I'm a complete newb to the world of batting and Gmax and 3d modeling and textures and and and , you get the idea. So if I should continue on to produce more models then this will be where I will share them with others to get advice and feedback.
I embarrasedly share my first building, this was done with no knowledge of how anything works in the gmax and I just attempted to place things on the skin of the building, which I've found out doesn't work all that well.
This building was used for a power lot for an area where windmills looked out of place and I didn't want large power plants messing up the landscape. Had this model came out nicely I think it would have fit in well with the style of my city, oh well... Live and learn, and try to improve on the next project.
After someone kindly pointed out a url to a tutorial over at simtropolis I went through *some* of the tutorial and recreated to a certain extent what the author of the tutorial had created. I stopped about 3/4 of the way through the tutorial as I had enough brain strain for one day so I never finished the doors or windows properly and my texturing is not good, I hate the candy stripe awning out front and it's not what I had envisioned but seeing as how this was just going to be a tutorial building I didn't bother to do anything else with it. Figuring I'd concentrate on the real buildings once I got up the courage to do one.
Not wanting to throw away the time that I spent in this tutorial I decided to reuse the basic rectangular building and see if I could come up with something else for it, since it's rather bland in it's original form so ... I copied the floors and stacked them after removing the foundation boxes and created a 7 story apartment or commercial building.
I learned a great deal on the tutorial on what not to do, like all my windows are individual items so if I wish to finish them Im going to need to do them all one by one and I don't really have the patience to do that. I also learned that when I copied the entire building so that I could place it as the now *L* shaped building, I probably should have removed the extra walls and windows from the building that was inserted into the other building since it's just unnecessary polys sitting there for no reason. I also think I should have grouped the cloned building so that it would have been easier to readjust once I moved it into place as it's impossible now to select it all and slide it in or out as I like. It's pretty much stuck in place now.
The thing i learned on this model is that Im likely to be a very generic batter, but I like these simple clean lines of buildings such as this. It definitely needs more details but overall Im pleased with the way it looks.
To explain the stuff, the object on the roof is supposed to be a water tower, and the things that look lik balconys off the back of the building were originally the tutorials rear door overhangs, I forgot about them when I cloned the buildings stories and then decided instead of removing them I'll recolor them, and add support poles to it and will eventually get around to adding ballisters to them and stairs and turn them into a fire escape staircase. It may take me a while to do that as Im not proficient at doing small itsy bitsy items like a ladder staircase but eventually...
Also where you see the verticle brown columns, those were put into place not as decoration at first but rather to hide another mistake that I made. On those walls that have the brown columns were doors under neath the column, instead of having to redo those walls all over again I decided to hide them with the brown columns instead. After doing so I realized that it actually took what was a really generic building and gave it a little detail, obviously showing that more detail is better to a certain degree anyway.
Overall, Im quite pleased with this building so far and though I may not go any further with it due to the mistakes I made early on (all windows being individuals) I have certainly learned from the experience not only how to do it, but that I can do it if I wish to.
It looks like you're off to a good start. Don't worry about getting through that tutorial all at once. There is a lot there, and I expect you'll be referencing it often (I certainly did). Texturing can be a bit interesting to start wiht, but it really gets easier as you go. I'll look forward to seeing your new development.
I like the L-shaped building the most. That building is part of a genre sorely undermined in SC4: rooftop ads and signs. Good luck with this.
Well, Im pleased to say that I had enough stamina today to try to work on the windows and try to find an easy method of changing all the windows to give them some sort of pane of glass effect (not the shiny glass skyscraper kind of glass) and an easy way to fix what was there in one fell swoop and to add in those that were missing (lots of them) just don't ask me to explain how I managed it because I don't honestly remember, something about arrays, and cloning, grouping and ungrouping and some other stuff.
If nothing else it blocks the yellow floors of each story of the building from showing through the window. I think I ended up using Maxis's glass pane texture and then altered the tiling and blur on it so that it wasn't as harsh as it is on their own buildings.
Something wiped out my billboard and the building now looks very very pale, must be something I screwed with regards to the lighting. Oh well, something else to fix, at least now all the windows have some sort of pane of glass in them.
Strange that in Gmax the billboard is intact but when it renders the image, the billboard is blank. I don't know what I could have done to cause this, but it must be something.
Still looks great. I hope you figure out what went wrong with the billboard. Maybe you applied it as a texture map instead of to the actual object? I odn't know, I just can't wait for it to be released.
Gmax will sometimes loose some of the textures during rendering. I think that is what has happened here. You can solve this problem by opening the gmax material navigator and then load all your textures fresh by clicking on them individually.
Quote from: kwakelaar on January 17, 2008, 04:04:39 PM
Gmax will sometimes loose some of the textures during rendering. I think that is what has happened here. You can solve this problem by opening the gmax material navigator and then load all your textures fresh by clicking on them individually.
Thanks, I ended up reloading the one billboard texture again and now it's rendering correctly. Good to know this for the future Im sure.
By the way does anybody know how to get gmax to not show me the lighting? I mean in the below screenshot you'll notice the yellow lines, which happened after the first rendering, Im wondering if there is a way to hide this so that I don't have to view it while working on the model.
Thanks agian.
P.S. Yeah I put a "cap" on the water tower to keep the pigeons out. Im not sure if it's too "farmy" looking or if that was what they use to do, never seeing one close up, kind of hard for me to know for certain. I think though that it gives the water tower a finished look so it will probably stay regardless if it's actually area and age appropriate.
Second shot has HVAC roof junk added (Too Much?) and the water tower was scaled down a bit (too small, too big?) and of course the billboard was changed for whimsy.
To get rid of the "light lines":
In the display tab (next one to the left of the utilities tab aka where you export) on the right hand side of the screen, there is a menu called "hide by category." Uncheck (thanks RebaLynn) the box next to lights and the lines should disappear.
NOTE: In GMAX, you need to Check the box to hide the item you wish to hide.
You can probably get away with just 2 HVACs, the water tower looks great.
Thank you.
Out of curiosity, does 3DSMax work with the BAT from maxis? Is there a seperate BAT for Gmax then there is for 3DSMax or not compatible at all?
to my knowledge, the BAT only works with GMax. I believe you can export from 3dsmax, to gmax/bat, to render, but I could be wrong on that.
I have to wonder... When is detail that we try to put on our buildings a waste of time? Is there a point where anybody else says, "oh this is such small detail that it will go un noticed so I won't bother with it"?
Case in point, I decided to put rain gutters and down spouts on my current building and have the first two done, but then I looked at it in the render'er and came up with the thought that it would just go unnoticed so maybe I shouldn't bother with the rest of them.
Screenshot attached.
I even bothered to bend the downspouts at the bottom at ground level to give them a more lifelike appearance like the ones I see on all the buildings around here, but still need to work on the gutters themselves to give them a more hollowed out appearance instead of being just a block of metal. Can anybody even notice the raingutters, downspout and bent end piece?
