Building an Adobe Cantina in gmax and BAT

[onlyplace4 605]

Building an Adobe Cantina in gmax and BAT

by onlyplace4

13th May 2006

Difficulty Level: beginner

Introduction

This is a step by step tutorial that will enable you to build your own version of my Desert Cantina BAT [https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/index.cfm?id=15927]. To enable you to texture your model I have uploaded my gmax model with the textures you will need. You can find this on the STEX  ... here.

Before we start I will apologise right now for the length of this post and the number of graphics, but if you intend to work your way through this tutorial I thought it best to post it as one.

Getting Started

I will assume that you have a very basic uderstanding of gmax (ie. you know where most of the tools etc., are to be found), but I will take this step by step so that even if you have only ever opened up gmax, screamed in horror, and closed it again, you will be able to follow what I am doing.

OK. Open up gmax and firstly check that you are using generic units as your scaling unit. To do this go to the Customize menu (found on the top menu bar), and select Units Setup from the drop down. Your settings should look like figure one below.

Fig 1

Next we need to check you Grid and Snap Settings. Again go to the Customize menu, and this time select, appropriately enough, Grid and Snap Settings. We initially need to have Grid Points and Vertex checked in the menu dialogue that pops up (see figure two).

Fig 2

Now select the tab marked Home Grid on the dialogue you have front and centre of your screen and make sure you have the Grid Spacing set to 1.0 and you have unchecked the Inhibit Grid Subdivision Below Grid Spacing check box. This dialogue should look like figure three below.

Fig 3

Close the dialogue by clicking on the X close button at top right. One last thing to check before we actually make a start on the model, and that is to enable the Snap Toggle which you will find in the bottom menu bar to the immediate right of the highlighted cube icon. Click on the Snap Toggle icon so that it is highlighted as shown in figure 4.

Fig 4

Now we can actually start to model!

Four walls, two doors and a window

Select the front viewport by clicking in it, and then select the splines selector in the right hand menu bar.

Fig 5

Select the Line tool by clicking on the first button, and then go back to the front viewport. Now, using figure 6 below as a guide, draw the two splines shown in that picture. The co-ordinates for each point are shown in the picture. Start with the larger spline, and when you are asked if you want to close the spline click on the Yes button. Next draw the smaller box, and again close it. These two splines will form the front wall of the cantina.

Fig 6

To form the wall we must firstly join the two splines together. To do this select the modifiers menu which is the second tab on the menu that forms the right hand menu bar of gmax. Highlight one of the two splines by clicking on it and the modifier menu for the spline will be shown in the right hand menu bar.

Fig 7

Select the Attach modifier which you will find in the Geometry section of the menu bar (see fig , and then click on the second spline in the front viewport. They are now attached and will be handled by the program as a single entity.

Fig 8

Unselect the Attach modifier and now select the Extrude modifier. This you will find either in the Modifiers menu at the top of the screen or, as I prefer, in the Modifiers drop down to be found at the top of the right hand menu bar.

Fig 9

As soon as you select the Extrude modifier your splines will take on a more solid form, but initially they are just a plane with no thickness, so we need to set the amount we extrude the splines in the Amount box. Set this to 0.5 as shown in figure ten.

Fig 10

We now have one wall to the Cantina. To form the rear wall do exactly the same thing again, but this time only draw the outside spline and move the door opening 3 squares to the left. This is easiest done by simply drawing your spline over the one you already have, but to ensure that the spline vertices line up you should temporarily turn off the snap to grid points (Customize > Grid and Snap Settings). You can turn it back on again afterwards. Extrude the new spline by the same amount (the program will remember the last setting you entered so you won't need to touch it), and there you have both walls, though as of yet the front wall is hidden behind the back wall!

Fig 11

We now need to move the back wall so that it is the correct distance away from the front wall, and behind it. To do this select the top viewport and highlight the back wall.

Fig 12

To move the wall we select the Select and Move tool from the top toolbar (fig 13), rightclick on the tool to bring up the MOve Transform Type-In dialogue and then enter the required Y co-ordinate. In this case this is 10.25, and at the same time we do the same for the front wall moving it so that it's front edge sits on the X axis. To do this, select the front wall and using the MOve Transform Type-In dialogue, ste Y=0.5 to move it. We now have two walls in position as shown in figure 14.

