The University of Clayhurst

[Utvaw]

Things are looking very good in here.  As for the tiles under the tower, i say keep em, helps give the university that identity it needs and it looks good to boot.

[bap]

The deep red of the main entry doors (front and sides) don't look very well lit here, but they will definitely show up better with a night mod such as Gizmo's.  Unless someone sees any other last minute show stoppers, I'm ready to call this finished!

Hi JB. One thing called my attention in your night light pictures of the atlhetic facility #1. It seems a bit strange that the upper row of 7 windows in the sloped part of the building (as well as the similar row of 11 windows on each side of the building) shows no night lights when the lower windows are quite transparent and illuminated. Was that made on purpose? Otherwise, this seems another excellent BAT of yours!

[Zacharuno]

JB, I love the Fieldhouse. It looks great. BUT... I hate to be THAT guy, but I'm not too fond of the Clayhurst stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love the UC stuff you're creating, but for myself, my universities aren't called Clayhurst. I imagine I'm not the only one. So labeling the buildings as such might create issues for some Mayors. Just my two cents. I'm looking forward to incorporating these buildings into my campus. Good thing I left room for expansion,

[metarvo]

I thought I would come in here and check on how things are going with Clayhurst, and I like what I see.  I prefer the new roof texture to the old one.  I like the red doors, too, because I feel like they add to the character of the building and the university in general.  The tiles under the tower add to the university's character in the same way. 

It's a shame you keep on having all of those power outages, but it's good that your computer situation worked out OK.  Good work, JB! 

[Ramona Brie]

JB, I love the Fieldhouse. It looks great. BUT... I hate to be THAT guy, but I'm not too fond of the Clayhurst stuff. Don't get me wrong, I love the UC stuff you're creating, but for myself, my universities aren't called Clayhurst. I imagine I'm not the only one. So labeling the buildings as such might create issues for some Mayors. Just my two cents. I'm looking forward to incorporating these buildings into my campus. Good thing I left room for expansion,

That's a good point...and especially on the bell tower mosaic. Not every university made with these pieces will have a "C" name. But it looks good anyways.

[JBSimio]

Guillaume:  Thank you!

Utvaw:  Thanks!

Bap:  Thank you!  Yes, the windows you mention are purposely blacked out.  The RL building that this one was based on is the same way.  Those windows have actually been covered (or replaced) with flat black sheet metal while still retaining the historical look of the frames.  I kind of liked the idea and simply copied it on my version.

Zacharuno:  Thanks!  I completely understand what you're saying.  I had the same debate with myself and in this thread a few pages back when I was making the entrance signs.  "How readable should they really be?"  For the record, the university in my own MD isn't even called Clayhurst!    For the most part, I've tried to keep things as generic as possible while still scattering some names or logos around to give a sense of identity.  Even when I do include such labels, I'm trying to do it in a way that can be easily blurred or even hidden.  On the Field House, I'd say the front carved stone name plate is barely readable and could easily say something else with the power of suggestion.    The rear door is painfully obvious, but at the same time, how many people are going to take a picture of the back of a building for their MD?  The mosaic tile beneath the bell tower is partially hidden and could really say anything.  I'm not saying all this is set in stone, but this is how I see it for now.  Anyone can feel free to disagree and adjustments could still be made if need be.

Metarvo:  Thanks!  Glad to see you stopping by and I'm equally glad that you like what you see.  Hopefully Spring will arrive here soon and we can forget power outages for a while! 

Tracker:  See above for the long answer.    The mosaic texture could easily be adjusted to make more white and less lettering visible if need be.

As I said in the replies, I'm very open to the "generic" versus "labeled" debate.  On the one hand, a sense of identity helps to tie everything together.  On the other hand, I understand that no one wants to be stuck with obvious names which they may not want to use.  It's a fine line to tread and I've explained my current approach which attempts to satisfy both sides.  If that approach isn't working then let the debate continue.  You all should know by now that I rarely consider myself infallible! 