Oh and the glass corner balcony, Im just not sure about yet, I've been tinkering with it, but I don't think it's going to stay there, but Im not 100% convinced either way. I think it's a neat architectural detail but Im not sure it's what I wanted when I started to create an L shaped building.
P.S. I believe that you are correct RebaLynnTS, and while I like my 3DSMax (the better half here bought it for college late last year and hasn't used it so I got it) it seems that it loses something or messes some things up when I export from 3dsmax to gmax so it's probably best to just stay designing in gmax to begin with for me. It's only a shame because it has many nice features that really help that arn't so far in gmax that I've noticed, they're probably there and Im just too much of a dullard to notice.
I see them perfectly. I doubt that changing them would matter in-game though. I think you just have to find your own comfort spot as far as how much detail you put into your bats. Too obsessed over it, and you'll work on one piece forever. Too relaxed, and it's generally crap. So just find your medium.
And as long as you keep your 3d files, you can always go back and update it later on, fixing anything that bugs you at that point, once you get better at doing it. Looks like you're off to a good start though.
Honestly, in the game, I have never noticed weather anyother buildings have rain gutters or not.
Quote from: RebaLynnTS on January 19, 2008, 07:56:16 AM
Honestly, in the game, I have never noticed weather anyother buildings have rain gutters or not.
I've not either, oh well, I guess it didn't hurt any to put them on there. I think I need to tackle night lighting next, but first to take a break I've been working on a new concept building that I haven't a clue what it will end up being, perhaps some form of a hospital or something along those lines:
I've spent far more time than I had planned to on this concept model, but I think Im nearing completion. I only have a few things to tidy up, place some night lighting and it will be done.
I know it's nothing compared to the detailed models that all of you 'old hands' create but I think it's not bad for a first attempt at a building all by myself without any tutorial holding my hand on this one.
I present my Hospital "Saint Patricks", it's not based on any real life building, just something out of the deep reaches of my mind. In fact if it were based on a real hospital it is quite likely that there would be more deaths occuring at the hospital due to the heliport being situated ontop of the emergency garage and so close to the front of the building, but hey, I like the way it turned out. I've decided not to 'texture' it but instead use some pastel simple colors that are in Gmax already and hopefully it won't flourese too much in the game, but if it does then I'll have to adjust it.
WoW love the hospital how its turning out and the name too... :thumbsup: &apls
but the entrance is a tad bit oversized though
Thanks, I named it after myself $%Grinno$%
Do you mean the enterance for the front door or the garage emergency opening?
I've not yet tried to plonk it down in the game so it's probably all off scale to begin with.
And finally some nightlighting for the outside of the building. It lights up the front door, and the helipad and there are two lights, one on each side of the garage emergency opening. Im not sure if I can do the windows or not due to the way that I created the model. I'll see if I can come up with some way of doing something with them.
LoL thats kewl name to have ;) my full name is Patrick as well lol.... From what I've seen and looking at the pic yes that entrance looks a little large....
Looks great. We've always needed more diversity in hospitals in the game. Thanks for fulfilling this need. Later.
Update on L shaped building: Well the nightlighting of the L shaped building has commenced finally. I've learned a few things along the way too. First, I will name any window pane that I place into the game nite_windowglass## so that if I decide to use the Maxis night window lighting I don't have all the extra work at the end when I try to lite things up. There's a lot of windows that's for certain: 10 (windows/floor) x 7 (floors) x 3 (walls) + 2 (walls) x 4 (windows) x 7 (floors) = One Hell of a LOT of windows to have to rename just to be able to choose which rooms are lit up at night! Granted Im not going to attempt to lite them all up so I don't "need" to rename them all, but I like having my choices so in case I want to change the lighting later on I don't have to guess which ones are already prefixxed with the word nite in them.
I think I may try to put a spotlight on the billboard too and see how that goes. I don't want too many lights however as with the hospital there is a nasty shadow above two of the windows and makes it look like there was a fire in that room and the smoke came out the window and I can't find the offending light or whatever it might actually be.
If Gmax had a simple way to just select all the windowglass## in the list and then add a prefix onto to them, or do a mass rename that would be grand but I don't see it.
Anyway, attached is the beginning of the night lighting of the windows.
Update on Hospital: The green is way too green in game, I may have to make a simple flat green texture and apply it to everything that's green. The yellow came out nice in game though and I've hollowed out many of the main windows on the front of the building so that the window frames and glass doesn't look so flat, and given them nite lighting though for some reason they aren't lighting up in the game, in the renderer they lite up perfectly but in the game there isn't any nightlighting on the hospital but there is on other buildings so I don't know what I did wrong, maybe I skipped a crucial step, but it seems to me that if the gmax BAT renderer lites the windows up like it's supposed to then the game would as well.
I'm sure theres a better way of doing this but it was the only way I could think of being a newb to Gmax. I saw the hospital in the game and felt that there was just too much green so I wanted to make the slanted back wall of the hospital to be the yellow color. But the main larger building is one box and I'd applied the green color to the box, so I had to draw out a plane, and adjust it's angle to be the same as the angle of the slant on the main building and then color it yellow thus in the render anyway, it makes the back of the building the yellow color and breaks up the mass green blob. But Im sure there must be a better way of taking a 4 sided box and coloring each side a different color. I'll ask if I can find the right forum for such questions on SC4D.
Oh well, maybe I'll figure something out, I might even have to scale the hospital up, as it seems a tad small for a full hospital in the game.
Well I don't know what's going on but the SC4D forum says my maximum file size is too large and the max size is 301KB but my image is only 81KB, so maybe it didn't like it with my last post, so here is what Im talking about with the smoke coming out the window of the hospital.
Your modeling skills are deffinetly improving ;) I think you need to work on the textures a bit :thumbsup:
Thanks, Im definitely no graphics artist. So I basically use what I can find on the web for free and then modify it slightly if need be. How would you change the textures on these buildings? Would it be to add more detail to the textures in the form of embellishments or to give them more of a texturized look, like stucco, or plaster or wood etc?
You should add a gradient to the walls. That will make the building looks more real.
Quote from: vester on January 20, 2008, 07:32:30 AM
You should add a gradient to the walls. That will make the building looks more real.
Okay thanks, I'll work on that and see what I can do. I find texturing much more difficult than modeling, I might create a texture and apply it to one of the boxes and it looks great from the front, but from the side the texture is askew and either squished or whatever depending on the size and squareness of the object being textured, I'll have to start reading tutorials on texturing pretty soon.
In the meantime, I've decided that the hospital looked way too small in the game compared to the other hospitals that I have and the green was way over powering so... I've scaled the size of the hospital up and tried to apply some gradient (subtle) textures, so i've done away with the green as it just doesn't look right at all in favor of a creamy yellow. While keeping in mind that this might be a building that you would see in Florida with the pastel colors. Oh and I've cut out two notches in the back wall/roof, it was just too large of a slab and not very interesting to look at, so now those cutout areas contain some roof air conditioners. Got's ta keep the simmies cool in the summer and warm in the winter 'n a hospital. But the thing to note is that Im not trying to create an ultra realistic building, this hospital is more of a cartoon type of building that I've seen around the world and in many other games, Im not going for realism here by any means. So scale is probably way off on many aspects but that's kind of what I was shooting for, something overly large and bulbous if that makes sence.