Fig 13

Fig 14

OK, we have two walls, so lets add the end walls. We will do this with splines, though you could also use boxes.

Select your spline tool and, making sure that you only have the Vertex snap enabled), draw a spline as shown in figure 15 in the left viewport.

Fig 15

Now extrude that spline, though this time set the extrude Amount to -0.5 so that the wall overlaps both front and back walls at the corners. Wel'll deal with that in a moment, but first we need to make a copy of this wall for the other end of the building. To do this select the Select and Move tool, pick the wall in the top viewport, hold down the Shift Key and drag the wall to the right. You will notice that a copy of the wall is moved and not the wall itself. When you release the mouse you will be presented with the dialogue in figure 16.

Fig 16

Provided the Copy circle is highlighted simply click on ok, and then position the new wall so

that it lines up with the other ends of the front and back walls. The best way to do this is again using the Move Transform Type-In dalogue, this time setting X=14.5 to position the wall correctly. You now have the basis of your building.

Fig 17

To complete the walls we need to select them all (simply drag a box around them in the front viewport so that they are all highlighted) and then right click on any part of the highlighted walls to bring up a sub-menu from which we need to select Convert to Editable Mesh.

Fig 18

This means that we can now vertex edit the corners of the walls so that they do not overlap, but rather meet neatly. To do this, highlight one of the four walls in the top viewport, then select the modifiers panel (second tab on the right hand menu bar), and under the heading Selection select the Vertex selector (the group of three small dots).

Fig 19

You will note that your wall now has a series of blue dots marking each and every vertex. Select the Select and Move tool and then, in the top viewport select one pair of vertices by dragging a box around them. The vertices you need to select are shown in figure 20, being the pair that form the inner side of the overlap with the end wall (the picture is easier to understand!).

Fig 20

To make moving these easier we need to zoom in on them in the viewport. This is done by using the thumbwheel on your mouse. Zoom in until you can clearly see the grid sub-divisions as shown in figure 21.

Fig 21

Now carefully, using the Select and Move tool by holding down your left mouse button over the X axis arrow, move these vertices to the left until they are over the inner edge of the side wall as shown in figure 22.

Fig 22

Now repeat this for the other end of the wall, and for each end of the other walls until your model looks like that shown in figure 23. When you need to change walls simply deselect the Vertex editing mode, and select your new wall before reselecting it again. To pan around the viewport between wall ends simply hold down the thumbwheel button of your mouse and move it in the appropriate direction. You can always zoom in and out as well using the thumbwheel as before. When you have finished your model whould look like that shown in figure 23.

Fig 23

A floor and a ceiling

Now that we have the basic shell of the building we need to put a floor and a ceiling in. To do this we will again use a spline, though a box would also suffice. Remain in the top viewport with only Snap to Vertex enabled and select your spline Line tool. Now carefully form a spline that connects to the four INNER corners of your building as shown in figure 24. Close the spline as before.

Fig 24

This spline is not where we want it, but it is the right shape. Now we need to move this spline so that it sits on the ground. There are two ways to do this. Either you can drag it down, but it is simpler to do it by (making sure it is still selected) selecting and then right clicking on the Move and Select tool which will bring up the dialogue shown below.

Fig 25

In the Z box on the left hand side of this dialogue you will see that the spline is currently at Z=8.0 when we need it to be Z=0.0 which is simply achieved by entering 0 in the Z box and pressing return. Having done that, close the dialogue using the X close button at top right, and then select the modifiers menu, then extrude this spline to 0.1 to form the floor.

To form the ceiling we need to make a clone of this floor as we did with the end wall. In the front viewport position your mouse over the Z arrow, hold down your shift key and drag in the Z direction (upwards), releasing your mouse button as the new object is about halfway up the wall, again simply selecting OK provided this is a copy. You should now have a ceiling, but in the wrong position. We want this ceiling to be at Z=6.0, so we do that by simply right clicking on the Move and Select tool and entering this position into the Z box. Hey presto, a floor and a ceiling just where we want them.

Fig 26

The extension

We now need to form three more walls, a new floor and a new ceiling. Basically you are just doing what you have already done to create the main building, so here you are on your own, though the pictures with co-ordinates conveniently marked should help you.

