The FrankU and Nexis CO-OP

[Jack_wilds]

Like the tease and the progress    ... enjoying the props as it will also inspire jmeyers with his farms as well as other rural modellers  ... thanks for working on the pink to alleviate the apparent conflict  -as I do understand the rationale of  flag colors for the query frame/title bar... as long as the rationale supports the logic, I'm ok    ... anyway, liking the progress    Merry Christmas [insert santa smiley here]

[FrankU]

Thanks Jack!

And Fred: I like the lower texture the most. Although the other is good too, but maybe a bit too fancy for a cheap shed like this.
Indeed our farmland is used up to the last square meter. How often do I see one cow grazing on a small triangle between three streets or a group of maize props ( ) on a narrow strip of ground between a ditch and a street or fence.

[FrankU]

OK, here I show you the last version of my Farm Fields Query.



Do you notice that the query is completely in Dutch?
I first made the queries for fields and for farms in English. This is the default language of my lots. Then I made separate language files that can override the default English and give you the choice of Dutch and German. Those are the languages I speak best, although for German I asked Rambuckel to help me. She did and now the files are complete and accurate.
Now I have observed that there are more languages in this world. But I cannot speak them. Is there anbody with enough knowlegde of another language who can help me with the translations? If yes, so please PM me. I will then send you a set of texts. You do the translation and I make an addon for my upload in this language.
I know there are French, Portuguese, Greek, Polish, Finnish (Noahclem, but RippleJet, are you there?) and certainly some other people that visit this thread.

It would be of great value for you and your country.

[jmyers2043]

Nice query. It looks very Dutch. 

- Jim

[FrankU]

Nice query. It looks very Dutch. 

- Jim

Yeah, thanks.
Only I see that I had placed the wrong image. It was not with Dutch text. Now I placed the correct image.

Sorry, Jim

[gn_leugim]

I like the detail of the pottery :p nice query

[jmyers2043]

Ah, I see ... a Nursery. It was a nice query before, twice as nice now! Watching this project move along has been fun.

- Jim

[FrankU]

And, while Fred is recovering from his diseases I lotted a Stage 6 mansion with horse stables.

It is called Landhuis de Haere, after a mansion in my neighbourhood.

No further ado: here are the images.

1. The front


2. Right side


3. The Back


4. Left side


So, you see..... It took me at least ten hours. Especially the fuzz with the CP textures and overlays. It cost me a lot of time to get the parking lot the way I liked it.... If even CP had made certain extra textures.... But he didn't so I had to puzzle and compromise and change the lay out at least four times.

The MJB stables and Swi fence in the front were way too big, so I made reduced models with Model Tweaker. Cogeo gets a kiss! It is a great help when scales go wrong. I use it more and more.... Where will this end?

Enlarging Haarlemmergold's mansion did not turn out good: the resulting model looked blurred like an unsharp image. Pity. 

Please comment,

Frank

[vortext]

Very nice lot, I think the lay-out is done well. Sometimes puzzling with overlays can be a royal pain in the a** indeed. Two things though; imho the mansion would be more fitting for an urban enviroment due to the modern glass extension at the backside, though that's personal preference really.

Secondly, Cogeo's modeltweaker is great yes. However, how is that gonna workout with the eventual download? i.e. do you have permissions to include the rescaled models and do they have different group IDs? Otherwise all occurences of swi's fences everywhere will be rescaled. .

Also, I presume the entrance to the stables will be network enabled? That would make the lot look even better! 

[w_swietwoot]

The lot looks very convincing  . But just like Vortex I'm not sure about the mansion. Haven't got an alternative either.
And just maybe the textue of the garden to the left of te mansion could be a different colour the the rest of the driveways (or perhaps the other way around).

[gn_leugim]

very nice 

only thing I couls say is, that mansion could be a bit bigger ^^

[Swordmaster]

I like it Frank, it's got a nice atmosphere going. My idea would be to change the texture under the stables, but it's all personal preference of course. As is the mansion itself.


Cheers
Willy

[sunv123]

Looks great, Frank! There is one thing to change, the mansion and the horse stables. Maybe a little hay in there? And the mansion should be bigger with a fence and some gardens. All brick doesn't look that nice. Still, it's up to you!

[mave94]

It looks great Frank! I agree about the texture of the garden, but I'm not sure how it'll look with other textures. For the mansion, perhaps Landgoed Frankendael by Haarlemmergold is a nicer building. I don't know how large that building is, though. Or perhaps this one from Haarlemmergold would fit, but I think the current one looks too urban.

-Matthijs

[FrankU]

Hi all,

Thanks for the input you gave me.
I will reconsider the texture of the garden. In fact I would prefer a texture of white gravel. I am not sure it's called like that in English. What I mean is small white stones that is used often for driveways and paths near historical buildings. Google translate tells me: gravel. But I do not have that in my plugins and I refuse to add another texture pack to the already long list. But there are more choices. I'll see what I can do.

The mansion is indeed too small. But enlarging it makes the house looking blurred. Model Tweaker uses the existing images, so enlarging makes the image larger.... resulting in unsharpness.

And indeed, maybe I should put some hay here and there.

