boarding school

[choco1 4]

Wow, I've never seen a BAT look so realistic! Thats photo-quality, I can't quite get over it.

I look forward greatly to seeing it in-game. Fantastic work!

Choco.

[cowkilla 12]

page two! hot dog

thanks guys for the kind words, please let us bow our heads and prey that the transition from 3ds to sc4 is a smooth one

[owenluby 1]

wow! looks great, better make sure that's on the STEX!

Good stuff!

[Kwakelaar 92]

As Choco said, photorealistic and as the rest, I look forward to see this on the STEX.

[yoder7652 21]

unbelievable

[bixel 1,224]

Your texture mapping is extremely professional, I'm jealous.

[cowkilla 12]

...there is a reaon for that

[bixel 1,224]

oh its ON! BAT BATTLE!!!! Rawr Rawr RAWWWWRRRRRR!!!

prepare to get SERVED!

[yoder7652 21]

nice....a friendly rivalry

[cowkilla 12]

oh my... well production on this building has sunk to the bottom of the ocean for atleast a week.

after that i should be exporting and what not, so bixel you may have to wait a bit

[bixel 1,224]

MWAHAHAHAHAAHH!!!!!!

[cowkilla 12]

ok so between learning chinese and working two jobs, here is the latest update.

unless someone can give me an awesome idea for the outside structure, it is done

now im working on the lod and run into and issue, i think?

anyhow i was reading about lods being the base that the building is rendered on and in order to have props you need to have the lod cut out. but i have the grass back court yard that is part of the model... so here we go

which do i do <top is real, other two photohut>

[SimFox 803]

Spectacular spectacular!

Fantastic job! One can spot the pro at work!

[bixel 1,224]

Ni shi xueshan ma? Hen hao. Wo ye xihuan zhongyu.

Yep, custom LODs are good so that props and flora can be used in the game, though sometimes I do a mix betweeen custom LOD and rendered flora.

[cowkilla 12]

rou

[Kwakelaar 92]

The more complicated the LODs are, more "power" is needed to play the game. Therefore try to find the most simpel shape when making custom LODs.

Some parts of your model can be outside the LODs and it will still show up in game, it is a bit depending on the viewing angel and how big the object is etc.

In your case I would try to make a LOD just below the grass level in the courtyard and leave the table, chairs and gardenwalls outside the LOD, no garantee that no funny things will happen with the objects outside the LODs though.

You can also play safe with using props for the furniture and the walls in the courtyard.

[SimFox 803]

I would say go with Xfrog trees, cause games trees would look way to cartoonish next to this marvel! Plus as Kwakelaar said complex LODs could really slow down game (and not only on older computers) cause engine doesn't seem to be able to hadle geometry well.

BTW how do you handle XFrog with Vray... it always gives warnings...

[cowkilla 12]

yah thats another reason i dont want to use them. for some reason xfrogs uvs are all messedup im max and vray gets all upset. what you need to do is import them in maya and export as an obj.

that way the uvs are intact, only trouble is they have to be retextured, but that is a million times easier than re-uving a million leaves

[cowkilla 12]

im sick of making lods... no fun

[SimFox 803]

Actually MAX has no problem with Xfrog, it is Vray that has... I’ve found that refitting UVs solves this problem but then all the leaves are upside down!!! which can be fixed by turning leaves 180 degrees in photoshop..., but anyway with all those alphas it is very slow in Vray... have you tried TreeStorm?

I would say forget about those custom lods... it isn't worth. All that effort and why? to put some props most of which would look very inferior next to your excellent building... and anyway i think props are greatly overused and abused...

