Diggis Contemplates BAT

[SimNation]

Freaking Fan Tastic and the transition looks great as well. Do I smell the hint of a Urban Diggis Pond Transitioning into a Canal coming on?

[Pat]

shaun I am breathless here wow!!!!

[TmiguelT]

what a Fantastic job you are doing here .
I just download your latest job and i'm truly impressed. I still have some of the old pieces on my city and i would like to show but do you mind if i show you a picture of my work using your magnificent creations? 

[Diggis]

Migeul, Please do.  I always like to see what people do with my stuff, especially as it's usually way better than what I can do with it.

Onto more serious matters... this set was originally intended to Match waters with the SG/CAL canal sets.  Unfortunatly, due to RL and some misscommunication I used a texture that Lee had hoped to rerender his canals with.  However he has been unable to do this.  So my question to you is, do I drop the darker water texture, and just use the matching one that I have got working now? Or do I do both?

[FrankU]

Diggis,
No one would ever stop you from doing both, but is it useful?
A lot of people use Cal's canals, so a transition to the existing canals is useful. If you intend to rerender alls Cal's stuff (and if you do, don't forget Simgoober's stuff that Cal forgot) it could be useful if the texture is better than we have already. Otherwise it is just a loss of time.
Otherwise I'd ask you to think of transitions with other water textures like Jeronij's urban canals and PEG's streams, ponds and canals..... Like maybe just your bridge elements with the watertextures and edges of PEG and Jeronij. The bridge would fill the transition.
Or do I miss your point?

[TmiguelT]

ok here it is  . I called this one "THE LAKE".... not much of a creative name though 

[Diggis]

No, I think you understood the question, although it was more of a question of does anybody really wants me to keep the original textures.

Additionally to do what you are asking would require getting my hands on the models from the various developers.  Now I'm pretty sure Jeronij would be more than happy to help, probably citynut too, but Peg.... not likely

[FrankU]

Ok then.
Well, there might be a solution.
PEG's canals and pond sets contain overhanging lots for under bridge placement. These lots can be used to link your props, like the bridges, to PEG's lots.
What I think about is a lot with the three bridge elements (left, center, right) with only the bridge prop on the edge. No base texture, but just empty. Maybe at the edge you need to add something small as coverage. Then we could plop your bridge lot and then use PEG's overhanging lot to cover up the distance.
I did something like this when I lotted an inland port that had to match with PEG's canals.

I hope I am clear. You would probably only need to lot (or BAT) a lot with just the bridge stuff. Also Jeronij's canals could be connected this way.

[Diggis]

Frank, got it, that could work, not sure, would depend on the way the LOD's interact really.  I'll take a look at it for you.

Miguel, that looks great, I really like it.  I love the trees around the edge.  I'm going to relot these the same as the models for the grass so people can plop what every they want on the edge.   That way you wouldn't have to have the pine trees around the edge.

[Ennedi]

TmiguelT: Great lake!  . Very nice shoreline, i love these diagonal peninsulas and small islands! Also the road network looks very good 

FrankU: Good idea, I wonder if it will work!

(...) I'm going to relot these the same as the models for the grass so people can plop what every they want on the edge.   That way you wouldn't have to have the pine trees around the edge.

Yes, do it! Of course we don't need trees everywhere, I'm going to make a mountain lake above an upper flora border (I want to use pond lots with stone bank), lots without trees will be a must to do it 

Adam

[Bobbi]

@Diggis
Your ponds grass is very great!

And I hope the streams grass will come.

---Bobbi

[Diggis]

Adam, I'll try get them done shortly for you, maybe over the weekend.  I never really was happy being forced to use the trees and now I have a few more tricks up my sleeve I've a good method for adapting what I already did to the same style as the grass ponds.

Bobbi, yup, grass streams are next I guess.

[FrankU]

Diggis,

Yesterday evening I played around with your kit.
I tried to plop weeds and cattails exactly on the edge of water and land, where they belong. But that was not possible. Did I do something wrong or is this on purpose? Especially things like cattails grow in the water on the edges where it is not too deep.

Also I plopped your bridge and PEG's overhanging lots of his new PPond kit. It is no good effect the way it looks now. The PPond overlaps your water, which looks nice, but it also does something with the bridge (I should have made pictures.... forgot). But especially the edges won't interact right, but mabe that is solvable.

[Diggis]

Frank, what set were you trying to get the cat tails etc to work on?  The shingle or the grass?  It should work on the grass sweet, but not on the shingle, I need to update the lots and models for them to do this (again )

As for Pegs stuff, feel free to post a pic, but not too sure I'll be able to help.

[FrankU]

Sorry, should have told you: the grass.
I never even downloaded the shingle set.

[Diggis]

OK, that is weird because in testing no one had any issues plopping stuff on the banks.  This isn't an exact science but basically in the single tile pieces you should be able to plop pieces on the land half of the tile.

Can you post a pic of what you can achieve?

[FrankU]

Diggis,

Here I show you what I've got.
Don't criticize the quality of my terrain painting. It's just rough to show what I mean.

Here I plopped three center pieces of your bridge and covered these with PEG's new PPond-kit canal. In a rough way it looks ok, but when you take a closer look it's not so nice. PEG's water level is too high, so the bridge appears to be drowning. Also the embankment crosses the bridge, which is, off course, a stupid look.


Especially when you turn the picture 90 degrees. You can see PEG's water on the wrong side.
I guess it would take some batting of a new bridge if you want to get these right. So a good transition from your canals to PEG's is not there yet.


And now the plopping of flora. On the land part it is OK. I just wanted to plop the cattails and some other water flora into the water. Mostly around the shore. But that is not possible.
Is it a lot of work to alter this? I hoped that it would be only some setting in LE. If it is that, then please tell me which setting it is, then I'll edit the lots myself.


And to finish this post: a request. Diagonals. What you see here is not something I'd dare to show in a CJ. 

[Diggis]

I have done the waterways that way intentionally so that the user can't plop on water.  This is because in most cases you wouldn't want to.   What you would need to do is alter the bounding box size of the prop to something very small in the Reader and then reset the prop on the lot and replop the lots to remove that abilitly.

As mentioned earlier, I will take a look at diagonals at some point, but don't hold your breath.  I tried them once before and had all sorts of trouble.  The streams are easy to diagonal, but the ponds are definetly not so easy.

As for Pegs stuff, I'm not overly worried about getting a seamless transition to his stuff, but if you can get his model off him I will render a copy of it with my bridge edge for you, but as you said, the water level is vastly different so I doubt it would look good anyways.  I would suggest you wait a few days untill I have time to finish off updating my stuff to Match Lee's and use his canals instead.

[FrankU]

Diigis,

Thanks....
Pity about the plopping ability. This sounds like a job I cannot do myself. Have never Batted and will never do. I am sure I'm smart enough to learn, but my time is limited.
And the combining of PEG's and yours: I'll let it go. I already guessed from the beginning that it would be too much work. Also I like Lee's canals a lot, but PEG has a very useful CSK for industrial areas. I think I'll try to think of an other way of combining these canals. Maybe by just pretending they fit together and never show the seams to someone else.

[Diggis]

I have Lee's canal models so at some point I might look at rendering some additional models for it, especially in light of the new CAN-AM.  I still have one more bank style I want to do for the ponds, plus a million ideas for variations.  I think I need to get the SSP tool working to do DAMN lots for these soon.