Royal Power Pyramid

[MattyFo]

Hello All!!!  I am relativly new to B.A.T but have already completed 2 buildings(though they are awful) and am trying to put those behind me and make one that is absolutly gorgeous.  I am willing to put alot of time into it and it may take me months. Anyways to get to the point I am going to be making a Pyramid shaped building for Royal Power, my local power company.  I will hopefully be able to create somewhat of a "Mayor's Diary" for the construction of this building but instead it will be a "B.A.T Diary".  Now here is where all of you come in,  because I am new to this i will require some advice from any of you pro's out there, and may also require some help at times when working with troublesome areas and minute details on my building I may be missing.  Below is my composite sketch i drew up in paint.  I know it is crude but hopefully you will be able to see what i am thinking of here.  This is by no means to scale or even mesured out corectly. Note that the Marble sourronding will not be that tall it may only be .5 meters to 1 meter but like i said it is only a quick scetch.  Now here is where i need you.  First off, for the glass facade i am thinking of making hundres of windows that may only be .1 meters apart instead of just texturing a glass facade for the whole thing(the latter i did on my last one and it turned out hideous), i would appreciate if people could email me some textures they used on some of their buildings or send me some sort of instructions on how to go about making this masterpiece(hopefully).  Also i want this building to be about 60 to 80 meters tall but don't want it to be about 3x3 tiles in Sim City, which i will show you why in my next post showing the proposed construction site.  And lastly any one who has any other design ideas that would have to time to make a quick composite scetch as oppose to using mine hat would also be appreciated.  Hopefully this building can be a team effort from the SC4D community, and will hopefully be one of the best Medium sized skyscrpers out there.







MattyFo, Head Designer;CEO
Forest Design 
415 King's Boulevard
King's Port, Royal Islands

[MattyFo]

Below is the proposed construction site for the new Royal Power Building.  The new building will take the place of the two small office buildings located in the center of the top picture and the right center of the bottom picture.  Royal Power's new HO will be facing Main Street, and the rear of the building will overlook King's Park, the city's central park. 






As you can see alot of the Maxis Buildings have duplicated in my Downtown and this will be the first wave of my custom buildings to come in and get rid of my 6 Brink Real Estates, my 4 Blue Platter LTD., and 2 Reflect System INC..  My eventual goal is to create a realistc skyline for a city of it's size.  Which I forgot to mention, as of right now the population of this island is about 83 000 but will get to about 100 000, and the total population of the region(comprised of this one and 4 others) will, by the time I'm done will be about 250 000 to 300 000 residents.  All of the Islands are connected by Ferries and a total of about 7000 workers commute via ferry to work in downtown King's Port.  Because the island is so small the city has pretty much grown as far out as it can and is right now growing up.  Not visible in the pictures are the residential areas outside of downtown, i have recently turned them from single family suburban homes to old town houses giving my city a good transition from downtown skyscrapers to single family homes. Well i think i should stop before this officially turnes into a Mayors Diary, I think thats maore than you need to know about my city before we get down to the contruction of this new skyscraper.  I look forward to hearing ideas from you guys out there and hopefuly we can get to building this damn thing soon.


MattyFo, Head Designer;CEO
Forest Design 
415 King's Boulevard
King's Port, Royal Islands

[MattyFo]

Ok well i figure I might aswell get started or at least begin to think about getting started . So i'm thinking it is wise to do this from the ground up, makes sense right?  Since in the past i have had some trouble finding the right textures in the lot editor to make a descent lot that has walkways and grass and fountains that fit in with my design. I figure i will just make them on B.A.T, by applying rectangles on the ground for walkways and grass area, designing my own fountain instead of using a generic prop etc. and then texturing those to give the building the appeal that it has it's own custom lot (not sure if this is a faux-pas or not but i am new to this)  then i will get started on the base of the structure which will be a marble half wall about .5 meters high and the inside will be topped with either grass or pebbles, not to sure yet.  I would post a sketch of my idea but unfortunatly i have absolutly no artistic talent when it comes to drawing(note my sketch in the first post) but i hope my words can decribe better than any picture i can attempt to draw.  Basicaly the building will be sitting in the middle of elevated grass but it will be open in the front to allow for a plaza.  I'm thinking the back should also have a back door with stairs going down towards a park setting, seeing as how the buildings back is to the city's central park.  Again I am open to other ideas any of you may have, and accually encourage you to give me some feedback be it in words or a scketch of a possible design idea.  Also any ideas on some minor details that would be on the ground level of a building like this i'd like to know about so i can incorporate it into the design.  I have to go to work soon so I won't be able to get started just yet maybe tonight but definatly tommorow,and i will be posting updates and pictures of what i have done so far, so it will be easier for you guys to hit me back with some suggestions,critisisms, sketches etc.



