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Art128's BATs

Started by art128, February 20, 2009, 10:53:23 AM

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mattb325

#460
I had this happen on one of the multi-function stations I released.

https://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=327.msg522884#msg522884

The trick in that instance was to heighten the LOD and make it taller. Such are the vagaries of batting.  $%Grinno$%

There are two schools of thought with LODs: many purport custom in all instances.

I do not subscribe to that theory, and only use custom LODs when absolutely necessary, such as objects to be placed in the water or objects which must have automata going through them.

The reason being is that when you make a custom LOD, you are effectively asking the game to over-ride its boxy 2d/quasi 3d rendering (which makes SC4 so efficient in terms of processing power) and instead make the game render your BAT in 3d. While I know this will be a ploppable model, you can see how the issue with having so many custom LODs would be a nightmare for  growable content.

For your model, unless you intend to have a lot of tall and wide props under the colonnade and large canopy, I would just go with a simple box with the centre area taken out via a simple boolean so you can place props in that courtyard area. Even with a basic LOD, you will still be able to place little sims and low props in those areas just fine without clipping.




-- My apologize Matt, I accidentally edited your post thinking it was mine right underneath...

art128

#461
Huge thanks mate, it worked.
At first I did like you said and moved some vertices and redid and export, same thing happened. Then I deleted the LODs and did them again, this time not bothering to do the pillars individually. It worked this time. I guess the LODs didn't like being separate for the pillars.

Thanks as well Matt for the advice. I must say I do enjoy making custom LODs. This one was done stricly using poly modeling. I've found that booleans tend to make the structure a bit messy. They are very useful though, so I do use them.

Here are some pictures of the Pavilhao de Portugal in game with the complete lot. It's a museum.

Please excuse the USL ultra brightness at night.... It doesn't play well with the Japanese street mod.










The dependencies for the lot are as follow:
-CP Textures vol 1
-CP Props (Cherry trees) vol 2
-Mas71 Props (light poles, benches) vol 3

I will try to get things uploaded to the LEX soon.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

AsimPika3172

I loves Sim City forever!

Barroco Hispano

Its beautiful!

I can send you some 3d sims so you can put them in your buildings and you don't have to do complex LODs.
Barroco Hispano

art128

I would gladly accept those sims, seeing as this will be usefull for atriums etc. Thanks! :)

I've uploaded the school! You can get it HERE.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

kelis

Love the school my friend !! I will give it a nice place in Saitama  &apls &apls
.                                                                                                                      

                                                                                     || Benelux Team || Windows on the World || My Photos on Flickr || Kelis BNL Projects ||

gn_leugim

I was really needing a museum, guess what :D  &apls

art128

I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

Tyberius06

Really nice work on this one (too)! Thanks for making and sharing it.
I'm gonna find nice spots in my cities for this one, I'm sure.

- Tyberius
You may find updates about my ongoing projects into my development thread here at SimCity 4 Devotion: Tyberius Lotting Experiments
or over there on Simtropolis into the Tyberius (Heretic Projects) Lotting and Modding Experiments.
I'm also member of the STEX Custodian and working on different restoration projects on behalf of non-anymore-active custom content creators.
Current projects: WMP Restoration and SimCity Polska Restoration.
Member of the NAM Team and RTMT Team.

art128

#469
Thanks!

I've started BATing Tampere Station but progress has been a bit slow. Been busy chain rendering cars (*) and playing the new Call of Duty video game.  :-[

Nonetheless, here is a render:



The tracks will not be part of the BAT. The platforms will be separate props. On the left is an avenue tunnel, just like the real one. On the right a fictional parking entrance. To the right there will be a passage underneath the tracks.

Does anyone know how I can make the day view brighter inside the building?

(*) I have been rendering car models on angles 90, 45, 225L and 225R. Single color only. So far I've rendered 342 different cars. I still have 155 models to render and another 20 that I can't find a free model of them anywhere.
I'm not saying for what I will be using them now, that will come later... I don't want to spoil my ideas..... :)


Quick question, I'm using 3dsmax 2016 Since recently, but I have the impression that the render quality isn't so good... Do I have to set some settings higher?  ()what()
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

mattb325

It's looking like a really good start to a great project  :satisfied: :thumbsup:

To make the interior brighter in the day, I use a simple rectangle approx 50-60% the size of the floor with a self-illuminating arch & design material colour that is left on during the day render.

