BAT Help - Render Related Issues

[debussyman 1,348]

I was wondering if someone could help me out with this.

BAT won't render in high quality, every time i select render high quality it will go on but rendering in a very low one (draft) it says it is rendering in high quality but the difference between the high quality preview and the final render is obvious.
Help.

[debussyman 1,348]

Here's an example:

[helomoto 28]

FosterK, me and Superstar were working on this building for a very long time....well it was me with loads of help from Superstar...thanks SS....but anyways he is not online so i thought i would ask you on your thread.....

ok, this is my first actual building where i do more then just array the whole thing...so please dont laugh....

 

I rendered it when i went to sleep last night...and thought everything was ok....so when i went into Lot Editor (i rendered it just to see what it would look like, i am not adding it to STEX yet till i improve it) the textures are all missing.....

the building was exacly how i made it and nothing was wrong, but i noticed when during the first part of rendering it started doing this....but i thought they would add the textures after so i went to sleep....anyways, if anyone can help me, PM me or post on this so other ppl, if they are having teh same problem, can know what to do....

[debussyman 1,348]

Yeah, that has happened to me a few times. I don't know what causes it, but to solve it I reload all the textures, reasign materials or quit gmax and start again, one of those usually solve it.

That's why I always see a preview before rendering

[the_SIMtastik_One 3]

I'm having the same problem that gonzalo1234 is having. I'm trying to render something really huge and when I try to export the BAT gets to 13% finished and freezes up. If I wait long enough (about a 1/2 hour) I get error code 6. I've searched the forums and have found a few postings about this, but they are all about a year old.

 

Here's what I'm trying to render. Its not even close to finished. I just thought I'd like to see this in game to get an idea of the scale.

 

Height at peak: 740m

Base Width: 350m

Polygon Count: 538

I'm trying a draft quality render.

 

http://img167.echo.cx/img167/1716/image16ox.jpg align=baseline>

 

Here is what I would like to know.

 

1. Is the building simply too big for the BAT to render or is there something I am missing?

2. Should I chop this up and render smaller parts of it and then put it all together in LE?

3. Would I have this same problem in 3ds max?

 

One other thing. Do I need to create a custom camera light rig for this? Here's a pic with the stock rig.

 

http://img167.echo.cx/img167/6679/image26cc.jpg align=baseline>

 

Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.

[timo 15]

1- Yes, your building is huge indeed! Maybe not for the BAT but at least for your computer. What are your PC's specs? You need more RAM or better CPU... Or you can try to increase your virual memory, and close EVERY application while rendering. You can also scale your model down, or...

2- This would work I guess. 2ch and linkartist (at least) do this to build very high towers...

3- Don't know... It is supposed to render faster...

4- Don't think so, but I'm really not sure.

 

The base with is really large... approx 20*20 in the game. A rendering nightmare. I made a stadium of the same size, it was really hard and long to export. Be prepared for an eternal rendering!

 

I notice your bat has many identical parts... If you choose the question #2 solution, you just have to work on the base, the red columns, and only 1 floor, unless they are all different... This would save you a lot of time.

 

Good luck

[the_SIMtastik_One 3]

Timo,

Quick reply! Thanks!

 

So from what you say it is possible for GMAX to render something insanely huge like this as long as my machine has the right hardware and is configured correctly.

 

 

My computer is fairly new.

• Dude, its a Dell 4600 bought brand new about 9 mos. ago.

On a side note, I paid $1,300 for it simply becasue my old machine could not handle SC4 (really).

• 3.06Ghz P4 Prossesor with HT (don't really know what HT does for me. I've been told it makes my prossesor act like its 2 prossesors, but I don't know what the benefit/drawback of that is).
• 512MB DDR RAM
• 40Gig HD that's just over 50% full

As for virtual memory, I was running live update for my virus software (Norton)right after my last post and a warning popped up that said my virtual memory was low and Windows was adding more to my system. I'm going to see if I can add more myself. Any recomendation on how much I should have? Any threads on how to fiddle with it? Any danger of me breaking my computer if I do fiddle with it?

 

Once again, thank you for the quick reply Timo.

More comments from experienced BATers please. Thanks.

[timo 15]

Well, your PC looks allright, maybe another 512 meg RAM would help you for rendering big models... For virtual memory, put 1 or 2 gigs if you can. It's just space from your hard drive to be used for RAM purpose, it kinda adds to RAM when needed, but it's slower. No risk at all I guess, apart from wasting space on your harddrive. I may be wrong i'm not an expert, but I doubt you can blow you computer because of virtual memory!

If you wanna keep the same size, I think you will have to split your model. And if you succeed in rendering the whole thing, it would take a veeeeeeeeeery long time!

 

Good luck!

[ryan04 3]

here's one, every time i go to render or export gMax freezes and i have to close it

[Hanson784 165]

How large of a BAT are you rendering? Are you sure it is freezing? Sometimes the program seems to freeze while exporting when the preview screen goes blank. Really, it is crawling along with the render. The wait can be agonizingly long sometimes so I usually do something else for a few hours to get my mind off of it.

