Commercial Tower

[RadicalOne]

I randomly got an idea for a commercial office tower; here it is. How is it?

[cogeo]

Ehmmm, what can I say? Needs some better texturing. And the nightlights (are these nitewindows?) are VEEERY blue...

Also that modeled base. Is this absolutely needed? Not only it looks all-black, this may be hard or tricky to use in LE. Could you instead reproduce the same effect using lotting techniques (props and textures)?

Another recommendation, can you check if this BAT is roughly of the same footprint (and maybe height) as some ingame buildiings? Then it could be included in the Maxis building families, and grow on Maxis lots.

[RadicalOne]

Ehmmm, what can I say? Needs some better texturing.

True.

And the nightlights (are these nightwindows) are VEEERY blue...

Have you seen what deeply colored glass does to light? Most towers have a color to their light.

Also that modeled base. Is this absolutely needed? Not only it looks all-black, this may be hard or tricky to use in LE. Could you instead reproduce the same effect using lotting techniques (props and textures)?

I can fix the apparent lack of shading, and I see no reason why I would have problems in Lot Editor. Using props would place a far larger resource drain on the game, what with all those LODs.

Another recommendation, can you check if this BAT is roughly of the same footprint (and maybe height) of some ingame buildiings? Then it could be included in the Maxis building families, and grow on Maxis lots.

It is. 3x3 building, average height for a Stage-8 tower. But why would I want to put it on a Maxis lot?

[Lowkee33]

There's no door.

I can fix the apparent lack of shading, and I see no reason why I would have problems in Lot Editor. Using props would place a far larger resource drain on the game, what with all those LODs.

The problem in LE would be that there are no base/overlay textures that match your foundation.  I would image the building would not fit in with the rest in SC4.  Also, if you include the base there is no way to place props near the building.  I get a little disappointed when BATers add more to the model than just the building, but that is only my opinion.

It is. 3x3 building, average height for a Stage-8 tower. But why would I want to put it on a Maxis lot?

To get more variance from the same amount of lots.

[madhatter106]

I think you need an interesting entrance/foyer/mezzanine - right now the tower just goes straight to the ground, it needs a little "oomph and pazzazz" when you walk in the front door...

[RadicalOne]

OK, I can redo the base to make it more interesting - I do have a door, three of them in fact, by the way - but what do you mean by "more variance in the same amount of lots"?

[Lowkee33]

I believe that is what Cogeo was talking about.  Not too sure.

Buildings can be put into families, at which point the game randomly picks one when it groes.  This is mostly used when you have the same houses with different color paint.  If you were to add your building to a family that Maxis uses, then your building would be an option to grow on the Maxis lot that you want it to.

Doing something like this would be preferable if you were interested in keeping your plugin folder trimmed. 

[RadicalOne]

I have done a bit of work with families myself, and it need not use the Maxis lots. I have done it with my own.
Additionally, I do not think this building is one I would render multiple colors of. Not only would that take days - or even weeks, given one day per building - but a building of this size will not appear often and thus making multiple colors kind of a waste.

[vester]

Will my first thought was, new windows textures, please.
The build itself looks good.

Here is a few I found on my HD:





Click on the images for larger versions.

[Girafe]

Agree with Vester either you pick glass texture or you do it yourself with some noise, transparency, waves and other porperties

The building itself is quite good 

[RadicalOne]

Thank you enormously for the textures.

I do have one slight problem. With the textures that do not tile seamlessly, how do I get them to work on the model without seams being visible or stretching the UVW box so much that it becomes pixelated?

[cogeo]

I see no reason why I would have problems in Lot Editor. Using props would place a far larger resource drain on the game, what with all those LODs.

It's the bigger and/or more complex LODs that can actually cause resource drain. If you remove the base, the LODs can become much smaller and much simpler (a simple box would be perfect here). And Lowkee got it right, its hard to place props with such LODs.

But why would I want tput it on a Maxis lot?

As Lowkee said, yes, for more variety. Also take a look at this post.

I do have one slight problem. With the textures that do not tile seamlessly, how do I get them to work on the model without seams being visible or stretching the UVW box so much that it becomes pixelated?

You can create seamless textures in Photoshop and Paintshop Pro. The resulting image will be seamless, but smaller, as it has to be cropped. Experiment until you find the largest possible selection that can be converted to a seamless pattern.

[RadicalOne]

You can create seamless textures in Photoshop and Paintshop Pro. The resulting image will be seamless, but smaller, as it has to be cropped. Experiment until you find the largest possible selection that can be converted to a seamless pattern.

I do not have $500 plus to spend on software.

[Lowkee33]

GIMP is a free photo editing program.  It can at least make images seamless and also seems pretty competitive.
http://www.gimp.org/

[cogeo]

GIMP is free, but its user interface is incredibly weird (unacceptable to me).

Paintshop Pro can do most of what Photoshop can, only for $50; the Ultimate version costs $100. Certain distributors may sell for much less though. Only "problem", Photoshop is the industry standard, not Paintshop Pro.

http://www.corel.com/servlet/Satellite/us/en/Product/1184951547051#versionTabview=tab1&tabview=tab0

[RadicalOne]

There has to be a better way than spending lots of time and money for a program for which I will only use one feature (I use Paint.NET for all my image editing).