The High Level Bridge

Model and Building information

A bridge model is a bit different from a typical building. Rather than modeling all the individual structural pieces, it uses a lot of partially transparent textures. Transparent textures can also be useful on building models (the sunshades on the Baker Clinic, or the fire escape on the Arlington), but not on this scale. Since transparent textures in Google Earth have to be png format (rather than the typical jpg) and since png's don't compress very much, this model is the largest model I've ever done at about 2Mb.

Still, I'm quite pleased with how it turned out. There's enough detail in the textures that you can zoom right in on the bridge, and it's a pretty good representation of what the High Level looks like.

The main annoyance was that the Google Earth terrain doesn't match the actual bridge approaches. This is particularly true at the north end, where the terrain had to be built up by 90' to avoid leaving the end of the bridge hanging in mid-air.