CB's Bats

[rooker1]

This is getting better, IMHO.  The belcony junk doesn't have to be recongnizable, just something there is good enough and I like the way it is except for the green rug.  That's gotta go or change the colour.  And the brick textures and the roof textures are not that bad, maybe just make them darker.

Robin 

[City Builder]

Apparently on High quality render the rendere does a whole lot of smoothing to the image, in draft mode the roof texture turns out much more like what I see in Gmax.  Hmmm, maybe I'll have to do the final renders in Draft, or low.

[rooker1]

No, it doesn't look good now.  Now it's too pexelated (if that's a word  )  I like the other ones much better.

Robin 

[City Builder]

Okay I just thought of something.  Maybe while trying to darken up the roof textures I can just add more contrast to it, that might bring out more of the grittyness of it to try to compensate for the smoothing that happens.

[City Builder]

Well here is half of the roof darkened up and with more contrast rendered on high settings.  Maybe it's too dark now, I know I've read many people say that colors flourese in the game but I don't know if that's just certain colors I think I've noticed that colors darken up when they get into the game maybe.  Anyway...

[Pat]

there we go that looks alot better then the last one....

[City Builder]

Cool.  I'm just waiting on the rendering now, only up to 27% (aack) then I'll be able to see what it looks like in the game.  I swapped both roof planes to use the darker texture which gives the whole building a more gritty look in my opinion, I also came up with a few more balcony junk, did a mosaic table and two wooden chairs (though only one is visible at a time due to the angles), rescaled one of the flower pots to make it larger for a different balcony level, changed the colors of the flowers to make it individual etc.  I had added a weight machine (think roboflex or whatever they are called) but when it's small enough to fit on the balcony theres no way to even have a clue as to what it is, and it was 75,000 polys so not worth it to me.  Oh and I just completely removed the outdoor rug, I don't think people would understand that it was a rug, they'd likely think that something went wrong when creating the building LOL.

It sure has gone through some changes since it was just a little tutorial building to what it is now.  So, anyway once the rendering is done I'll post some screens hopefully it will be to the majoritys likings.

[RebaLynnTS]

CB, great job! This stuff can be fun.

[City Builder]

Well, here it is in game.  It's a screenie of a side by side shot, the old building and the new darker roofed brick building.

Now, maybe someone here can tell me about a problem while trying to render in 3dsmax...

I followed the instructions and exported the LOD files, and created the model file in Gmax with the exported LOD files.  I then render the model file in 3DSMax and it tells me that it exported just fine.  When I try to place the building on a lot in the lot editor Im shown a box of colors, a multi colored box instead of the building.  Can anybody tell me what is causing this and what to do to fix it so that I can start using 3dsmax to do my buildings.

Thanks,

[City Builder]

Well, I think I've gone as far as I can with the L shaped building so I started on a tower, which got totally trashed when trying to texture it and add details to it so I gave up on it and started on a new tower (screenshot below).

Right now it's still just a work in progress and needs tons of details, textures and "fixing up" of things, such as the glass's reflections Im not happy at all with.  It's sort of too opaque I think but I've not stumbled upon the right combination of settings to get rid of that yet. 

So anyway, Im listening to suggestions on how to improve this building, I know it looks rather plain jane but so do the real life buildings that I was originally using as a model for which to model these buildings (second screenshot).

Ummm, need not say it but... Yeah I've not done the windows on the other two sides of the building, so that should take me a couple hours to try to remember how I did the punchouts and lay everything the way that it is.  I still have the punchout box templates however so it should just be lining it up and pro booleaning out some holes then laying in the glass and cross hatching strips.  Of course roof junk will come too, Im thinking a tower of some sort, satellite dishes etc.  I don't know whats on the original buildings but there isnt a tower than can be seen but that's okay, artistic license and all that.

[Pat]

that looks good there CB i wish i could offer you anything else for tidbits but im dumb when it comes to bat and all that, Im a lotter and somewhat modding lol....

[RebaLynnTS]

I started out just playing the Game, then downloading new stuff, now I am making it, and getting better all the time.

[City Builder]

It is only through making stuff that we can get better at doing it.  Heck I already laugh when I look into one of my cities and see my "Deacons Power Supply Co" building sitting there (same one that is in the first post or two of this thread) in my game and it just makes me chuckle to realize how much I really struggled on that model (if you can really call it that) and just how far I've come in a very short period of time at least if not in the execution, at least with the technical know how to do it better now.

