Tomytec Downtown Skyscraper

[gavino200]

I bought this model a few years ago. It should have been obvious that it had a solid plastic front, but somehow I didn't make that connection, and I was pretty disappointed with it. But I can't justify leaving it any longer as an "open project" while starting other projects. So I'm going to finish it up. I've got a couple of questions about it.

 

My understanding is that this represents a glass-front building. It may look during the day like a solid mirrored front, but my understanding is that at night, light would shine through, and that at least some lights would be left on. Is that correct? Or are there buildings like this that remain "unlit" in front at night?

 

I've considered hacking the blue face off of it except for the doorway, and then trying to construct a new face for it, that has translucent windows. I've never done anything like that before, so it would have to be a "learn as I go" project.

 

Apart from the solid front, the building has some redeeming features.

 

Here it is - blue-painted solid front.

 

 

The roof top has some nice details and could be painted

 

 

Lots of "open" windows on the back and side, begging to be lit. I don't know what those "stick-out" bumps are supposed to be.

 

 

A nice big open showroom-type window on the bottom floor.

 

[cteno4]

I agree it does feel like a piece of plastic. One trick for high rise walls is to start with a sheet of heavy clear acetate or thin clear acrylic and then do a vertical set of window lines all the way up with pin tape. The nail art tape is perfect as less than a mm wide and you can get it in a metallic copper, gold or silver. Just lay out your lines on the computer and print out and ape down your clear sheet over it as a guide to where to put down the pin tape. 

 

 Once the verticals are all the way up the wall cut some like 1-2’ high (or higher) wall pieces to go around where the floor structure and duct level below the floor would be. Pre paint them. You can either just glue over the top of the pin tape or again on your template just put down the horizontal lines and cut across the pin tapes and remove pin tape where the horizontal pieces will fit.
 

Lots of buildings have panels looking like this. 
 

I’ve seen folks scribe plex sheets to get the window module seams, but one oops and it’s start over and hard to get the scribes looking really even.

 

yell I can pop some of these pin tapes in the mail to you to play with I have a scad.

 

jeff

[disturbman]

17 minutes ago, gavino200 said:

I don't know what those "stick-out" bumps are supposed to be.

Ventilation outlets, no? These are very common on the backsides of buildings.

https://www.google.com/maps/@35.701829,139.7763199,3a,75y,66.96h,113.94t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sHO_4c-51ng8JR49BeqSgAg!2e0!7i16384!8i8192

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

I agree it does feel like a piece of plastic. One trick for high rise walls is to start with a sheet of heavy clear acetate or thin clear acrylic and then do a vertical set of window lines all the way up with pin tape. The nail art tape is perfect as less than a mm wide and you can get it in a metallic copper, gold or silver. Once the verticals are all the way up the wall cut some like 1-2’ high (or higher) wall pieces to go around where the floor structure and duct level below the floor would be. Pre paint them.

 

yell I can pop some of these pin tapes in the mail to you I have a scad.

 

jeff

 

That would be awesome.

 

I realized writing the above that I do want to make an attempt. It's really fear stopping me, but even if I ruin it it's no big deal as I don't like it, as is.

 

So, I guess this is the point of no return? It went quite well. the front is off with no damage. I may cut some arcs of the blue plastic and arrange them, one on each floor, then just add windows between them.

 

 

I'm also assembling and lighting these two tomytec buildings.  The green one has small windows, so likely I'll just vary some brightness and room colors. Maybe a figure or two by the windows. The coco building has decent windows, so I may add some interiors. The roof of the Coco looks pretty bad though. Maybe just some paint or a roof detail will help it.

 

[cteno4]

Gavin, will do, pm me your street address again.

 

for the other buildings if no internal floors might look at if you can make your floors out of the 2mm fun foam and cut them just a tad large. Then cut a styrene floor like 5mm smaller all around and glue them together. The styrene give stiffness and fun foam outer edge is a little squishy and flexible and kind of makes a gasket around the edge w.o having to light seal. I used the fun foam like this around the old video wall I made way back and it made a perfect Gasket like this around the screen but allowed a pressure fit that popped out easily when I had to pull it in and out of the building. Fun foam is useful stuff for odd things like this.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

Gavin, will do, pm me your street address again.

