CB's Bats

[City Builder]

Well that was a good waste of time.  I had to really shrink this one down to make it fit in with other farm type buildings and there was very little point to the hour or three that I spent today trying to get the lettering on the side of the building to say what I wanted which shows up real nice in the max, but once in game and the building is small it says nothing discernable.  Oh well, I still like the way the building looks in the game.



Can anybody tell me what I need to do to make this a growable agricultural lot?

[RebaLynnTS]

There is a tutorial on making farm lots, just can't remember where right now.

BTW, have you seen my latest update?

[Pat]

CB Im glad you are using image shack its soo much nicer and better looking to view the pics directly without having to click on it lol..... Also I think the farm building could have been converted to an ID lot with the size... But overall great look BAT....

[BarbyW]

Try reading my Guide to creating custom content as that takes you through the stages of making a working lot from model to finished lot.

[City Builder]

Hi,
I just can't stay away from the high rises even though Im not any good at them, though I suppose if I ever want to get good at them, I'd need to actually do them.

Anyway, maybe someone reading this can tell me of a easy way to make a covering for the ribcage in this image:



You can see the curved beams, and my initial thoughts on it is that it's going to be some sort of a glass covering so that the peeps can go up on the roof to hold their winter/summer block parties or what ever it is that people living in high rise swank apartment houses actually do up on the roof.

If you're wondering why the circular windows... Originally there were going to be identical matching buildings and they were to be connected through cement and glass tubes that would run through the circular holes to each building, originally there were going to be 4 buildings in the set all connected with the tubes but once I actually put it together it looked too futuristic for the SC4 game so it was reduced back to just one building with some circular windows.

[Pat]

CB with practice and patience come good things.... I like the start of the building soo far...

[RebaLynnTS]

Don't hold back on the futurist stuff. I could use it in a CJ I want to do.

[City Builder]

Thanks for the encouragment, I was looking at this today in the 3DS program trying to figure out whether to just scrap it like I did with a few of the past designs I've been attempting (yes, Im sure many will be happy to know that the "Hospital" went by the wayside and is sitting in my recycle bin now) and then I remembered that I've seen a building similar in style to this, well, it didn't have a glass canopy on the roof but it had this octagon type holes in the center of the building, and in the center were the elevators, so when you got off on a floor and tottled out of the elevator you could walk to the wall of the building and you had a great view of the outdoors through some octagon windows that were from memory anyway, almost as large as the whole floor to ceiling.

Now if I could just find an actual picture of that building or even just remember what city I was in when I was in it.  Though from memory, Im pretty sure the real building didn't have the smaller windows that I portray but rather large glass panels, and Im pretty sure it didn't have the octagons on every single floor though I could be wrong, but for symetry I'll leave them.  Perhaps I'll two versions of it.  One with the single building and then one version with the 4 seperate buildings connected by the tubes if I can make it look right.  My previous attempt didn't work out too great, too much transparency on the glass I think, but I've also learned that since all 4 of the buildings were identical in my original idea I was wasting a whole lot of time actually designing 4 buildings (as Homer Simpson says: Doooh!), I must have wasted about 3 hours duplicating the individual panels and walls and windows for each building instead of waiting till I actually get through with the one single building and then duplicate the entire thing (again... Dooooh!).

I started to texture the building so that I could get a sence for what I was going to do with it, I did find out that texturing it in a bare cement/concrete is not the way it's going to go but thought I'd share with others how not to texture      For some reason my 3DS is laughing at me and it's taking anything that's textured and really flattening it out, and Im just not sure why that is at the moment.  In the 3ds program the texture of the concrete and that little facade decoration are highly detailed.  (whoops, forgot about linking it into my google image account, back with an image in a while).



As you can see in a direct prt scrn shot there actually is some texture to the material used but.. anyway... doesn't really matter.


So after seeing this lack luster texturing I've reverted back to the untextured version until I can actually finish the details of the building as it's too distracting looking at the bad texturing job constantly wanting to fix it instead of put the details on the building.  Plus that bronze facade detail work didn't turn out how I had actually envisioned it so I'll just save it as a seperate entity scene and maybe have the opportunity to use it on some other building in the future (or not).

[Pat]

CB that is looking real good there...

[City Builder]

Thanks Pat, I really appreciate that.

I've been trying to figure out what it is about my models that are so different than other peoples models and I think the main thing (to me anyway) is that other peoples models are very delicate looking and mind are very bulky looking, so I attempted to add just a little bit of some smaller details with this one:







I don't know if anybody else notices it or not but I've added some little detail art deco type corner pieces at the top of the roof corners (they might turn out to be some sort of lighting embelishment maybe, or maybe they're just rocket propulsion devices waiting to blast off HAHA), added a cornice (crown) to the building, added the remaining window dividers, and added in the glass panes to the circular windows.  As you can see I've gone back to the untextured building.  Im still deciding what Im going to do with the rib cage on the roof, Im thinking about just removing it as I don't really know where Im headed with it.  I really no longer have a clear picture in my mind of what it would be like yet I know that the building will need something that is specific to the building to make it stand out just a little bit.  Hmmm will have to give it some thought before I go tearing things off of it.  The facade moulding that I had in the bronze color was just too bulky.

I've also found out sadly that when I did the walls I never lined up the windows, so they arn't on the same level as the windows on the shorter walls (doooh, double doooh!) oh well, not all windows are on the same level, I had an apartment years ago that had two walls with windows on the same level and another wall with windows much higher on the wall so maybe.... sssshhhh, maybe nobody will notice right.

Anyway, Im pretty good with boxes [laugh].

[Pat]

the rib cage at top could be a place holder for the command center lol, naw really maybe a garden on top?

[RebaLynnTS]

Looks good to me, just get the texture right and it will take off

[City Builder]

Hopefully this one will be easier to texture since the walls are one large slab instead of individual levels like the L shaped building (that Im still working on, [laugh])

[RebaLynnTS]

I spend way more time on the textures than any other part of the process, and still not getting it right all the time

[City Builder]

I spend way more time on the textures than any other part of the process, and still not getting it right all the time

Yeah maybe but your stuff looks so great!