My entire extent of 3d modeling was when BAT was first released and I opened up Gmax, poked around in it for about 5 minutes and said, "No way Jose", this aint for me, and the next time I reinstalled it and started playing with it was just last week when I did that first power supply company model.  It's wonderful to see these threads from people that start out like me with little to no knowledge of how to do this and watch them progress, I only wish more people would post their first model regardless if it's crap or not, because it makes it interesting to see how they progress.

[callagrafx]

Well, here it is in game.  It's a screenie of a side by side shot, the old building and the new darker roofed brick building.

Now, maybe someone here can tell me about a problem while trying to render in 3dsmax...

I followed the instructions and exported the LOD files, and created the model file in Gmax with the exported LOD files.  I then render the model file in 3DSMax and it tells me that it exported just fine.  When I try to place the building on a lot in the lot editor Im shown a box of colors, a multi colored box instead of the building.  Can anybody tell me what is causing this and what to do to fix it so that I can start using 3dsmax to do my buildings.

Thanks,

Your problem is one of ID conflicts...It occurs when you re-render a building. To avoid conflicts, simply delete the old .sc4model and .desc file, re-export the LODs, copy/paste the new model name and re-render.  You may, if the export window still has the name of the old model in it, have to merge the model into a new scene, resave and then re-export.  The TGI (Type Group Instance) that forms the filename and the texture reference is derived from a number of different sources, one of which being the computer clock, so the TGI will always be different every time you export.

[jayo]

Great work CB but your building has to be wider if you want it to look like the RL one-I think so anyway 

[City Builder]

You mean the twin towers building needs to be wider right?

I noticed that too and I don't know what happend but when I was initially creating the building I couldn't get the width to go any higher than 79.8mm so I "thought" I had reached some kind of limitation in the program only to find out much later on that I could have created the items that make up the width substantially wider and 79.8m is barely a drop in the wideness bucket but by then it was too late as I didn't feel like starting over again on this one.  So...  I guess it will just have to be twin towers from my mind.

Also found a great plugin for (free) 3DSmax called Color Correct that allows me to adjust the hue and RGB values and much more right inside of 3ds which makes darkening up textures or adding contrast etc much faster and easier, of course now I've got to actually do texturing right which it appears I've got a lot to learn in that. 

Oh, the towers are going to be a concrete color/texture eventually , not this brown color.  And the doors are not to scale nor are they staying.  The two boxes at the front of the base will eventually become the garage openings and I'll just pretend (hey, this is a game right?) that the only entrance to the buildings is through the garage.

[RebaLynnTS]

Getting the texture and color just right is a real challenge. Trust me, I know.

[City Builder]

I believe you, I've been struggling with it ever since.... Well, last week anyway. 

It's great that I learn something new on each model.  On this model I learned that I should have built the walls as one solid object and punched holes where I need them, it would have made everything line up perfectly and given it a totally smooth surface as well as been easier to texture with a gradient (which I may still redo this one since I enjoyed playing with it so far) on one large wall surface since when it's broken down to components it's near impossible for me to keep a texture flowing the way that I want it to be.

[callagrafx]

I believe you, I've been struggling with it ever since.... Well, last week anyway. 

It's great that I learn something new on each model.  On this model I learned that I should have built the walls as one solid object and punched holes where I need them, it would have made everything line up perfectly and given it a totally smooth surface as well as been easier to texture with a gradient (which I may still redo this one since I enjoyed playing with it so far) on one large wall surface since when it's broken down to components it's near impossible for me to keep a texture flowing the way that I want it to be.

Simply select all the walls group together and assign a UV Map that covers the entire wall, then the single texture will be seamless and the gradient can be applied.

[City Builder]

Thanks, I had no idea, I think that's super, I just tried it and got some interesting output, none of which I'll bother sharing but makes for interesting possibilities in the future.

Anyway, here is the original width that I had in mind when creating these buildings and I may just have to start over with it, as I like it far better, just looks nicer to me. (obviously Im talking about the building on the left.)

I will never try another diagonal slanty type of building again, that's for dern sure.  Math is not my strong point so this was a whole lot of visually trying to line things up instead of using protractors etc to get all the angles and I'd dare say that in my opinion, these non-boxed type of buildings are best left up to the expert batters