 

I'll send it to you now.

 

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

 

for the other buildings if no internal floors might look at if you can make your floors out of the 2mm fun foam and cut them just a tad large. Then cut a styrene floor like 5mm smaller all around and glue them together. The styrene give stiffness and fun foam outer edge is a little squishy and flexible and kind of makes a gasket around the edge w.o having to light seal. I used the fun foam like this around the old video wall I made way back and it made a perfect Gasket like this around the screen but allowed a pressure fit that popped out easily when I had to pull it in and out of the building. Fun foam is useful stuff for odd things like this.

 

jeff

 

I already made floors for them. Those are the rectangles in the front of the picture. That's styrene, painted black, then painted white again. For light sealing the corners I like to use the white E6000 glue. It acts as both a light sealer and a non destructive/removable glue.

 

Agree about oversizing and sanding down to a perfect fit.

[cteno4]

Hmm I wonder if you were to cut your floor fronts to the contour of the old glass wall you could wrap clear acetate to make those curved edges. Then maybe couple pin stripes at the floor joints to the acetate to hide that. Then you could slide the whole front glass with floors attached (could make some blocks in the rear of the floor to space and support the floors in the rear like an elevator shaft where wiring could go) into the opening on your building. The idea of adding the layer of fun foam on top of the styrene floor sheet is to make a lift seal gasket that can compress a litte and not require gluing of the floors to the building side. I thought of it from those architectural high rises i bought off ebay that have all the floors glued to an elevator core that just slips out the top of the building shell. Needed to be able to light seal the floor to the walls w.o being able to access them all and also make it removable to install and if needed work later.

 

tough melding a scratch built window onto the premade back.

 

jeff

[gavino200]

Yes, I thought of remaking the floors to enable a wrap-around window. I may also slice up the blue plastic front tomorrow into sections, to make a partial front piece for each floor. There would be windows in between. I'll mock it up with adhesive putty and post a pic

 

Edited December 12, 2021 by gavino200

[Madsing]

4 hours ago, gavino200 said:

The green one has small windows, so likely I'll just vary some brightness and room colors. Maybe a figure or two by the windows.

I have the same two buildings. The glass roof of the green one needs to be replaced by a transparent roof with a bar, chairs, tables, some greenery, people and a warm white lighting. We have no choice, Gavin, that's the right thing to do 😀.

 

https://thesmartlocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ximages_easyblog_articles_7802_b2ap3_large_image19.png.pagespeed.ic.lRdiJQE-aN.jpg

https://thesmartlocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/images_easyblog_articles_7802_b2ap3_large_image14.png

 

For the glass, I recommend polyester over acrylic, much easier to cut and perfectly transparent too.

https://midwestproducts.com/collections/polyester-sheets/products/040-clear-polyester?variant=707519655

 

Marc

[gavino200]

4 minutes ago, Madsing said:

I have the same two buildings. The glass roof of the green one needs to be replaced by a transparent roof with a bar, chairs, tables, some greenery, people and a warm white lighting. We have no choice, Gavin, that's the right thing to do 😀.

 

I totally agree. I was looking at that earlier and thinking the same.

 

4 minutes ago, Madsing said:

 

https://thesmartlocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/ximages_easyblog_articles_7802_b2ap3_large_image19.png.pagespeed.ic.lRdiJQE-aN.jpg

https://thesmartlocal.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/images_easyblog_articles_7802_b2ap3_large_image14.png

 

For the glass, I recommend polyester over acrylic, much easier to cut and perfectly transparent too.

https://midwestproducts.com/collections/polyester-sheets/products/040-clear-polyester?variant=707519655

 

 

Very nice. I think I'll pick some up.