Yeah I still have a problem with the shadows on the front of the building. Not much I can really do about it. I've removed all the lights and they are still there to some degree so it must be a lighting problem that Im not prepared to tackle just yet.
Emergency-area looks too big compared to actual hospital and you could remove the helipad because it looks silly.
Anyways, keep on working both bats and do not release these until they are ready. At the moment, they are not.
Thanks, originally the emergency drive in was just supposed to be the administration wing of the hospital and I don't know what possesed me to turn it into the emergency enterance but I did. I may try to undo it and return it to the administration portion of the hospital one day, but not today.
Thanks for the reply.
Hey CB, just a note about working with 3DSMax: there is a separate BAT designed for Max, though it is not an official release. It was designed by someone over at ST and it can be used to render the building in Max. The LODs will still need to be created in gMax, but the building will look a lot better if you know how to use Max. It might be an idea to ask someone like callagrafx or blahdy, who both use BAT4Max (that's what it's called), for more detail and help with getting up and running.
Fred
Quote from: freedo50 on January 21, 2008, 06:32:34 AM
Hey CB, just a note about working with 3DSMax: there is a separate BAT designed for Max, though it is not an official release. It was designed by someone over at ST and it can be used to render the building in Max. The LODs will still need to be created in gMax, but the building will look a lot better if you know how to use Max. It might be an idea to ask someone like callagrafx or blahdy, who both use BAT4Max (that's what it's called), for more detail and help with getting up and running.
Fred
Thanks, I found it last night while over at ST. My first attempt at installing it seems to have gone fine, however Im not certain just yet if it's any easier (not that it's meant to be) to be able to create the model in max, then do the whole rigamarole of opening in Gmax, saving, then finding the file name then exporting out of 3dsmax just yet. I've got to re-read the tutorial over there on how it works as Im probably making it harder then it really needs to be. Boy howdy, how I'd love to have just a simple process of getting the model out of 3dsmax and into the game. 3DSmax is just much easier for me to work with now that I've started to do it than Gmax is for me. They're both very similar but seems that 2008 has many new or enhanced features over Gmax. Thanks again for the reply as it's jogged my memory to put the Bat4max back on my todo list for today.
Quote from: City Builder on January 20, 2008, 10:27:37 AM
Yeah I still have a problem with the shadows on the front of the building. Not much I can really do about it. I've removed all the lights and they are still there to some degree so it must be a lighting problem that Im not prepared to tackle just yet.
Those aren't shadows but an unfortunate byproduct of multiple Boolean operations in that one of the vertices has "flipped" and is creating a distorted mesh. There is no "fix" for it apart from remodelling the structure. For multiple operations using boolean, the best thing to do is to create the shape that acts as the "punch" (in this case a cube) and duplicate it until you have all the cutout shapes defined and it position. Next, select them all and right click and select "convert to editable mesh". It should be noted that it's also a wise idea to do this to the wall object too. Once you've done that, instead of using Boolean, use ProBoolean, which allows you to pick multiple objects. This should solve the face error problem.
Quote from: Krio on January 20, 2008, 11:45:57 AM
Emergency-area looks too big compared to actual hospital and you could remove the helipad because it looks silly.
Anyways, keep on working both bats and do not release these until they are ready. At the moment, they are not.
Hopefully that reads the way it does because English is not your first language...If I recall you are not long out of BATing short trousers yerself :P
Quote from: callagrafx on January 21, 2008, 07:56:57 AM
Those aren't shadows but an unfortunate byproduct of multiple Boolean operations in that one of the vertices has "flipped" and is creating a distorted mesh. There is no "fix" for it apart from remodelling the structure. For multiple operations using boolean, the best thing to do is to create the shape that acts as the "punch" (in this case a cube) and duplicate it until you have all the cutout shapes defined and it position. Next, select them all and right click and select "convert to editable mesh". It should be noted that it's also a wise idea to do this to the wall object too. Once you've done that, instead of using Boolean, use ProBoolean, which allows you to pick multiple objects. This should solve the face error problem.
WOW, what a bummer. I guess this model is trashed and will need to perhaps be created from scratch again at some future date as I can't release it with those shadows, it's just too distracting. Oh well, at least now I know how to do multiple boolean cut outs so my thanks for that.
Here's another method...have a read through
http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2877.0
What determines a landmark building or a commercial building?
I understand pretty much how the plugin manager actually works and Im thinking ahead for my L shaped building and whether it should be a landmark building or if it could just be a commercial low or medium wealth building. As I understand it, if I turn it into a commercial building then the game will (I guess) randomly build it when it's time to build a commercial (of the same wealth level) building if there is a zone large or small enough for it.
My thinking is probably along the lines of a landmark since I don't think it will ever be high quality enough to have it sprouting up all in more than one spot in the city and this allows the gamer to decide if/where he wants the building.
Is this the best approach for a building of this sort?
Then I have a cottage that I've been working on that fits in the same (well, look at the screenshot)... Woops, guess I deleted the model out of the plugins folder when I was cleaning house due to not naming my models a distinct enough name to make them easier to find. Anyway, it fits on a 2x2 lot and is rather generic looking and I think would fit in well with the maxis buildings as it's just a square box with a nice roof, and windows, and the lot is nice with a pool, shed, couple trees, driveway and a pickup truck. So I think when I saw it in game last night next to the game built smaller buildings it looked right at home. Im guessing that for the cottage, it's acceptable to make it a growable building.
Are there any set in stone rules that people are following with regards to whether they lot up their buildings as growables or ploppables?
Edit: I've been thinking about the emergency garage building in the hospital (because I was at my doctors office today which is across from the hospital locally here) and I noticed something... The parking garage for the hospital here is larger then the hospital itself. So Im really not so certain that leaving the emergency garage the size that it is, would really be all that out of line. Around us the hospitals use multi level parking garages, such like our Imax theater's parking garage is actually bigger than the Imax theater itself.
I think if anything, making the windows smaller on the hospital would make it appear that the hospital has more rooms, and thus is much larger then the way it is now. Not that it really matters since the model is trashed due to the boolean fiasco, but if I rebuild it at some point in time, I don't really think it's that out of line to have a parking/emergency garage as large as I made it. But when you try to put everything into scale, let's face it... Place a pickup truck in the lot editor next to a building such as the hospitals emergency garage opening and you might be able to get 8 trucks inside comfortably on one level, so it's not like it's really scale in the game on many buildings (all just my opinion, mind you.)
Thanks for reading everybody, thanks for the advise and lessons and tutorials and thanks for the community, it's a pleasant place to hang out.
I like it, but it's not quite ready yet. For instance, that emergency area is huge, there is by no means need for a door which looks to be at least 10 meters wide. That helipad could need some adjustments too, as you probably understand yourself, it does look pretty silly otherwise, it's allright for a starter, all though i must agree with Krio on this one. Don't release it quite yet. Because at the moment, it is not ready for a release.
