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Spa's Atlantic Retreat

Started by spa, February 25, 2007, 01:13:45 AM

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Pat

Hey Spa congrats on the new addition there  :thumbsup:

Don't forget the SC4D Podcast is back and live on Saturdays @ 12 noon CST!! -- The Podcast soon to Return Here Linkie

threestooges

Congratulations on the new addition to your family! I don't think her birthday will be too bad either; she has an excuse to celebrate it into next year. Hope you all are doing well.
-Matt

TiFlo

Wow, talk a bout a Christmas present. Congratulations Spa!  :)

spa

#683
Wow. It would seem that my updates have become fewer and fewer as time has gone by. From the looks of things, I started the Dominion Public Building almost 2 years ago! Where did that time go! 2011 has been a really full year. My daughter is now almost a year old and is growing like a weed. She can stand on her own (hasn't taken a step yet) and is really surprising us daily with what she understands. It's simple stuff really, like I can now ask her where her turtle is and she crawls off to retrieve her stuffed turtle. She's such a joy.

I also spent most of the summer and fall absolutely run off my feet because I ran for city council here in Halifax. It was my first time trying anything like that and it was really a blood and sweat type effort (no slick campaign machine or army of volunteers behind me). My district, Dartmouth Centre, was a really crowded race with 7 candidates including the incumbent councillor, Gloria McCluskey. McCluskey is 81 or 82 and has been either a councillor or mayor in Dartmouth for nearly 30 years so she's quite entrenched. I ran on an urban planning platform of redirecting some of HRM's growth and spending away from the suburbs and back to the urban core. McCluskey ended up running away with it (51% of the vote), but I finished a strong second, well ahead of the rest of the also rans. I picked up 1,700 some odd votes (20%). Michelle and I were really pleased since that meant that more than just our friends and neighbours voted for me and that the campaign and my message really gained traction. This is likely McCluskey's last term so it leaves me well setup for next time in 2016 if I decide to try again. You can see some of my campaign up on my website www.samaustin.ca.

The other thing that was floating around this year is I organized a neighbourhood beautification effort on my street, Tulip Street. My neighbours and I formed an association and pitched for funding to whoever had cash to give away. We were successful and a few weeks ago we planted 11,000 tulip bulbs on my 4 block street (tulips on Tulip Street). To sum up, it has been a full rich year, but Sim City really hasn't factored into it.

After doing nothing in SC4 for months and months, though, I have finally started to pick away at things again. The Dominion Public Building is once again inching towards the finish line. Here's what it looks like now:

I have also textured the side (may need to tone down the glass on this side):

I'm hoping that over the next few weeks I'll be able to finish the project. All I have left is the roof, three sides of the tower, the stone on the Lower Water Street side (the angled wall) and lighting. Still a fair number of hours left because the texture creation on this one is really, really time-consuming. Making textures has really taken more time than the modelling did! Once I get the Dominion Public Building finished, I'm going to upload my finished batch of Government of Canada Buildings. It'll be 6 instead of 7 done, but goodness knows how long it will take for me to finish the Saint John POA. Anyway, sorry I have been such a stranger.

threestooges

Even though you didn't win the seat, congratulations on the relative success! After seeing the devotion you have toward re-creating various buildings, landmarks and otherwise, from the area, it kind of makes sense you would want to run.

I like the progress on the building too. I've always been pleased, and impressed by the detail of your buildings even without the textures, but this is the point where they really start to look sharp.
-Matt

vortext

First CP, then Andreas and now you return! Did you guys had a secret meeting or what?!  $%#Ninj2  $%Grinno$%

Anyhow, it seems like you've had a wonderfull and joyfull year. The Dominion Public Building looks great already, I'm sure it'll be a fine addition to the game once it's finished!  ()stsfd()

Keep it up!  :thumbsup:
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

io_bg

Congrats from me too and wishes for even better luck next time :thumbsup: Your last bat looks great as well, can't wait to see more progress on it!
Visit my MD, The region of Pirgos!
Last updated: 28 November

Swordmaster

I agree with Vortext - must be something with solar winds or a stellar conjunction influencing the affairs of SC4D and its most creative members. :D

Anyway, I'm glad to hear you're still working on that building. Looks like a certain addition to one of my towns some day.

Great to hear your politics is running well, and best of luck in '16 already.


Cheers
Willy

Serkanner


Jack_wilds

is that really you Spa  ()what() its has been awhile, to vaguely recognize you  :D ...

I also made an effort to get a seat on council here... and I too didn't win but what do you do  :'( or  :satisfied: ... so I will wait and see about giving it another go...

glad to hear that your girl is blooming like tulips [although U said 'weed', hope it ain't the bishops' variation  ;D ]

also like the progress and am anticipating its final release... so if we should cross paths again Merry Christmas... [ insert Santa smiley here ]...