@ Vortex,
The glass extension makes it useful as a museum or conference building. I actually wanted the mansion to look like a conference building: hence the large parking lot. Apparently it is not too visible. I should reconsider that. A conference building with stables. Maybe I should change the name too. Something like "Conferentieoord De Haere".
For the models: I made a copy of the S3D exemplars, changed the IID's and saved these into a separate dat-file. Then I made new props with their own name and IID's.
The S3D files only show something when the original prop packs are in the plugins folder, so the copyrights are safe. And my version of the model can be used without fear for other fences or stables.
Network enabled would look cool but I long ago read something about bad influence on trasit or network behaviour? I don't know much about that aspect and better keep on the safe side. It would look better indeed, but all my farm lots are non-transit enabled. It's better I make no exception now.

@ w_swietwoot,
Thanks.

@ gn_leugim,
Thanks for your comment.
Enlarging the model is no option. I tried, but it looks bad. Sad enough.

@Swordmaster,
Thanks for replying. I'll reconsider the textures.

@ sunv123,
Thanks for your interest in my work. I replied already to your comments.

@ mave94,
The landgoed Frankendael is already on my list for another lot. And the German mansion in the other link is a bit too small for these large gardens I thought.
Or do you think I should swap builidngs, put the Frankendael into this lot and use the mansion for another? Who knows.

Well, conclusion: I am not finished yet.
You will see the improved version when it's there. Have patience please. It's not easy.

[FrankU]

Hello again!

I changed the lot in several ways.

First of all: I changed the building and changed the name of the lot. It's now called "Landhuis De Bannink"

I also changed the pavement of the formal garden. I think this CP texture looks like the white gravel we see often in these kind of gardens. I hope you agree with me, because I know of no better texture for this purpose. I also changed the front yard, the shape of the pavement and the access road to the parking lots. I am not yet completely sure about the rose beds next to the entrances. They are a bit too much, maybe?
It is now more like a manor that is open to the public, hence the parking and the terrace next to the house. There we find a restaurant for the visitors.
The grass texture was changed too. Due to the fact that I had two quarter circles of pavement around the fountain I ended up with another grass texture. So this has become a different meadow. A nice variation, I thought, with these purple floers and all.

The question is: what do you think?





If you take a close look at the second image and look in the front right corner you see my standard type of grass. In SC4-Pim the texture is not visible on this tile. After I had seen this image I opened the file in LotEditor, saw that there were two textures on this tile and there I could delete them both and place the correct one.
This is a small flaw in SC4-Pim that I had seen two or three times before. I do not know when it happens and how it is caused. I just see that the lot in game shows another texture than I had placed in SC4-Pim. Then I opened the file in SC4-Pim, but could not see that texcture. When I opened in LotEditor I could see the texture, I was able to delet it and save the lot.
Did anyone observe this too?

Frank

[vortext]

The new mansion definitely is an improvement as far as I'm concerned, as well as is the new pavement in the formal garden. The parking spaces came out great too, especially the diagonal one. 

Though two may be a bit too much so why not turn the orthogonal parking space into a informal patio, with a gazebo, small gardenhouse, shed, or something? It already has paths to and from the mansion and stables. Besides, imho that part of the lot looks a bit empty.

Also good to know you've got the rescaling issues all figured out. I would've hate to see it rear its ugly head later on.

As for the texture issue in SCPIM, I've had this on more than one occasion too. Bit annoying since it only shows ingame, no idea as to why it happens. 

[Diggis]

Frank,

Nice looking lot. I just don't like the blend between the carpark dirt track and the brick. :/

On the note of textures, I saw you lamenting not having certain ones you want to use. If you want some custom textures done I can knock a few together, even from someone elses.  I've done a few for myself this way.   If you provide me with the name of the original texture pack and the IID of the one you want it to match, blend etc, plus what you want it to do I can do them up for you. As they'll only be one or 2 you can easily include them in the download, rather than as a dependency.

[FrankU]

Hi Vortex,

The idea of leaving out the second parking lot is maybe a good one. The two lots are a bit much for such a small mansion, indeed.

Hi Diggis,

Thanks for your offer, but I fear that once you start making dedicated textures you open a can of worms.... I might ask you for a special texture every week. I think it's better to work with what I have got, even if that means a bit of improvisation now and then.

And the blend of dirt and brick is indeed not perfect, but I can't get it better with CP's textures.
In the earlier lot I therefore decided to make the parkings more posh by making them brick. This also fitted better to the congres center idea I had. Now the lot shows a nice old, not too posh, Mansion with a more improvised parking space made of dirt. And now I have to work with the dirt and the brick as CP provided.
I think it's not perfect, but is is bad? I hope not...

And otherwise....

I think I am going to delete the roses directly behind the entrance, despite the fact that I am not able to put some grass between the car entry (large gate) and the foot entry (small gate), because I have no textures there...
I need to think of something less emphasized on this spot.

The building model I used in the former version of this lot is going to be the core building of a congress center.

[Diggis]

A texture a week is pretty simple to do. Especially as I'll be working from someone else's work. Remember, I did the entire SAM textures. Now THAT was a lot of textures.  ;-)