autoVino's bat projects

[Pat Riot]

dude your giving me nightmares about college...i had studied for the first time since 6th grade today 

well, good luck on your exams, have fun in mexico, and don't bring anyone to america in your trunk 

[BigSlark]

Oh Pat Riot, you have no idea...

Tomorrow I am taking my oral comprehensive exam (its not a common thing for undergrads), I started studying for both the written and oral portions in January.

College is a healthy dose of study, class, women, and alcohol.

Cheers,
Kevin

[autoVino]

haha, I'm not quite at collage yet, it's jsut that inorganic/metalla organic chemistry and mechanical physics with calculus are killing me right now!  Hardest classes i've ever taken (the metallaorganic is actually in part for a 360 hour research project that I'm planning on doing with the local university)
but anyway, what do you think about this: ?


I'm planning to try to do something special on this buidling with vertex painting and prosedural painting (not yet started, but I've found a tutorial on 3dtotal.com that explains it pretty well).  If I can get a good grasp of this process I might write a nother tutorial on it. 
oh yeah, some stuff about the buidling, it's a mid rise office building (looks actually big in the area that it's built on) that is located in south western Lexington.  This is just the main tower, it has a semi-elaborate base with it too.  Along with the building, there is a decent sized area of many different office suites occupied by small componies and compony branches.  This is also located in the nice part of town.

[Pat]

Auto that is looking sweet and i cant wait to see further progress on it!!

[Pat Riot]

Lexington Kentucky? we all know the real Lexington is in mass...

good start!

[autoVino]

yup 

[autoVino]

What I need to finish here is the roof, make a slightly smoother transition into the ground, and night lighting.  Then it would be done and ready for render.  I'm also thinking about making a large office complez out of this building (or many versions of the building copied over onto on large base... so it will have multiple towers of similar but hopefully not the same design.  Big undertaiking probably won't get to it very soon though)
This building will also be continued into the original midrise, but some of the modelling and dimensions are a little bit off from the real thing so instead of scraping the project I decided to improvise, make it taller and make a new building.  I also think this building would make a nice diagonal building...  I also changed some texters here.

[Pat Riot]

reminds me of "International Place" in boston. nice work

[autoVino]

thanks 

click for larger and higher quality preview!
the only thing as I see it left now is maybe work on the roof textures a little bit and night lighting.
anyone have any criticism?  I would be thankful for it because I haven't got much of it for this model...

[iamgoingtoeatyou]

the model looks incredible, my only critism is that the textures look a bit flat.

[Krio]

Yes, textures look flat and plain. "Noobish" would be right word, though you are not a noob 

[Pat]

Auto that is looking real good but i do agree the textures are looking a tad to blaaahish imo... But other then that the building is stunning and also if you need a readme done for it lemme know and i will be more then happy to git r done!!!

[autoVino]

which textures, all of them?  iamgointoeatyou, what do you mean by "flat"? the window textures?  that's actually not texture but modelling so I don't imagine how to make them any less flat.  This is how the building texture is in the real world.  I agree that the roof texture, though, doesn't look convincing, it needs some work.  Also the textures should be more or less plain, this is how it really looks and how many buildings of similar design look like, but with slight color variations.  'Tis the color of concrete.

here's the original (inspiration)


and here is some night lighting:

I can't quite get the roof night lighting too look right, anyone have any ideas?
I think the roof needs a tad bit more detail and less perfection, looks way to clean.
@pat: sure!, but first I need to finish it and make it as perfect as I can

[Pat]

sweet just lemme know when and email me the file and all that good stuff.... Just supply me with any pics you want used and also the background on the building... Now seeing where the real building is from I understand why the textures look whitish, its because the building itself is white lol.... 

[iamgoingtoeatyou]

i meant the whitish texture looks a bit flat / the roof junk compared to some of the maxis buildings. maybe jason or simfox can explain what i mean? i'm bat-challenged.

[autoVino]

don't worry, I know what you mean now... 
I'm working on it right now.

hold on, I gave it a sort of galvanized steel texture, didn't quite turn out to look like galvanized steel but I think the results are better:

now I'm going to look up a tutorial on vertex painting and see if I can use it to better mix procedural textures and make the roof of the building look more convincing.

[Heblem]

looks so great!

also i like the reflection on the building excellent work 

[Pat Riot]

"now I'm going to look up a tutorial on vertex painting and see if I can use it to better mix procedural textures and make the roof of the building look more convincing."

in english?

good work

[Pat]

Auto that is looking good and patriots i think in english he means hes gonna crack the whip on himself to get it right??? 

[autoVino]

Auto that is looking good and patriots i think in english he means hes gonna crack the whip on himself to get it right??? 

lol... not quite that intense, but pretty much 
btw, I'm going to try to finish this one up by tonight and do a render... and if the results are good I'll be sending information about it over to you for a readme.  once again, thanks for offering the help. 

the main work is concentrated around the roof of the building.  I've done some more experimenting with procedural textures (which are increadibly powerful tools) and mixed them in with vertex painting and blending.  Basically, I was able to come up with what I usually make in photoshop through taking a render picture of the top of the building and modifing it from there into a more flexible and editable procedural version.  Although I'm still a bit fuzzy on all the tools and functions of vertex painting and its possobilities, I might write a tutorial on how to apply them onto a building (such as I did on the roof).  (man, I'm having this strong urge to use long words and complex sentances while writing this... then again I am writing upa research proposal for the local university and I'm using some heavy technical/chemistry jargin... it will give a modest amount of funding for the research project.)

anyway, I'll be finishing up the roof of the building and work on night lights for the next few hours and then set up a test export for tonight.  Hopefully the results will come tomorrow morning if the power doesn't go out, we're having a nasty ice storm right now so let's hope that the powerlines don't snap under the weight of the ice... knock on wood! 

some time later:
What's bad is that 3ds max just completely fell apart on me, probably a memory issue (in order to make vertex painting convincing, a large amount of polygons are needed on the model that's being painted)  so it didn't let me save and I lost everything before the previous save, which actually isn't that much.  But it is enough for me to say, "Time to take a break..."
it may be a good thing that it crashed because now I can redo the vetex painting with more precision and maybe make it look better (and cleaner in the model file).