BAT Projects - SimGoober

[Simcity5 2]

SimGoober, I love your work! It's absolutely amazing.

You're so good at the BAT. I'd love to see something like a Best Buy, Sears, or maybe even a post office.

[couchpotato 8]

BAT errors... it will drive you crazy

I bought a new pc just to get rid of these problems... pieces of maxis buildings showing up when things rendered..

Didn't help... only thing that helped is an external hard drive with additional paging files ... windows monitored.
since then... no problems with those memory driven pieces of buildings.

I know...how difficult is it to render a tree... well... six or seven hours of difficult

[budweiserdude23 80]

Simgoober, that's too bad. Hopefully everything will work itself out. Elaborating on Simcity5's thought, if you have any interest in creating any more name brand retail lots I have compiled a list. They can be found in the link in my signature to the Barry Sanders Project. Kroger's was actually on that list. Keep up the good work...

[joerg 278]

I wasnt saying that it shouldnt have the second entrance even though i think its to small to have 2 entrances. I was just thinking that the round entrance was very modern and elegant while the other entrance (no offence) but it looks like alittle to cheaply built like it would be part of an older gorcery store or maybe an afterthaught and the store couldnt afford anything better. Also i understand simcities limits but i think there comes a time when we just have to accept that some bigger stores are ploppables.

[SimGoober 2,351]

I posted the Kroger lot.  The second entrance probably could have been better, but I think it looks ok.  I think I'm going to do a little cleaning up on the Columbus One, and release it, then move on.  I have been getting requests for some strip centers / mini malls.  I'll play with those next.

 

I also have a couple pics of a Best Buy and Office Max.  Those are on my todo list...

[mcarch 15]

SimGoober, how about some more hotels like your Embassy Suites hotel... I really Enjoy this one! For example... Radisson Hotels around the world.

Thanks,
mcarch

[SimGoober 2,351]

Here is an older project I am revisiting.. Suburban offices buildings.  This is modeled loosely on one near me, but now that I can see it from this angle, I am not fond of the base.  I'll play with it some more.  There will also be a small mechanical room on the roof.

It is laid out to fill a 3x3 tile, I may do 2 versions; with and without parking around it.

[hogmeister 7]

That

[SimGoober 2,351]

It's roughly to scale of the real ones : each square is about 5 meters, which inside the building is one office.  The real one is just a utilitarian office complex, but I'm trying to spice this up a little.  I like the weirdness of the wall shapes, so I am playing with it.  The first floor will be shops, as is the origonal.  There are actually several of these buildings near me, all in slightly different variations.  Some are square like this, others rectangular.  Some have 4 floors, up to 8.  They all have this hugely ugly mech area building on top (another 2 stories of metal), but I am playing with some different ideas.  A glass atrium might work, I'll play with that.

[cerulean 15]

There are buildings with small windows like this, dental offices come to mind...looks interesting!

[oldfart 12]

That is an interesting building. It has wierd, but cool, walls (How did you make those, anyway?). Are the walls going to be that light yellow color when it's all done?

 

[davidhogan 1]

if you do the storefronts as real stores, couldn't you make a prop family of storefronts for a bunch of different chains, so that each time the building came up it'd have a different combo of storefronts?

 

maybe it'd be too much work, but it'd be pretty sweet. 

 

dave

[SimGoober 2,351]

There are no textures on this yet, just the colors in BAT.  I'll play with those later, but that will be the general color, though not as bright.

 

I made the panels for each section by making a lg rectangle, with a smaller one inside for the window; edit spline, attach and extrude to .5 meters.  I then did an edit mesh, vertices, and moved the 4 corners of the window back into the wall .4 meters.  To accent the variation, I traced the 4 angled lines with another line, with the view mesh on, set to .1 meters.  Edit mesh on those, and attach them to the rest.  Hope I didn't lose you there!   If you need a more detailed explanation, I can do a mini tutorial with pictures.  Not sure it's necessary for everyone to makes walls like this..(style), but it might give others ideas of how to reshape something.

[oldfart 12]

Thanks for explaining! You didn't lose me, all that made sense. I never really used view mesh. I'll have to try that. It sounds a little like lofting.

And like you said, I don't think the color should be quite that bright!! 

[ak72 54]

That looks nice, it looks more like a 60's or 70's building. It is good to add some variety.

 

The base looks alright besides the color.

[SimGoober 2,351]

The office building is rendering on my other machine, to be tested in game.  Here are the semifinal pics:

There are signs for Arbys, Jasons Deli, Dunkin Donuts and Radio Shack around the base.  If anyone has requests for more of these types of addons, some logos would be helpful....

[oldfart 12]

Ooh, Yeah! I like it! That'll look good in-game, I'll bet.

I like the signs around the bottom. Now Arby's can dominate cities in more than one building..... I'm assuming the real-life building you based it on didn't have a big Goober sign on top?  

Looks good, keep up the good work!