[brtim2 11]

Has anyone had problems with custom LOD's? I create custom LOD's on all my buildings as it makes it easier for prop placement. However, recently I have had massive amounts of problems with rendering issues in that upside down right side up maxis buildings appear instead of my buildings. It happens (mostly) at 4-5-6 zooms. I had this problem on one building where 6 different attempts ended in failure even with merging into a new scene, moving everything from both plugin folders, along with all the simcity.dats from the program files. I just batch rendered 9 different files and 3 had texture issues, 4 had maxis building issues and one just decided not to show up. Only one of 9 buildings appeared the way it should have.

So I was wondering if custom LOD's could be the problem? Cause as of right now all I can do is remove everything and I mean everything from my Simcity folders. Both of them.

[Hanson784 165]

Sounds like your having the extremely annoying broken render error I was plagued with last month. I made a post about how I was able to get rid of mine on the first page near the middle of the thread. Hope that helps.

[digger313 47]

brtim select everything in your preview window except the lods and the camara and 'save as' a new file name. open a new window and merge your model

That usually helps me

[creature 0]

Hi There.

Whenever I preview or export something in BAT, it always comes our really small so I can see the detail fully.  If anyone knows what is wrong, help would be greatly recieved.

 

-creature-

[Hanson784 165]

creature, make sure your building is the correct scale. Just scale up your building with the button in the middle of the toolbar, select and uniform scale.
Also, make sure you refit your LOD'S before exporting.

[creature 0]

Date: 7/16/2005 4:08:44 PM Author: Hanson784 creature, make sure your building is the correct scale. Just scale up your building with the button in the middle of the toolbar, 'select and uniform scale.' Also, make sure you refit your LOD'S before exporting.

Hmmm, I dont fully understand what you mean, purely because i'm a total $%&^! at this sort of thing.  Here's an image of what I mean.  I have everything set out like phillipbo did in his tutorial aswell.

 

 

-creature-

[Odd from Sweden 129]

An answer to a post a bit up in the thread, that totally gray render. Well I had never had anything that bad but I had problems a bit like this. I think I found out one of Gmax hidden features. At least it seems that Gmax only cares about the first eight letters in the texture bitmap file name. So if You have two textures named for example

 

empirestatewall.jpg

empirestateroof.jpg

 

Gmax then thinks that two textures share the file name empirest, gets totally confused and renders gray.

 

File names should be something like

 

wallempirestate.jpg

roofempirestate.jpg

[toxicpiano 125]

Even on draft quality, the rendering process was still on 9% after 20 mins. Is this normal? or am i just impatiant? The the building was quite small, and i don't think it had more than 40 polys at the most. My PC is 2.6ghz, 1gb
RAM.

[Odd from Sweden 129]

Creature, If You want to have a closer look at the rendering:

If You have a scroll wheel mouse, just roll the wheel to zoom.

[toxicpiano 125]

Oh yeah and i'm pretty sure that it takes bloody ages/ or BAT/Gmax freezes when i tried to preview a BAT.

[creature 0]

Date: 7/16/2005 4:36:09 PM Author: Odd from Sweden

Creature, If You want to have a closer look at the rendering:

If You have a scroll wheel mouse, just roll the wheel to zoom.

If I zoom in any further, it becomes pixelated.

 

-creature-

[toxicpiano 125]

Bump

[toxicpiano 125]

Help me please! sorry to double post.

[Odd from Sweden 129]

Okay Creature... If Your building is 16 meters wide, the street facade will be about 110 pixels wide. If that is what You get is everything OK, that is what it will look like in the game at the closest zoom.

 

To be absolutely sure that there is nothing wrong with the size of Your building, draw a new box and type in its dimensions of 16 x 16 x 16 meters. If Your building fits fairly well inside the box then the building has the right size.

[toxicpiano 125]

ooh and it also freezes kind of. actually that may be because the rendering slowed my PC down so much.

[Odd from Sweden 129]

Toxicpiano, if Your model is only 40 polys it would render in a minute on Your computer!

 

...but are You sure that it is only 40 polys? A cube consists of at least 12 polys!

 

I suggest: Make a new scene, build a 16x16x16 cube, center it and render.

If it renders good, then there is something wrong with Your old model.

If it messes up, then it is something wrong with your installation/ settings.

[creature 0]

Date: 7/16/2005 5:10:51 PM Author: Odd from Sweden

Okay Creature... If Your building is 16 meters wide, the street facade will be about 110 pixels wide. If that is what You get is everything OK, that is what it will look like in the game at the closest zoom.

To be absolutely sure that there is nothing wrong with the size of Your building, draw a new box and type in its dimensions of 16 x 16 x 16 meters. If Your building fits fairly well inside the box then the building has the right size.

quote>

Yea, the building fits right into the box.  Cheers for the help mate

 

-creature-

 

[timo 15]

@ toxicpiano : how big is your model? If it's huge it will take ages to render... Enven with only 40 polys. Your PC seem OK enough.

[kmoh4346 2]

The picture below shows my rendered structure, its just a draft but there is a white spots that I just don't get it why it is there? and I don't think it is because of the export quality!!

https://www.simtropolis.com/idealbb/files//soh1.jpg align=baseline>

[gonzalo1234 68]

i try divide my building in tree or four parts