I've been a fan of Carlo Scarpa's work for a long time, and one of my favourites was always the Canova Museum in Possagno, northern Italy.

I love the different ways he brings natural light into the building, and how it bounces off the walls to provide a beautiful setting for Antonio Canova's plaster casts.

I modeled this about a year ago in good old sketchup and rendered it using 3dstudio as a portfolio piece. Its served it's purpose now and I thought I might as well share it here! Its an interior only model, but there are scanned dwgs in the skp if someone wants to complete the exterior.

More info:

beautiful photographs by Richard Bryant - partly my inspiration for the cg views: http://www.arcaid.captureweb.co.uk/mtest3/SetDisplay.asp?JobNo=7700

carlo scarpa photographic library: http://fototeca.cisapalladio.org/web/index.php?valo=i_6

wikipedia entry for scarpa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carlo_Scarpa

Castelvecchio homepage: http://www.comune.verona.it/Castelvecchio/cvsito/english/scarpa.htm

Flickr photos of the museum: http://www.flickr.com/search/?w=all&q=canova+scarpa&m=text

Hard to get but beautiful book on the museum (photos by Richard Bryant): http://www.amazon.co.uk/Carlo-Scarpa-Gipsoteca-Canoviana-Possagno/dp/3930698226/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1204374953&sr=8-1

Canova museum homepage: http://www.museocanova.it/menu.php?name=gipgipsca&lang=uk

First set of renders I did a year ago: http://www.peterguthrie.net/visualisation/museo-canoviano-possagno-carlo-scarpa/

Updated renders for 3dworld magazine: http://www.peterguthrie.net/visualisation/canova2/

movie: http://vimeo.com/298070/

section

interior view 1

interior view 2

interior view 3

interior view 4

render 1

render 2

render 3

render 4

and finally the skp

check the layers for scanned drawings

Bravo,
Extraordinary renderings.

Beautiful. Can you explain the sculptures I see in the rendering, but not in the skp file. What did you use to render, where did the sculpture figures come from?

Agreed lovely images thanks for sharing your work. I also really like the clarity and simplicity of your website. :craqueur:

Beautiful work. Thanks for the model.

thanks everyone,

The sculptures are just whatever I could find on the internet rather than Canova replicas. As far as I can remember the majority are from an evermotion.org collection that I bought and some are from http://forum.jotero.com/ - look in the 3d scanning section. I obviously couldn't include the evermotion models in the skp as they are from a commercial collection, and the 3d scanned models are rather detailed as I'm sure you can imagine!

The sketchup model was exported as a 3ds file and imported into 3d studio max. Textures were all made in photoshop - all had diffuse maps, reflection maps, and bump maps. It was rendered using vray.

@gorgon: thanks!, clarity and simplicity were the main objectives. A friend of mine did it for me - http://www.randomsequence.com/

I thought they were not the actual artwork from the gallery, but I did not run to my books to compare. Its very convincing propping none the less. Thanks for posting it.

excellent renderings, i thought they were real photos at first.

Great work...

I must agree with everyone. The renderings are beautiful and realistic, and the lighting is simply amazing. Great job!

Excellent work! Is that all natural lighting?
A small detail I like is the realistic feel of the walls. What kind of specularmap did you use?
Sheik

great work and rendering....
Thanks for posting it

Lovely work mate. I didnt recognise the building until I saw the corner window and then it clicked.

Scarpa did some wonderful stuff. My favourite is the Brion Cemetery.

Beautiful renders as well

@Sheik: The specular map was probably a mix of a greyscale version of the diffuse map and another tileable image of some polished plaster.

The only light source is the sun. Thanks for your comment!

@siliconbauhaus: Yes the corner window is the most memorable detail from this isnt it! I should really do a render of it. My favourite scarpa work is definitely the Castelvecchio, followed by the Olivetti showroom and Querini Stampalia in Venice.

Simply beautiful. Thanks for sharing!

The renderings are awesome....good job mate.