 

[SimGoober 2,351]

Well, the office building didn't fit well in game.  It just looked like a huge brown building,  so I shrunk it down and reworked it.  Very low end looking, but they can't all be diamonds, can they?

I'll play with it for a few days, and see what happens.

 

I also started working on a suburban shopping center (strip mall).  I only did the front so far :

It's going to be big, but not too big.  Right now it almost exactly 6 tiles wide.  i'm thinking of making it 2 deep, with 1 tile for parking in front.  That wll make a 6x3 growable feasible.  It will have an anchor in the middle (grocery?), 2 more semi major draws at the ends (Dollar General, ??), and 4 small mom & pops in between.  I might throw a couple franchises in there (Arbys, Dunkin Donuts), but am open to suggestions.  I could also make another variation in an L shape, on a 6x6 lot.  Anything bigger would be plop only.  Any thoughts on that (size)?

[kassarc16 4]

How about Sears for an anchor store? In addition to the Safeway I work at, the strip mall has a Sears as a major anchor.

I'd suggest Hallmark, some video store, a hair salon, dollar store, maybe a SimNation liquor store. Those are examples based on the above mentioned one.

I love the facade, but 2 tiles deep seems a little small, maybe 3 at least, so a 4x6 growable.

[joerg 278]

Looks great but im still all for bigger buildings. I dont want 10 office depots in my suburbs anyway.  I would love it if you could make some larger more realisticly sized buildings your a great batter i just cant see buildings being that small.  You could never cram that many stores into that shopping center heck around here you might only get the grocery store in there.

Anyhow yes i know my complaints about the depths and sizes of these buildings are getting rather old. I just cant bare that fact that the buildings look great and i would love to use them but they mean very little in my cities as acctual large suburban stores if they fit in nicely wiht all the rather unrealistic smaller commerical stores in the game now.

[SimGoober 2,351]

hmmm.... I think this one will be a mini strip mall so that it can remain growable.  You know the types; moslty older shopping areas with more low income business types.  Then I will work on one of the newer big box format shopping centers.  Won't be hard too do , just a bigger scale.  I'll still want to keep a reasonanle size, say no longer then 12 tiles?  Hopefully GMAX won't eat it when I render....

 

One problem I've noticed with making some larger buidlings more realistic (deeper in lot, lots of parking), is they really stand out in game, and don't blend well.  None of the Maxis lots have much in the way of parking, or deep buildings.  I'm not saying that couldn't be improved upon, just that unless a lot of new, bigger buildings come out, they won't fit in well.

 

 

[Morhavoc 166]

The start of that strip mall looks very good indeed! I can't wait to see the finished product. Hope you use my boards somewhere in it hehe

[vil 3]

I like the office building shape i think some texture work might help it get more contrast - make every window different, maybe use a different texture for vertical and horizontal walls. Some wear and tear on the roof and walls?

[Cobb32118 239]

SimGoober, I love that office building.  I'm glad you put your name on it, too!  (I would light your name up, but you might not be as vain as I am.    )

 

The strip mall is very cool too.  SOOOO true to real life!   I swear I was just in that mall yesterday. 

[SimGoober 2,351]

Here's another update of the office.  I put an older roof texture on it, as it is not supposed to look new and shiney... I also had a little fun with my sign... felt silly for a couple minutes... Put eyes in the o's..

The sign is lit up at night.  What do you think of the subtle glow on the roof from the mechanical area?

[SimGoober 2,351]

Here's an update on the Shopping center as well. I spent a few hours on the BAT today... now it's back to the honey do list.  The signs for the stores will be separate props, so I can make several variations with one building...

I'm not sure about the nightlighting...It may be too much.  I wanted to simulate the lights coming out of the windows, and lights down the sidewalk.  The sidewalk lights might have to go. One store will be closed at night....

I made it a little deeper than planned.. should make Joerg happy! It is about 2 1/2 tiles deep.  I figure a half row in the back for truck access and 1 full row of parking.  6x4 lots.  Might make it 4x6 for side entrances as well, so you could put 2x2 or 2x3 outparcels in front. Might even have to plan a couple of those as well...  hmmm.....

[kassarc16 4]

Incredible. You never cease to amaze. A good variety of sizes/lots would be great.

[Mexicanboy13r 12]

I know your SO BUSY but Hampton Inn Gots a Bug?

I think?

When your in high view of your city you cannot see it?

I think I has told you this before?

SORRY 4 CHANGING THE SUBJECT

[SimGoober 2,351]

I'm aware of the Hampton Inn bug, I just haven't figured out how to fix it.  I'll look into it again, as I think I know what went wrong last time.  The only tricky part is I merged all the files together to keep it neat and simple, so i have to dig a little deeper into reader than I have before.

[oldfart 12]

lol, I like the eyes in the sign! . That glows looks good. What happened to Dunkin' Donuts and Arby's?

You think the shopping center lights are too bright? I think they look nice.

BTW, I was going to ask you where you got the Arby's sign texture?