The FrankU and Nexis CO-OP

[gn_leugim]

OMG... I have that door texture :O

Now serious, it looks good, although both wall and roof texture look a bit grainy I think

[mrbisonm]

OMG... I have that door texture :O

Now serious, it looks good, although both wall and roof texture look a bit grainy I think

I suppose you picked up that doortexture at the same place as I have. I didn't make it and I seriously cannot remember where I got it from, and I can assure you that I didn't steal it from you.

Sorry for the "grainy" texture look on the last picture, it was done in a low quality, but the model was rendered in High resolution, don't worry, it doesn't look like this ingame.

Here's another one I finished.

Fred

[mrbisonm]

...And before I go to bed, here's another one "repaired" and re-rendered.
This barn has an open-air side, as I have seen in the "Eifel" (near Holland) two years ago when I was checking one of my "Blockhaus" construction site near Monschau. I talked to the farmer for more than 3 hours, fascinated by the barn structure and idea of summer ventilation, since I am a "hobbyfarmer" myself.The idea is quite new and spreading over Europe. In the winter, the wall is covered with a transparent-like Canvas, easy to install and less costing as a whole wall, plus keeping the stable warmer during the colder months because it let's in the sunrays from the south side of the building.

Good Night, be back later tomorrow.......

Fred

[FrankU]

Hi Fred,

The set is getting larger and larger!
I like the M4-B textures a lot.
The open-air side is quite common these days in new barns. It gives the cows fresh air, but keeps them in the shade. When the wind is strong or cold a curtain of semi transparent and semi air-permeable textile is lowered in order to protect the cows. This method is chosen because these days many cows stay in the barn all day. They don't go out on the meadows anymore. And it is a cheap way of constructing barns. I showed a lot of images of these barns in the beginning of our cooperation.
There is even a development that goes a step further. I will tell about that in my next history update, that will be more like an overview of contemporary farms and my SC4 farm lots interpretation of them.
The M3-B is nice, but I have three objections:
1. the roof texture is a bit too repetitive.
2. The glass strips in the roof are not following the rythm of the roof-sheet sizes. In real life this would certainly be the case!
3. The square thingy over the central door is blocking the green construction elements. That does not look nice.

Otherwise..... My hands are aching!

[mrbisonm]

I sent the finished datfile of the MFP1 Set1 to Frank earlier today. He will test it again and figure out how they are. If any errors or other problems are found, I will fix them right away.

I will add pictures of ALL the mainbuildings in this set later this week. There are 27 models in all. I didn't include the Models M12, M17, M18 and M19 in this pack for the simple reason that I do not have the time to finish them. So, I will probably make a small ADD-On pack later.

As soon as FrankU tells me that the props are ok, I will start (or continue) rendering the second MFP1 set.

Set1 contains the mainbuildings of barns and stables, while set 2 contains the smaller buildings, manure, silage, machinery, and other stuff that usually can be found on a Modern Farm.

So this is what I have been up to the last days. Now let's enjoy the break and do an update for my MD...........

Fred

[noahclem]

The progress is looking great    I look forward to seeing it continue shortly 

[mike3775]

I'm giddy because I cannot wait for these to appear in my farming towns

[mrbisonm]

Thanks for the feedback folks.

Well, believe it or not......the MFP1 Set1 (Mainbuildings) is now ready for LOTting and in FrankU's hands.
He is testing all and then start LOTting or whatever, he will keep you informed here in this thread. I will continue with the MFP1 Set2 (Secondary Buildings and Farm Accessories) and that shouldn't take too long, right after I finish uploading all the pictures of this set. Most of the models are already finished and/or only need to be rendered, others are in the making. I have no exact number of them, but we'll see with time. Be informed though that there will be quite a few, some interesting ones.

From today 'til Friday (sorry but I need that time to make the pictures and present the whole and my time is quite limited at the moment irl with springtime just pushing me with my jobs. I will show detailed preview pictures of all Prop Models in this set. The pictures are in regular quality, so some glitches might be present, which are NOT to be seen on the models in the game.

I worked on this for months, not everyday, but I spent several hundred hours on this project, having re-modeled, re-textured and re-rendered them many times. Frank was a great help to make them look as they do now, while having tested and tested them again all over several times and giving me advice and ideas to improve them. Thanks to him and his patience since he was waiting for them eagerly. I also thank all kinds of modeling/texturing tutorials that I found here on SC4D, ST, also on SimcityKurier, Simpeg and Toutsimcity, which I have been visiting in the last 8 months quite often.

The MFP1 Set1, or Modern Farm Proppack 1, contains 30 models, each with different textures and individual details. These are the Main-Buildings in this set, made of barns, stables and stalls.
This will be a Proppack only, which will become a Dependency for Frank's new growable Dutchfarms soon to come and my Growable North-American Farmset (Nexis) which will be done sometimes later this year. The DAT propfile will only be uploaded after FrankU has finished his farmset, giving him priority on his dutch farms.
Then it can be used as a linked basefile (dependency) for anyone's upload.

