CB's Bats

[City Builder]

I'm a complete newb to the world of batting and Gmax and 3d modeling and textures and and and , you get the idea.  So if I should continue on to produce more models then this will be where I will share them with others to get advice and feedback.

I embarrasedly share my first building, this was done with no knowledge of how anything works in the gmax and I just attempted to place things on the skin of the building, which I've found out doesn't work all that well.

This building was used for a power lot for an area where windmills looked out of place and I didn't want large power plants messing up the landscape.  Had this model came out nicely I think it would have fit in well with the style of my city, oh well... Live and learn, and try to improve on the next project.

[City Builder]

After someone kindly pointed out a url to a tutorial over at simtropolis I went through *some* of the tutorial and recreated to a certain extent what the author of the tutorial had created.  I stopped about 3/4 of the way through the tutorial as I had enough brain strain for one day so I never finished the doors or windows properly and my texturing is not good, I hate the candy stripe awning out front and it's not what I had envisioned but seeing as how this was just going to be a tutorial building I didn't bother to do anything else with it.  Figuring I'd concentrate on the real buildings once I got up the courage to do one.

[City Builder]

Not wanting to throw away the time that I spent in this tutorial I decided to reuse the basic rectangular building and see if I could come up with something else for it, since it's rather bland in it's original form so ...  I copied the floors and stacked them after removing the foundation boxes and created a 7 story apartment or commercial building.

I learned a great deal on the tutorial on what not to do, like all my windows are individual items so if I wish to finish them Im going to need to do them all one by one and I don't really have the patience to do that.  I also learned that when I copied the entire building so that I could place it as the now *L* shaped building, I probably should have removed the extra walls and windows from the building that was inserted into the other building since it's just unnecessary polys sitting there for no reason.  I also think I should have grouped the cloned building so that it would have been easier to readjust once I moved it into place as it's impossible now to select it all and slide it in or out as I like.  It's pretty much stuck in place now.

The thing i learned on this model is that Im likely to be a very generic batter, but I like these simple clean lines of buildings such as this.  It definitely needs more details but overall Im pleased with the way it looks.

To explain the stuff, the object on the roof is supposed to be a water tower, and the things that look lik balconys off the back of the building were originally the tutorials rear door overhangs, I forgot about them when I cloned the buildings stories and then decided instead of removing them I'll recolor them, and add support poles to it and will eventually get around to adding ballisters to them and stairs and turn them into a fire escape staircase.  It may take me a while to do that as Im not proficient at doing small itsy bitsy items like a ladder staircase but eventually...

Also where you see the verticle brown columns, those were put into place not as decoration at first but rather to hide another mistake that I made.  On those walls that have the brown columns were doors under neath the column, instead of having to redo those walls all over again I decided to hide them with the brown columns instead.  After doing so I realized that it actually took what was a really generic building and gave it a little detail, obviously showing that more detail is better to a certain degree anyway.

Overall, Im quite pleased with this building so far and though I may not go any further with it due to the mistakes I made early on (all windows being individuals) I have certainly learned from the experience not only how to do it, but that I can do it if I wish to.

[threestooges]

It looks like you're off to a good start. Don't worry about getting through that tutorial all at once. There is a lot there, and I expect you'll be referencing it often (I certainly did). Texturing can be a bit interesting to start wiht, but it really gets easier as you go. I'll look forward to seeing your new development.

[TopCliff]

I like the L-shaped building the most. That building is part of a genre sorely undermined in SC4: rooftop ads and signs. Good luck with this.

[City Builder]

Well, Im pleased to say that I had enough stamina today to try to work on the windows and try to find an easy method of changing all the windows to give them some sort of pane of glass effect (not the shiny glass skyscraper kind of glass) and an easy way to fix what was there in one fell swoop and to add in those that were missing (lots of them) just don't ask me to explain how I managed it because I don't honestly remember, something about arrays, and cloning, grouping and ungrouping and some other stuff.

If nothing else it blocks the yellow floors of each story of the building from showing through the window.  I think I ended up using Maxis's glass pane texture and then altered the tiling and blur on it so that it wasn't as harsh as it is on their own buildings.

Something wiped out my billboard and the building now looks very very pale, must be something I screwed with regards to the lighting.  Oh well, something else to fix, at least now all the windows have some sort of pane of glass in them.

Strange that in Gmax the billboard is intact but when it renders the image, the billboard is blank.  I don't know what I could have done to cause this, but it must be something.

[TopCliff]

Still looks great. I hope you figure out what went wrong with the billboard. Maybe you applied it as a texture map instead of to the actual object? I odn't know, I just can't wait for it to be released.

[kwakelaar]

Gmax will sometimes loose some of the textures during rendering. I think that is what has happened here. You can solve this problem by opening the gmax material navigator and then load all your textures fresh by clicking on them individually.

[City Builder]

Gmax will sometimes loose some of the textures during rendering. I think that is what has happened here. You can solve this problem by opening the gmax material navigator and then load all your textures fresh by clicking on them individually.