Now if only JBSimio and his UofC ep1&2 [as the promised release of the packs is getting suspensefully mysterious  %confuso ] would make a showing as did CP and Andreas and -whose next  ???

spa

Matt: Thanks. I really did sink my all into it and I was really pleased with the result.
Vortext: haha no secret meetings. I guess the old dogs are just feeling the sim city itch.
Io: Thanks.
Willy: I think we all wax and wane a bit depending on how much time we have. For a game like SC4 that has been out for years, we've kind of lost the casual gamers portion of the audience and are now made up of mainly the really dedicated who treat SC4 as a hobby. With that kind of crowd, it's often more likely to be in and out rather than gone for good.
Serkanner: Thanks.
Jack: I know! 2012 was a bit of a blur. Politics is a funny pursuit. Many politicians actually lose their first time out. Don't rule out trying again. I too miss JBSimio. His work was always top notch. Maybe he'll surface again at some point in 2013.

Since I last posted I have made some more progress on the Dominion Public Building. I have been picking away at the tower and it's now textured on both the south and west sides. You can check it out below.


Still hoping that I might finish this up in the near future. It won't be by the end of 2012, but maybe in the first month or two of 2013 :)

metarvo

Nice to see you, Spa!  :)  I'm hoping for the building to be finished in early 2013, too, because it truly is top grade.  The textures are nicely done.
Find my power line BAT thread here.
Check out the Noro Cooperative.  What are you waiting for?  It even has electricity.
Want more? Try here.  For even more electrical goodies, look here.
Here are some rural power lines.

sunv123

It looks really nice there. I agree, the textures are nice. :thumbsup: Not sure about the dome, though. Doesn't really fit my liking. &mmm

Keep up the great work that you're doing.
Provo, a city apart Updated July 4.

threestooges

I like it. The wheelchair ramp is a nice little detail too. I just now noticed it.
-Matt

spa

Metarvo: It's looking like 2013 is a go. Probably another week or two.
Sunv123: Thanks. The dome isn't your cup of tea eh? Is it the copper texture or just the style.
Matt: Thanks Matt. It's the little details that really add a lot. All of my upcoming Government of Canada Buildings are wheelchair accessible. I see the same attention to detail in your work.

So I may have been quiet since the New Year, but I have been picking away at the Dominion Public Building and I'm nearly done. So nearly done that I did a render of the parking lot free version last night. Below are the day pictures.




The parking lot free version actually fits snug on a 5x3. I didn't plan that. I'm thinking a 6x3 would be better as this one kind of has a "stand alone" rather than a wall-to-wall feel. I'll probably just make two lots in the end :) I still need to adjust the night lighting in the atrium because the light is spilling out in funny ways. It's also a touch brighter than I was going for. Since I'm going to be rerendering, if anyone has any last minute suggestions. The version with the underground parking lot is still to come (need to texture the parking lot walls and put in the ground textures). Here's where the night lighting is heading.

magee_b

Spa, great to see you back in action. Was pleasantly surprised to see the Shelbourne GoCB up over at Simtropolis and popped my head in here to see great progress on the Dominion Public Building.

Looking great and looking forward to more in the year ahead!

Cheers!

Brian

spa

Brian: I had a little uploading issue with Devotion. Turns out our LEX doesn't like firefox. All of my government buildings are now up and released on both sites, which empties my vault. Thanks for popping by.

So in case you've missed it, all my government buildings have been released on the STEX and LEX. I even finished the Dominion Public Building in the nick of time. The version with the sunken parking lot proved to be more challenging than I expected, but I learned something that might be of interest to other batters. After I added the cars to my already complex scene, gmax began to really crawl. It started crashing everytime I tried to preview or render because my computer was running out of memory. My computer is old, but it's not a terrible machine (first time this has really happened to me). I tried several things to try and streamline the model with no success. I had pretty much concluded that the only solution was to render the parking lot as a separate prop, when the lightbulb went on. I had noticed earlier that when I clicked on the materials editor, the program would hang for a minute as gmax loaded textures. The custom-made masonry textures that I created for the Dominion Public Building were really large files and there were several dozen of them because of all the surfaces. I guessed that part of the problem was being caused by gmax trying to load the larger textures and it turns out I was right. I went into photoshop and significantly shrunk the image size for each texture. Because I had really been overly generous with them, there was no loss of quality on my model, but there was a substantial improvement in gmax's performance. It would seem that the larger the texture file size, the more memory gmax needs. Good information to have! If I model a similarly complex building at some point in the future, I'll keep the textures small to save myself a ton of aggravation! Worth knowing for anyone else who still uses gmax.

Anyway, below is how the final version turned out:








Air6

Another wonderful BAT ! I've downloaded your recent creations and I love them. Great work  :thumbsup:

IL...

Indeed, did you model those cars? :D

spa

Well it's about time for my once a year post and bat release (dismal average lately!). I still play Sim City and I still bat too, but I just don't have the time I once did. Community involvement, one toddler, plus a second baby on the way for January suggests that that won't change anytime soon. Anyway, over the last several months I have slowly finished up a commercial building from Halifax's Barrington Street: the St. Pauls Building. Below is how it turned out.

Anyway, it's pretty much done. Up next I'm think of another commercial building from Barrington Street or maybe an historic mansion. Don't know yet. Whatever it is, it'll be a slow process!