CB's Bats

[Pat]

LoL thats kewl name to have  my full name is Patrick as well lol.... From what I've seen and looking at the pic yes that entrance looks a little large....

[TopCliff]

Looks great. We've always needed more diversity in hospitals in the game. Thanks for fulfilling this need. Later.

[City Builder]

Update on L shaped building: Well the nightlighting of the L shaped building has commenced finally.  I've learned a few things along the way too.  First, I will name any window pane that I place into the game nite_windowglass## so that if I decide to use the Maxis night window lighting I don't have all the extra work at the end when I try to lite things up.  There's a lot of windows that's for certain: 10 (windows/floor) x 7 (floors) x 3 (walls) + 2 (walls) x 4 (windows) x 7 (floors) = One Hell of a LOT of windows to have to rename just to be able to choose which rooms are lit up at night!  Granted Im not going to attempt to lite them all up so I don't "need" to rename them all, but I like having my choices so in case I want to change the lighting later on I don't have to guess which ones are already prefixxed with the word nite in them.

I think I may try to put a spotlight on the billboard too and see how that goes.  I don't want too many lights however as with the hospital there is a nasty shadow above two of the windows and makes it look like there was a fire in that room and the smoke came out the window and I can't find the offending light or whatever it might actually be.

If Gmax had a simple way to just select all the windowglass## in the list and then add a prefix onto to them, or do a mass rename that would be grand but I don't see it.

Anyway, attached is the beginning of the night lighting of the windows.


Update on Hospital: The green is way too green in game, I may have to make a simple flat green texture and apply it to everything that's green.  The yellow came out nice in game though and I've hollowed out many of the main windows on the front of the building so that the window frames and glass doesn't look so flat, and given them nite lighting though for some reason they aren't lighting up in the game, in the renderer they lite up perfectly but in the game there isn't any nightlighting on the hospital but there is on other buildings so I don't know what I did wrong, maybe I skipped a crucial step, but it seems to me that if the gmax BAT renderer lites the windows up like it's supposed to then the game would as well.

I'm sure theres a better way of doing this but it was the only way I could think of being a newb to Gmax.  I saw the hospital in the game and felt that there was just too much green so I wanted to make the slanted back wall of the hospital to be the yellow color.  But the main larger building is one box and I'd applied the green color to the box, so I had to draw out a plane, and adjust it's angle to be the same as the angle of the slant on the main building and then color it yellow thus in the render anyway, it makes the back of the building the yellow color and breaks up the mass green blob.  But Im sure there must be a better way of taking a 4 sided box and coloring each side a different color.  I'll ask if I can find the right forum for such questions on SC4D.

Oh well, maybe I'll figure something out, I might even have to scale the hospital up, as it seems a tad small for a full hospital in the game.

[City Builder]

Well I don't know what's going on but the SC4D forum says my maximum file size is too large and the max size is 301KB but my image is only 81KB, so maybe it didn't like it with my last post, so here is what Im talking about with the smoke coming out the window of the hospital.

[jayo]

Your modeling skills are deffinetly improving  I think you need to work on the textures a bit 

[City Builder]

Thanks, Im definitely no graphics artist.  So I basically use what I can find on the web for free and then modify it slightly if need be.  How would you change the textures on these buildings?  Would it be to add more detail to the textures in the form of embellishments or to give them more of a texturized look, like stucco, or plaster or wood etc?

[vester]

You should add a gradient to the walls. That will make the building looks more real.

[City Builder]

You should add a gradient to the walls. That will make the building looks more real.

Okay thanks, I'll work on that and see what I can do.  I find texturing much more difficult than modeling, I might create a texture and apply it to one of the boxes and it looks great from the front, but from the side the texture is askew and either squished or whatever depending on the size and squareness of the object being textured, I'll have to start reading tutorials on texturing pretty soon.

In the meantime, I've decided that the hospital looked way too small in the game compared to the other hospitals that I have and the green was way over powering so... I've scaled the size of the hospital up and tried to apply some gradient (subtle) textures, so i've done away with the green as it just doesn't look right at all in favor of a creamy yellow.  While keeping in mind that this might be a building that you would see in Florida with the pastel colors.  Oh and I've cut out two notches in the back wall/roof, it was just too large of a slab and not very interesting to look at, so now those cutout areas contain some roof air conditioners.  Got's ta keep the simmies cool in the summer and warm in the winter 'n a hospital.  But the thing to note is that Im not trying to create an ultra realistic building, this hospital is more of a cartoon type of building that I've seen around the world and in many other games, Im not going for realism here by any means.  So scale is probably way off on many aspects but that's kind of what I was shooting for, something overly large and bulbous if that makes sence.