Quote from: City Builder on January 21, 2008, 12:00:00 PM
What determines a landmark building or a commercial building?
...
Are there any set in stone rules that people are following with regards to whether they lot up their buildings as growables or ploppables?
I don't think there is any rule on that subject besides the fact that some buildings are 'unique' or 'civics'. Unique is what I qualify a building to be a landmark, and most of time it can be made as a reward ( more indepth modding knowledge needed ). Others things with a specific purpose will be done using the appropriate SC4 category ( hospital, trainstation etc.. )
This is of course a matter of play. I usually take any plopable landmark that I like to a corresponding growable when applicable. just because I hate plopping things. but there are lot of other players who do love plop things to better match their vision
Quote from: wouanagaine on January 21, 2008, 02:17:30 PM
there are lot of other players who do love plop things to better match their vision
Yours truly.
That L-shaped building is great. I think that the textures are too bright, but it is a really lovely model. Please finish it, I think it is very good considering your experience... I'd use it, and I'm very very picky.
Quote from: callagrafx on January 21, 2008, 07:56:57 AM
Those aren't shadows but an unfortunate byproduct of multiple Boolean operations in that one of the vertices has "flipped" and is creating a distorted mesh. There is no "fix" for it apart from remodelling the structure. For multiple operations using boolean, the best thing to do is to create the shape that acts as the "punch" (in this case a cube) and duplicate it until you have all the cutout shapes defined and it position. Next, select them all and right click and select "convert to editable mesh". It should be noted that it's also a wise idea to do this to the wall object too. Once you've done that, instead of using Boolean, use ProBoolean, which allows you to pick multiple objects. This should solve the face error problem.
Hopefully that reads the way it does because English is not your first language...If I recall you are not long out of BATing short trousers yerself :P
Hi callagrafx, where is this "ProBoolean" located? Is it only in 3dsmax or is it hidden away somewhere in Gmax? I'm gonna guess it's only in 3DSMax as it's out in the open there and obviously theres a whole lot more choices in 3DSMax, so I guess I'm gonna have to design in 3dsmax and then export the model unless it's hidden away somewhere in Gmax too.
Actually you can export to the game using 3DSMax. There is a ported script located here:
http://www.simtropolis.com/modding/index.cfm?p=details&id=374
You will probably need to reinstall 3DSMax 9 to the following c:\3dsmax9 rather than the default directory as it has spaces in the names, which causes one of the conversion programs to error.
Download the file and install, following the instructions carefully, as it can be a bit tricky. Also, the line that tells you to change the 3dsmax.ini file is now outdated, as this file is located in a hidden folder (which can be made viewable by changing the folder options in Windows) C:\Documents and Settings\<user>Local Settings\Application Data\Autodesk\3dsmax\9 - 32bit\enu
It is, however, not for the faint-hearted and is a bit of headache to set up, but if you follow the instructions it should work.
Im pleased you brought this up... I tried this the other day and misread the instructions on how to use it. I thought (maybe I wasn't actually thinking) that I had to create the LOD's in Max, then export all of the model *except* the LOD's to the 3ds file, then open Gmax, import the 3ds file, render it (which takes forever and a day), then find the file name in the plugins folder, put that into Max's output file name and render it again, this time in Max. In reality I only needed to export the LOD files from MAX to Gmax, then render the LOD files one time, find the name plug it into Max and render in there which seems much faster too me.
But now I do have a problem with Max... When I use the Render command (the one at the top of the screen, see screenshots) I get some dialog boxes and finally a failed to overwrite file. Don't know what that's all about as when I use to hit the F10 key in Max, it would allow me to render a view of how my model will look. As you can see in the third screenshot, the "Preview" of the tools for Bat4Max V2 is grayed out so I'm guessing that's never been finished and likely never will since the software is dated like 2004 or something like that.
Any suggestions on why it's trying to overwrite a file when I try to use Max's Renderer as seen in screenies 1 and 2?
Going back to Plopable VS growable ... in a situation where either would be ok, I generally make both, and give the user the choice of which to use.
The error occurs when you try and render the scene after exporting the model as a BAT...The script uses the file save option but because it's scripted rather than manually input it doesn't have a filename...If you look at the error the path is shown but not an actual filename...the solution is to exit and restart Max. On that note, it's best to save the file before copy/pasting the sc4model filename and exporting, otherwise this info gets embedded and can cause ID problems. If you've saved the file after pasting the name in, I recommend you merge the model into a new scene.
As for the greyed out sections, yep, those are disabled, non functional buttons, legacy from the BAT script for GMAX (which was the basis of BAT4Max).
Hey, thanks for that information, it is appreciated.
Okay, I think I've taken my L shape building as far as I can. I've listened to some suggestions and I've darkened up the textures substantially as well as added some "stucco" type of texture to the brown to give it more depth. I've rescaled the HVAC boxes on the roof, I've added a roof top access door, I've added ladders to the rear fire escape levels, I've finished adding the rain gutters (which by the way show up rather nicely in the game I think), and I've just tidy'ed up some loose ends and just don't really see any more to do be done to make me happy with it at this time.
So with that said, if anyone has further suggestions on my L shaped building please let me know. I will just say though before anybody complains about it... On the side of the building is the numbers 9000. I did this for my own satisfaction as when I was a child my biological father worked in the 9000 sunset blvd building (which looks nothing like this one, but which had big bold white letters on the building announcing to the world that it was "9000 sunset blvd") and so it's my little tribute to him as this will be the 30th year of his passing come next month so if you don't like having the numbers on it, don't use it I guess. Hell, I created it for myself as a challenge to prove that I could do a whole building just because I wanted to see if I could do it so.... If people don't like it they don't have to use it, and those that do can.
So any further suggestions for it, let me know and I'll see if I can do it.
Oh... The night lighting isn't working for some reason. I renamed the window pane textures with the nite prefix like "nitewindowpane326" etc and they show up as lit up in the BAT renderer but for some reason in the game they don't lite up. Unless someone knows how to fix that I don't suspect theres much I can do with that problem.
I think the textures could still use a bit of grittiness...
I like the model a lot.
Im stumped how to even start to make them gritty.
Are the textures large and not repeated or repeated? If it is UV mapped I can probably help you out...
I think they are repeated, attached is the stucco that I use for the main walls of the building:
Still suprises me how much the renderer lightens up the textures.
From the looks of it that covers very little area of the model. Is it possible to layer textures so as to add a grungy layer?
Quote from: flame1396 on January 22, 2008, 07:07:09 PM
From the looks of it that covers very little area of the model. Is it possible to layer textures so as to add a grungy layer?
Not in Gmax..the texture editor is rudimentary at best. The only way to dirty it up would be in a paint package like Photoshop, but you'd have to create a texture that was the same size as the entire wall so there are no repeats.
edit: I've played with the base texture and dirtyed it up somewhat, see if it works for you (making sure you change the UV map to 1, 1, 1 or no repeats)
CB i cant wait to see how you use the new texture....
I don't think this worked right, in other words Im a total newb remember.
