A computer rebuilt as a city.

Each computer part became the organ it stands in for, built as one dense city block in worn metal under neon.

1Hero scene
10Mapped components
3Texture sets
2KTexture resolution
Final render of P.CITY: a power supply base carrying a miniature city built from computer components, lit in teal and magenta The same frame rendered as wireframe over ambient occlusion
P.CITY, final renderDrag to reveal the wireframe underneath: same camera, same frame
01

Concept

Role
3D modelling & texturing
Timeline
2.5 months
Tools
Blender, Substance Painter, Photoshop

If a computer were a body, what would the city built on it look like?

The project started as a one-to-one mapping exercise. Every component of a desktop machine does something a human organ also does: the CPU thinks, the GPU sees, the RAM holds what you are working on right now, the SSD holds what you keep. Instead of illustrating that as a diagram, I built it as a place.

The whole scene was blocked out from one annotated sketch. The power supply became the ground the city stands on, the cooling fan became a carousel at the edge of town, and the USB stick plugged into the side became the thing that arrives from outside and changes what the city knows.

Pencil sketch of the scene with handwritten labels naming each component and the city element it becomes
The sketch everything came fromEvery label in the final model was decided here
CPUBrain under a glass canopy, centre of the cityThinking
GPUEye mounted on the tallest towerSeeing
RAMTerraced buildings holding working dataShort term memory
SSDBridge carrying what the city keepsLong term memory
Power supplyThe plinth the whole city is built onCirculation
CPU fanRotor above the brainBreathing
Case fanCarousel at the city edgeBreathing
ResistorsLamp posts lining the streetsRegulation
Peripheral portsLow buildings along the front faceSenses
USB stickArrives from outside, plugs into the sideConsciousness
02

Modelling

Hard surface, built part by part from reference.

Each component was modelled separately against photographs of the real part, then scaled into the city. Working that way meant the silhouette stayed legible: a RAM stick still reads as a RAM stick at a glance, even once it has windows and a roofline.

Three parts, three stages each: primitive, cut, resolved. Move across the stages below to see a simple form become the final mesh.

RAM tower

Hover a stage, or click the image
RAM tower, flat blocked-out slab against the reference photograph RAM tower, angled and divided into segments RAM tower, final beveled mesh with fins resolved

GPU eye tower

Hover a stage, or click the image
GPU tower as a simple tapered form with few edge loops GPU tower with panel divisions cut in GPU tower finished with armour panels and the eye sphere mounted on top

CPU brain

Hover a stage, or click the image
Brain starting as a smooth deformed sphere Brain with retopologised surface ready for sculpting Brain with folds sculpted into the surface
03

Texturing

Worn metal first, neon second.

Everything was unwrapped and textured across three 2K sets in Substance Painter. The base is steel and bronze with rust, grime and scuffs painted into the edges, so the city reads as something that has been running for a long time rather than something freshly rendered.

The colour comes almost entirely from emissives. Window strips, fan rings and port indicators are the only light sources of their own, which is what lets the teal and magenta key lights do the rest of the work without flattening the surfaces.

Substance Painter: the carousel fan with its emissive ring and layer stack
Carousel fanSteel rust base, emissive ring on its own layer
Substance Painter: the RAM tower textured in bronze and concrete with emissive arrows
RAM towerConcrete dusty base with emissive signage
Substance Painter: the CPU brain under its canopy, textured pink against steel
CPU brainPainted separately from the canopy that frames it
Substance Painter: the GPU eye tower in bronze armour with a scuff layer
GPU eye towerBronze armour, scuffs painted into the edges
04

Renders

One scene, four camera angles.

The final frames were rendered with ambient occlusion composited over the beauty pass to keep the detail in the deep parts of the city readable, then taken into Photoshop to balance the lighting across the set. Each angle was chosen to show a different mapped component in the foreground.

Click any frame to see it full size.

Render of the city from the front, ports and cabling in the foreground
Front elevationPeripheral ports and the cable run into the power supply
Render of the city looking toward the CPU brain under its canopy
The brainCPU under glass with the cooling rotor above it
Render of the city looking up at the GPU eye tower
The eyeGPU tower against the carousel fan
Worth noting

The cargo train was a last minute idea. Late in the build I ran the folder assets around the power supply as a train circling the city, a metaphor for cargo delivery: it arrives, loops the block, and drops off what the city asked for.

05

What I took from it

01

A rule beats a mood board

Fixing the one-to-one mapping up front meant every later modelling decision had an answer already. Nothing in the scene is there because it looked good.

02

Silhouette before surface

The clay pass caught two towers competing for the same skyline. Far cheaper to fix there than after unwrapping.

03

First time in Substance Painter

This was my first project in it, so a lot of the time went into exploring what the textures and layer options could do rather than following a plan.