The FrankU and Nexis CO-OP

[FrankU]

The KWK sheds
Made by Kwakelaar, available in the BSC Mega props KWK vol02

I used them here:
It's the dark wooden shed with the red roof. This is one.


Here you see two props: a second dark wooden shed and the thatched large barn. This is also KWK.


And here: a small thatched prop, put directly behind the Haarlemmergold house like a barn. It is a separate prop. Also you see the large thatched barn again.


Maybe it's better I make an image with all five props from the set before you decide to make new ones or not. OK?
Besides that: if you make new ones, I do have some wishes. Like the thached volumes should please have brick walls, instead of this brownish stuff.

[jmyers2043]

Nice farm. It gave me some ideas.

- Jim

[mike3775]

wow i cannot wait for farms to be developed from these props. 

[FrankU]

wow i cannot wait for farms to be developed from these props.

I am truly sorry, but you will have to.

[mike3775]

wow i cannot wait for farms to be developed from these props.

I am truly sorry, but you will have to.

I know, figure of speech 

I would rather wait for a great lot, then be disappointed with rushed stuff

[mrbisonm]

Frank, yes,put these props on one close picture and I'll see what I can do.
Started working on some sheds last night.

Fred

[FrankU]

wow i cannot wait for farms to be developed from these props.

I am truly sorry, but you will have to.

I know, figure of speech 

I would rather wait for a great lot, then be disappointed with rushed stuff

I know you knew. No problem.
I rather deliver a great lot than a rushed one. We agree completely.

And Fred,

These are the five Kwakelaar props. They are in the BSC Mega Props - KWKvol02.dat



Maybe you put your time into making new props rather than in remaking old ones. I'd rather have a good thatched barn in Dutch style than the Kwakelaar one redone by you. I will show you images in my last upload of the Dutch farm history lessons. If I have a good Dutch one from you I'll throw out the Kwakelaar out anyhow.

[FrankU]

After some waiting I now present you the third lesson in regional architecture.

The traditional farm house type Salland

In my first history lesson I told about the basic shape and construction of the traditional Dutch farmhouse.
Every region has its own interpretation of this basic type. I could go into this very deep, but I won't, because this site is about Simcity and not about Dutch farm house history.
On the other hand: I'd like to show you something about a certain kind of farm house, because I hope one of you is getting triggered and is going to BAT one or two models for me, so that I can use them for my farms set.

So here I am going to show you some of the farm houses I drive by when I take a bicycle ride in the weekends. Because the region around my hometown is called Salland, I named this update the Farm house type Salland.
This is my bicycle.


The basic type is shown very good on the aerial I ended my former update with.
Here it is again.
What you see is the main house (the largest building), a barn next to it, another traditional barn in the back yard, a quite large haystack (the barn like thing with the three vertical poles that are used to lift the roof when the hay is brought in), and another relatively new barn or machineryshed.
The three traditional buildings are thatched and have cut off edges in the front and the back of the roof. On the location where the ridge meets the front and back walls the roof has a small steep triangle that is thatched too. We call this a "Wolfeind", in English this is apparently called a hipped roof. This is very typical for traditional thatched roofs. I think the shape was invented in order to preserve the thatch better where the edge of the roof is more vulnerable to weather conditions.


My daughter, who is 8 years old at the moment describes these farms as: a low house with a high roof. And that is exactly what you see here: the walls are very low, because traditionally bricks were expensive, and the roof is high, in order to make enough room for everything to be put into it. The ground floor in the front was for the people, the back for the cattle and the upper floor was used for hay storage. Haystacks were built later when the upper floor became too small.

I now show some typical facades of these kinds of farms.

I thought it would be easy to make images for this update, so I jumped on my bike last week. But with every farm there was something wrong: it was in the shade, there were too many trees in front, the back was invisible (because of many barns), the dog was too eager... or the building was ruined by untypical extension that I do not want you to see.
So I decided to make a kind of collage for you.

I even didn't find a good visible front facade, so I borrowed one from Staphorst. The fronts of these farm houses are quite similar to the ones in Salland, so that's not a problem to get the idea.
Typical is the non symmetrical position of the front door and the small windows on the sides.


Here you see a double with two similar back walls of a large Salland farm.
Typical is the central large door with the arc. This was used to enter the building with the hay carriage.
The two small windows are for daylight and the two small doors on the sides are for cleaning out the manure of the cattle.


Here you see a smaller one. You can see the front of the house and one of the many kinds of fronts for the barn. The large white windows are not very typical to these barns. I guess the farmer had an opportunity to buy them somewhere and just put them into his barn. Most things have a very simple practical reason in farms.


Now for the side walls.

Two images. In the rear end, that belongs to the cattle section of the house, you usually see an alternating row of small doors and windows. The front part shows larger windows (kitchen or bedroom) and a door. This door is usually the entrance that is used daily. The front door in the original farm house model is almost only used when someone has died or is getting married. In many farmhouse, like in the second image below, the door is even taken out and replaced by a window.





I hope I was able to give you a good impression of the architecture of traditional Dutch farm houses like they developed in Salland.

After the Second World war a lot of new farms were established on locations that were too wet before. Because of better drainage technologies these wet areas became available for farming now.

A typical farm house form the 1950's looks like this one. You can find this kind all over the Netherlands, they are not regional anymore.





History never ends, but these lessons do.
At the end of the time that lies behind us is today. And today shows a whole new kind of barn for the cattle. We call it a "Serrestal", you could say a "veranda barn". As you maybe can see it consists out of a very thin steel structure clad by foil. The foil is translucent, so that the interior is very light. The walls are almost completely open, although there is a possibility to close them with a curtain when wind or winter gets real cold. In our climate "real cold" means: below -10⁰C (don't you dare to laugh!).
The barn is hardly more than an umbrella.





The end of history....

Is today!

Have fun

Yours truly,
FrankU

[mrbisonm]

Interesting and nice to know. Thanks Frank.
Some pics gave me ideas......hmmm. Good reference pictures.

Fred

[FrankU]

Interesting and nice to know. Thanks Frank.
Some pics gave me ideas......hmmm. Good reference pictures.

Fred

If you want more? Don't hesitate!

[mrbisonm]

If you want more? Don't hesitate!

More ideas? More Pics?.........ok......why not while I'm BATting....

[mrbisonm]

The weather is beautiful since a few weeks and I am taking full advantage of it for ...."doing all kinds of things". This is the mainreason why I haven't been around so much lately. Who wants to spend time on the computer when the weather is so nice?
Well, just to show you all that I am still on the project, here is a small preview of what I am working on right now.

Sheds, all kinds of sheds. I have started on machinery sheds, haysheds, manuresheds, repair and storage sheds. There will be quite a few I think, some open, some closed, others with metal siding and some with wooden frames......and so on.

I work on them late at night or when it's raining, so don't worry, I am still on it 100%.

Fred

[gn_leugim]

I would de-saturate that roof texture a bit, it's a bit shiny IMO otherwise it looks good

[mrbisonm]

I would de-saturate that roof texture a bit, it's a bit shiny IMO otherwise it looks good

Thanks for pointing that out, but the textures on all the sheds aren't yet final, neither are the models, the picture is quite poor also, sorry. I hope I find some time this week and show you some finished products of sheds.


Edit:

Here's a better picture, but still not the final textures, but just to show you that I am working on them....

Fred

[gn_leugim]

defenly a good set of props coming and usefull. I have some too, I made a while ago for making Minho type farms. but I just made some buildings, these will be handy too

[FrankU]

Hi Fred,

Nice job! Are the props inside separate models, or are they part of the whole? It would be very nice if you could make the sheds in such a way that we could put or own props inside. If you don't know how to do it with the LODs, I guess it is a LOD thing, you could maybe ask JimMyers? He made sheds that have this ability.
The weather here is nice too. Besides that the vacations have started, so my daughter finished her fourth year of primary school (we start with the age of 4 and have 8 classes, so she's half way now). So I have to entertain her. Not boring, but taking time, so there is less for Lotting.

[mrbisonm]

Hi Fred,

Nice job! Are the props inside separate models, or are they part of the whole?

The props inside are separate models and belong to the M100 series (agricultural machinery). This shed and maybe 2 others will be made so you can place smaller props (machinery, bales, garbage, junk, planks and whatever you have) inside without being cut off in half.
The LODs are custom made for these Props, but......since these models have an increased number of polycounts, I will only make 2 or 3 sheds like this. Others will have the machinery already incorporated like the picture above clearly shows.
I only hope that I will be able to make them like this, 'cause "tight" LOD's are very difficult for me to create.

Here is a picture of the same shed empty, ready to receive whatever you can put inside.


Hope that it will be ok. I made this one as you showed on a picture above with an offset angled roof.

Fred

[gn_leugim]

The LODs are custom made for these Props, but......since these models have an increased number of polycounts, I will only make 2 or 3 sheds like this. Others will have the machinery already incorporated like the picture above clearly shows.
I only hope that I will be able to make them like this, 'cause "tight" LOD's are very difficult for me to create.

that is a good idea 

anyway, creating tight lods is quite easy (usualy) select all the items, or at least those making the outside, copy them (but don't deselect them, assign them a new unique color (if you don't do it already, it is a good idea to assign colors to certain groups, it is good for organization, like all walls grey, windows blue etc etc.), turn them into mesh, hide the rest, select one of them, attach the others, remove the materials and rename and copy twice (and rename) :p

[mrbisonm]

The LODs are custom made for these Props, but......since these models have an increased number of polycounts, I will only make 2 or 3 sheds like this. Others will have the machinery already incorporated like the picture above clearly shows.
I only hope that I will be able to make them like this, 'cause "tight" LOD's are very difficult for me to create.

that is a good idea 

anyway, creating tight lods is quite easy (usualy) select all the items, or at least those making the outside, copy them (but don't deselect them, assign them a new unique color (if you don't do it already, it is a good idea to assign colors to certain groups, it is good for organization, like all walls grey, windows blue etc etc.), turn them into mesh, hide the rest, select one of them, attach the others, remove the materials and rename and copy twice (and rename) :p

Whoa There! You mean that there's another way to make custom LODs than handling the Vertexes one by one?
I didn't quite understand what you mentioned above, because I need more details. How about a step by step tutorial that explains this better? Oh, I know, now you wish you shouldn't have mentioned this....well too late...lol.

Here is what I do to make custom LODs: First I figure out how many width, length and height segments I need, then create the box, then make an editable mesh out of it, click on vertexes and then, one by one, move these vertexes until they fit snagly to the model. Then I simply make 2 more copies and name each one of them LOD1, LOD2 and LOD3. Sounds easy, but it is quite difficult and quite a time-consuming job to do.
If you know that there's an easier and /or more pratical way to achieve this....hey....I've got to know....in details, please?

Thanks


Fred

[gn_leugim]

let me see if I can make a quick video tutorial then