First draw the two splines required to form the first extension wall, and then extrude this to 0.5 as with the main walls.

Fig 27

Now reposition this wall as shown in figure 28 and clone a copy of it and position as also shown in figure 28.

Fig 28

Now form the end wall in the Left viewport and extrude it by 0.5 so that you now have all three walls of the extension.

Now sort out the corner vertices by first selecting the three walls and converting them to an editable mesh as before, and then move the overlaps until your new three walls are as shown in figure 29 below.

Fig 29

Finally form the floor and ceiling as you did for the main building. The ceiling in this case needs to be at Z=5.5, so you should finally end up with the extension looking as it does in figure 31.

Fig 30

The courtyard

The courtyard is formed from three splines, each spline having a Z dimension of 3 units. You can use the picture below to glean the co-ordinates from. The walls are formed in exactly the same way as the walls you have been making, and have their corner vertices adjusted as before.

Fig 31

Adding detail

Here we do the little things that turn an adequate model into a good one. The detail we will be adding here are two doors (simple boxes suffice for these), awnings over the windows, and a series of poles that are typical of this type of structure. Lets start with the simplest, the doors.

Select the front viewport and then, from the Standard Primitives menu (right hand menu bar, first tab) select Box. With vertex snap enabled position your mouse on one corner of the front door, click and drag to an opposite corner, release the mouse, and then drag to an arbirtary thickness before clicking again. You should now have a box filling the front door of the building.

Select the modifiers menu (second tab on right hand menu) and set the height to -0.2 then select the Move and Select tool, right click on it, and set Y to 0.2 so that the door is recessed. Now clone the box using the shift drag mouse method you have already used, and position this in the rear doorway so that it is also recessed inwards by 0.2 - the easiest way to do this is to clone the box and then, using the Move Transform Type-In dialogue set X=-2.0 and Y=9.6 (provided of course you have made your building exactly the same as mine!).

That then is the doors sorted. Now we can add the roof poles. To do this, select the front viewport and zoom in to one corner of the extension where the ceiling meets the outside wall. Now, from the standard primitives menu, select Cylinder and, positioning your cursor on the intersection of the two darker axis lines just within the intersection draw a cylinder with an arbitary diameter and height. Now select the modifier menu and in the Parameters section set the radius to 0.3, the height to -10 and the height segments to 1. You should now have a single roof pole sticking out of the front and back of your extension as shown in figure 32.

Fig 32

Staying in the front viewport (and that is very important) select the array tool [fig 33] which can be found on the top menu icon bar.

Fig 33

This will bring up a complex dialogue as shown in figure 34.

Fig 34

We only need to set two things as circled in figure 34 above. Notice that in this X=2 and the Count=4. Now click OK and, hey presto, you now have ceiling poles for the extension. However, they are not quite in the right position, so select them all (by dragging a box over their ends in the top viewport), making sure that you do not select anything else. If you do select other items you can deselect them by holding down the Alt key and draggin a box over the items you want to deselect.

Fig 35

Now open up the Move Transform Type-In and in the X of the Offset Screen column enter X=1, and your poles will be positioned 1 unit to the right. They are now where we want them.

We now need to do the same for the main building. Again draw a cylinder at the first dark intersection of axes within the main building and give this cylinder a diameter of 0.3, a height of -12.0, and height segments of 1. This will position the pole with it's front face flush with the outer side of the front wall of the main building. We therefore need to move it outwards as well as upwards, and we do this with the Move Transform Type-In dialogue setting x=-4.5, Y=-1 and Z=5.5 to position the pole where we need it for cloning via the array tool. At this stage you should have a pole positioned as shown in figure 36.

Fig 36

Now, making sure you are in the front viewport, select the array tool and leave X=2, but set the Count to 10. Click OK and you have a complete set of poles for the main building. as shown in figure 37.

Fig 37

Almost there. Now we have to tackle the awnings, and to do this we want to select an area off to one side of the building, so pan your front viewport using the thumbwheel button of your mouse. Zoom in until you can see the grid sub-divisions and then select the Cylinder tool from the standard primitives menu.

