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Bombardiere's London, British and Other BATs

Started by bombardiere, February 15, 2016, 10:08:43 AM

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Girafe

Prob 1: does not matter
Prob 2: keep it like this
Prob 3: do new LODs

What I gave you is settings working for day rendering from a scene I created under 3dsmax 2012. I removed all object and keep all settings (cameras).

You should be able to merge your BAT (only objects, no camera), you can merge your LODs.
You should be able to do sharp previews
The Floraler

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bombardiere

#21
Yes, I am able to do sharp previews now.  :)

I do get "deleted scene object" error, Prob3, if I try to open a new scene and try to render it. Then the 3DS MAX frozes and I have to restart the program. But it works fine if I just delete old model and merge a one and do the LODs again.

Thank you

mgb204

The last one is an annoyance of mine. I get that message whenever I try to preview a model after reopening it if I don't select day or night first. I know Girafe said not to, but I think it might be unavoidable, since otherwise the script simply won't see it, suggesting it's not there until you turn it on.

bombardiere

#23
Alrighthy. :) Thanks for Girafe's scene I have got the render process moving on. I have studied his scene, but so far I haven't spotted where my error is. There is something in my scene that makes it prone to be fuzzy, but I haven't figured it out. Honestly, I really wish that I would know where my mistake is. Must be something elementary.  ()what()

I am finalising the day scenes and working with the night ones. First time with 3DS and Dark Night, so I have a lot to learn still.

Uhuh, talk about the learning. This has been a long and hard learning process. There has been so many new things that my little brain has been exhausted.  %confuso

The next thing is to set the background using MR Phycial Sky, so that the grey lining would be minimal. ART128's instruction should be clear enough that even I can follow it. :D

Those of you who know me from Simtropolis, might already know that my projects tend to escalate. Instead of making one building, I have a bad habit to use the base model for all kinds of variations. And it happened this time too.  ::) Sorry, this post is picture intensive.
























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Themistokles

Look really nice! I don't think you need to worry about the repetition, this kind of houses lend themselves very well to only subtle variations.
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vortext

Great to see you opened a BATting thread on SC4D as well!! 

Your timberframe manors (and water well  :)) have already found their way into my region. I really like your other BATs, too, and the latest row houses are no exception. I will be following developments here with great interest! :thumbsup:
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TheTeaCat

Oh these are just beautiful!!  &apls &apls

Look forward to the day they get released ;)

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romualdillo

They look wonderful!! I like the nightlights a lot, but I fear some of the windows need a bit less contrast, especially the reddish ones, IMHO. (It's a matter of taste, I'm not able to do anything similar  ;))

Great work!!  &apls

bombardiere

Thank you belfastsocrates, Themistokles, vortext, TheTeaCat and romualdillo.

@vortext I am no master batter and I still struggle. I am glad that you have found use for those. At the moment I am toying with the Georgian theme, but I may do more historical, medieval buildings in the future.

@romualdillo. Yes, the red one and the one with side curtains are very strong. I need to adjust those. However, my night light window are not anything special. I just used self-illumated material and textured a few window picture.

I have had more troubles and according to very good advices given by Mattb325 and Jasoncw, I have changed my main textures.

I now have a yellow brick texture, which is very close to real life building from which I took the inspiration. Also I have desaturated my textures, as I have learned that the SC4 game uses very desaturated colour palette. Obvious now, but a quite eye opener for me.

On the left are adjusted textures. Desaturated a little bit and lightened on the roof. On the right are the base textures as those are. I am planning to use ones on the left with some changes.



I made a comparison with the Google Earth photo. The lighting looks very different, but when I use the Eye Dropper tool and compare the colour shades, those are surprisingly close. I don not plan to exactly match the real life buildings, just to get my reference right.



So, I am not yet close to upload.

mgb204

I think it's coming along nicely, it's great that you are taking on board all the feedback to improve these. Hard to say looking at the render alone, but I have a feeling the brick now would look a little bright in-game? However the roof is a huge improvement, it's a much more natural colour now.

Every model I've moved from SC4BAT to 3DS Max has needed major texture adjustments though, the two are completely different. That said, I find SC4BAT would allow you to be sloppy with textures, the added quality from 3DS Max highlights such things pretty quickly. But for new models, I'm also finding I don't have to adjust the textures as much.

I really looking forward to seeing the final results of all your improvements, I'm certain these will be your best models yet :).

romualdillo

They look fantastic!! Too "clean" for my taste, but I love them!!

Quote from: bombardiere on February 27, 2016, 04:49:35 AM
I now have a yellow brick texture, which is very close to real life building from which I took the inspiration. Also I have desaturated my textures, as I have learned that the SC4 game uses very desaturated colour palette. Obvious now, but a quite eye opener for me.

Saturation...  :D I had sooo many problems with that... And still have!!!

bombardiere

No need to worry. These are not going to be clean. :)

Hopefully these will be last preview pictures.









