This is a diverse selection of models from the larger Istahr, Ancient Persian City Kitbash Collection. Istahr was a principal Persian city of the ancient Archaemenid Empire founded in 7th Century Persia. The kitbash collection includes some of the major and minor buildings of the city, fountains, boats, background dome and wall structures, and many small items, such as spears, hanging lamps, tables, chairs, bronze "coffee" pots, planters and date palm trees.
The purpose of a "kitbash" collection is to provide you with enough models to allow you to lay out a scene of your own devising. You can arrange the models any way you choose. You can make cityscape scenes with dramatic sunrises, storm clouds or sunsets, embed the city into a landscape, or focus in on an area and populate a neighborhood with Poser or other characters. This is a good way to make use of all those Arabic characters and clothing you purchased in the past.
Because the kitbash collection is extensive, the models are organized into small workable (and affordable) groups that focus on a portion of the city. Each group has sufficient models to allow you to design a reasonably complete scene.
The forty-some (40) models in this "Garden Buildings Group" focus on intimate garden settings. Persia was known throughout the ancient world for fabulous gardens. Beautiful gardens were a relatively rare art form in the ancient occidental world. They were a particularly notable feature of the Persian Empires and widely regarded as the mark of an advanced civilization.
Public gardens were found in several places in Istahr. Anyone could enter these gardens at any time, taking advantage of the cool areas and fountains during the day, perhaps having a morning hot tea or "coffee", and later enjoying cool lamp-lit evenings with friends. Private gardens also always had a fountain, often fruit and nut trees, and often cultivated roses, as well as other plants in a wide variety of ceramic and metal pots.
This group of models includes a public and a private garden building, about 35 small items, such as tables, stools, "coffee pots" and cups, optional hanging lamps, planting pots, and a five high resolution plants that might be difficult to acquire elsewhere.
In general, the kitbash collection does not include plants, since these are easy to aquire from other vendors. However, date palm trees (as opposed to coconut and other kinds of palms) are somewhat of a rarity in the 3d world, so this kitbash collection includes these. Three high resolution date palms that are different from those in the City Center Group are in this Group, and there are two climbing roses that can be placed against any of the walls of the garden buildings.
The two garden buildings are designed so that they can be viewed from above, from the viewpoint of a person looking down from another building. They also are designed to accomodate close-up camera views. Both buildings have independent walls that can be deleted, or hidden, to bring in a camera for a closer view of the garden.
To accomodate Poser users, the buildings, doors and sometimes the optional items, such as lamps, lamp flames and planting beds are in separate pieces. (Poser users generally cannot disassemble an *.obj formatted model into its subcomponents.) So, when you import a garden building, be careful to import each wall, the building base, and any doors or other objects that are in separate pieces so that they can be moved, rotated, deleted or hidden.
All the Istahr Kitbash models are high resolution, as illustrated in the pictures of these lamps and fountains, but have been made with care to minimize the number of polygons so that you can populate a large scene without overly straining your computer. These models are in the *.obj file format, which can be imported in a wide variety of programs. Because these models are high resolution, you can use any of them for both close-up or far-away scenes.
A catalogue showing all the models available in the kitbash collection is included in the zip files for this smaller group of models. The current catalogue of all the models also is located as an item in the Freestuff area. You can download it from there.
Software:
Poser 8 / Poser Pro 2010+