Yeah I still have a problem with the shadows on the front of the building.  Not much I can really do about it.  I've removed all the lights and they are still there to some degree so it must be a lighting problem that Im not prepared to tackle just yet.

[Krio]

Emergency-area looks too big compared to actual hospital and you could remove the helipad because it looks silly.

Anyways, keep on working both bats and do not release these until they are ready. At the moment, they are not.

[City Builder]

Thanks, originally the emergency drive in was just supposed to be the administration wing of the hospital and I don't know what possesed me to turn it into the emergency enterance but I did.  I may try to undo it and return it to the administration portion of the hospital one day, but not today.

Thanks for the reply.

[freedo50]

Hey CB, just a note about working with 3DSMax: there is a separate BAT designed for Max, though it is not an official release. It was designed by someone over at ST and it can be used to render the building in Max. The LODs will still need to be created in gMax, but the building will look a lot better if you know how to use Max. It might be an idea to ask someone like callagrafx or blahdy, who both use BAT4Max (that's what it's called), for more detail and help with getting up and running.

Fred

[City Builder]

Hey CB, just a note about working with 3DSMax: there is a separate BAT designed for Max, though it is not an official release. It was designed by someone over at ST and it can be used to render the building in Max. The LODs will still need to be created in gMax, but the building will look a lot better if you know how to use Max. It might be an idea to ask someone like callagrafx or blahdy, who both use BAT4Max (that's what it's called), for more detail and help with getting up and running.

Fred

Thanks, I found it last night while over at ST.  My first attempt at installing it seems to have gone fine, however Im not certain just yet if it's any easier (not that it's meant to be) to be able to create the model in max, then do the whole rigamarole of opening in Gmax, saving, then finding the file name then exporting out of 3dsmax just yet.  I've got to re-read the tutorial over there on how it works as Im probably making it harder then it really needs to be.  Boy howdy, how I'd love to have just a simple process of getting the model out of 3dsmax and into the game.  3DSmax is just much easier for me to work with now that I've started to do it than Gmax is for me.  They're both very similar but seems that 2008 has many new or enhanced features over Gmax.  Thanks again for the reply as it's jogged my memory to put the Bat4max back on my todo list for today.

[callagrafx]

Yeah I still have a problem with the shadows on the front of the building.  Not much I can really do about it.  I've removed all the lights and they are still there to some degree so it must be a lighting problem that Im not prepared to tackle just yet.

Those aren't shadows but an unfortunate byproduct of multiple Boolean operations in that one of the vertices has "flipped" and is creating a distorted mesh.  There is no "fix" for it apart from remodelling the structure.  For multiple operations using boolean, the best thing to do is to create the shape that acts as the "punch" (in this case a cube) and duplicate it until you have all the cutout shapes defined and it position.  Next, select them all and right click and select "convert to editable mesh".  It should be noted that it's also a wise idea to do this to the wall object too.  Once you've done that, instead of using Boolean, use ProBoolean, which allows you to pick multiple objects. This should solve the face error problem.

Emergency-area looks too big compared to actual hospital and you could remove the helipad because it looks silly.

Anyways, keep on working both bats and do not release these until they are ready. At the moment, they are not.

Hopefully that reads the way it does because English is not your first language...If I recall you are not long out of BATing short trousers yerself 

[City Builder]

Those aren't shadows but an unfortunate byproduct of multiple Boolean operations in that one of the vertices has "flipped" and is creating a distorted mesh.  There is no "fix" for it apart from remodelling the structure.  For multiple operations using boolean, the best thing to do is to create the shape that acts as the "punch" (in this case a cube) and duplicate it until you have all the cutout shapes defined and it position.  Next, select them all and right click and select "convert to editable mesh".  It should be noted that it's also a wise idea to do this to the wall object too.  Once you've done that, instead of using Boolean, use ProBoolean, which allows you to pick multiple objects. This should solve the face error problem.

WOW, what a bummer.  I guess this model is trashed and will need to perhaps be created from scratch again at some future date as I can't release it with those shadows, it's just too distracting.  Oh well, at least now I know how to do multiple boolean cut outs so my thanks for that.

[callagrafx]

Here's another method...have a read through

http://sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=2877.0

[City Builder]

What determines a landmark building or a commercial building?