Callagrafx, Im not sure what you mean by making the UV map to 1,1,1 or no repeats. I applied the texture to the walls and just adjusted them to get what I thought was the best visual effects because it's quite likely that I've layed out the walls improperly to begin with, maybe I went north when I created them instead of going east or something like that.
Anyway, I think in this preview and because the walls are broken up and not one solid item (broken up by the darker brown ledges) then texturing with your texture (which is very very nice, so thank you) really doesn't get to be seen and it just looks brown.
I've also found out that while the BAT renderer seems to lighten up textures, on my computer when in game they are almost as dark as the original textures that I use. Maybe I need to recalibrate my monitor one of these days.
Anyway the attached image is using the grunge texture but as you can see theres not any difference that I can discern, but maybe I just don't see the finer details. I do think it's a tad shade darker though. Im re-rendering the building now to see how it turns out in game, seems to me that the game for me renders things darker then the BAT renderer does.
I did change a few things though, like the roof texture is now using a gray pebble type of texture instead of the tan as I was really annoyed with the repeating tiles of the tan texture which made the roof look like it had 4x8 sheets of plywood on the roof, and I changed the top of the balcony's roof to be the same texture as the roof and finished the rain gutters around it, as well as the roof ledge to add uniformity. I also changed the roof access box, the old one was too small and in real life if you had one like it use to be you'd open the door and just fall down a shaft with this one it's been made a bit longer to simulate the possibility of there being stairs inside there. I also got rid of an annoying spotlight that I had forgotten was placed and was shining a circle of light on the roof.
Just thought I'd show how it looks in the game, and boy does it get dark in the game compared to Gmax and the renderings.
First screen is how it looks in the lot editor, 2nd screen is the building in the game (obviously).
And here something I've been tinkering with today.
I'm sure other LOTers can provide more feedback on the actual LOT, but first impressions are that the LOT is way too big for the type of building...a 7x3 LOT is the equivalent of 112m x 48m
I think it's actually ony 6x4, the parks at one end of the lot aren't part of the lot. I could easily remove the front two rows and make it a 4x4 lot which I've been toying with as the front two rows look empty as I couldn't find anything in all the multitude of dependency files to use so they just stayed green. Actually, just getting rid of one row would help I think since theres only the faux roads on the first row of tiles it wouldn't be any harm to get rid of it all together. There used to be some other junk on those tiles but I didn't like the way it looked.
I haven't posted in here yet, but I have been following your incredible fast learning curve. I am very impressed by your residential building. This has potential.
I have some suggestions. Maybe the roof could be a different texture, something that was a little darker, dirtier maybe.
The brick texture doesn't stand out enough, it almost looks like a solid colour. Also could you try to do some becony junk, they look very bare.
As for the LOT, I like the first pic, it looks like that LOT is 4x4, this one is perfect. But the other LOT, 7x4, I think is way too big.
Great work and I will continue you to follow this closely.
&apls &apls
Robin :thumbsup:
Quote from: rooker1 on January 24, 2008, 05:51:10 AM
I haven't posted in here yet, but I have been following your incredible fast learning curve. I am very impressed by your residential building. This has potential.
I have some suggestions. Maybe the roof could be a different texture, something that was a little darker, dirtier maybe.
The brick texture doesn't stand out enough, it almost looks like a solid colour. Also could you try to do some becony junk, they look very bare.
As for the LOT, I like the first pic, it looks like that LOT is 4x4, this one is perfect. But the other LOT, 7x4, I think is way too big.
Great work and I will continue you to follow this closely.
&apls &apls
Robin :thumbsup:
Hi Robin, thanks for the comments and suggestions. I agree I too would like to change the roof texture to be a bit more grimey looking. Ummm, I don't think there is any brick in the textures, the walls are what callgrafx posted for me above in this thread, and the dividers between the floors are a dark mahogony texture. Hmmmm brick, that might be interesting, after all the buildings already got that squared off look so brick might be a natural for it and I've lots of brick textures laying around to try out on it. I'll have to see if the way that I built the model will accomodate a brick texture, sometimes those side shots get that odd ball look of a squished texture.
Good suggestion on balcony junk, I really like that idea, maybe a bicycle, potted plants, clothes on a line etc.
When I finally do Lot it up for the public (if that time ever does come) then I'll make two of the lots, the 4x4 and the current 6x4. I have the 6x4 in my game and love the size of it, and I think it looks pretty good once the trees have grown to full size (I hope they will grow to full size and not stay small, they are flora trees). I attached an old pic above of the lot when it was 4x4, that building was the "old" model (haha) but yeah, I can see how some people would rather have a smaller lot, something that the building takes up most of the lot, so I'll just do both of them.
Thanks again for the comments.
Well, since I couldn't sleep I decided to try to alter it incorporating some balcony junk, a different more gritty roof textures, and brick walls.
The result can be seen in the screenshot below.
1. You'll notice in the screenshot I have 4 mini images, the thing to note is the one marked "INSIDE GMAX" shows how I thought the roof texture would turn out, it seems much more gritty, dirty and texturized then the either the day or night renderings, I guess even on High quality a good bit of detail is actually lost. I've also shown in the 4th mini screen the brick texture close up on one of the walls, which I happen to find quite pleasing, however in the renderings (and possibly the game too) I think it's rather hard to tell that it's even bricks. Any suggestions on how to compensate for these problems I'd love to hear it.
No, I didn't overwrite the original, I saved this one with a different name so I can always work on the non brick, cleaner version if i should choose to keep going that route.
The other thing you'll notice is that I attempted to create some balcony junk, but with the way the balcony is with a roofline at each floor it's very very difficult to create anything that fits and can be seen that would be recogonizable, so I attempted to create a few things, the first floor has some moving boxes on it, the next level or two has a couple of potted plants (at least that's what they are supposed to be) and the colorful looking thing is supposed to be a rug believe it or not. I know that a lot of little stuff becomes almost unrecognizable in the game so there was little point in my creating ultra realistic looking flowerpot or leaves and I felt what I did was probably going to do pretty well to represent the flowerpot and flowers in the game but I'll have to do a final render and LOT it up to be certain on that.
So, any suggestions on how to make the bricks more brick like when the renderer happens and puts the view to Z5 camera mode? Seems to me that on that far zoom it's just going to look like the color of the bricks with little definition. But maybe there is a trick to working with bricks.
Oh yeah, and again, while the Gmax/BAT renderer shows the night windows lit up, for some reason in the game this building's windows don't lite up at all. Not sure why in the render the windows lite up like I designed them to but in the game they don't. Most other buildings in my game light up the windows at night so I don't think it's like Im missing a patch or something like that...
This is getting better, IMHO. The belcony junk doesn't have to be recongnizable, just something there is good enough and I like the way it is except for the green rug. That's gotta go or change the colour. And the brick textures and the roof textures are not that bad, maybe just make them darker.
Robin &apls
Apparently on High quality render the rendere does a whole lot of smoothing to the image, in draft mode the roof texture turns out much more like what I see in Gmax. Hmmm, maybe I'll have to do the final renders in Draft, or low.