Spent a few hours tinkering with the arena last night and again this afternoon.  Here's the latest:



The curved walls are just place holders for now, but it should give a little bit of an idea where this is headed.  Some people may also now be able to recognize the inspiration for this one.  This should wind up fitting on a 6x6 lot... give or take.

Until next time,
JB

[XiahouDun]

  Wow that is looking grand.

For the labeling debate going on, I get the point both sides are making. Its not really an issue for me though. My region name is Chiana, so its going to be UC anyways

[Zacharuno]

Hey JB. Thanks for the response. I think I've read every page of every thread you've created, so I'm quite familiar with the debate, which is why I brought it up. I don't mind the buildings being named. In fact, I'd rather them be named and modeled with names than to be empty and void of personality. As for the tower mosaic, you're right. You can't really tell what it says, so I vote it stays the same. But with regard to the 'back' of the building. If you're taking a snap shot of your campus, odds are, not all buildings are facing the same direction and the FH may end up having the back facing the camera. My two cents, again.

A general question now. What's the difference between a Fieldhouse and an Arena? There's Allen Fieldhouse at Kansas and Rupp Arena at Kentucky. So they're both used for Bball, among other things. Is there a difference with regard to these two buildings, or just for variety?

Thanks!

BTW the arena looks good. I'm excited to see more.

[Sciurus]

Really nice, but I wondered... how do you do these wonderful rounded walls? One more time, a BAT question

Guillaume

[Aaron Graham]

This is such a big project and it's looking great. I can wait to see it finish.

[jdenm8]

Hm... an Arena... Could be passed off as a Theatre or Cinema too. 

Also, the Placeholder Colour you're using for the fascia looks like Stucco or painted concrete... me like 


Looks good so far.

[Jack_wilds]

Hey JB,

Trust all is well and good with you... I've been on sick leave the passed 4 days, it sucked  ... but I am on the mend.
 
the weather here is strangely acting... , after the snow storm, it turned colder than normal and all spring events are delayed... now their forecasting more snow then rain over the weekend... so march will go out the lion unlike the lamb of its coming...

I like the tower, its lighting and the mosaic logo however I'd make a bigger diameter that fits in side that will show it off better; plus save the mosaic to use in a couple of other applications -like an 'class of' alumni gift,

the arena teaser is that a teaser  ... it kinda has that look of a mid 70's arena even the progress suggest that mode... so what direction of period look are you shooting for?
maybe give it a name ie Llama arena or some such cheeky name... perhaps named for the UC-mascot... just some 

Jack

[Ramona Brie]

Hey JB,

Trust all is well and good with you... I've been on sick leave the passed 4 days, it sucked  ... but I am on the mend.
 
the weather here is strangely acting... , after the snow storm, it turned colder than normal and all spring events are delayed... now their forecasting more snow then rain over the weekend... so march will go out the lion unlike the lamb of its coming...

I like the tower, its lighting and the mosaic logo however I'd make a bigger diameter that fits in side that will show it off better; plus save the mosaic to use in a couple of other applications -like an 'class of' alumni gift,

the arena teaser is that a teaser  ... it kinda has that look of a mid 70's arena even the progress suggest that mode... so what direction of period look are you shooting for?
maybe give it a name ie Llama arena or some such cheeky name... perhaps named for the UC-mascot... just some 

Jack

A mid-70s design but renovated. Personally, I'd like something a little more true to the 1970s design.

[JBSimio]

Hi everyone... no update today, and no replies just yet either.     I'll get to both later in the weekend.  In the meantime, I'm here to fulfill another tutorial request.  Guillaume asked about building the curved walls.  The short answer is, "It's just a tube!"    The long answer is next... 



Before we get into my methods for modeling curved walls, I first want to mention that nearly all of my modeling is done using the spline methods described here.  While I wouldn't necessarily categorize what I'm about to describe as "advanced," it will definitely make more sense if you're already familiar with things described in Couchpotato's tutorials.