The first model is a Bonus model, not modern at all, but one of my own owned barns irl, that my wife Lynn saved from being teared down by me two years ago. Today it is fully restored and retinted with a red teint. It was built sometime in the late eighteen hundreds, something like 1880 or younger if I go by a dated journal page found in the dairyhouse walls dating to 1889.

8 MODELS

M1.3 is an old and worn-out wooden barn with a tinroof, which has now an aluminum roof irl and now looks different as shown.



M1 is a commonly found Beefcow barn, also sometimes used for Pork production. Painted green tinroof and beige tinwalls with a small office attached to it.



M1A is the same as the above with different coloured textures, also all painted tinwalls and roof.



M2 is a european style solid brickbarn with an extension, often seen on the mid-euro continent. These barns a commonly used as raising stock for cows, pigs and sheep, but also for birds, such as chicken, turkey and ducks/geese. This one has a worn tinroof and lightbrown/pink bricks including roof natural lighting. The aeration system is by the roof.



M3 is a modern barn, same style and basics as M1, but with different textures and a minimum of different details, also a little shorter or narrower, if I remember right. Walls and roof are tin sheets or painted metal sheets on a wooden frame. This is a multipurpose barn, used for several small animal productions and storage for fruits, veggies and other field harvests. Some are even refrigerated. Mostly seen in Europe, but also in North-America since a few years.



M3B is very similar to M3 but with a few extra details and different textures. Plaster Walls and sheetmetal roof. Ventilation is on the sides and on the roof.



M3C is again like the above with little changes in detail and textures. Dark sheetmetal roof and darker plaster on walls. Same ventilation system.



M3D is exactly as M3 except for the roof texture that changed.




That's it for today, more to come again tomorrow. Hope you like what you see sofar.

Fred

[Jack_wilds]

exciting and wonder-filled and nicely nostalgic, all rolled up  well done, the hours of dedication will populate many sim cities everywhere when completed and lotted, finally released... 

[mike3775]

Absolutely amazing.

Now if I could only find a way to keep a region going for a long time instead of blowing it up and starting over all the time. 

[mave94]

This is good news for sure. Well done! 

[RickD]

They are looking great. M1 could also work as a I-M or I-HT building.

[mrbisonm]

Hey, Thanks again for the feedback and comments. And yes, maybe some of these props may and can be easily used for IH or IM lots like RickD said.


Today we're back with some more models of the MFP1Set1 Pack. More farm mainbuildings. It may seem to you that some models ressemble. Yes, some are not very different, but they do have at least some different details and/or textures. The reason for this is to give us a chance to build a building family with them and have growing farms with different looking buildings that have the same footprint.

11 Models

The M4A barn is more of a North-Am style than Euro. It can be seen in all kinds of colours, especially with red, medium blue and dark green tinroofs in the southern part of Quebec/Canada. The walls are either out of wood (painted or teinted plywood in most cases) or prepainted tinsheets to keep the costs down. Windows are simply made out of a semi-clear plastic film called here in Canada, Polythene. These barns are mostly used for cattle production or some as dairyfarms.



The M4B is the same as above, except for some detail and texture changes. I wanted this model to be used by FrankU for his Dutchfarm set, so I gave it a more Euro look to it, giving it a tileroof and brickwalls and more earthlike colours.



The M5 is a different style and size, being a little shorter and narrower than its precessors. These are both Euro and Northams, all depending on the material used. This one is wooden walls and a tinroof. Can be used for Porc productions as well as for goats, sheep and birds.



Same as the above with different textures and details, the M5A is more of a Canadian style barn with it's aluminum roof and woodframe walls filled with painted on Polyurethane for insulation. Used for animal productions of all breeds.



The M6 series has a slightly smaller footprint than the M5 models, but is almost the same in general with different details and textures. This one is an all sheetmetal building, mostly found in the east to midwest part of North-America, both US and Canada. Again this model is mostly used for animal production.



The 7 series is a whole collection of more euro-style barns.
M7 is mainly a horsebarn, but can be used for anything else, maybe nor for porc production, since wood is the last material used for the production of porc (pigs) because of the intense amoniak that derives from the manure and keeps itself "locked-in" inside the wooden structures.



The M7A is a cement or cement plastered wall building, which can be used for porc and birds. It has no windows since both birds and porc are sunlight sensitive.



The M7B and M7C are the same as above, mostly euro style with different claytile roofs. The walls are also a plaster like material, hardly used in the northern part of North-America, but can be found everywhere in Europe and souther States of the US. Both models hav an open side which will help aerate the building during the summer and a closed side with windows. The open side is usually closed with a semitransparent polythene film during the colder and windier months.





The M7D is the same basics as the above, even though that their footprint is narrower and longer. Mainly made out of fir and sprucewood, somehow weathered by rain, sun and wind. It has a wooden shingle roof.



The M7E is the same as the M7D, except that it has a regular tin (sheetmetal) roof. Both are used for animal production of any kind, except maybe birds and porc.



That's it for today, I'll be back with more tomorrow.


