The Tropenmusem, Amsterdam, is a museum of anthropology. The building is in a mix of neoclassic and archaic Dutch styles dedicated in 1926.
Long view of the Port Spinoza Museum. It is actually located on Spinoza South, a second sim adjacent to Port Spinoza proper.
The complex of six sims created by Jon Seattle includes the original Cedar Island and Sea Turtle Island (home of the Music Island performance venue), which face the open water "void" sims of Ijssel and Halve Maen on the other side of which are Port Spinoza and Spinoza South. The "front" (or what I think of as the front) of the museum faces the open water to the east, across from Cedar Island. If you have your draw distance set to max, it's quite a spectacular view with the skyline of Cedar on the horizon.
The front towers hold large bronze bells which can be "rung" by pulling on ropes inside the building.
A symbol of Amsterdam is the cog ship, a single masted square rigged ship with a fairly flat bottom that could carry heavy cargo. The Tropenmuseum has several symbolic images in bright gold on its spires (which I believe serve as lightning rods).
In SL, one rarely has occasion to look up, which is a shame. Upon entering the museum, there is a long atrium with a great arched skylight.
The interior is very formal with neoclassical arches and colonnades of Corinthian columns. The columns were an extravagance. They use way too many prims.
I'm not thrilled with the cold gray walls and blue Delft tiles. It is a cold room. I might change the colors to something warmer. Maybe add more wood.
I made a scene rezzer to make the space adaptable to different uses. With a simple button you have a menu that with choices from a formal dining or meeting table.....
to a lecture hall....
to a dance hall complete with animated lights and a dance animation ball.
The alcoves above the stairs are generic, to house whatever is relevant to what's going on in the hall. I placed a couple of objects in them as placeholders.
The mezzanine is spacious. Will make a nice space for art exhibits.
I dropped a piano in one corner of the mezzanine. This shows a nice view of the sea through the window.
Looking up at the atrium. I should place some plants around....
The grand stairway with cathedral window.
Showing the side entries from the south under the stairs.
And looking north from the stairs.
The quatrefiol was difficult to make, but I wanted it. It's kind of a signature I've used in several of my rl lutherie projects.
The iron star-shaped wall retainers are single sculpted prims I found somewhere.
I placed metallic trefoils over the side doors for decoration.
I've discovered that it's often easiest to create a complicated architectural detail, such as this egg-and-dart design, in SL using prims. Then I take a picture of it and edit it into a texture in Photoshop. Thus a cornice like this can be made on a single prim rather than using 30 or more it would take to do the same thing. Surrounding the building on two levels, this cornice would have taken several hundred prims.
Similarly this turned railing. The original used about 80 prims to make, but this image goes on a single prim. These details are not intended to be seen at close range, of course, since they do lack dimensionality.
Here are the two details in place along the roof of the museum.
I combined the textured cornice with full prim corners. A small detail few people will ever notice.
I built a grid in SL for the window muntins. Used a green screen behind so it could be cut away and made transparent.
In addition to lighting the grid from the upper left in SL, I used a layer drop shadow in Photoshop to give depth. (There are no shadows naturally in SL.)
Some long views of Spinoza South
Boating on the sea is a new pleasure. I need to learn to sail properly. This boat actually sails in the SL ambient winds (or an optional touring wind) so you have to tack to sail into the wind direction.
A view from the roof of the museum showing Cedar Island across the sea.
A corner showing my personal residence across the canal from the museum; a house I built based on a Vermeer painting.
