiful, storybook 3D renderings of five San Franciscos.
I almost hate to embed these here, because 500 pixels doesn’t do her work justice. These are huge images—definitely suitable for use as desktop backgrounds. Don’t miss the full-size versions on Flickr:
Or, if you like, you can just snag a pack of full-resolution JPEGs here.
But wait—there’s more.
This is the coolest: Emily has agreed to share the 3D geometry that she built to render these images. That means you can import it into SketchUp, Blender, Photoshop, or the 3D app of your choice and make new images from new angles. Or maybe there’s a 3D printout in your future?
Get the models here. You’ll find mostly OBJ files with a few 3DS thrown in for use with SketchUp—the full downtown scenes and a few isolated objects. Like the images, these are all Creative Commons-licensed.
If you use these models for something fun—and you should! you must!—let me know and I’ll link it up here.
Wow. If I could go back in time and show these images to the Robin Sloan in that cafe down the street, he would flip. out. That stuff he made up one day—it’s real. It’s there. It’s Fog City, and glimmering within: the Shard!
Thanks, Emily. Great work.
And coming soon: updates on the other remix projects!
