The Suzhou Museum is the largest and most difficult (modeling) project I have ever worked on. The scale was huge and the task was excruciatingly long until the end. Nevertheless, it was still worth the effort, because this particular bulding deserved so.

Link towards 3D model files for download

Suzhou Museum model video tour

Foreword

In 2010, as a young engineer, I visited the Suzhou Museum by chance. This unexpected experience really impacted me. Amazed by the beauty of the design at each corner of the building, I then recognized architectural mastery.

And I was right to do so, since I found out later the identity of the author : world reknowned Ieoh Ming Pei, the Pritzker winner architect who among other things made the Louvre Pyramid of my home town of Paris.

Anyway, this visit marked a turning point for me, since it was part of a journey to China to decide if architecture was my real calling or not. Although the journey ended at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo, it was in Suzhou that my decision was made : I wanted to become an architect.

The impulse of the project

A few years passed, I got my architecutral degree, and I started practicing 3D modeling by revisiting architectural projects that inspired me. I always intended to come around back to the Suzhou Museum, one of my favourite buildings.

The scale of it always pushed it back, until I finally decided to go for it and get started on recreating that memory about a year ago.

As always, modeling the project made me understand it better, and appreciate it even more. So here we are now, model’s finished, (almost) everything is there, I got to visit the place once again in a way, and so can you.

Getting started on the model

As usual, I start by searching tons of photos for reference, accurate 2D floors plans and sections (which I was fortunately able to find somewhere), before entering the 3D modeling phase. Then came the hard parts.

3D model challenges for the Suzhou Museum

The difficulty in modeling a building this enormous and this complete comes from the will to accurately recreate every detail that counts. Once you set a certain level of precision on one part of the model, you have to maintain this level all throughout. The main challenges I encountered were :

• the structure design under the roofs
• the diversity and quantity of small building parts
• most of all, the fatigue of keeping modeling

Structure elements

The roof structure was designed to create a sunshade above all corridors and galleries :

• Exterior/interior walls
• Metallic tubes
• Roof windows
• Wooden solar screens
• Metallic windows
• Glass panels

Once you start extruding those first lines in 3D and see the shape of the building appear, it’s quite the fun phase. After a few weeks of drawing and adjusting small pieces that ressemble each other from one side of the building to another, it starts getting mentally exhausting.

Especially when you have to texture the whole building, find the right materials and paint each tiny part of the project so it doesn’t mess with the final renders.

You always had to remember at which step of the process you were, and separate the tasks in an effective manner to waste as little time as possible. For instance, do all the painting of the walls at once when all walls are definitely modeled, set up all the renders when the model’s complete, etc.

Tha fatigue is the reason I had to go and make other smaller models in between, to clear my head, because I grew sick of this one that never seemed to end. I came back to it eventually because I didn’t want to leave it unfinished, but from the first drawn line to the last render, it took me roughly one year (modeling outside working hours only).

Persevering on the modeling : final renders

Skecthup to Enscape

Finish line of the marathon : here are the main views I captured from Sketchup in the Enscape real time renderer.

This software is very useful to wander through the building, pick a spot and take a quick picture, or event to render animation pretty fast. Here is what the navigation windows looks like with the map positioning on the top left.

3dsmax to Vray

I also tried to make some renders through Vray via 3dsmax. The importing process was quite tiresome, since it has to be made little by little not to overcharge the file with tons of geometry (=crash).

The texturing stayed the same (thank god) and the layer organization remained as it was prepared well in Sketchup. Method : Import skp version 2016 file directly into 3dsmax as groups, keeping layers, then dissociate everything.

The pictures feel a little more realistic but take way more time to render.

Main lessons from the Suzhou museum modeling in Sketchup

As for the overall making of this model, here are a few teachings I can sum up, that can hopefully help me later on gain time and work more efficiently :

• Layer organization : use groups of layers for building ensemble, don’t use simple layers for building parts ensembles.
• Create a few customized styles that you like working in and that make the navigation non lagging
• Save numerous versions of the file to keep some geometry safe in case of error deletion
• Name your components immediately, no matter how many there can be
• Use Deep select plug-in to tag the whole geometry with a layer, before exporting into 3dsmax
• Import complexe shapes modeled in 3dsmax in .3ds format
• Use the smoothing tool to simplify the geometry lines in the viewport
• Save component separately to work on them independently of the whole model, reload then

Conclusion

Summing up this whole journey within the journey, I can imagine how hard it would be to actually work on a project like that in real life. I see that it would obviously take large teams of architects to contribute to the large picture over years, given that by myself I fell like I got sick of it a few months in.

It must take patience, perseverance, and respect for the quality of the work to give it your best from beginning to end. That’s what I understood most from making this model.

As for the architectural lessons the Suzhou museum 3D model is full of, I will undoubtedly try to unpack them at some point on my ‘Instructive modeling’ segment. The circle will then be complete.

I will see you there eventually,