Metarvo steps up to BAT

Aaron Graham · June 06, 2011, 03:48:55 AM

Your doing such a great job, I can't wait to see the sub stations for these power lines. Keep it up.

Buzzit · August 08, 2011, 05:23:12 PM

hey Metarvo hows things going with the P3? it has been awefully quiet over here!

metarvo · August 15, 2011, 08:23:44 AM

supremec: Thanks!

So, how do I go about ameliorating my cylinders? I've looked, and don't see an option like that anywhere.

Aaron Graham: Thank you.

Before I work on the substations anymore, I want to get this isolator issue sorted out, because the isolators for the substations (and to a degree the ones on everything else) will be based on these.

Buzzit: After a long break from SC4 due to summer and RL, I'm planning to get back into this. This isolator issue had me bogged down just a little, but I think I'm starting to make some progress.

Here's a test render showing the new isolators. I can see that they appear more ridged than the old ones, but this effect diminishes in far zooms.

This is a close up of the isolators.

supremec · August 15, 2011, 08:45:10 AM

It is really good

Quote from: metarvo on August 15, 2011, 08:23:44 AM
supremec: Thanks! So, how do I go about ameliorating my cylinders? I've looked, and don't see an option like that anywhere.

A bit more grey and a bit more small at radius, but it is my opinion, you can do what you want

metarvo · August 15, 2011, 02:06:10 PM

I have rebuilt the isolators again. Following supremec's suggestions, I have designed these new isolators with a smaller radius, and they are more grey now.

This is a test render of the redesigned isolators,

and here is a close-up from within the BAT.

Buzzit · August 16, 2011, 08:42:10 AM

oh they look really nice!
far diffrent than anyones i ever seen but still cool! aspecially from far!
btw could you scale this model times 2 if you have the time? im pretty curious how it looks like it when scaled up

its good to see you back! im not feeling alone anymore when its about pylons

Aaron Graham · August 16, 2011, 10:36:46 AM

Looks great, I can't wait to see more.

metarvo · August 17, 2011, 10:04:25 AM

Buzzit: Thank you for the kind words!

It's good to be back, since I started missing pylons again.

I'm trying to at least give my isolators some life, rather than just slapping some cylinders on a stick and calling it good like I did before. Yes, I did try upscaling the model times 2 as requested.

Aaron Graham: Thanks for the compliment.

Here is the Zoom 5 view of the pylon with new isolators, shown in SD and HD, normal scale and 2x scale. 120 ft. is indeed the textbook average for this pylon, so upscaling it 2x results in 240 ft., which is quite high (perhaps not in comparison to the European pylons that I have heard about and seen pictures of). The real problem, though, it the fact that the pylon no longer fits into a 1x1-tile area, as seen in these in-game pics.

Here is a Zoom 6 shot of the two 1x-scale pylons, to better showcase the crispness that only HD can provide.

Here is a Zoom 4 pic. Of course, there's no difference between HD and SD from this zoom out. Notice that the ridged texture of the new isolators can't be seen as clearly in this zoom on the 1x pylons. It can be seen better on the 2x pylons, simply because the bigger pylons have larger isolators to match.

I'm still not sold on upscaling them 2x, though. 1x will probably be the route I will go here.

Buzzit · August 17, 2011, 05:35:45 PM

wow thats a diffrence indeed!
tobad that i get really confused about the sizes now because the smaller ones of you look better than the big ones but its the opposite with my models hehe.
also when i put them next to maxis buildings they do look a bit oversized. but if i put them next to downloaded material wich is somewhat bigger they look really nice. aspecially with downloaded tree packs.
i also limit my pylon feet to 8 meter wich will be doubled to 16 (wich is the maximum for 1 tile. as i will use 9 tiles for really big river crossings.
keep the updates flowing!

metarvo · August 20, 2011, 11:12:43 AM

The Maxis scale is way off anyway.

That's why I built these strictly by the RL measurements (or by comparison with the RL poles when measurements were unavailable). From what I've seen by comparing the RL pictures of your pylons to my measurements and templates, yours are much taller IRL than mine anyway, which may be why they look better taller than mine do.

Here are two more development pics that display the new isolators and textures in place on various poles and angles:

The double-circuit wires I have already BATted for this set will still work, because the changes I've made are purely cosmetic. Expect to see them in the next update.

Aaron Graham · August 21, 2011, 07:30:40 AM

Looks great.

metarvo · August 27, 2011, 08:00:06 AM

Thanks, Aaron.

As promised, here are some pics of the new wires. I have created a custom texture just for the wires, as opposed to the basic solid colors I used previously. Direction and zoom level are indicated in each pic.

Buzzit · February 21, 2012, 04:44:36 AM

hey metarvo it has been ages!
do you have any updates on your project??
the most recent ones surely look good!

Aaron Graham · February 21, 2012, 01:14:09 PM

I just Hope he can get back to bating soon.

Lewis2567 · March 10, 2012, 04:40:28 PM

Hey! So when will be bating again? I would like to see you new H frames the wood poles. 138kv poles!!

metarvo · May 12, 2012, 05:17:36 AM

Buzzit: I'm still trying to get the substations ready, but progress is moving along on the 345kV metal set. I'm glad to be working on these again!

Aaron Graham: I'm sorry I was away for so long. I've just been busy with some non-SC4 things lately. I'm back now, though.

Lewis2567: I'm back to work on this project again, although I haven't really done any work on the 138kV wood set lately. I'll get back on it soon.

I don't have too much to show right now, but I did think of something else the set needed. Playing around with this set, I regularly run into situations where a building or road happens to be just where the next pylon needs to be located. It turns out that varying the length of the span might not help because there's yet another obstacle where the pylon after that one would go. Rarely are structures ever torn down for the construction of power lines; they usually curve around the occasional bump in the route. When an 18.4° or 45° angle would take the route unnecessarily out of the way, an S-curve can prove to be a better alternative, which is why I'm now including them in the set. The S-curve's function is to slide the line over by one tile. The wood pole set will be getting them as well.

Buzzit · May 12, 2012, 10:54:57 AM

thats a fantastic idea! i never thought of that one

!
it indeed is really annoying to redecorate the scene because the pylon is in the way of the road or a building. i usually demolished it because powerlines have the highest priority in my land

.

it seems like you redone your orgininal model aswell? or is this exclusively used for the S-curve?

metarvo · May 12, 2012, 03:39:21 PM

Lol

! I guess structures are bulldozed in dense cities to clear the path for power lines in my area (the local electric utilities are some of the privileged few that get to use eminent domain), but the utilities near me do try to avoid tearing things down in rural areas or suburbs where there is sufficient real estate available.

This model is only going to be used for the S-curve for now. It's the equivalent of the RL set's 5° pylon, which is used for any angle below one requiring a 10° piece instead. According to one site I looked up (I can't remember the name of the site for the life of me now

), most RL pylon sets usually have straight, 30°, and 90° variants. Even the pricing tables for the RL equivalent of my set include those three variants, but the actual set has a ton of different models: straight, 5°, 10° (not yet represented in my set), 25°, 70°, and 90°. I've also added in 40° and 55° poles (with the angles based on Google Maps observations rather than official specifications) to my recreation of the set which were used at one time in RL but apparently no longer are for new installations. They actually seem to favor using 90° pylons for every turn now, even though actual 90° realignments in the lines were once quite rare. They show up much more now that the new lines in the western part of the state are following farm field fences.

Thanks for the input.

Here's a comparison of the S-curve model (edges) with the standard one (center). As seen here, each rotation will have two S-curves, with one going left and the other going right.

Buzzit · May 14, 2012, 03:28:52 PM

amazing job
what a work this should be!
it takes me more than a frustrating week to wire my poles orthogonal an diagonal. and you create angles wich are even more frustrative if you ask me!

is there some kind of technique you use for wireing the pylons? if its possible to do it faster i would love to know

Lowkee33 · May 14, 2012, 03:48:42 PM

@Buzzit: I imagine a simple way is to select every object and move all of their pivots to 0,0,0. Then they will at least rotate along the same axis. It's one of those tabs in the upper right, a button called "Effect pivot only".

Some of those angles aren't so great for the power lines. For small details, you might want to turn on anti-aliasing in the S3D. Here is an image of what needs to be done in the Mat section (Link), I've also made a script for Xannepan that will do it automatically for you in Reader 1.4 (Link).

Another thing that can be done (though much more time consuming) is editing the FSH directly. FSH have alpha values, but if you don't edit the S3Ds as I mentioned, SC4 will only display the 100% opacity pixels. I've found that doing an "Alpha Threshold" at 50% (anything more than 50% opaque becomes 100% and anything under becomes 0%) works pretty good.

Anyway, keep up the good work, glad to see you back