At any convenient point draw a cylinder of arbitary dimensions and then, using the modifier menu, set this cylinder to Radius=0.1; Height=2.5; and Height Segments=1. Now clone this cylinder using the click and drag method so that you have a second one 3.2 units to the right of the one you have just formed (see figure 38)

Fig 38

An easy way to do this is to hold your mouse over the Y arrow of the cylinder, hold shift, click your mouse and release it without dragging the clone. Once you have clicked OK to verify the clone, select the Move Transform Type-In dialogue and using the Offset Screen co-ordinates, enter X=3.2 to move it to the desired position.

OK, so far so good. Now select the Line tool (you remember where that is of course) and in the front viewport draw the spline shown in figure 41. You may need to drag the vertices of the line around as you did when doing the corners of your building, to get them in the right position, but when you have done so you should have a spline that resembles that shown in figure 39. The easiest way to line up the spline vertices is to draw the spline too large and then use the Move Transform Type-In dialogue to position each vertex via the Vertex modifier we used before.

Fig 39

Now select the vertex I have marked A on figure 39 and in the modifier menu, maing sure you are in Vertex selection mode, find the control marked Fillet in the Geometry section (you may have to scroll through the modifier menu to find this) and enter a value of 0.09 and press return. Now do the same for the vertex I have marke B on figure 39. Finally do the same for the vertex marked C, but this time enter a value of 0.5 in the Fillet box. When you have done this you should have a spline that resembles that shown in figure 40.

Fig 40

Now deselect the Vertex Selection tool and from the Modifiers drop-down select Extrude and set this to 2.5 to form the awning. However, when you do this you will not see anything until you have selected a second modifier. From the drop-down menu find the modifier called Normal and then check the box marked Flip Normals. You now have an awning as shown in figure 43. Don't worry if yours looks a little different. We are dealing with a one sided object here, so at certain angles not all the faces might be visible.

Fig 41

We can now procede to position the awning on the model. To do this select all the elements of the awning (the two cyliners and the awning), and then, from the top menu select Group > Group and click OK. Now you can move these three elements as a single entity.

We'll do the positioning of the three instances of the awning using the Move Transform Type-In dialogue.

Make sure you are in the front viewport with your grouped awning selected. To position the awning over the first window enter: X=6.5, Z=3.8 (ignore the Y setting for the moment). Now make a clone of the grouped awning by holding shift and clicking on the Y arrow of the group and releasing the mouse button without dragging and then verify the clone by clicking ok.

Now enter: X=1 (you can ignore Y and Z this time).

Now clone this new awning in the same way as before, and this time enter: X=-10.5, Y=-0.25 (again ignore the Z dimension).

You should now have three perfectly positioned awnings and a completed model as shown in figure 42.

Fig 42

Finally, select all the elements of your model by dragging a box around them in the front viewport. Open the Group menu and select Ungroup (this will remove the grouping from the awnings). Now right click on any part of the model and select the Convert to Editable Mesh option as before. This is to ensure that everything in the model, even the primitives we used is a mesh. Finally, with the model still selected, select the Group menu again, and this time select Group to group the lot. Open the Move Transform Type-In dialogue and enter X=0, Y=0 to move the model to the exact 0,0 co-ordinates the BAT needs to export your model. Finally go back to Group and select Ungroup to remove the grouping. As your model will probably now have shifted on the screen, simply use the Zoom Extents button at bottom right (see figure 45) to centre the entire model in all viewports.

Fig 43

Now you can save your model and take a breather before we texture it, add night lights and export it.

Texturing

I have included the textures for this tutorial, so you should have the five textures you need. We'll do the floors and ceilings first. Open the material navigator (the last icon on the top menu bar) and select New, then select Standard from the options presented by double clicking on it. This will open the Material Editor for that material. Don't get alarmed by what you see, it's not hard.

Fig 44

There are three boxes near the top marked Ambient, Diffuse and Specular. You can forget the first and last, it is Diffuse we are interested in. Next to the word is a box filled with a colour, and next to that an empty square. Click on that square and then double click on Bitmap when given two options. This will open a file selector. Select wood0184.jpg and click Open. The wood texture is now applied to the material.

Fig 45

Now select the two ceilings and two floors in your model, but do NOT close the Material Editor. The easiest way to do this is, in your front viewport, to drag a box over your model between the floors and ceilings. This will highlight all the elements of your model except those we are after. Now select the fifth tab on the right hand menu bar and in the list there find the box marked Hide Selected. Click it and you will be left with just your ceilings and floors.