I am doing a SD, HD, Dark Night and maxis Night versions, so I will be quite busy rendering. And I did some extra props, Pub Benches, Newspaper and pub sandwich boards. I will update my British Boxes prop pack to add these street items.

c.p.

The building looks very nice :thumbsup:

When you make the foundation, if you import the walls of the building and then set the wall object(s) to not be visible to the camera, you can get rid of the sunny spots on the foundation (i.e. the invisible building walls will cast a shadow onto the steps and projections of the foundation).
You would do this by selecting the wall object(s), then right-clicking in the viewport, hit "properites", and unchecking the "Visible to Camera" checkbox.   (In my version of 3dsmax, anyway.)

Alan_Waters

On the slope of the stairs do not look correct. &mmm

mgb204

@Alan_Waters, I think the point is to clearly show they are slope-tolerant. I don't think the intention is to use them on such steep slopes, even if you did have more stairs continuing, that would always look terrible, just a limit to how tolerant to slopes things can be really.

None the less it's an extremely useful addition, that I'm so pleased you've taken the effort to include. If British buildings are lacking, slope torrent ones are practically non-existent, I have a number of situations where these will be replacing what's there now :). They are looking excellent in-game too if I may say.

Alan_Waters

Saw that does not look very nice - decided to tell. And in general - it's a great job and, of course, will be used by me in my cities. &apls &apls &apls

bombardiere

#37
Quote from: c.p. on March 01, 2016, 08:02:00 AM

When you make the foundation, if you import the walls of the building and then set the wall object(s) to not be visible to the camera, you can get rid of the sunny spots on the foundation (i.e. the invisible building walls will cast a shadow onto the steps and projections of the foundation).
You would do this by selecting the wall object(s), then right-clicking in the viewport, hit "properites", and unchecking the "Visible to Camera" checkbox.   (In my version of 3dsmax, anyway.)

Thanks. Damn, I did not notice that until you mentioned it.  ::) Guess who just finished foundation renders. :)

Well, Jasoncw suggested a tighter LODs in the foundation, so I have rework to be done. That trenchline is quite awful and I have to see what I can do with. But otherwise, it is as Robin said, these building are not suited for steep slopes. I think couple meters would be maximum.

However, other problems have emerged. Three of my renders are distorted. It is not too bad from 12 building (HD and SD ver) and 12 foundation (HD SD), but still another issue to be dealt with. :(

Jasoncw has already suggested that I should increase the height of the LOD. It may very well solve the issue, but I do know that this distortion is relatively common, and it can be fixed with iLives reader. However, I can't make any sense of the number. I try to double or halve the numbers but it only distort more. I post the picture here too if some overhere understand the numbers better.




mgb204

#38
Are your LODs the correct size?

When you export from 3DS and import the LODs into SC4BAT, don't forget you need a different LOD for SD or HD versions. Click Preview (under BAT Rollout) and make sure the correct setting is selected before rendering the LOD.

This could explain why your UV mapping does not match the LOD/Texture. From a cursory glance at your screenshot, I'm certain this is the problem. The texture as applied to the model is totally out of proportion, even if the UV mapping was wrong. If the LOD was twice the size (which HD is), then the texture here should not look so squashed. That's not to say the UV mapping isn't potentially also an issue.

The issue where BAT messes up and halves the UV mapping I think may be related to something in the scripts for BAT4Max. Note how the "box" around the texture in the UV mapping is twice the width it looks like it should be?

It's a simple fix, copy everything in the UV colums (you can do them all at once) into Excel (or another Spreadsheet). Put these in columns A+B. Then in column C use "=A1*2" and in D use "=B1*2". You can then highlight C1/D1, and drag from the bottom right edge to cover the number of rows you need. It will copy the formula's in A1/B1, adjusting the cell incrementally for you. Eh Voilla, you have very quickly a set of values that are doubled. Now copy/paste colums C+D back into the U/V settings of reader.

:edit:
Maybe that's a bad example, if the box is twice the size as you show here, change the "*" for "/" to divide not multiply the UV numbers.

bombardiere

Quote from: mgb204 on March 02, 2016, 07:57:30 AM
Are your LODs the correct size?


Yes. I have repeated that so many times that there is no human error involved. This affects only level 4 zoom east - west views if SD and level 5 north- south views if HD. All other renders are fine.

I tried Jason's suggestion of increasing the height of hte LOD, but that didn't help. I made the LOD to be 50 % taller, but the result was same.

Interestingly, when I increased the size of the building, 1 % for HD and 2 % for SD then the render was fine. All zooms and views normal.

It is something to do with the shape and size of that particular building. This is the shop corner. Almost similar pub corner's renders were all fine. It is weird, but this not something I see first time. Even in my early days in GMAX, some building sizes and shapes simply refuse to be rendered.

I may try your excel trick. It would be easier rather than manually calculate each individual value.

That box in the picture is the correct size of the building, so I think it is UV mapping porblem.