No, it doesn't look good now. Now it's too pexelated (if that's a word ??? ) I like the other ones much better.
Robin ;)
Okay I just thought of something. Maybe while trying to darken up the roof textures I can just add more contrast to it, that might bring out more of the grittyness of it to try to compensate for the smoothing that happens.
Well here is half of the roof darkened up and with more contrast rendered on high settings. Maybe it's too dark now, I know I've read many people say that colors flourese in the game but I don't know if that's just certain colors I think I've noticed that colors darken up when they get into the game maybe. Anyway...
there we go that looks alot better then the last one....
Cool. I'm just waiting on the rendering now, only up to 27% (aack) then I'll be able to see what it looks like in the game. I swapped both roof planes to use the darker texture which gives the whole building a more gritty look in my opinion, I also came up with a few more balcony junk, did a mosaic table and two wooden chairs (though only one is visible at a time due to the angles), rescaled one of the flower pots to make it larger for a different balcony level, changed the colors of the flowers to make it individual etc. I had added a weight machine (think roboflex or whatever they are called) but when it's small enough to fit on the balcony theres no way to even have a clue as to what it is, and it was 75,000 polys so not worth it to me. Oh and I just completely removed the outdoor rug, I don't think people would understand that it was a rug, they'd likely think that something went wrong when creating the building LOL.
It sure has gone through some changes since it was just a little tutorial building to what it is now. So, anyway once the rendering is done I'll post some screens hopefully it will be to the majoritys likings.
CB, great job! This stuff can be fun.
Well, here it is in game. It's a screenie of a side by side shot, the old building and the new darker roofed brick building.
Now, maybe someone here can tell me about a problem while trying to render in 3dsmax...
I followed the instructions and exported the LOD files, and created the model file in Gmax with the exported LOD files. I then render the model file in 3DSMax and it tells me that it exported just fine. When I try to place the building on a lot in the lot editor Im shown a box of colors, a multi colored box instead of the building. Can anybody tell me what is causing this and what to do to fix it so that I can start using 3dsmax to do my buildings.
Thanks,
Well, I think I've gone as far as I can with the L shaped building so I started on a tower, which got totally trashed when trying to texture it and add details to it so I gave up on it and started on a new tower (screenshot below).
Right now it's still just a work in progress and needs tons of details, textures and "fixing up" of things, such as the glass's reflections Im not happy at all with. It's sort of too opaque I think but I've not stumbled upon the right combination of settings to get rid of that yet.
So anyway, Im listening to suggestions on how to improve this building, I know it looks rather plain jane but so do the real life buildings that I was originally using as a model for which to model these buildings (second screenshot).
Ummm, need not say it but... Yeah I've not done the windows on the other two sides of the building, so that should take me a couple hours to try to remember how I did the punchouts and lay everything the way that it is. I still have the punchout box templates however so it should just be lining it up and pro booleaning out some holes then laying in the glass and cross hatching strips. Of course roof junk will come too, Im thinking a tower of some sort, satellite dishes etc. I don't know whats on the original buildings but there isnt a tower than can be seen but that's okay, artistic license and all that.
that looks good there CB i wish i could offer you anything else for tidbits but im dumb when it comes to bat and all that, Im a lotter and somewhat modding lol....
I started out just playing the Game, then downloading new stuff, now I am making it, and getting better all the time.
It is only through making stuff that we can get better at doing it. Heck I already laugh when I look into one of my cities and see my "Deacons Power Supply Co" building sitting there (same one that is in the first post or two of this thread) in my game and it just makes me chuckle to realize how much I really struggled on that model (if you can really call it that) and just how far I've come in a very short period of time at least if not in the execution, at least with the technical know how to do it better now.
My entire extent of 3d modeling was when BAT was first released and I opened up Gmax, poked around in it for about 5 minutes and said, "No way Jose", this aint for me, and the next time I reinstalled it and started playing with it was just last week when I did that first power supply company model. It's wonderful to see these threads from people that start out like me with little to no knowledge of how to do this and watch them progress, I only wish more people would post their first model regardless if it's crap or not, because it makes it interesting to see how they progress.
Quote from: City Builder on January 24, 2008, 02:35:04 PM
Well, here it is in game. It's a screenie of a side by side shot, the old building and the new darker roofed brick building.
Now, maybe someone here can tell me about a problem while trying to render in 3dsmax...
I followed the instructions and exported the LOD files, and created the model file in Gmax with the exported LOD files. I then render the model file in 3DSMax and it tells me that it exported just fine. When I try to place the building on a lot in the lot editor Im shown a box of colors, a multi colored box instead of the building. Can anybody tell me what is causing this and what to do to fix it so that I can start using 3dsmax to do my buildings.
Thanks,
Your problem is one of ID conflicts...It occurs when you
re-render a building. To avoid conflicts, simply delete the old .sc4model and .desc file, re-export the LODs, copy/paste the new model name and re-render. You may, if the export window still has the name of the old model in it, have to merge the model into a new scene, resave and then re-export. The TGI (Type Group Instance) that forms the filename and the texture reference is derived from a number of different sources, one of which being the computer clock, so the TGI will always be different every time you export.
Great work CB but your building has to be wider if you want it to look like the RL one-I think so anyway :-\
You mean the twin towers building needs to be wider right?
I noticed that too and I don't know what happend but when I was initially creating the building I couldn't get the width to go any higher than 79.8mm so I "thought" I had reached some kind of limitation in the program only to find out much later on that I could have created the items that make up the width substantially wider and 79.8m is barely a drop in the wideness bucket but by then it was too late as I didn't feel like starting over again on this one. So... I guess it will just have to be twin towers from my mind.
Also found a great plugin for (free) 3DSmax called Color Correct that allows me to adjust the hue and RGB values and much more right inside of 3ds which makes darkening up textures or adding contrast etc much faster and easier, of course now I've got to actually do texturing right which it appears I've got a lot to learn in that.
Oh, the towers are going to be a concrete color/texture eventually , not this brown color. And the doors are not to scale nor are they staying. The two boxes at the front of the base will eventually become the garage openings and I'll just pretend (hey, this is a game right?) that the only entrance to the buildings is through the garage.
Getting the texture and color just right is a real challenge. Trust me, I know.
I believe you, I've been struggling with it ever since.... Well, last week anyway. :P
It's great that I learn something new on each model. On this model I learned that I should have built the walls as one solid object and punched holes where I need them, it would have made everything line up perfectly and given it a totally smooth surface as well as been easier to texture with a gradient (which I may still redo this one since I enjoyed playing with it so far) on one large wall surface since when it's broken down to components it's near impossible for me to keep a texture flowing the way that I want it to be.
Quote from: City Builder on January 27, 2008, 01:29:21 PM
I believe you, I've been struggling with it ever since.... Well, last week anyway. :P
It's great that I learn something new on each model. On this model I learned that I should have built the walls as one solid object and punched holes where I need them, it would have made everything line up perfectly and given it a totally smooth surface as well as been easier to texture with a gradient (which I may still redo this one since I enjoyed playing with it so far) on one large wall surface since when it's broken down to components it's near impossible for me to keep a texture flowing the way that I want it to be.