Thanks, I ended up reloading the one billboard texture again and now it's rendering correctly.  Good to know this for the future Im sure.

By the way does anybody know how to get gmax to not show me the lighting?  I mean in the below screenshot you'll notice the yellow lines, which happened after the first rendering, Im wondering if there is a way to hide this so that I don't have to view it while working on the model.

Thanks agian.

P.S. Yeah I put a "cap" on the water tower to keep the pigeons out.  Im not sure if it's too "farmy" looking or if that was what they use to do, never seeing one close up, kind of hard for me to know for certain.  I think though that it gives the water tower a finished look so it will probably stay regardless if it's actually area and age appropriate.

Second shot has HVAC roof junk added (Too Much?) and the water tower was scaled down a bit (too small, too big?) and of course the billboard was changed for whimsy.

[threestooges]

To get rid of the "light lines":
In the display tab (next one to the left of the utilities tab aka where you export) on the right hand side of the screen, there is a menu called "hide by category." Uncheck (thanks RebaLynn) the box next to lights and the lines should disappear.

[RebaLynnTS]

NOTE: In GMAX, you need to Check the box to hide the item you wish to hide.

You can probably get away with just 2 HVACs, the water tower looks great.

[City Builder]

Thank you.

Out of curiosity, does 3DSMax work with the BAT from maxis?  Is there a seperate BAT for Gmax then there is for 3DSMax or not compatible at all?

[RebaLynnTS]

to my knowledge, the BAT only works with GMax. I believe you can export from 3dsmax, to gmax/bat, to render, but I could be wrong on that.

[City Builder]

I have to wonder... When is detail that we try to put on our buildings a waste of time? Is there a point where anybody else says, "oh this is such small detail that it will go un noticed so I won't bother with it"?

Case in point, I decided to put rain gutters and down spouts on my current building and have the first two done, but then I looked at it in the render'er and came up with the thought that it would just go unnoticed so maybe I shouldn't bother with the rest of them.

Screenshot attached.

I even bothered to bend the downspouts at the bottom at ground level to give them a more lifelike appearance like the ones I see on all the buildings around here, but still need to work on the gutters themselves to give them a more hollowed out appearance instead of being just a block of metal.  Can anybody even notice the raingutters, downspout and bent end piece?

Oh and the glass corner balcony, Im just not sure about yet, I've been tinkering with it, but I don't think it's going to stay there, but Im not 100% convinced either way.  I think it's a neat architectural detail but Im not sure it's what I wanted when I started to create an L shaped building.

P.S. I believe that you are correct RebaLynnTS, and while I like my 3DSMax (the better half here bought it for college late last year and hasn't used it so I got it) it seems that it loses something or messes some things up when I export from 3dsmax to gmax so it's probably best to just stay designing in gmax to begin with for me.  It's only a shame because it has many nice features that really help that arn't so far in gmax that I've noticed, they're probably there and Im just too much of a dullard to notice.

[xxdita]

I see them perfectly. I doubt that changing them would matter in-game though. I think you just have to find your own comfort spot as far as how much detail you put into your bats. Too obsessed over it, and you'll work on one piece forever. Too relaxed, and it's generally crap. So just find your medium.
And as long as you keep your 3d files, you can always go back and update it later on, fixing anything that bugs you at that point, once you get better at doing it. Looks like you're off to a good start though.

[RebaLynnTS]

Honestly, in the game, I have never noticed weather anyother buildings have rain gutters or not.

[City Builder]

Honestly, in the game, I have never noticed weather anyother buildings have rain gutters or not.

I've not either, oh well, I guess it didn't hurt any to put them on there.  I think I need to tackle night lighting next, but first to take a break I've been working on a new concept building that I haven't a clue what it will end up being, perhaps some form of a hospital or something along those lines:

[City Builder]

I've spent far more time than I had planned to on this concept model, but I think Im nearing completion.  I only have a few things to tidy up, place some night lighting and it will be done.

I know it's nothing compared to the detailed models that all of you 'old hands' create but I think it's not bad for a first attempt at a building all by myself without any tutorial holding my hand on this one.

I present my Hospital "Saint Patricks", it's not based on any real life building, just something out of the deep reaches of my mind.  In fact if it were based on a real hospital it is quite likely that there would be more deaths occuring at the hospital due to the heliport being situated ontop of the emergency garage and so close to the front of the building, but hey, I like the way it turned out.  I've decided not to 'texture' it but instead use some pastel simple colors that are in Gmax already and hopefully it won't flourese too much in the game, but if it does then I'll have to adjust it.

[Pat]

WoW love the hospital how its turning out and the name too... 
but the entrance is a tad bit oversized though

[City Builder]

Thanks, I named it after myself 

Do you mean the enterance for the front door or the garage emergency opening?

I've not yet tried to plonk it down in the game so it's probably all off scale to begin with.

And finally some nightlighting for the outside of the building.  It lights up the front door, and the helipad and there are two lights, one on each side of the garage emergency opening.  Im not sure if I can do the windows or not due to the way that I created the model.  I'll see if I can come up with some way of doing something with them.