The most important thing in creating curved walls is planning ahead and setting things up from the beginning.  Don't get me wrong, trial and error will be a huge part of the whole thing, but you'll save a LOT of trouble later by getting that trial and error out of the way early.  (Trust me!)  In this case, we'll be making a large curve that covers the entire west side of my building.  I know I want it centered to a certain portion of my existing model, which here can be seen as the dark orange wall on the same side.  This section has a centerpoint of y=33.  To begin, I will simply create an arc in the top view by snapping each end to the corners of the orange wall.  After each side is snapped you can stretch the arc into the approximate curve you think you want.  It doesn't have to be exact at this point and you don't need to worry about the specific placement yet either.  This is just a starting point.



"But Jon... why snap it to that wall when we'll be putting it way out at the end of the angled walls?"  Fair question.  I actually made the angled walls after figuring out the exact curve I wanted to ensure everything would fit properly.  The method will work the same either way.  Once you've established your curve, click on Select and Move to make sure it is indeed centered at y=33. 



It is?  Great!  Let's move on.  Now we're going to click the Modify tab and start playing around to get the proper fit.  Actually, we'll also move it along the x axis to line things up properly too... this is the trial and error part that takes some switching back and forth.



Now in my case, I knew I wanted this wall to curve no further than 32 meters left of my center line.  (I'm going for an overall lot width of 6 tiles on this building... 32 meters on each side would put me at 4 game tiles wide.  None of this really matters unless you want to know why I did what I did!)  So I moved the arc and changed the radius, by simply typing in larger or smaller numbers as needed) until I had something that looked good to me.  I'm not overly concerned with the "corners" between the angled walls and the curve being a perfect 90 degree corner, but I didn't want it to look ridiculously off either.  This is why simply moving the arc into place may or may not be enough to get the right look.  I went back and forth between changing the radius and moving the arc several times before getting this result.  Now we'll clean up the overhanging bits at either side of the arc.



In the last picture, you saw the Parameters for an arc include Radius, From, and To along with the two check boxes that we don't need here anyway.  I didn't explain Radius in the last step because, quite frankly, I would hope that anyone following this would know what the radius for an arc is and how to use it!    From: and To: are the incriments in degrees that define the either end of your arc.  If you imagine your arc as a complete circle, then 0 degrees is at 3 o'clock, 90 degrees is at 12 o'clock, 180 degrees is at 9 o'clock, and 270 degrees is at 6 o'clock.  Yes... the whole thing works counter clockwise!!!  All we'll do here is adjust the From: and To: settings until our arc ends somewhere inside the existing walls, preferrably on a workable whole number or at least a decent tenth.  As you can see, I ended up with an arc which begins at 142 degrees inside my existing wall.  We want this to be even on both sides in the future, so do the math to get your other side.  180 degrees (at 9 o'clock which is the center point of this curve) minus 142 equals 38 degrees.  180 + 38 = 218 which is what I filled in for the opposite end.  This will keep things nice and uniform when we actually begin modeling the wall.

So we have our curve looking just the way we want it and have it placed to line up perfectly with everything else it needs to line up with.  How do we change this simple arc into a wall?  The short answer is, "We don't!"  The long answer is that this arc is simply a template because it's the easiest thing to work with.  Now we are going to use what we've figured out and create a Tube for our wall.