[cowkilla 12]

  but i thought the lod's had to be there in order for the building to display properly?

and no it is actually the way they are brought into max. when you view a xfrog tree in maya the uvs display properly and are set to the default extents of the uv editor. but when you import them into max they are greatly elongated and while max renderer can work around they absurdly large scale uvs, vray cannot. thus i say uvs are messed up in max and vray gets upset.

and all the bouncing of GI rays between the leaves will make this take for ever to render. granted you can exclude them from gi but then they look different from the rest of the scene and then you have to go light them individually. not worth it.

this building is now officially on hold till i can use the blam forum. and i have to find out the particulars of exporting from max. i may to it here at work but i think i need simcity to be pathed here and i dont have a video game installed at work.

[6underground 11]

looking beautiful, i cant wait to see more!

[jacqulina 162]

very nice

[sloppet 3]

Agree.. Lookin' good!

[SimFox 803]

@cowkilla: yes you do need LODs for building to be displayed in the game, period. but i think you should simply go with default ones the BAT would automatically create for it when you hit Re-fit LOD’s in Parametrs submenu in Utilities. You may edit it a bit for a better fit, but don't overdo it. As of trees thanks for the UVs info. I have seen people render forests with a very reasonable time on regular machines not render farms. Although those were Onyx Trees.. with vertex coloring (if I name it correct here) but form distance of those similar to Simcity (and even much more closer) those looked very realistic.

As of exporing the building.. actually there isn’t much to it! But there are some hidden pifalls here are few suggestions based on my own experience with it:

1. exporting LODS to Gmax:

make sure that MÀX system units set to be meters of then you should get problems at this stage.

2. Rendering in MAX

When you have done your LODs in Gmax and have got blank *.sc4model file in your Plugin folder make sure that you TAB out after you have place the file name into the SC4Model Name window in Export section in Utilities in MAX!

And NEVER save your *.max file AFTER you’ve place this *.sc4model file name into it! Doing so will screw with names of resulting *.fsh files and you will get colored check patterns instead of the proper building in lot editor.

Sorry if some of it unclear.. anyway if it is just ask!

[cowkilla 12]

ok... so refit lods made a big box, and you say i have to export this box <on box no model?> to gmax... then do what with it?

[cowkilla 12]

alright so i did the gmax thing... but the part were it says export. is a no go, i need to install simcity at work tomorrow so that i can generate the sc4 file. also i cant install bat tool in gmax because of the lack of simcity, so i tried to massage batformax to work with gmax but its not finding the camlightrig.max file so i give up for today. just gona sketch out ideas for a proper building to add under the BLaM thread!

woo!

[SimFox 803]

you have to have BAT installed, I mean original BAT which you can download from SimCity website. It has all you need to generate needed files. Which part where it says Export is no go?? in Gmax Bat or in MAX??

[cowkilla 12]

ah confusion, batForMax is fine. i exported the re-fit lods to gmax as a 3ds, no biggy. but cannot install the origonal BAT for gmax. in order to install it you need simcity installed. which i dont have at work. so i tried to hijack batForMax to work with gmax, everything worked fine all the scripts loaded and then i tried to reload the origonal <not moddified> camlightrigs and it failed to find them. though it is pathed correctly.

besides that problum which can be fixed tomorrow, im confused by the export part from gmax. i have read the readme file that comes with batformax and it just says export. now is that a file export as .sc4 or is that a export render BAT?     ugh, modeling is so much easier

[SimFox 803]

Well, as much as i understand your confusion stems from the fact that in the readme that came with BatForMax other ”thing” is one time to often is referred as GMAX, when it SHOULD ALWAYS be called BAT.

You absolutely MUST to have BAT in order of the process to work as it described in the readme.  In BAT (Gmax) you’ll find EXPORT in Utilities ->BAT . What is does is simply renders the LODs as if that would be final building. And creates *.SC4model file which is automatically placed in Plugin folder in My Documents. What BatForMax does is taking the render from MAX cuts, converts to FSH and pastes resulting images on top of the original render from BATgmax.

Hijacking BatForMax to work with GMAX wouldn't work simply because it doesn't do the crucial step - creation of *.SC4Model file.