Fred

[mike3775]

Some of those buildings look like they be bigger than the largest CAM farm imo(which I believe is 10x10).  That kinda worries me

[mrbisonm]

Some of those buildings look like they be bigger than the largest CAM farm imo(which I believe is 10x10).  That kinda worries me

The largest building of this set is not quite 6 tiles long, most of them are 3 to 4 tiles of length. I don't know exactly what size of lots FrankU is going to build, but I suppose that he will not exceed 10 x 10 lots. Frank will answer this more precisely than me.

Below are pictures to show you the actual ingame size of the buildings plopped near a Maxis farm. I think that I must have resized all of them 6 or 7 times until I found the "ideal size for them. It was quite a challenge to find an *in between*, because there are 4 or 5 different scales of farmbuildings Maxis only has 3 different scales) available and I wanted mine to fit in with all of them. I even opened a helpthread for the scale of my buildings to get some opinions. It was a real pain somewhere.
But , I think I found the best one (scale) for my use.

Fred

[FrankU]

Hi Mike3775,

Yes, 10x10 could easily be filled with these barns. Especially the large Piggeries (model M2) are quite large.
At the moment the largest lot is this one: it's 10 tiles deep and 6 tiles wide. So you see: I limited myself a bit.

Meester Bison Biggen
Pigs are being raised by Fred/mrbisonm himself, or was it his nephew with the same name? You could have seen this one before.

Frank

[mike3775]

Thanks guys.  I was worried because of the size, glad that they are not as big as they appeared.

Those buildings look great

[mrbisonm]

Well, here is the next series in the MFP1-Set1 Pack.

7 more Models

Starting today with the M8 model, we get back a little to the M4 series, similar in size and style. The M8 has a tinroof and vinylbased walls, becoming more and more common on several continents, including Asia, Australia and Africa. So far it is often seen from the last ten years of constructions, in Europe and North-America.



M9 is typical European, used for any kind of animal production, but some of these models can also be found in Canada lately, especially in southern Quebec. Cement or plaster walls and clay rooftiles.



M9A is for the variation's sake a different textured model of the M9, the little dirtier version.



The M10 is my own barn, the walls are out of oiled Sprucewood planks and the roof is prepainted galvanized sheetmetal on a H-beam metal frame, built in 1998 to replace my old wooden barn. I keep my Meat producing (cow/calf production) Aberdeen Black Angus herd in this during the long wintermonths here in Quebec/Canada. It has a central "drive-in" where the tractor enters with a load of round haybales twice a day. The barn is 138 x 60 feet and holds at the moment the max it can take, 112 cows and 2 bulls. It has roof windows out of fiberglass to give it a light environmement inside without direct sunlight (filtered by the fiberglass). Window on the side are semi-clear plexiglass.



The M11 again is a typical european model for bird and/or goat/sheep production. My neighbor here in Canada has the same style, built 4 years ago, with a silo in/on the roof. He keeps and raises rabbits for meat, 4000 he has, I think. The silo is used for feeding-grain and filled once a month with a specially equipped delivery truck. Good for turkeys, chicken, ducks etc too, also goats and sheep. It has a galvanized tinroof and solid cement walls, poured into a styrofoamed metalframe.



The M11X, not really classed yet in my files (probably never will), is another piggery style eurobarn, which can be seen often in Central and northern Europe. It has a sheetmetal roof and brickwalls.



And a last one for today, the M13 which is similar to the M11, but has an extra "office" or "medical" extension to it. Mainly used for Porc production in Europe, it can also be used for bird raising of all kinds.



I will again be back maybe tonight or tommorrow with the rest of these models from the MFP1-Set1 Pack. Hope you'll enjoy these props to the fullest, giving the farm communities another dimension with some reality buildings. Thanks for the feedback, any questions?

Fred

[RickD]

I knew that this was a huge project, but I didn't think there would be that much variety. Great work! 

[mrbisonm]

Hey Rick, you haven't seen half of it yet.....lol. There's enough stuff in those packs to change the game's name from Simcity 4 to Simfarming 4.

The MFP1-Set1 will contain only the mainbuildings for animals production farms.

The MFP1-Set2 will have all the smaller props one can think of to go with the MFP1-Set1. (silos, manure piles, machinery, sheds, haystacks etc) (under production and almost finished) I will start showing the pictures next weekend. (see picture below)

The MFP2-Set1 one will cover all the mainbuildings for Vegetable, Fruit, Flower, Fiber (such as cotton, hemp etc) and seafood production farms. (also under construction and some very nice and stunning preview pictures are on the way as teasers.

The MFP2-Set2 has all the smaller props (veggie machinery, flowerharvesters, fiber harvester, fishnets and fishfarm floaters including oysterposts, clam, lobster, crab cages and traps etc, to go with the MFP2 Set1. You name it, it will be there! So, lots of variety you get!

All this should be ready for the tenth anniversary of SC4. I wanted to leave something behind before I retire from SC4 one day.


Just to tease you a little and make you wonder what these farms from the MFP1 set 1 and set 2 could look like, here's a little teaser.

Have Fun with Nexis.

Fred



PS.....hm....I wonder if FrankU will be interested in the MFP2 ?