Click on the Create tab, then click the button for Geometry, then the button for Tube.  There are all sorts of things to look at here.  Creation Method simply decides whether your tube will grow from the center of your first mouse click or the outer edge of your first mouse click.  Since we have our centering numbers from the arc template, we want the default setting to draw from center.  Everything else will be important in a moment.  First simply draw a tube in the Top view.  Again there is no need to make it perfect as we'll use the Parameters settings to do get this right.  Obviously mine is nowhere near where it needs to be.  That's what our template was for!  First we need to move the tube to the same settings as our template.  Move the tube to whatever your settins were.  (This example used x=-2.25, y=33.)  Using the Modify tab, we'll bring our settings over that we used for the arc.  Radius 1: will be the outer radius of our tube.  Radius 2: will be the inside radius.  Our arc had a radius of 44 meters, which I chose to use for Radius 2.  The difference between the two numbers should simply be the thickness of your wall.  Height is whatever height you want the finished wall to be.  The next setting is Height Segments which defaults to 5.  For our purposes, there is no need to have multiple segments so I've reset it to 1.  Cap Segments and Sides can be ignored for the moment, although we'll come back to set the number of sides later.  Smooth will be checked as a default which is fine.  Slice On needs to be checked in order for us to establish the end points of our wall.  Check this box and use your numbers from the arc template we set up.



Wait!!! What the...  Oh, Gmax, your dirty dirty so and so!  For reasons that I will never understand, tubes use a different basis for degree settings than the arc we used earlier.  So now instead of 0 degrees being at 3 o'clock, it's at 12 o'clock!  (Which actually makes more sense to me)  The numbers still go up in a counter clockwise motion (so 90 degrees is now at 9 o'clock) but From and To are reversed compared to the arc as well!  (This actually makes sense even though it constantly feels backwards when I use it.  The arc was being drawn from one degree to the other.  Here we are removing the portions between one degree and the other.)  All this is fixable, just confusing at first.  We know that our center point is on the left hand side at 9 o'clock, which is now 90 degrees.  The arc stretched 38 degrees on either side of this center point.  We simply need to add to and then subtract from 90 to get our new ending points, which are now 52 degrees and 128 degrees.



That looks better!  Notice that the endpoints are simply reversed from the arc settings.  Also notice how perfectly it lines up with the original arc?  That's called success my friends!    We're done with the arc and can delete it.  Now, if you simply want a solid wall, you could slap a UVW map on this tube and call it a day.  Consider your wall finished! 

However, if you want windows, or almost any other details that line up perfectly then we'll have to keep going.  That process will continue in the next post.

JB

[JBSimio]

If you're reading this post, I must assume that you want to complicate your life even further for the sake of trivial details such as windows, doors, or possibly even stairwells.  Are you crazy?!?  Who needs windows in a curved wall?  Save those for the flat walls and move on!  It would be so much easier.

Actually, that's kind of what we're about to do.  Gmax has boolean functions and some other methods to cut openings through our tube if we wanted to, but I find them difficult to work with and that they tend to distort the textures for some reason.  Since I like to model with splines anyway, this method is just an extension of the same practices.  From this point on, the tube will become our new template and we will be modeling the curved wall in individual flat sections just like any other wall.  The individual sections will then be put into place so that together they form the curved look we're after.

The first thing we need to determine is how many of those individual sections we want.  There are several things to consider when making this decision.  The most important is making it still look good.  The more sections you have, the smoother your curve will look.  However, at the same time, more sections means that each one will also be smaller which could severely limit what you'll be able to do within each section.  Obviously, we need to find a decent balance.  A final thing to consider is the angles required to fit all this together.  This is not as important, but it would be nice to make the math as simple as we can if possible.  We'll get to that in a moment.  First let's have a closer look at our tube template.



Select your tube and uncheck the Smooth box.  Looking in the Perspective view will give you a fairly decent idea of how pronounced the "corners" of your curve sections will look when rendered.  Currently, we have the number of Sides set at the default 18.  This means our entire curved wall would be made up of 18 individual sections.  Play around with that number of Sides and find an acceptable number that still looks good.  I decided that 13 sides will fit my needs quite well here, but before we finalize that we should check how much space that gives us to work with in each section.