MattyFo, Head Designer;CEO
Forest Design 
415 King's Boulevard
King's Port, Royal Islands

[beutelschlurf]

moin MattyFo,

let me be the first one to welcome you into the world of bating. sure, you can't expect to know everything right from the start - it will be a long-taking process, but you will get there eventually. this is the right place to learn what to do or not to do. there is always someone around who will anwser your questions or say something about your progress ... so see you around!

good luck
b_schlurf

[tag_one]

Hi MattyFo, I like the idea behind your building and I'm sure this will become a special one. Just some small suggestions before you start batting your masterpiece 

When you render a building in GMAX of BAT4MAX details smaller than 0.2 meters won't be visible in the game or become very blurred. Especially if there's a big color difference between the details. For example yellow window frames on a grey wall are always a disaster to make it look right in the game.   I suggest only making details of more than 0.2 meters.
When you're making the building you also have to keep in mind that Maxis screwed up the size of a sim in SC4. Instead of a normal 2 meters your sims are about 4 meters tall. So it's the best to use a floor height of about 5 to 6 meter. Doors should be about 4.5 to 5 meters tall.
As for the height of the marble surrounding 0.5 meters looks very small in SC4. I would suggest using a height of about 1 to 2 meters.

I'm looking forward to your updates 

[MattyFo]

Quick question.....I'm working on the base of my building, and was just about to go onto the net to look for grass textures.  As i did that i wondered if some of you "Pro Batters" out there have some great looking textures, prooven in the game they wouldn't mind giving me??  Be it for grass or anything else like glass, concrete, water, metal, etc.

[MattyFo]

Ok well with out further ado, i will like to intoduce the intial work on my Royal Power Building Project.



Ok, now if you remember my concept "drawing" from my first post you can see why i said that my words will probly describe better than the drawing.  Here you can clearly see what i was thinking of.  Anyways, this is the ground level for my building.  The building itself will sit in he middle of this and then rise maybe 70 meters above.  I decided to go with 2 meters for the walls and they are 1 meter thick.  The building at it's base will be 32x32 meters and will be i think 3 floors as a rectangle building, then it will start to become the pyramid shape i ahve been aiming for.  As usual if any of you have any comments be it negative or positive i will love to hear them.  Also if you have any suggestions of things I shoulkd add to this to make it more realistic than would be nice. 

     Before i get started on the rectangular (base) of the Building itself, i would like to here some ideas on how i should do that.  I normally use Rectangle Spline and then add windows and doors then attach and extrude.  But that is all i really know how to do if any one has some other, better ideas i'd like to know.  I'll probly look on the net at alot of different buildings that might have a similar design concept just to see some ideas for ground level walls.  Then i'll probly quickly draw something up on paint so i have something to reference to, i'll post that and hopefully get some feedback.  But of course that drawing will most likely not look anythign like my final design. 

So if anyone has any comments i'd like to here them, i'm not done with the base yet so I will consider any thing you guys might suggest.


MattyFo, Head Designer;CEO
Forest Design 
415 King's Boulevard
King's Port, Royal Islands

[MattyFo]

Well i've browsed the net for a little while here, and happened to come across something early in my search.  The Norton Building in Seattle



Definetly an old picture, and most likley it isn't HD, but nevertheless, can you still make out the black pillars on the bottom of the building? I saw this and immediatly wanted to incorperate that into my own design.  I drew up a quick sketch on paint but really it doesn't show much.  I'll opt out of showing that to you but i will say that i have decided to have the pillars to be just outside the edge of the short marble walls, and the will run every 5 or so meters ( don't know yet will have to B.A.T it and see how it looks)  they will run along tho front and sides of the building and will support the Glass Pyramid much like the Norton building,  The rectangle structure will be inside just like in the picture above. But i am still absolutly lost when it come to the back of the building, i don't know if i should just do the pillar thing the whole way around or have the back flat with some sort of "loft" or balcony with stairs going down to the park. 

[tag_one]

Looks like a great start MattyFo! Can't wait till you start on the glass part. Once finished I'm sure it will look very special 
I use the same way of modeling like you do. Drawing shapes, attach them to each other and then extrude them. Ofcourse there are many other ways, but personally I like this one. Probably because I'm used to it and it does the job
What kind of glass, concrete, water, metal, etc textures would you like to have? Old weathered ones or more modern shiny stuff? I've quite a lot of them and I don't fancy emailing 100 MB of images 

[MattyFo]

Well it's been i while since i've been on here and I assume everyone is thinking I've got to be done by now....well not quite yet.  I'll post a picture of what i have so far.  I've been pretty busy with work and stuff around the house etc. so i was unable to devote alot of time towards this.  Also any time i did end up working on it i was just stuck with the front wall that you will see is still under contruction, but i did enough that you will be able to see what it will end up like.  Please give me feed back on what you think i have so far, I have no idea what else to do with the front wall and maybe with my luck it wont even be visible once i put the pyramid on top....   but in any case let me know what you think......

[tag_one]

Don't worry MattyFo, real life is important and we're all gone from time to time. No one is rushing you

Don't worry to much about the walls, only the lower parts will be visible. I have one suggestion about the entrance, could you make it a bit taller? In SC4 sims are generally 4 meters tall, so a door should be about 4.5 meters high in order to look realistic in the game (I know, very annoying)

Looking forward to your next update