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Pozzessed goes BATTY

Started by Pozzessed, August 08, 2010, 02:25:36 AM

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Pozzessed

A little background.
I downloaded gmax in May, I needed some more wall props for the lots I was putting together and I succeeded in this .. I did have a quick go at making the building in the tutorial on ST and got bored with it .. I'm really bad at following orders! I dumped gmax.
A couple of weeks ago a friend decided to let me share his copy of max. In the meantime I'd been snooping around a nearby city in GoogleEarth and realised that there were a bunch of middle class terraces that were missing from the small, sprawling cities that I've been playing. So when push came to shove and I 'needed' these houses in my game, I once again downloaded and installed gmax .. I figure it was better to learn the basics in that, than jump straight into using max. That was the situation a couple of weeks ago, so if you're going to get technical with your comments please bear that in mind. This time I thought to heck with following a tutorial, just go with your intuition and just pick what you need out of the help topics .. I am in the process of figuring out the lighting.
Please excuse the lotting .. it was done really quick just to get them into the game for pics and I was most pleasantly surprised when I put one of  Gascookers pubs on the end of the lot, to find my wall line decor (unintentionally) matched up with his.
The following pics are my 3rd, 4th and 5th bats (the early ones need a little attention) they're not finished but will give you some idea of the way I'm headed :-)

Trelawny House

Lynton Villa

Warwick House


Sims view of Lynton House

In game views.
They are rendered in HD
Please call me Roz.
Visit my BAT thread .. http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11464.0
The Beginning of Knowledge, Is the Discovery of Something We Do Not Understand ...

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XiahouDun

I like them, looking really good so far. My one suggestion would be to mix up the textures a little. Some of the patterns in the brickwork are easy to notice repeats of, notably in http://a.imageshack.us/img155/1598/lyntonvilla2.jpg and http://a.imageshack.us/img580/575/warwickhouse2.jpg. That would more be something to fix in photoshop (or PSP, Gimp, whichever you use) than in the BAT though.
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You may have meant to search for Houdini. (result of searching for XiahouDun on SC4D)

Myself.or.?

What to say...we've got a new 'London' BATter. Since I love London I guess I should say: WELCOME!

Your Buildings are really nice, and looking at Warwick first thing that sprang to mind was a Village 'Royal Mail' outpost (from when they still existed).

Keep on learning (and ignoring the tutorial?). Hope to see those Buildings, and many others from you, around the LEX soon.

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zero7

The terraces look really good.  I particularly like the end terrace with the road name on the side.

If you want to avoid the repeats you get when using a traditional brick texture you could look at using the 'Tiles' procedural texture generator.  Used in the diffuse and bump slots it can give a good brick pattern.  Changing the seed number for the randomisation can also quickly generate a different pattern of bricks for different models in a set.  The technique tends to work best when the brickwork is fairly uniform in colour - I'm not sure how well it would do with the style of the front of your terraces.

Also I think the houses are most likely to be viewed at z5 than z6, so nice as an HD render looks, SD will give the best detail for the zoom it's most likely to be viewed at.

Call me Richard

metarvo

This is pretty good here!  :thumbsup:  It almost feels like I can see inside the windows.  I can imagine that I would use this in a medium-density R-§§ type environment, as the W2W style can be good for the development of modular town house complexes.
Find my power line BAT thread here.
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Here are some rural power lines.

Pozzessed

Thank you for all your comments ...

@XiahouDun - I admit and I know from what I've read that you shouldn't texture until you finish modelling but like I said before I'm not good at following instructions. Some of these textures were 'dumped' on just so that I could get a feel for what I was doing. I sometimes hide the map folder from gmax and take a look at the untextured model. Oh, and I'm a confirmed user of paintshop pro .. I've been using it for years which means I only have to think about what I'm trying to achieve instead of 'how' to achieve it.

@Myself.or.? - These were actually modelled from a city in Ill Tonksos neck of the woods, which would be Bristol. A port city and from what I know were originally built for the newly rich merchants in the late 1800's. There are many streets of these particular style houses, although some of the inhabitants have chosen to paint the front decoration in some pretty wild colours that, if I want to get close to reality, I will have to reflect.