Now select a floor or ceiling and return to the material editor. Next to the box that gives the name of the material is a blue and white checked cube. Click it. This will ensure that your texture shows up. Now simply click Apply and the selected floor or ceiling will change colour. Now select the Modifiers menu again, and in the modifiers drop down select UVW Map. Don't worry about any of the settings, here the standard settings work very well for us.

Now do the same for the remaining three objects until they look like figure 46.

Fig 46

Now select all four objects and Group them using the Group menu, and give them a name such as Floors. Now return to the Display tab on the right hand menu bar (the fifth tab) and pick Unhide All, but make sure your group is still selected before you do. Next select Hide Selected and the group will disappear leaving you with the untextured portions of your model.

Next we are going to texture the awnings, but only the covers, not the poles. Firstly set up the texture we need by clicking on New on the Material Editor and then select Standard from the options given. Now select your material, this time fabr0011.jpg, in the same way as before, enable the blue and white checked cube, select an awning, and then click Apply. Back to the Modifiers menu, select UVW map, and this time make sure than the Box mapping circle has a dot in it.

Fig 47

Do the same for the other two awnings.

Now we need to select just the three awnings to group them. The easiest way to do this is on the perspective viewport. Select one of the awnings, then hold down the Control key and select the other two. Now group these and call them Awnings. Now you can hide them by using the Hide Selected option as before.

OK, now we'll do the poles, including the awning polmaking sure of course this is a new material or you will change what you have already done! The texture you need this time is wood0001.jpg, remembering of course to click the blue and white checked cube.

Now select ALL the poles. This is easiest done in the top viewport. Drag a box around the four poles of the extension and the awning poles that are on that part of the model, the box you drag only needing to touch them to select them, so selecting the front portions will suffice. Now hold down the Control key and select the ten poles and the awning poles for the main part of the building.

Fig 48

With them all selected Apply the material to them. Now apply a UVW map, but this time make it Cylindrical.

Fig 49

Once you have done that you can group them as Poles and hide them as before.

Now set up the material we need for the doors, this time using the texture wood0183.jpg and again making sure that the blue/white cube is clicked. Now select one of the two boxes we used to make the doors and then, holding the Control key, select the other one. Now Apply the texture, then the UVW map, this time making sure it is a Box mapping. We have one final step here though as this will put the boards across the door and we want them vertical. This is simply achieved by clicking the X circle under the heading Alignment. Now group them as Doors and hide them.

Fig 50

All we are left with now are the walls of the Cantina. Set up the required New material, this time with the texture ston0092.jpg and enable the blue/white cube. Now we can apply this to the walls, but we need to do this one at a time. Select a wall, Apply the material and then apply a UVW map (the standard settings work fine here). Now do that for all the walls until you have them all with the stone texture on them. Now you can group them and call them Walls, but you do not need to hide them.

Fig 51

Now go to the Display menu and select Unhide ALL and you have completely textured model.

Fig 52

You can now close the Material Editor.

Time to save again!

[onlyplace4 605]

It would appear that a post has a maximum length that I exceeded and this part of the tutorial was cut off.

Night Lights

We're in the home straight now! This is a very simple model that we can light with two Omni lights.

First select the Lights menu which is the third icon under the first tab of the right hand menu. Select Omni from the five options and a menu opens up. The first thing to do is make sure that there is a tick in the box next to Cast Shadows. Then set the Multiplier to 2.5 or you won't see the light! Next, click on the bar that says Attenuation Parameters and put a tick in the USe box of the second set of parameters marked Far Attenuation, and set the End value to 8.0 or the light will go everywhere!

Fig 53

Now we have all that set up we need to place the light. Select the front viewport and position the light dead centre of the window in the extension part of the model. Now select the top viewport and select the Move and Select tool. Using the Y arrow, move the light until it is dead centre of the extension. In the Front viewport move the light up until the X arrow is level with the top of the window. Now, in the right hand menu there is a box headed Name and Color. Click in this and change the name to nitelite Omni01 or your light will not work in game!

Fig 54

Now in the top viewport, make a clone of the light by the shift, click, drag method and position it in the middle of the main part of the building.

