autoVino's bat projects

[Heblem]

Thats a great building, buildings like that are great at open spaces with gardens, etc

[Pat]

Looking good there auto and I would venture to say Govermental building at the size and shape of it....

[zero7]

When I looked at it my first thought was pharmaceutical company, but the offices of some arm of government works as well (Department of Spin, Statistical Manipulation and Outright Lies    )

Nicely shaped building.  Should look extremely good as it gains detail.

[autoVino]

thanks :-p
After a nice vacation, here is some more work:

[TopCliff]

It looks like two things to me: either some generic 80's bank building, or the kinid of building in a sci-fi movie where everything goes horribly wrong. It doesn't matter which, I'd still DL it the moment it's released.

[autoVino]

[Howling]

Wow that's starting to look fantastic! I can imagine seeing that building on the shores of Lake Michigan or near the beaches of Florida! 

[autoVino]

thanks for the comment!  Unfortunatly, things are getting hectic in life right now so batting has tacken a pause... 

[Pat]

Jasoncw said it was too yellow, so I did another endering:

original

I think it looks much better imho.
I think I'm getting pretty close. 

Hey Auto I agree that the coloring looks much better and btw what has happend to that building?  Im really loving the progress here on this newest building, keep up the hard work!!!!

[metasmurf]

I love this building. Any change of it popping up on the lex soon? 

[autoVino]

still working on it, I just need some time to create a new uvw unwrap for night mapping... which somehow got lost? 

[Pat]

oooh no that sucks... I do hope you get it worked out...

[autoVino]

these are previews, I'm finishing off an export right now, so we'll see an in-game soon, hopefully... 
the render is actually has a bit more contrast, and it *might* fit better in the game, but we'll have to wait to see...

oops!  here's the message I posted on simtrop about a little issue I'm having...

I have some good news and bad news about the render:

good news: it went okay and I was able to succefully create output files and merge/rename them into a seperate output folder that is to be mergeded into the model file.  All the fsh files got put into the model file correctly too.

bad news: the model file, for some reason, had every fsh file replaced as a UI file.  So it didn't map correctly.  When I try to edit/delete the ui file (because it contains data for an fsh file but is inctanced as an IU file) the whole reader program crashes.  So that means I'll need a new model file and new output files.  Even worse is that when this error is fixed witha quick work around, that is just adding in new fsh files, the fsh files are still incorrectly mapped.  The night files are mapped as day files and as night files, although the day files still exist.  This I do not know how to fix, but I'll try after I get all the renderings done again.

Once again put on hold...   

[Pat]

Woohooo Auto I cant wait to see this ingame!!!

[Yoman]

grr....Anywhere I see Auto is reminding me of Grand Theft Auto IV, darn my obsession! But it did lead me to an excellent thread that contains some great projects, nice job

[autoVino]

some more work, just a concept texture (might keep the coloration though)


.... it was sort of messy (the model) so I redid some of the bad parts, here's what we're currently at:

the glass needs to be more reflective, maybe blueish tint, and there needs to be less grass in the background.  the tile color is still in concept but I'm thinking about shades of blue.
some "window stress" wouldn't hurt either, any other suggestions?

[autoVino]

update:


here's some shadow theory I posted on simtropolis as well if anyone's interested:

As far as I understand from experimenting with shadows, you are correct.  Shadows, I think (and am 90% sure), come from the fsh alpha files that are perpendicular to the current view.  The alpha is distorted and skewed so that it lands on the ground.  There are some exemplar files in the simcity DAT that can edit/distort this and edit the shadow, which is a mask on the ground that makes the ground look darker.  I have seen the ability to lengthen the shadows and to shorten them by moving the sun, but not to change their direction... which is logical based on how they are derived.

Moving a sun, in the real world, will change how a shadow looks like off of a building, not just by simple distortions such as skewness and rotation, but it will change the shape.  This is because as the sun moves, some parts of the building open up and become more passable for the light and some close up for the light (tell me if this doesn't make sense, I'll try to explain better).  This requires full 3d information to calculate how the light will pass and not pass through the model.  The game cannot do that.  It is limited to a simple alpha map and it cannot accurately change/distort the shadows to match the building.  Here is a crude example:
How the game will calculate shadows, approx. (top view)

How the lighting rig will calculate shadows, approx. (top view)

How the game will calculate shadows, skewing and rotating them, to attempt to match the lighting rig shadow, approx (top view)

Because you don't have true 3d information in the s3d file (only a limited lod with 4 views slapped on), no amount of skewing or rotating will be able to correctly show the shadows.  And this is only 90% sure, because that is how sure I am that the shadows are calculated this way (using the fsh alpha files from an adjacent view).  Hope that makes sense for my skepticism in fixing the shadow problem in the game (thought the game directly).

btw, thank god for the new spell checker :-p

....

Originally posted by: SimFox Well it is a possiblity... problem is that the angle of the Game sun isn't terribly beneficial to the buildings.
45 degrees is (or at least was) considered standard for architectural drawinsas it creates shadoews that best define the shape. Game sun will create very long shadows eating away and the details in stead of revealing them. Situation will be particularly bad with Default rig as it's low res shadowmapos will drown the facade with any pertruding features in a messy blob of "shadow".
But that is just a thought... Some experimentation would be needed. The angle of game sun is in one of those properties. It memory serves me right it is something like 68 degrees.
Still I think it would be better to find the property that is responcible fro the skew factor in game. It must be there, I don't think it has been somehow hardwared into exe or something like that when all the other properties are there to tinker with.
On the other hand WHY and HOW on earth game with such an obvious graphical glitch ahs been released and never fixed in numerous updates?

I don't think that the game has any skew factor, because the making of the shadows does not requier any skew so it probably never was encoded.
Let me explain by replicating (how I think the game does it) how the game creates its building shadows:
It starts with the alpha files of the view adjacent (to the left, so rotating the model counter clockwise).  It takes that file and rotates it 90 degreese then scales it hor. by aout 140% and ver. by about 70%.  Then it slaps the shadow on the model.  Here are some illustrations:


(the first model represents the shadows with the standard lighting rig, this is why they don't align correctly)
Very simple to do and probably very simple to code.  No skew requiered.  Changing the suns declenation/right ascension only changes how the game rotates and then scales the alpha file. 
Plus there is a problem with skewness (as I explained in a few posts above), the shadow simply won't be accurate if skewed.  It may be accurate for a simple box building, but anything more elaborate will be inaccurate (but most people probably won't even catch that the shadow is off by a tiny bit).
The point here is that having the shadows formed perpendicular to the camera is the simplest and most accurate way to "fake" the shadows with the limited amount of information given.

[Pat]

   Auto that building is looking real sweet!!!

[mightygoose]

bit non sc4 related but your the man to ask, right im using volumetric fog in mr sun sky environment to make clouds but they are appearing black......
is there a way to resolve the issue with volumetric or will i have to set up a particle system? if so how would i go about doing that?

[autoVino]

@mightygoose: appearing black ingame or in the renders?  If in the renders then I can't help you, if it's ingame then it is probably the fact that (If I remember correctly) the script turns atmospherics off (but that would mean that they don't appear ingame at all).  The black would be, ingame, the fact that fog is usually transparent and therefore requiers transparent alpha mapping for the s3d file.  I wrote a tutorial on this (for anti aliasing) but the same technique can be applied [link].
here are some older renders:

here is a close up:

and here are the current versions: