Rural Renewal Project

[Unassigned]

Use of fences, flora, draggable path & ploppable livestock in an urban setting.

[bat]

Very nice use of that stuff there, Unassigned! And looking forward to the new stuff tomorrow...

[jacqulina]

Unassigned great pic there

[Chrisadams3997]

Uh... anyone else notice the sheep on that building facade?  I'm not going to ask what they use the sheep for .

At any rate, I'm still planning on packaging up those flora this evening, just wanted to show off a little side project I've been doing for fun.



For those of you scratching your heads right now , it's a small working facility for cattle, with holding pens, a crowding pen, and squeeze chute.  This is where routine health and management things, such as giving vaccinations, or putting in ear tags would occur.  Many also include a loading chute for loading cattle on or off trucks, though I didn't include one here.

I'm thinking about making a series of these that could be placed on lots and used as eyecandy(or even with jobs), or could be incorporated into farm lots if there is interest.  If not I'll make a few for myself anyway

Chris

[XiahouDun]

I had a flora question last night while playing with plopable cows, are you planning on making a flora plopping tractor?

[jacqulina]

hiya chris im very interested in these holding pens and such wonderfull work

[Unassigned]

If that squeeze chute picture is an ingame shot I've even more to learn about making pix look good than I thought.

Anything which may be used to adorn livestock "farms" such as the Cody or the Llama Refuge is very welcome, especially if it can be plopped without erasing the "farm field tile" underneath. though I've never seen a squeeze chute IRL, methinks they are mainly used in those parts of the world where ranches are same size as the country I live in. That small working area looks good to me, especially the ground texture is very credible.

The majority of cattle fences in Denmark are electrical, a single strand of wire strung between poles. Any chance you'll be making such fences?

[threestooges]

Chris,
You've hit upon yet another brilliant development. Add this to the list of things I didn't know I needed until I saw it. The pen looks great (a preview render I'm guessing?) and I would certainly like to see a few versions of it. Perhaps a few versions that can link together to form a larger complex and perhaps one with a loading chute for road and rail access (I'm picturing Kansas City in its cattle times. Great texture work too.
-Matt

[cakeeater]

neat BAT chrisadams!

I like those cows, they must have been pretty tedious to BAT.

[girlfromverona]

Oh wow, Chris - you think of everything! Good job! 

[Chrisadams3997]

Oh man, I am such a liar, I haven't even looked at the flora yet today, Jess sent me his cow models and I haven't quite playing around with them yet



But I am moving on to the flora after I type this reply .  Anyway, on with the replies:

Xiahoudun:  Well, I hadn't planned on it.  But there are already several good tractor props out there.  I'll make a deal with you.  If you can dig up the TGI's for a good model or two from one the existing prop packs, I will make a ploppable out of 'em for you

Jacky:  Well that's good, as I'm really kinda excited about them, so we'll see what I can come up with.

Unassigned:  Well, it's as Matt said a preview shot from Max, so there will likely be a little loss of detail getting to game, but, nothing that can be done about that.

These won't be 'ploppable' per say, as in flora.  There are several reasons for this, but I'll just suffice it to say for now that they will be lotted, possibly with transparent base textures, maybe not, I haven't gotten that far in the process to decide.

As for electric fences, the level of detail is just too small to really come across well in game.  This is the same reason I made the fences wood instead of barbed wire.  Wire type fences also wouldn't look very natural on sloped terrain, as we wouldn't expect any stair stepping at all, and even SF pieces will have some in between the 'perfect' slopes for them.

Threestooges:  Whooaa, slow down, I just got the first one thought out .  Right now I'm planning on concetrating on small cow/calf or stocker type operations, and as you can tell from the pic at the top of this post, I'm looking at other 'interconnecting' pieces.  Some of the larger working facilities will have single file loading chutes such as you would back up a semi truck, or even just a pickup with a livestock trailer to.  Larger ones, particularly with rail access would only be seen at large stockyards, feedlots, or meat packing facilities, which are far beyond the scope of what I've got in mind right now.

Cakeeater:  Thanks.  Fortunately I didn't have to bat the cows themselves, as Jestarr was kind enough to pass his model along to me, though I've been doing some sub-object and modifier work to 're-posture' them, not to mention some re-texturing(needed my Black Baldies--that's a Hereford x Angus cross).

Marisa:  Thanks, I try my best

Alright, back to work...

[XiahouDun]

I'll get right on it Hopefully can find a red and a green one. Should cover most variety?

[threestooges]

All right Chris, I'll take it easy on you (for now heh heh). I know this is only the first version of it, but I thought I should plant the seed early as it were. I don't expect any massive versions, but I would like a couple about the size the current on is that can stand alone (as this one can) and can hopefully be placed together to attempt to recreate the stockyard thing. I'd be quite happy with just this version (though knowing you, I would suspect there might be more in the works) and I'll look forward to seeing what you have in store.
-Matt

[Chrisadams3997]

XiahouDun:  It's been a while since I've looked at the different tractor props(I personally avoid LE so much as possible ), but I'd shoot personally for a set with diagonals as well.

Threestooges:  Yea, baby steps, lol.  I'd have to do a lot of research to pull off stockyards or feed lots.  This stuff I'm a little more familiar with.

As we speak I'm placing a link to the new flora in the sticky(well, not literally-I've kinda gotta finish this post first.  Don't be so impatient ).  There are seven new flora types added to the menu in this(doesn't replace any old ones, just the new ones).  Four of them are new grasses, in two styles, each with two colors or shades.  These new ones are made specifically to blend in well with the terrain(thanks Ennedi for some suggestions here).  Not only do they take advantage of the better rendering engine in Max(opposed to Gmax), but I've actually also used a technique similair to that that adds transparency to TPW to antialias the edges at the closest two zooms.  OK, it's really just zoom 5, but the sixth zoom in game is just a blown up version of zoom 5, so it covers two zooms.  Also I've hand edited the .fsh files for the higher zooms to account for atmospheric scattering.  Basically this means they won't stick out like a sore thumb when you zoom out.

Straw


Dry Rye Grass


Green Rye Grass


Also included are the two 'weed' types I showed several days ago.  Each of these has four models arranged in ascending order by size, and as I said before can fit in almost anywhere, which can really come in handy when space is tight.

Here's a shot of all six in case you've forgotten(OK, or if your new too, geez ):


What?  I said there were seven?  Well, I guess you'll just have to download it to find out what the last one is .  And no Xou, it's not a tractor

Chris

[XiahouDun]

Those new shots are amazing And so far I'm only digging up the standard renderings, not sure which have diagonals. Going to have to dig through the lex and stex to see if I can't find more tractors then the ones I have (which there are likely a lot, I only started downloading farms when this project started )

[Unassigned]

Mmmmm, fresh weed weeds. 

I have some wild grass patches which it has suddenly become necessary to replace. I'll go get my bulldozer ready while you're putting up that link. Strange, btw, using a bulldozer to clear away grass.

[Chrisadams3997]

Xia: Just off the top of my head, I know SimGoober did a number of them, but beyond that my memory fails me.

Unassigned:  Yea, these are quite a leap from the original, though I think that it still has it's place as well.  It just might get a makeover at some point.

Another thought that crossed my mind recently was to make the grass grow then die(or get mowed, eaten, etc), and grow again at some interval, just like trees that 'grow'(like the maxis ones or the ones c.p. did), only at much shorter intervals.  I'm not sure if it'd be all that great of an idea yet, but it's a thought.  One more experiment to add to the list.

Edit:  By the way, it's up

[CasperVg]

Thanks for the new floras 

By the way, any chance on a feeding bin like this one?


26th June 2008 - Casper Van Gheluwe

[Unassigned]

I have some urban areas where none of the grasses from the first pack look appropriate (viz. that pic I posted with the Deviant Desires store). There are other locations where the "v1" grasses would fit just fine (several, in fact, less than a five minute walk from my place).

Enough posting, time to fire up SC4 and play! Thanks again, and enjoy your holiday or break or whatever 

[jacqulina]

wow more wonderfull things you are amazing thankyou for the new flora