@Buzzit - Thank you, this is a steep learning curve but I've always been up for a challenge.

@zero7 - I bow to your greatness. You who cause me to keep renaming my/your plugin folder .. now named 'z7 etc'.  :D
I have yet to figure out all of the things you speak of, generally making the complete tex in psp .. ie if I have a wall of say 6 high and 8 wide I make a tex of 600 x 800 which seems to work. The tex for the front of those were actually picked off a house wall and was tiny but like I said to XiahouDun, the side wall texs were just dumped on and not final, I'll have some more pics shortly. The HD renders were just for my satisfaction  ;D

@metarvo - I have no idea what will happen to the windows when I have a go at lighting these. In reality, in those streets, 95% of the windows have net curtains .. whoever makes net curtains over here are making a killing! LoL Most of them would be R$$ but with a few R$ in between, that is how they are. I'm going to try to achieve the difference. I also intend making some corner shops.

I just spent the last day or so making a satellite dish, not quite what I was looking for but I learned a few things from it .. I only got as far as making the model as it seems I need a vray plugin to light it with and I've no idea how to export this and import into gmax .. another one chalked down to experience  &mmm
For what it's worth, a pic of said dish ..

Please call me Roz.
Visit my BAT thread .. http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11464.0
The Beginning of Knowledge, Is the Discovery of Something We Do Not Understand ...

I Refuse To Have A Battle Of Wits With An Unarmed Person.

MattyFo

Good looking BAT's there Roz. (I read your signature)  If there is one thing I feel this game needs more of, it's row homes, W2W residentials, townhouses etc.  May I add that your look great.  The satelite dish looks great also.  Once it is in game any flaws that you feel it has, will not be noticible. keep up the good work.  :thumbsup:

- Matt

!!!!GO HABS GO!!!!

Pozzessed

Hi Matt. I too think that there should be more row homes, here they make up most of our cities .. the city that I'm using to model these on have very few residential sky scrapers but thousands of these type of houses ..

Update to Lynton Villa, I'm fairly certain that this is final except for lighting .. unless someone says different .. LoL
I hope it's okay for the site to be uploading animations but it takes up less message space than four pics ..
Please call me Roz.
Visit my BAT thread .. http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11464.0
The Beginning of Knowledge, Is the Discovery of Something We Do Not Understand ...

I Refuse To Have A Battle Of Wits With An Unarmed Person.

MattyFo

Looks great!  the only thing I could think of adding is maybe some steps at the back door, it looks a bit flat.  Of course that is if you can fit them.  Also will these be available on a 1X1 lot? I find thats the easiest way to ensure that rowhomes grow.  I'm thinking of maybe BATting some more modern rowhomes myself,  but I likley need a bit more practice.

- Matt

!!!!GO HABS GO!!!!

Pozzessed

I'll have a look at adding a doorstep but if I remember correctly it caused a problem when I came to lotting it.
I usually lot terraces as 3x2 or 4x2, I've found that I can grow them easier that way as there are very few others in *my* plugins that will compete with them.


This is the first with a shop attached (unfinished, needs more grunge on that wall!), I'm thinking of making it C$$ and R$$ .. I know a chippy should really be C$ though .. LoL
Please call me Roz.
Visit my BAT thread .. http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11464.0
The Beginning of Knowledge, Is the Discovery of Something We Do Not Understand ...

I Refuse To Have A Battle Of Wits With An Unarmed Person.

vester

Nice work on these.

Keep it up.  :thumbsup:

Would love a copy of your window textures. Very nice touch.

JonM

Great looking!

I think you should scale them vertically a bit though, typically by 133% up from what would be otherwise normal proportions.

:thumbsup:

mattb325

Another good batter gets off to a great start &apls

I like these very much. The scale is fine (these line up with Gascookers stuff, so no change needed)

The only thing I would offer advice on is the roof tiles - at the moment they are too stretched and rectangular; maybe change the UV map to make them a little more square (or better still change the size of the map in photo-editing software) - also, maybe then match the bay window roof so the tiles are same size and the BATs will be perfect

Pozzessed

 :) Thank you for your replies and interest in my small corner of the BATisphere (confused the spell-checker on THAT one!)   ()stsfd()

@mattb325 .. rooves are my nightmare with gmax, I can't get to grips with the method it uses. I've used that same pattern and squished and stretched it, changed sizes but to no avail .. the only thing that I think might be the problem is the angle and the way gmax sees it, although it's probably 'operator error'. I think I may have cracked it using a different tile pattern  ()stsfd()

Now, this pic is the roadside view with the chip shop on the street-side. I knew the chippy had to be a C$, so I tried to make the houses R$. I need to know if you think that I've overdone the grungy feel .. please ignore the roof and above.


Please call me Roz.
Visit my BAT thread .. http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11464.0
The Beginning of Knowledge, Is the Discovery of Something We Do Not Understand ...

I Refuse To Have A Battle Of Wits With An Unarmed Person.

zero7

Nice work with the chippy.  I think there's probably scope for some variation in the shops - Indian/Chinese takeaway, hairdressers, empty or boarded-up shop.  If you find making the shop fronts fairly easy it could be a good opportunity to have a go at a building family.

As far as Cs$ and Cs$$ is concerned, don't forget that you can also use the lot to help suggest the status of the building as an alternative to the "low wealth = add grunge" formula.
Call me Richard

Pozzessed

#16
It's been an interesting few days. I bought myself a new monitor (LG W2361V 23-inch Wide LCD TFT Monitor (2ms, 50000:1, Full HD, Gloss Black)) and it's wonderful! The downside was that my ancient video card wasn't having any of it and curled up and died  :(  .. not surprising as I use a cube desktop with gmax running on one screen PaintshopPro running on another,google earth on the third with Firefox on the last side. The good news is that I now have a new video card and I'm back in business  ;D.

@ Richard (zero7).. could you please explain 'Tiles' procedural texture generator .. I'm assuming that it's not part of gmax, if it is I can't find it. I've binned the brick pattern I was using for the front of the houses but it's thrown some of the other things out of kilter so I've a bit more work to do before I can show some new pics. I've got a bunch more shops lined up in PsP .. barbers, bookies, Happy Shopper etc, I was a little ahead of you there .. LoL
Uhh .. 'grunge' as in my grunge brushes that I use to break up what looks like a perfectly rendered finish on that wall :)

Edited to show new Warwick House pic ..
Please call me Roz.
Visit my BAT thread .. http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11464.0
The Beginning of Knowledge, Is the Discovery of Something We Do Not Understand ...

I Refuse To Have A Battle Of Wits With An Unarmed Person.

zero7

Roz - the 'Tiles' procedural generator applies to 3DS Max rather than GMax.  Sorry, after reading the bit in your introductory post that said you had access to Max I skipped past the next bit that said you were going to start in gmax rather than diving into 3ds max.  I'll still put something together in my thread about how I use 'Tiles' it may come in useful for someone, or you when you switch to Max.

You may find this useful as a texture generator, though http://www.brick.com/md/index.htm - was well known a few years ago, but I don't know whether it's mentioned in any of the usual tutorial guides.
Call me Richard

baconrocky

I just stumbled on this, and all I have to say is OMG exactly what I am looking for. I hope to see this released.

Goodluck and i Hope to see more!!


Pozzessed

Richard .. thanks for explaining that the tile thingy was is 3DS Max, I will begin to use it as it has a lot more features than gmax .. I had a quick look at a couple of their tutorials. However, when I asked my friend about this vray thing he told me I could work it out for myself .. great!
I had already downloaded and installed that acme brick generator but every time I tried to run it, it crashed and thrashed my cpu, I had thought it was compatible with Win7. Still making walls the hard way here .. LoL

@baconrocky .. I need to learn how to light these before I get around to lotting them. I'm bad at following tutorials but I will do it  :)

New local shop ..
Please call me Roz.
Visit my BAT thread .. http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11464.0
The Beginning of Knowledge, Is the Discovery of Something We Do Not Understand ...

I Refuse To Have A Battle Of Wits With An Unarmed Person.