This took a long time, but my Soho block scene is now officially out. This is a modular set of highly detailed building facades inspired by the cast-iron district in NYC. You can buy each individual building separately (check here for all my commercial 3D assets), or you can get the full set here at a $100 discount.
The assets will open in 3ds Max 2017 and higher, and they are shaded for use in V-Ray Next 4 GPU. They should work pretty much out of the box in V-Ray CPU, though you may need to modify the bump value on some materials. Automatic converters should help you get the scene to work in Corona, Octane, FStorm, etc. with minimal adjustments.
Every individual facade comes with a chunk of walkway, and you can assemble them to obtain the full block, which looks like this in Max.

The assets include ornate cast-iron decorative elements, molded cornices, typical NYC fire escapes, store signs, and a range of facade finishes ranging from freshly repainted to sooty and rusty.

Because of their relatively high poly count (the entire block is about 17m polys), these may work better in archviz scenes, illustrations or vfx projects than in games. That said, I’ve tried to use instances whenever possible, especially on the most high poly sculptural details, to limit the VRAM footprint of the scene.

Below is an example of what you can do with the models. I added a few street props and cycled through Peter Guthrie’s excellent latest skies (the expertly calibrated V5 ones), to generate a range of different moods.



Sorry for the delay. I’m selling it but only as part of the full scene I’m afraid.
Hey, Bertrand! Can I ask you – where can I get this lamppost model? I guess I’ve searched everywhere… 🙂
Hey there. Sorry this gave you trouble. I hope you still found the models useful. Would love to take a look at what you’ve done with it.
the scale is somehow wrong, a normal person does not fit into the doors !? we had to scale everything by approx. 1.2, 1.3
Thank you for the answer. It is very interesting how you divided the whole facade to keep texel density. Did you slice it horizontally or vertically? Could you advise the article to read how unwrap and pack the 4-5 level facades to keep texel density? it will be great if you could show some screenshots in you article.
@Johann sorry, I didn’t take notes of which skies I used where. I should really do that. And there was some pretty heavy post involved on the images but mostly in the VFB.
The Dude’s Lair isn’t for sale yet. Not sure if I can give you a date for this one.
@MaxMad sorry for the late reply. The facades were modeled as a single object (except the very dense details like pillars which were instanced), unwrapped, packed and brought into Substance Painter. There, I painted a black-and-white weathering masks that I used in Max to modulate between a clean and a dirty version of the textures, using tilable maps. That way you get both a convincing overall look without repetition and fine texture details at close range.
Nice Work. Could you tell the workflow you used to texture the facade please? Did you unwrap the UVs?Did you use the standard UVW map modifier? How did you create seamless dirt effects?
Whoa! These are amazing, BRAVO!!! Do you happen to recall which HDRIs were used for specific pictures? Was there any postprocessing involved?
P.S. Have you decided to put “A Dude’s Lair” for sale? You mentioned that it would require some optimisation first.
Thank you!