 

The roof of the "Coco" building needs some work. Probably to cut out the center section, create a lower roof and add details like roof-top vents.

 

Gavin

[Madsing]

Another idea for a nice building I came across recently

https://worldarchitecture.org/architecture-news/ecpnv/nendo-wraps-the-facade-of-office-building-with-a-timber-grid-in-tokyo.html

The flat timber grid could be done using tape as recommend by Jeff, or styrene strips for a better 3D effect. I think these would be to scale https://evergreenscalemodels.com/collections/14-white-polystrene-strips/products/100

 

Marc

 

[cteno4]

Very cool! Basswood would be perfect. Looks like 0.0208”x0.0208, 0.0208”x0.0312”, and 0.0416”x0.0416” basswood would work. Rest of the building could be tinted acetate or acrylic. But not sure it would give the interior lighting effect of the prototype, have to give that some experimentation, I think I have some tinted acetate here.

 

https://midwestproducts.com/collections/basswood

 

jeff

[Madsing]

1 hour ago, cteno4 said:

Looks like 0.0208”x0.0208, 0.0208”x0.0312”, and 0.0416”x0.0416” basswood would work

Yes! Nice. I didn't know basswood could be cut so thin!

[gavino200]

None of these strips have been fine sanded. And they're only loosely held in place with adhesive putty. But I think I like the basic concept as it keeps the architectural look of the building.

 

I can think of two ways of putting this together.

 

1.  Build a single front piece and attach it after putting in the floors. I think this will be extremely difficult as the back and sides of the building are one piece of plastic.

 

2. I can build up from the bottom floor by floor. i think this is much more likely to work.

 

I'm going to use @cteno4's idea of building an elevator shaft to hide the wires.

 

I'll need to decide whether to use the decals the building came with. I'm leaning toward making new ones. It's a skill I need to learn anyway for multiple projects. 

 

 

 

 

[cteno4]

Nice! I’m guessing you could just glue a thin acetate sheet on the inside of this as one big piece to pull out the front with floors glued in behind the acetate or floors just glued into the building. Put the vertical pin tapes on the acetate first.

 

yeah finding a hidden space for wires is a must. I always look for a room that can just never be lit to house wires, pots, etc. almost always not every room in any building is lit! 

 

jeff

[gavino200]

On 12/12/2021 at 7:46 PM, cteno4 said:

Nice! I’m guessing you could just glue a thin acetate sheet on the inside of this as one big piece to pull out the front with floors glued in behind the acetate or floors just glued into the building. Put the vertical pin tapes on the acetate first.

 

I dunno. I can imagine the whole thing being quite unstable and difficult to line up. Line trying to install a slinky.

 

On 12/12/2021 at 7:46 PM, cteno4 said:

 

yeah finding a hidden space for wires is a must. I always look for a room that can just never be lit to house wires, pots, etc. almost always not every room in any building is lit! 

 

jeff

 

Yes, I love the idea. I especially like the idea of an elevator shaft. If it's visible I could paint little elevator doors on each floor.

[gavino200]

This still needs a bit more fine-sanding, but I think opening up the roof-top was a good idea. I may also try to open the ground floor front and door windows.

 

 

 

[Madsing]

5 hours ago, gavino200 said:

This still needs a bit more fine-sanding, but I think opening up the roof-top was a good idea. I may also try to open the ground floor front and door windows.

YESSSS !!! 😀

So much better!

[Madsing]

I didn't think about asking. You just cut the plastic around the beams, correct? It's so neat. Was that easy?

Tomytec suggests a swimming pool there: https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10796557/30/1

 

[gavino200]

8 hours ago, Madsing said:

I didn't think about asking. You just cut the plastic around the beams, correct? It's so neat. Was that easy?

Tomytec suggests a swimming pool there: https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/image/10796557/30/1

 

Yes, I just used an xacto knife. Multiple passes, just like you mentioned in your description of how you made the Sagawa van. It's doable. There was a bit of a learning curve for me and I'm not 100% happy with it. So I wouldn't say this was easy, but with more practice I think it'll be an easy technique.