And that's the nightlights in place! Time to save again.

Exporting

The very last stage, exporting your model. Click on the very last tab of the right hand menu bar (with the hammer on it) and then select B.A.T. from the options. Click on the bar headed Parameters and select Re-fit LOD's which will enclose your model in boxes. Next click on Reset Lights & Cameras and click OK when asked.

Fig 55

Your Perspective Viewport should now resemble something like that in figure 56.

Fig 56

Click on Parameters again to close that menu and click on Preview and then, making sure you have the Perspective viewport selected, click N and then on Day & Night. No point in rendering Day and Night for the other views as the night lights do not show in those rotations. You can of course adjust the awnings so that they do, but that's something for you to play around with.

Fig 57

One final save and then click Export and the BAT will go through the somewhat lengthy process of producing your SC4Model file which you will find in your Plugins folder.

And that's that. You can play with this model as much as you like, tweak it, refine it, do what you will with it. It's not quite the same as the model I released on the STEX as that was modelled in 3D Studio Max, but it's a fair approximation.

[tzotzil99 2]

great tutorial, clear and lots of fun. the texturing and lighting finally made a bit more sense to me although i don't really know what i'm doing or why when it comes to the lighting. but it all works! thanks for all the graphics, makes it much easier to follow then just written instructions

[onlyplace4 605]

Glad you enjoyed it tzotzil

[tzotzil99 2]

i replaced your wall textures with a great tunisian adobe texture map, a jpeg, i found online and the previews looked great, the export went smoothly, but then when i put the DESC file into lot editor, it only shows up in the first three zooms. once it gets to the last two closeup zooms all that shows up are greyish pixels where the building should be. the same in the game, the buildings shows up only at the first few zooms. i've tried several different textures and it happens with all of them. i didn't export with your textures so i don't know if the same would have happened. any ideas? is the problem my texturing or are there steps before exporting that i'm forgetting? or is it a lighting problem? so frustrating to finally have something export that looks cool but then not show up when i want to get up close and check it out!

[tzotzil99 2]

i exported with your textures and the problem is my model. the roof doesn't appear to be flush with the walls and lots of light seems to be escaping. would that explain the strange disappearance at higher zooms? my textures worked great on the other practice model i made, so i must have done something wrong with one of them. none of the nitelites show up in the game, including the ones as part of your completed model, not sure why. so much to learn!!

[onlyplace4 605]

OK. The light seepage wold not necessarily cause the problems with the zooms and what is happening to your model. Sure, the light seepage is a nuisance, but nothing that can't be sorted by simply selecting the roof in the model, selecting vertex edit, and then stretching the roof so that that points align with the inside corners of the wall, or are even a little oversize so that the edges of the roof are actually within the walls.

The zoom problem is a littel harder to understand. It sounds like somewhere along the line the LODs have got messed up. As a first test I would suggest opening your model, going to the Display tab and selecting Unhide All (this should display the LODs), carefully select the LODs, and then delete them. NExt go to the BAT rollout and Refit the LODs, and then Export again to see if that sorts it.

If that doesn't work open gmax and rather than loading your model, Import it (you'll find that option in the File menu). Refit the LODs as above, then try again, making sure that you save this version of the file under a new filename.

The nightlights could be one of a number things. It might be that you simply forgot to rename then to nitelite Omni01 (etc). It could be that they are simply not bright enough, so edit them and adjust the multiplier for them upwards a little at a time. Or it could be that you need to patch your game file with the official patch from ea.simcity.com

If none of this works I'd be happy to take a look at the gmax file for you and see if I can come up with the solution.

Mike

[tzotzil99 2]

thanks, i deleted the LOD's, saved, exited, reopened, refit everything and it worked the nitelites are tricky but i finally got them to work as well. i've been using your tutorial to made some houses and its great fun. i will upload the model when i'm done tweaking it so i can get some critique and advice. i love playing with the texturing.

another lighting question: i made a palm tree prop from a free model i found online and it rendered great and i made it a prop in LE, but it throws no shadows in the game. i've noticed that some props have shadows in the game but not all. how do we get things to throw a shadow? i assumed it was part of the LOD and lighting you do at the end before exporting. or is it something else? do i need to go back and redo all that and render again?