Simply select all the walls group together and assign a UV Map that covers the entire wall, then the single texture will be seamless and the gradient can be applied.
Thanks, I had no idea, I think that's super, I just tried it and got some interesting output, none of which I'll bother sharing but makes for interesting possibilities in the future.
Anyway, here is the original width that I had in mind when creating these buildings and I may just have to start over with it, as I like it far better, just looks nicer to me. (obviously Im talking about the building on the left.)
I will never try another diagonal slanty type of building again, that's for dern sure. Math is not my strong point so this was a whole lot of visually trying to line things up instead of using protractors etc to get all the angles and I'd dare say that in my opinion, these non-boxed type of buildings are best left up to the expert batters
After spending quite a few more hours trying to do my twin CC towers I finally came to the realization that I really didn't like the way it was turning out. I like the buildings very much for what they are but trying to place them together and create some sort of base for it wasn't floating my boat so I dumped it. I stripped the buildings apart (after saving them) and figure if theres anything usefull in there I'll merge it in with a future project.
But I started playing with just a single version of the building this morning and decided to create "SimTelco", still have plenty of texturing to do but Im not going "grunge" with this one, This is a new building in town so it's likely to be somewhat cleaner than the rest and the inhabitants of it take really good care of it so it's windows are cleaned regularly and it's roof is swept. ???
Yeah I think (keyword, think) that it's going to be raised above the ground on those pedestals, they may get tweaked a bit but I like the idea of it since it's rather funky. Only a shame that I can't get stuff to go underneath it in the Lot Editor like cars etc, instead I'd have to put them into the model file instead and I don't really want to do it, though I might. Maybe have an under building parking lot or something like that.
Well the color sure did shift on the SimTelco building once it made it into the game and here it is. Let me know of ideas for improvements, if possible I'll try to implement them within reason and within my skill range.
I do like the way raising the building up on the stilts allowed me to park cars under neath it. A building with this many offices surely has need for more than one little 12 slotted parking lot like I've seen in many lots, I was also under the impression that you can't place things under the building and have them show up but they show up fine here.
The windows are still my challenging point. Even using a targeted directional light pointed at the sides of the building and naming it nitelite_spot01 etc and excluding everthing except the windows still doesn't show up in my game, yet other peopls custom content lights up fine. Also I've got to rebuild one more time for the windows as I made them too translucent to try to make them appear whiter at night instead of a glowing blue, but now in the daytime they are completely transparent so that needs to be changed.
Thanks,
Some other shots
Thats looking real intresting there CB...
Quote from: City Builder on January 29, 2008, 07:59:16 AM
The windows are still my challenging point. Even using a targeted directional light pointed at the sides of the building and naming it nitelite_spot01 etc and excluding everthing except the windows still doesn't show up in my game, yet other peopls custom content lights up fine. Also I've got to rebuild one more time for the windows as I made them too translucent to try to make them appear whiter at night instead of a glowing blue, but now in the daytime they are completely transparent so that needs to be changed.
If the windows are transparent at night they will not reflect the light that's being thrown at them...and as you've excluded the interior from the light, it will not be visible either. Just make the windows non-transparent but add a sky bitmap to the environment setting and make the window material reflection map "raytraced" but set the amount to around 20. This will reflect the sky environment onto the windows just enough to add interest but won't really interfere with the nitewindows.
Also, be sure you have set your main building to consume power, I believe at least 10 is required for lights to work.
One night in a rage of disgust I decided to release my country cottage which wasn't much of a cottage at all and more of just a small boxy house like I've seen in my neighborhood when I lived up in the mountains over on simtropolis. I didn't take much time at all to do the lotting and just slapped it down onto a lot and made it a landmark. Along came Nexis who relotted it (and made it look more distinct by doing so) and I guess turned it into a growable lot.
The cottage model can be seen earlier in this thread somewhere but you can get the final lotting on simtropolis from : http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=19316&v=1 and get the model file from here: http://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=19291
Download the first link first, then download the second links contents and only extract the sc4model file into the same folder that you extracted the first links contents and the lot will appear in game.
P.S. In case I need to mention it, my "cottage" is the white building on the left in the first image.
Things I learned on this BAT... Roofs should overhang the walls of the buildings a bit to look right. On this BAT I fudged it and added some roof rain gutters which gave it just enough overhang to look like it should IMO, the brick chimney was an after thought because I didn't like the amount of windows that I put on the lot so the chimney was used to cover up one of the windows instead of having to redesign the whole wall.
Edit Turns out I never did show you all my little country cottage in this thread. Probably never thought it was worth showing so when 3DSMax is done rendering my sim telco I'll have to upload a screenie of it in the max program.
That isn't a bad BAT at all. It fits in quite well with the game... the scale seems to be about right, anyway.
I've had to give up :'( on the sim telco bat (it's the triangular shaped one) as the angles are just too wonky after I tried making some adjustments to it so I did what I do best and I grouped many of the components and saved them individually to use later on my next project which brings me to my next box style 70's era building.
And an image of the whole building as it currently is.
Im looking to add some detail to it, but Im not sure what kind of detail to add to it just yet. I'm one of those people that like the traditional concrete rectangular buildings but i know that many people like to see buildings with a great deal of detail to them.
CB ... don't get caught up in trying to please everyone, you can't. Make the stuff you like, and just do it the very best you can.
I've decided that I need to start over and start smaller. Im finding that Im really not ready for these larger buildings just yet, I guess baby steps are in order here.
So I searched out to try to find a rural'esque type of farming building and found one that I like then spent some time trying to model it up. The textures are certainly not final nor is the model for that point. Hmmm seems none of my models are final nor ever done, hmmm go figure.
Anyway.... You can see the original building on the plane behind the model (duh :D )
As you can tell, it took me about 2 hours to put this together, I think if I had more patience they might come out better. I can't quite figure out on the original whether the walls are boards, like siding in red or just worn out deep red/brown paint on the original building. Hence why I used the brown grunge texture for my walls which Im not really liking though I am liking the grungyness of the texture but since there are so many different wall pieces they show up the individual texture on each one making it looked chopped up when it should flow from bottom to top. Not quite sure what to do, to fix that. I've tried choosing all three wall pieces on the front of the building and applying a uvw map then applying the texture but it still choped them up and applied the texture individually to each piece.
Edit: After looking at it with fresh eyes this morning, I now see that it's not proportionally correct. I think the height is okay, but the main portion of the big building should be as wide as it is long, so it's basically too narrow. Oh well, live and learn, maybe I can fix that without re-doing the entire model.
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg228.imageshack.us%2Fimg228%2F919%2Falbertawheatfieldbuildivq7.jpg&hash=9f3a0bec8c89a288116eb8bc60756f8c47db6b0b)
(https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/proxy.php?request=http%3A%2F%2Fimg228.imageshack.us%2Fimg228%2F5852%2Falbertawheatfieldbuildisk6.jpg&hash=fee73f1692bb156daa25dc5b52f8af922dbdd572)
The second image I was trying out some wood siding but I really don't like the way the angles mess up the lines of the boards and make them all wonky, so I don't think I will go with wood siding for the moment. Many BAT's that I've seen on different exchanges that use wood siding have the same situation where the lines of the individual boards get messed up by the angles that the BAT creates for the game of the building.