 

The sanding is probably as important to the end result as the cutting. I have a set of micro files which work well for the job. But a small flat file with smooth sides is something that would help me get right into the corners without eroding the right angled beams.

 

The pool isn't a bad idea. I like the bar idea. Other ideas are boardroom meeting. If I had a way of making my own figures like @Tom C I could make a Specter meeting or an "eyes wide shut" party. lol. A fancy  loft apartment might be a nice idea too.

Edited December 14, 2021 by gavino200

[Tom C]

7 hours ago, gavino200 said:

If I had a way of making my own figures like @Tom C

Mr.Gavin, You most certanly do have the skills to make wonderful little people, everyone does, it's just a question of how much of our time we want to put into someting. The problem is, if you wanted to carve and paint a bunch of people eg, Specter meeting, you won't be finding much time for anything else in the next month or two !! The only reason I put so much energy into my little people is that I love exploring their personalities as they come to life. Not that there is any of them comming to life at the moment ☹️ 1/1 people are taking the energy I normally have for modeling at the moment so no new little people untill well into next year some time.

 

 

[gavino200]

I made some adjustments with some putty and filing, and I'm much happier with it now. Lesson learned. Less haste more speed.

 

 

 

I was getting carried away, dreaming up possible interiors for this building. Realistically I'm limited by the interior detail pieces I have. I'll have to look through my "interiors" box and improvise based on what I have!

[gavino200]

A little more work on the Downtown Skyscraper today. It's still just a mock-up with the pieces stuck on temporarily with blobs of adhesive putty. But the balcony pieces are fine sanded closer to where they need to be. I'm finding it's best to do this in multiple stages, going a little closer each time. Otherwise fatigue makes me impatient and I sand to aggressively.

 

I still think the only way this can be done with my current skill set is to build it floor by floor from the bottom up. I know that trying to put the front together in one piece and then placing it onto the building would end up in a big messy, gluey, rage and tears fest.

 

I think the next stage will be the ground floor, elevator shaft and individual floor pieces, as well as light sealing the inside. While I'm doing that I'll start thinking about how I'm going to do the windows.

 

 

 

[gavino200]

I opened up the ground floor windows on the small building. It's not perfect but this time I don't think I'll need to apply putty. My technique is developing. What works for me is to etch the plastic away with the back of the blade, and only use the cutting edge for the corners. Also the slower the better. I almost try to do it as slow as possible.

 

 

First round of light proofing for the Skyrise. I'm thinking of possibly applying the glass front as one piece and then adding the facade pieces over it. I'll have to come up with a good way of printing the window frames. I think I have instructions in one these threads on this forum. Hopefully I'll be able to find them.

 

Edited December 26, 2021 by gavino200

[gavino200]

I've been thinking about how to do the "glass" on this building. More specifically how I would do the window frames. Of course I can experiment with different methods. All I have to lose is some plastic. But I'm also deciding on a color printer to buy. I'm leaning toward a color laser printer, but the one advantage of an inkjet is that it could print on transparent film. I'll be using the printer for the interior details, which will be done before putting on the front, so I'll need to decide this in advance.

 

I could have sworn I remembered seeing Quinntopia print window frames like this onto plastic. But looking back at his blog, all I can find are window frames made by painting over masking tape. It worked pretty well for him, so that's an option I hadn't considered.

 

 

Posibilities in mind right now.

 

1. Printing black frames on clear plastic. I don't favor this, as I'd prefer to buy a color laser printer for other reasons.

2. Masking tape and paint. It'll be difficult to get the frames exactly even, but I can just keep doing it until I get it right.

3. Cut very thin strips of styrene for the window frames. Paint them and then apply. It will also be difficult to get these right but it should give a slight 3D look.

 

There are still pros and cons to making the windows in one sheet versus one small window strip for each floor.

 

Next step will be to cut floors and fashion an "elevator shaft" for the wires to run in.

Edited December 29, 2021 by gavino200