[onlyplace4 605]

Those houses are looking very good. Before uploading I would suggest opening your own thread here in the forums and post the pics so you can get some general advice, comments, etc. One comment I can foresee would be regard to the wood boards texture you have used. On the general roofs this is fine, but on the tower roof this looks a little odd. You should ensure that the UVW map for the boards is the same for all regaions it is applied. You can do this by either making a note of the U, V and W amounts when you apply the map to one item, so that you can then enter those values manually for other itmes. However, it is easier to simply select ALL the items you wish to apply the map to, and then apply the UVW map globally to them. This way the boards on the roofs and the tower will be more uniform.

As to the palm tree problem, that is a Plugin Manager setting. When you make the .SC4Desc file using the PM the dialogue that appears has five tabs. The second of these, 'Common', has just two settings. Ignore the second one totally, but set the top one, 'Is Ground Model' to True. You also need to look at the settings under the 'Advanced' tab, but I will assume (unless you tell me differently) that you have already played with these.

I am very glad that you found the tutorial good enough to inspire you to start making your own models, and I hope that this will be the start of many great new BATs from you.

[tzotzil99 2]

thanks!

i'd planned on opening a thread and just uploading my models there but i've never done it before and can't figure out how to do it. learning the tricks of simtropolis and how to find information often takes way more time than i ever spend actually playing the game! makes me feel dumb, but then i figure everyone has to go through the same learning process.

you're right about the roof texture on the tower. i had a hard time figuring out how to get it to orient so it looked right on all the rooftops equally since the texture has rectangular blocks. i'll try what you suggest.

i've never noticed the ground model to 'true' setting but it makes sense so thanks for pointing that out. the palm tree is the first prop i've tried so mostly i was used to the building settings and didn't play around much with any of the others.

your tutorials on splines and this one were great and your posts anwering various questions are great. thanks again for sharing your expertise. i look forward to more tutorials! i'd love to learn how to make less orthagonal shapes like tapered or sloped walls and curvy rounded shapes for walls or roof tops or towers. those modifiers in gmax are so tricky that getting them to do something predictable for me is a real challenge. do you modify your spline first and then extrude? do you extrude and then do all that modifying? what if you want to add cut out shapes for windows to an already extruded wall, is that possible? i've played around to see for myself but again the results are so irregular that i don't know much more then i did before. have you modeled any plants? i'd love to make a tree but it seems totally mystifying to me how to even start.

i'd wanted my houses to fit on a 1x1 square so i they would be w2w but they are a bit too big even though i made them to the gridlines. do you know what dimensions to use to make things wall to wall? if i select and group my whole house, can i use the scale button to shrink everything to those dimensions or will that screw everything up? i'll have to try that too. scaling the plant models worked okay but i didn't try it on the building.

another thing i'd love to learn is how to use transparency in textures. i remember finding a quick tutorial once on how to use it to create the illusion of ornate balconies or to layer grafiti over something but i don't know how to do it and can't find that tutorial again. right now i'm just happy at having finally learned to actually put a map on an object! and still i can't figure out how to use the library so that i can quickly use the textures i've already used.

okay, i'm rambling. it happens cuz i type pretty quick. thanks again. i'll try again to figure out how to make my own thread so i don't take up so much space on yours

[CitySeeker 0]

Cool tut man!  I'm new to BATing here and although I'm not interested in making an Adobe type structure I did learn how to do some of the Nightlighting (easier than I thought it would be) and I liked the info on awning you modeled for the windows.

Thanks for the knowledge!

[Aidian_KIDD 0]

Nice tut there Only- hope to see some more from you, very interactive explaining, maybe a texture or a advance modeling one? lol

[mightygoose 92]

why is this not in the omnibus...

[benvoliothefirst 36]

I second the omnibus comment, mightygoose. I found this article to be very thorough, lots of pictures, (always nice!) and helpful.

One question, and it's really just a matter of preference... I noticed you sort of "beveled" the inside edges of the walls so they met at 45-degree angles. I've thought about doing something similar with my models, but I thought I was just being anal retentive. Is there a reason you chose to do so? It seems to me like my textures don't have any sort of overlap problems without doing so, but maybe I'm just lucky.

Anyway, thanks for the fantastic tutorial! Put this in the omnibus right away!

Also, make more tutorials. GO.