Edit: Since I feel quite guilty uploading my images to SC4D, I've uploaded them to imageshack and hotlinked them here instead. I don't want to be sucking up SC4D's bandwidth for my little "works of art" :D Especially since I have the tendancy to show a new image everytime I do some small little thing that I might be pleased with.
Personally, I think the wood siding is amazing.
No matter how much I'd like to take credit for that texture I can't since it's not my work. My only work with it is to put the words stamped onto it for the one wall, and I don't actually recall where I got the texture, I found it on the deep recesses of my hard drive but of course that could mean I downloaded it just yesterday too :D
Anyway, I took the cheaters way out and used the stretching tool in max to widen up the building a bit which widened the windows a tad but I don't think it's that bad and when it makes it into the game I don't think it will be all that noticible really. Now I've got to figure out how to make it a wheat farm building so that it grows with a wheat field.
I also did some refinement on the odd contraption near the front corner of the building and made it a bit smaller, and added hand rails and a ladder as seen (I think) in the original photo of it. It seems Im always designing very bulky items and then later trying to refine them down to make them a bit more ... well, refined.
The more I look at the original photo I have a feeling that the original building might be constructed out of some sort of cement or stone blocks, I've seen these blocks before at the local home depot, they are sort of like cynder blocks except they are smooth, and sort of rounded on the sides and a bit smaller than the traditional cynderblocks that are used in todays cheapy 1 story apartment construction used in the less affluent areas where I live.
I still need to insert some window glass though since I have no plans to light this model up at night (after all, it's a barn of some sort so not likely to have people working in it at night) so I may just leave them vacant since after angles, window glass is not my strong point either and since the nite lights don't work properly with 3dsmax and I don't like the effect that shining a targeted direct light and excluding all other objects 'cept the pane of glass on creates so it might just be a waste of time to do it.
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So... What have I learned so far on this model?
1. No matter how much I'm feeling lazy, I really can't chintz out or cheat on the model and it will show. The small gable roof at the bottom of the model, the one that has the door under it and the two fence railings below it, I took the cheaters way out. The gable type roof was orginally a box I believe that I grabbed up some poly-Annas and bunched them together to make a peak, not thinking ahead to what I was going to do for the roof texture. After realizing my mistake in doing so and not wanting to have to actually design walls for it since angles are not my fortay, I detached the two faces on the angle part of the box and moved them forward to give them an overhang. The problem in this is that it makes them paper thin and I see now way of extruding them at this point and don't really want to do it all over again just so that I can thicken up that small roof panels, next time I'll try not to take the cheaters way out.
2. I was wrong in my post (was it this one or the one before?) where I said I applied a uvw map to the entire side of the barn and applied the grungy brown texture and it wasn't working right. I hadn't done that at all and that's why it came out in panels. Once I selected all of the panels and applied the uvw map and then the texture it all flowed together as if one giant piece of good browness.
3. I learned a relatively easy way to make the roof panels with the angles but the angle thing is still not my friend and the roofs were a right pain in the butt trying to get them to line up properly with each other and I had to grab some edges of them and push and pull them until they lined up properly.
4. I don't need to create a floor inside of the building if it's not going to be seen through a window, and it's a waste of time to do so if nobody can see it.
5. Many finer details get lost in the game and just become some colored pixels so theres little point in putting them in there since I don't design my models to be award winning models in the model form but only design them to get them into the game. That's not to say that all details get lost, but the smaller ones seem to.
6. I need to pay more attention to the proportions of the building that Im working on and not wait till the end to scrutinize it as stretching the model is not the best option by any means, and will create a bit more work to unstretch certain parts that get way out of whack from stretching the entire model. Case in point (though really simple and easy) is the chimney stack on the front roof line, when the building was stretched wider, so was the chimney stack and it was not longer round but now eliptical, so it had to be adjusted back to round. Theres far more that would need to be adjusted back if I really felt that it would be noticed in the game but I really don't.
I really think you should consider doing 2 versions, one with the wood siding, and one with stone or brick.
I've got nothing but time on my hands today so I might try to do it in stone or brick to see how it turns out. Though Im not a big fan of brick buildings in the game as the lines of the bricks on the angled walls seem to go all wonky and get pixelated to where the lines are no longer straight. But I'll try it out as I just downloaded about 50 different brick textures so one of them might be a good candidate to work with.
Wish I could offer some advice on that problem.
Brick. The bane of all existance. It is the cause of all that is most evil in the world. :angrymore: :D
I think brick textures might be one of the most difficult to work with. If they aren't looking terribly tiled, then they are making awful moire patterns, make the bricks more in proportion to the building at hand and it makes those issues even worse. Make the bricks larger and it reduces those two issues but then the bricks are huge and would have taken a team of construction workers to lift each brick into place $%Grinno$%
Oh goody, I can now link photos from my Google Picasa album so that I can permanantly store them online instead of using imageshack. :)
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Anyway, it's that tiling effect that sort of bothers me, and Im really not sure what can be done about it other than to create a really huge texture file and make every single brick different so that it doesn't get that effect but man, that would seem to me to be a huge undertaking.
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This image uses a substantially larger brick texture to try to combat tiling and moire effects and as mentioned it would take a team of workers to lift each brick in place but once inside of the game it may not be nearly as noticible since the game does such wonky stuff with angles and patterns with textures like brick textures (at least I think it does)
Can you say woops! The thing is 4 squares long and 4 squares wide in total, (ummm, math no good... 64x64 feet?) That seems a bit large for a farm building in the game.
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Yup, when placed near to those single family dwellings this must be Dr Evils lair. It's just massive. Boy is it going to lose a lot of detail when shrunk down to a more appropriate size.
In SimCity, each tile is 16 meters x 16 meters (approximately 52' x 52') making your lot 208' x 208' (A meter is rounghly 3.2 feet)
Thanks for the correction, yeah I was thinking in feet instead of meters with regards to the grid.
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.
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Can anybody tell me what I need to do to make this a growable agricultural lot?
There is a tutorial on making farm lots, just can't remember where right now.
BTW, have you seen my latest update?
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....
Try reading my Guide to creating custom content (http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=307.0) as that takes you through the stages of making a working lot from model to finished lot.
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:
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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.
CB with practice and patience come good things.... I like the start of the building soo far...
Don't hold back on the futurist stuff. I could use it in a CJ I want to do.
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 :'( :D 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).
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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.
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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).
CB that is looking real good there...
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:
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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].
the rib cage at top could be a place holder for the command center lol, naw really maybe a garden on top?
Looks good to me, just get the texture right and it will take off :)
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])
I spend way more time on the textures than any other part of the process, and still not getting it right all the time :)
Quote from: RebaLynnTS on February 13, 2008, 04:20:28 PM
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! :thumbsup: