Swamper's Garage

[Swamper77]

i love that van with open doors and would love to have it 

great work

The open doors are for my use when I make props out of the model. The automata version will not have opening doors.

-Jan

[dragonshardz]

Jan: I think that on the side without the sliding door there should be windows, as well as a window above the sliding door tracks.

[nerdly_dood]

The purpose of this van is to be a police van, and they are often panel vans. Jan will probably add windows for the civilian version.

[Simpson]

Nice work here 
Go on 

[nerdly_dood]

Well, whaddya know... I found a Chevy Astro police van with windows!

Note that this may actually be a GMC Safari instead...

(GMC or not, Manassas police cars have blue lights)

EDIT: Here's another one... this one is certainly a GMC Safari.

[Swamper77]

Dragon, as Nerdly mentioned, this is the panel van version of the Astro. I will make a copy of the van and model in the windows for the passenger van. A panel van is easier to model and it gives me a base to make other variants of the vehicle. Both the panel and windowed versions will be used for police vans.

Nerdly, thanks for the picture. It seems that you have issues with showing images from FortuneCity, for some reason. The van shows exactly how I plan to do the window glass on the police van(s), light colored glass up front and darker glass for the rest of the van. The civilian variants will have light colored glass all the way around. Judging by your photo of the van, it looks like I will have to remodel the door handle wells on the front doors a bit, though. Not a major issue

-Jan

[nerdly_dood]

All I did was copy the image URLs from the respective cities' webpages at that Police Car Web Site I linked to earlier - I should probably put them in my photobucket in the future to ensure reliability...
EDIT: I found a sort of half-panel Astro police van... it's kinda weird...

I hope the fortunecity image works this time...

[Pat]

Hey Jan I came across this pic of a paneled astro with front view if it helps you any?

[Meastro444]

i hope im not too picky, but too me, the wheels the furthest away (perspective) seem to big... (in the last 3 pictures)

[Swamper77]

i hope im not too picky, but too me, the wheels the furthest away (perspective) seem to big... (in the last 3 pictures)

Both the front and rear wheels are the same. It's just the viewing angle that is distorting their appearances.

-Jan

[CasperVg]

That van looks great already, and with the minor detailing it will look splendid.



This may be a little irrelevant to the current thread topic, but I was wondering if it would be possible to replace the in-game Freight Train automata with a passenger train automata, and thus have two different passenger train automata in one city at one time, but without having the ability to have freight trains (well, you would be able to have them, but they would look like that new passenger train automata).

Greetings,
Casper

[sim-al2]

Cool idea, but a lot of work I'm guessing. It would also take work to get them to be in the right place and not hanging in your industrial area all the time.

[Andreas]

This may be a little irrelevant to the current thread topic, but I was wondering if it would be possible to replace the in-game Freight Train automata with a passenger train automata, and thus have two different passenger train automata in one city at one time, but without having the ability to have freight trains (well, you would be able to have them, but they would look like that new passenger train automata).

I suggested this a few months ago already. Obviously, the new "passenger trains" would be pure eye-candy, but any train skin is eye-candy anyway.

[Swamper77]

@Casper: As Andreas stated, it is possible to do what you are suggesting, but it will take a bit of work to do so. In addition to suppressing the Maxis (or other creators') train cars, a new Automata Plugin would have to be created, unless you don't mind having long "passenger" trains.   Doing such a project is not really high on my project list right now. I have large backlog of projects that I am working on for myself or I'm helping with (or supposed to be helping with). It will be a long while before I take any new projects.
After almost a month of tweaking the Astro panel van model, I am finally done adding to it (for now). It has enough details for now and for making the automata skins for SC4:



And ingame:

In the game, it has fully functional headlights and rotating lights for the light bar. It currently replaces the Maxis Police van. The rear windows are tinted darker than the windshield and the front windows. The van is bearing the Washington State Law Enforcement Memorial plates on the front bumper and rear door. The light bar is accurate as per the real world pictures that I found on the web. This is the one that I used for the light bar and for reference:

The original photo can be found here: Seattle Washington Police. Photo courtesy Ian Marlow

The color is a bit off as I used the paint from the Crown Victoria Seattle Police car. I did a bit of creative licensing with the backside of the light bar. The amber lights were modeled based on photos that show the backside of the light bar on other Seattle Police vehicles. The two center lights on the bottom half of the light bar are known as Take Down lights and are always white. The lights at both ends of the bottom half blink back and forth when the officer has a vehicle pulled over or is responding at a scene. I chose not model the animation for these lights as the lights would be obscured by the rotating lights in the light bar. Only the rotating lights in the light bar are functional ingame.

Given the size of the vehicle ingame, I'm undecided as to whether or not I want to add the text on the front fenders and the hood. The text probably won't be very readable if I do add it. The emblems are showing crisply on the front doors because they are a separate image.
The Seattle Police package will probably be released as a Replacement mod only as both the Crown Victoria and the Astro Van share the same logo for the front doors. Not to mention, there are very few police department paint schemes that would complement the Seattle Police paint scheme.

-Jan

[Tarkus]

Jan, I'd say you nailed it with that van.  One of the most detailed automata I've seen.  Excellent, excellent work, as always!

-Alex

[papab2000]

Nice work 

[nerdly_dood]

Now THAT is not bad! One hint: The little lights under the main light bar are red and blue on your model, but in the RL image below they're both red... I'm picky like that, bear with me Never mind, you fixed that for the in-game automata...

Can't wait for more!

EDIT: That's it... If I ever show another image from that Police Car Website again I'll save it to my hard drive and upload it to my photobucket, no more using the same image URL as that website uses...

EDIT: I've updated the model and the picture of the model. Good catch! -Jan

[Pat]

OMG Jan that is simply wicked awesome I love that streethawk light bar its perfect!!! Do you happen to have an ingame of it lite up??? sorry I love twinkilies lol  I cant also forget that van is sweet too!!!! Wow overall a wicked job here!!!!

[Swamper77]

OMG Jan that is simply wicked awesome I love that streethawk light bar its perfect!!! Do you happen to have an ingame of it lite up??? sorry I love twinkilies lol  I cant also forget that van is sweet too!!!! Wow overall a wicked job here!!!!

Pat,

I didn't know there was a specific brand name for that light bar. Thanks for the information. Looks like I will need to update the van model and the automata model though, based on my reference photo. I forgot the alley lights on the ends of the light bar. It shouldn't take me long to do it. I'll update the van color at the same time. It's looking too blue-green at the moment.

I will see about getting a picture of the light bar running ingame. Keep in mind, that only the rotating lights on the top of light bar are actually animated ingame. None of the extra lights on the light bar are modeled in the "flashing lights" animation.

-Jan

[Swamper77]

I've updated the Starhawk light bar model to include the alley lights on the ends and two placeholders for additional lights in the center of the backside of the light bar. I've also repainted the van to better match my reference photo. It's more of a baby blue now, instead of the aqua color it was originally. I may need to fade the color a bit and make it lighter. At least I don't cringe when I see it now.

And just for Pat:

As stated previously, only the lights on the top half of the light bar are animated. The rest of the lights on the light bar are just for looks and extra detail. I probably went a bit over the top with the details, but it is the details that set my automata apart from anyone else's.

I have a little more cleaning up to do on the model and then I will package it up for release with the Seattle Police Department Crown Victoria patrol car. Both vehicles will be released as a Replacement Mod only. Together, they will replace the Maxis police car and police van automata. They will not be separated.

-Jan