In the Left view, snap a rectangle against a single section of your tube.  It can't just be any section though!  To give you an accurate size, you MUST snap your rectangle to the outside vertices (as opposed to those on the inside of the curve which would give you a slightly smaller width) of your tube.  It also MUST be snapped to a section which is perfectly perpendicular to the axis, just like any flat rectangle would be.  Notice in the top view, that I'm snapping to the center section of our tube.  Since we have an odd number of sections, this is the one that will actually be at that 90 degree angle.  Gmax will allow you to snap your rectangle to any of these sections, but it your shape will not follow those angles and it will give you an inaccurate size.  Hopefully, I've explained this well enough because it is quite important now and later when we really start making these wall pieces.  Anyway... once you've drawn the rectangle, you can look at the Width to the right and see what the size will be.  Mine is 4.518 meters wide, which gives me plenty of room for a window or any number of other options.  So I'm happy with that.  If for whatever reason you need different sizes, continue repeating the last two steps until you find a size that works.  Keep in mind that you may have to temporarily rotate your tube, in order to have a section center itself on 90 degrees (or 0, 180, 270, depending on where you're working.)  Once you have a size you like, you can delete the rectangle.  We're not quite done adjusting our tube yet, so we don't need this rectangle for anything beyond testing the size.

The last thing we need to determine from our template is the angle that each of the sections rotates.  We have a curve that stretches from 52 degrees to 128 degrees.  This is a difference of 76 degrees.  Since I have 13 sections, I simply divide 76 by 13, which equals 5.84615 blah blah blah.  This is the angle between each section of our wall.  That's an ugly number!!!  Can we make that something a little more managable?  Certainly!  We could continue playing with the number of Sides to come up with something that goes more evenly into 76.  Or, since our curve actually ends inside the walls on either side, we can shave or add a little to our slices to make a nicer number.  (This option will not always work if, for example, your curve needs to end flush with another structure.)  Grab a calculator and try a few nicer integers near the original ugly number.  5.8 x 13 = 75.4.  Can we get away with shaving our curve down by 0.3 degrees on each side.  Try it, zoom in on the top view, and make sure your curve still meets the walls at each side.  As you would have seen if I hadn't lost the image, it still works out fine.  (Basically, we changed the slice settings to 127.7 and 52.3)  So we'll keep these new settings and work everything off of them.

Now may be a good time to jot down some of these measurements for future reference.  The biggest ones we want to remember are the center point of our tube (x= -2.25, y= 33.0) and the angle for each section (5.8 degrees) as well as the number of sections (13).  These will be important when it comes time to reassemble our curved wall.



Good grief, Jon!  We've spent all this time messing around with curves and tubes, but we still haven't built anything we can use!  Alright, alright... let's make something then.  Snap a rectangle to your tube exactly the way we did when testing the size a couple steps back.  Remember to use the proper section and be sure that it snaps to the outside of your curve.  Notice that since we adjusted our curve slightly, it also changed the width of each section a little bit.  This is why we didn't simply save our original rectangle from that step.  This new rectangle is now our wall section!  At this point, we don't really need the tube anymore, but I usually save it just to make sure everything lines up properly in the end.  So I'll just hide it for now to keep it out of the way.

At this point, you have everything you need to do almost anything you want in building this curve.  For the sake of discussion, let's just say we want to put a window in the center of each section and have every section look the same as the next.  This would be the simplest thing to do, but it will serve well enough to show the remaining steps.



I've added my window opening, using those spline modeling methods you hopefully already know.  Then I simply extruded the wall, but it's important to extrude it the right way!  Since we snapped this rectangle to the outside of our curve, we need to extrude towards the inside of the curve or else the edges will not line up.  If you're not sure, unhide your tube and make sure you've gone the right direction.



I've modeled the window and a sill.  I also added UVW maps to everything at this point.  It's not necessary, but it's easier to do now than later.  Now we're going to select all the pieces that are involved with this wall section and group them together.



Now comes the biggest "secret" to the whole process.  Pivot Points!  Once I learned how to manipulate these, a whole slew of modeling options opened up.