So for instance, if the room is 15mx 8m then the self illuminated rectangle will be 7.5mx4mx0.1m and I push this up to the ceiling in the scene (making sure it won't be visible in the render). I then set the illumination to a really high setting like, say, 7000 physical units (cd/m2) in the Luminance area as well as giving the interior surfaces a glossy texture. I then use this as the night light (but turned right down to say, 300). You can get tricky here and model these lightboxes as strips which can also give the impression of rows of fluorescent lighting

As for the 2016 issue, are the render settings on Classic/raytraced in the Renderer settings and Skylight Illumination from Indirect (GI or FG)....under Rendering->Render Setup?


kbieniu7

That's great to see you back modelling! Haven't been on the forum for a while, but that's a nice news to see :) The effects are great, hope you can continue without many technical issues  ;D

Regards
Thank you for visiting Kolbrów, and for being for last ten years!

Barroco Hispano

#472
The building looks great!

It seems that I have competition. So far I have exported 15 different cars, 4 colors and 4 angles (90°, 45°, 22.5°, 67.5°  ).
Barroco Hispano

art128

#473
Thanks for the replies!

Matt, I tried applying your method and I must say the result is great. Maybe a bit too dark still but I will work on it later.

I've made some progress on it, not much but still progress.



Blue monoliths are just there so I know where to make the platforms stairs and lifts for the underground passageways.


Matt, regarding the render settings here's what is on the renderer tab:



I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

mattb325

I'm glad the nite-lighting hack worked. It's how I do much of my stuff, as I find it gives better colour control than omnis or spots without the endless back and forth of adjusting minuscule parameters. You can also combine self-illumination with self-illuminating materials and spot-lights, etc, for maximum effect.

To fix the blurriness, every single time you click either Day, Darknite or Maxis nite, you have to go in and re-adjust the settings:

Global Illumination sub-tab should be set to "Skylight Illumination from Indirect (GI or FG)

Renderer subtab should be set to "Classic/Raytraced"


All other settings can remain the same. In addition to making the render crisp, it also speeds up the rendering time.


noahclem

Tampere station is looking great  &apls  Really excited you'd take on that station since it's one I've got a lot of familiarity with. Implementation sounds great too. A couple questions there though: will the avenue underpass also not be baked in? With one of Finland's signature mass transit projects of the moment involving a new TIA underpass there (to best of my knowledge that's the routing at least) it could be nice to have that option. Just a thought, but having the station and platform models overhang that underpass could be a way to avoid having to make multiple versions. Second, are you planning on keeping the middle platform the roughly 24m width shown above? Certainly the normal ~8, platform width in SC4 can be on the narrow side and there are practical limits to something intermediary but it still seems a bit wide.

In any case, this will certainly be a beautiful station to have the chance to use in-game! Good luck with the project and the rest of what you're up to  :thumbsup:

art128

Thanks for the tips Matt, will try that as soon as I make a render.  :thumbsup:

Noah, the avenue texture itself will not be baked in, but the tunnel shape will, including the central concrete pillars which would be in the way of a tram track...

Just to clarify for everyone, the embankment with the textures will NOT BE RENDERED with the model. It's just there to help me place everything. Same goes for the avenue and street textures, they will NOT be made in the BAT, but added in the LE.

I am planning on keeping the platform large. I've already experimented with that in the past and I actually quite liked it.

Here is how it looked:



For comparison here's a standard platform size:




Here's a size comparison:

I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

245a

Quote from: art128 on December 25, 2020, 05:13:03 AM

Here is how it looked:


Great work! What is the station on the picture and where to download it? ()what()

art128

the main building is a model of Sendai station from a Japanese website..... Unfortunately I do not remember which one.  You can check out these websites [link] to try and find it.

Quick question guys.

What's the easiest, or rather correct method to rename props? I'm not satisfied with how I've named my car props and I'm looking into re-arranging it.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

noahclem

Great continued work on the station  &apls  TIA or other texture can bend to make way for center pylon rather than vice versa ;) I think the wider platforms look excellent and certainly aren't lacking RL examples; overall there's been a lot more trouble with too narrow platforms than too wide ones.

To answer your question, I'm extremely rusty but can at least reply with what I remember off the top of my head from the old days. First, make sure you're using the pre-1.x reader version to avoid just-in-case corruption or crashing problems, then open the lot and/or model files and look for anywhere you can find the building or model's name and then change it. IIRC there should be multiple instances that usually look similar, pertaining to lot/model/maybe something else too, but you shouldn't have any negative consequences from renaming something you didn't actually intend to rename. Sorry for very sloppy "help"  :D