I understand pretty much how the plugin manager actually works and Im thinking ahead for my L shaped building and whether it should be a landmark building or if it could just be a commercial low or medium wealth building.  As I understand it, if I turn it into a commercial building then the game will (I guess) randomly build it when it's time to build a commercial (of the same wealth level) building if there is a zone large or small enough for it.

My thinking is probably along the lines of a landmark since I don't think it will ever be high quality enough to have it sprouting up all in more than one spot in the city and this allows the gamer to decide if/where he wants the building.

Is this the best approach for a building of this sort?

Then I have a cottage that I've been working on that fits in the same (well, look at the screenshot)...  Woops, guess I deleted the model out of the plugins folder when I was cleaning house due to not naming my models a distinct enough name to make them easier to find.  Anyway, it fits on a 2x2 lot and is rather generic looking and I think would fit in well with the maxis buildings as it's just a square box with a nice roof, and windows, and the lot is nice with a pool, shed, couple trees, driveway and a pickup truck.  So I think when I saw it in game last night next to the game built smaller buildings it looked right at home.  Im guessing that for the cottage, it's acceptable to make it a growable building.

Are there any set in stone rules that people are following with regards to whether they lot up their buildings as growables or ploppables?

Edit:  I've been thinking about the emergency garage building in the hospital (because I was at my doctors office today which is across from the hospital locally here) and I noticed something...  The parking garage for the hospital here is larger then the hospital itself.  So Im really not so certain that leaving the emergency garage the size that it is, would really be all that out of line.  Around us the hospitals use multi level parking garages, such like our Imax theater's parking garage is actually bigger than the Imax theater itself.

I think if anything, making the windows smaller on the hospital would make it appear that the hospital has more rooms, and thus is much larger then the way it is now.  Not that it really matters since the model is trashed due to the boolean fiasco, but if I rebuild it at some point in time, I don't really think it's that out of line to have a parking/emergency garage as large as I made it.  But when you try to put everything into scale, let's face it... Place a pickup truck in the lot editor next to a building such as the hospitals emergency garage opening and you might be able to get 8 trucks inside comfortably on one level, so it's not like it's really scale in the game on many buildings (all just my opinion, mind you.)

Thanks for reading everybody, thanks for the advise and lessons and tutorials and thanks for the community, it's a pleasant place to hang out.

[Glenni]

I like it, but it's not quite ready yet. For instance, that emergency area is huge, there is by no means need for a door which looks to be at least 10 meters wide. That helipad could need some adjustments too, as you probably understand yourself, it does look pretty silly otherwise, it's allright for a starter, all though i must agree with Krio on this one. Don't release it quite yet. Because at the moment, it is not ready for a release.

[wouanagaine]

What determines a landmark building or a commercial building?
...
Are there any set in stone rules that people are following with regards to whether they lot up their buildings as growables or ploppables?

I don't think there is any rule on that subject besides the fact that some buildings are 'unique' or 'civics'. Unique is what I qualify a building to be a landmark, and most of time it can be made as a reward ( more indepth modding knowledge needed ).  Others things with a specific purpose will be done using the appropriate SC4 category ( hospital, trainstation etc.. )
This is of course a matter of play. I usually take any plopable landmark that I like to a corresponding growable when applicable. just because I hate plopping things. but there are lot of other players who do love plop things to better match their vision

[flame1396]

there are lot of other players who do love plop things to better match their vision

Yours truly.

That L-shaped building is great. I think that the textures are too bright, but it is a really lovely model. Please finish it, I think it is very good considering your experience... I'd use it, and I'm very very picky.

[City Builder]

Those aren't shadows but an unfortunate byproduct of multiple Boolean operations in that one of the vertices has "flipped" and is creating a distorted mesh.  There is no "fix" for it apart from remodelling the structure.  For multiple operations using boolean, the best thing to do is to create the shape that acts as the "punch" (in this case a cube) and duplicate it until you have all the cutout shapes defined and it position.  Next, select them all and right click and select "convert to editable mesh".  It should be noted that it's also a wise idea to do this to the wall object too.  Once you've done that, instead of using Boolean, use ProBoolean, which allows you to pick multiple objects. This should solve the face error problem.

Hopefully that reads the way it does because English is not your first language...If I recall you are not long out of BATing short trousers yerself 

Hi callagrafx, where is this "ProBoolean" located?  Is it only in 3dsmax or is it hidden away somewhere in Gmax?  I'm gonna guess it's only in 3DSMax as it's out in the open there and obviously theres a whole lot more choices in 3DSMax, so I guess I'm gonna have to design in 3dsmax and then export the model unless it's hidden away somewhere in Gmax too.