Select your new group and find the Hierarchy tab on the right.  The Pivot button should already be selected when you open this tab for the first time.  Then hit the Affect Pivot Only button.  Now, pick the Select and Move button at the top of your screen.  This shows the current pivot point for your group.  We want to change those coordinates to match our templates center point.  (Remember our tube was centered at x= -2.25, y= 33.0)  Retype those numbers at the bottom... notice your piece didn't move.  (The z coordinate is irrelevant here.)



In theory, any rotating you do should now follow this new pivot point, but Gmax tends to be finicky on this one.  The best way to make sure, is to now push the Select and Rotate button.  Make sure the green and red arrows line up with your new pivot point.  You may have to mouse over your selected view port to make it jump to where it belongs.  I usually switch between the Select and Move and Select and Rotate buttons a time or two just to make sure things stay where they belong.  If the pivot point gets ignored for some reason (which seems to happen a fair amount) you can simply repeat the last two steps to re-orient things.



Leave the Hierarchy tab.  (I usually just click on the Modify tab to do this.)  Make sure your in the Top view and click on the Array button.  We're going to clone our wall section and rotate the pieces into place all at the same time.  Remember that our angle was 5.8 degrees?  That number goes under the Z axis column in the Rotate row.  We also had a total of 13 sections with 6 on each side of our center section.  Since we have our center section, we need to add six more sections in each direction.  So for the Count we type 7 because the count always includes the selected item as well.  Hit OK and giggle with delight at how well that worked. 



Now simply select you original section again, open the Array options and change your 5.8 degrees to -5.8 degrees to do the other half of the curve.



Curved wall finished!  You can unhide your original tube if you want to double check and be sure things lined up.  But there you have it.



Have fun,
JB

[Sciurus]

Thank you! It's a very usefull tutorial, and believe me that I'll use it for a little suburbs house Which has windows in a curved wall
I wait for some more images of your arena I hope they'll arrive soon

Guillaume

[JBSimio]

XiahouDun:  Thank you!

Zach:  Not to be argumentative (think of it more as devil's advocate ) but wouldn't most overviews, aside from mosaics, be zoomed out further?  I'm not entirely sure about the "technical" differences between the two.  From what I've seen, field houses tend to be older athletic facilities built between the 1910's - 30's or so.  Glad you like the arena so far!

Guillaume:  Thanks!  Glad the tutorial helped as well. 

Aaron:  Thank you!  Finished?!?  I shudder to think... 

Jdenm:  Thanks!  Yes, the cream colors will be a sort of off white similar to the DeBussy and Swan buildings.

Jack:  Thank you!  Things are going well here... sorry to hear you've been under the weather.  And dealing with it too!    I don't really want to make the tile mosaic much larger or I feel it would look too crammed in.  I haven't completely picked a name for the arena just yet.

Raymie:  Actually, according to what I've found, the actual University of Kentucky Memorial Coliseum opened in 1950.    It was heavily rennovated in the early 90's, but I'm not sure how much the exterior may have been changed.

Just a quick picture today...



Not a whole lot to say about it right now.  Still piecing things together and figuring out the lower sections of the building.  The small "rooms" flanking the main entry are meant to be ticket sales windows.  Beyond that, it's coming along...

JB

[Utvaw]

That arena is shaping up very nicely, can't wait to get ahold of this stuff and complete a big, fat anchor university in one of my cities.

[Zacharuno]

JB, I like to argue, but I don't think this is a time or place to do so? Besides, it's not really something to argue over. Devils advocate wins. Where are you thinking of going with the new addition on the left side? It looks as if the new part will have a roof that awkwardly covers up part of the building's windows. Have you looked at Memorial Colosseum at UK? Your building reminds me of it a lot. Looking forward to seeing more.

[Sciurus]

Quick but wonderful picture! I really like the details you make on your BATs, they render them more beautiful, and with the textures, the rendering is excellent... I'm really impatient to see the final and IG! I could be a really goo beta tester for this (I say it, I say nothing )

Guillaume