hkabat-forum-threads SimFox Construction & Research

[autoVino 26]

Are those caustics I see?  Simply more than simply amazing!

[HONG KONG 74]

correct angle ? 

[SimFox 802]

Mightygoose:

yes it is!

Autovino:

yes it is!

:-)

[BAT56 0]

Caustics… yessssss… mentalray is not easy to parameterize but it is surely what you use!?!?

in any case, the result is superb… really! 

[bixel 1,223]

@ mightygoose you are kinda correct

the MTR transit building on the far right is HUGE. I made a tiny one based off of their design. Also the Green MultiTower Residential complex next to One Silver Sea is the Island Harbourview, which you will be happy to know that I already modeled it and its almost ready to go! The sleek oval commercial tower in the center is the Bank of China Center, which is already modeled and will get attached to Olympian City1, which only some parts are visible in this photo.

All in all between me and Simfox this whole scene will be realized in Simcity 4 very soon. I am very excited.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Can't wait Bixel and Simfox! Really want to try out some of these BAT's!

[SimFox 802]

HongKong:

Well it is great shot, but again it shows towers and not very bottom of the structure. What I'm really interested in are the entrances. One seen on the picture in your last post under the large text "OneSilverSea" and one in the back.

BAT56:

Actually I had to do one project (in cooperation) and had to use V-Ray. I must say Mental Ray now is probably better all around package for exterior works. We had quite a bit problem with exactly caustics in latest installments of V-Ray, In Mental Ray Caustics are pretty straight forward and work well if sometimes a bit slow compare to competition. Most Flexible Caustics I've seen to date are in Final Render. There you can even separate if you want only refractive or reflective ones! I know that can’t possible be accurate, but sometimes it is very handy!

The bottom line is there isn't one best renderer. All have some advantages and disadvantages - sometimes it looks like producers are conspiring to force users to buy all of them to cover the entire range of production needs!! Bastards! But Mental Ray does seem to be most rounded and nowadays easiest package to use! And it comes built-in Max!

Here are renderings of  ”fixed” base. IO think it is more or less done, - some details remain – swimming pool, plants, some furniture and some such but basic structure I believe is done.

     

And here is clay render of the structure – this one is done in V-Ray:

Well, Since it is China, afterall, it is of white, porcelain clay

Bixel! hip hip hurray!! I don't want get destructed before I finish OSS, but when done I'll give you a hand in whatever there will be left, knowing you I doubt there will be much though!!

[bixel 1,223]

Absolutely gorgeeous. This One Silver Sea + your render of the Lippo and Tung Chung Crescent - I believe are LANDMARK strides in ALL game modding history. Believe you me, I pay attention to A LOT of games and game modding, NWN, NWN2, BF2, FARCRY, DAWN OF WAR, HALO, HL2, COUNTER-STRIKE, UNREAL...and man the things that HKABT has done.....

NDEX raised the bar on commercial capacity. HKABT has raised the bar on Residential Overseas Commercial - RealLife Design, Asian Observance, huge leaps into pushing your city (CJ) to how far can you go(with LOTS)!! I am just gushing with pride everytime I play this game and see PVM, Dmscopio, Skyscraper, 2ch.netsimplayer, and a host of new guys ---- these buildings are a set that is captivating. Simfox I am most eager to see your buildings shine!

[Jasoncw 11,843]

HKABAT and it's members really are outstanding, you should be proud!

[SimFox 802]

I’m sort of staring do the material for the walls… would like to hear your opinions.. Jason, your would be especially appreciated. I’m a bit apprehensive of using bitmapped textures as the structure is very big and I sort of afraid visible tiling and repetitions of patterns. Idea is to emulate polished stone cladding. Currently it is totally procedural – tiles with Cellular blend. So how does it look? I‘ve noticed that it is very much resolution depended, I mean procedural textures are by definition are resolution independent, but the sizing of tiles, for instance, that look ok at this – game view at Zoom5, looks awful with closer perspective rendres. One thing that I hope to avoid is that it would look like bricks.

Ok, to cut long story short here is thumbnail picture - click for full Zoom 5 view:

[Sim shady 12]

No bat expert here, but i have eyes, and they are telling me that the textures look fantastic

[Simfan34 11]

It looks FANTASTIC! And you started out with NOTHING!! Absolutely nothing! Amazing work! One of the few that shall fit into my cities!

[Jasoncw 11,843]

Those look fine, but the reason they are looking funny is because the blocks have rough outlines.  It makes them look more like bricks, or like the blocks on an ancient pyramid or something.

If there is a way to export the generated texture and edit it in Photoshop, then I would do that.  Just use the line tool to retrace over the lines and make them cleaner.

If you wanted to make the entire texture yourself, you could do that too.  You'd use the line tool to draw in a small portion of blocks, and then you'd duplicate and merge down the layers until you filled up the entire area (just making sure to line everything up properly as you go along).  Then you make a new layer, and use the paint bucket tool (set for all layers) to manually fill in the tiles with different values.  Here, you can do large areas, and then duplicate the layer, and then mirror, or rotate it, and move it around to quickly fill in the rest of the blocks.  This is what I do for all of my wall textures.

But I think the only problem with your current blocks, is that the lines aren't clean enough.

[SimFox 802]

Jason:

isn't there some program that could do it?? ore some plugin for photoshop??

Cause I don't want any repetitions. And manually to do what this procedural maps do in MAX is next to impossible. I would need bitmap of at least 2000x4000 pix in size...

Also I'm not sure I get you when you say about rough outlines...

There is no way to export this texture as it doesn't really exist till the moment the render is performed. then it is generated on the fly. Only solution I could thin of would be to vreat large plane apply this mat to it and then render it - top-down view.

Sim Shady and Simfan34

thank you guyz you're so kind ;-)

Sorry if I'm not too clear.. we have a party here and I've had few drinks... :-)

[patriots_1228 51]

wow that pool is amazing how did you make it?

[SimFox 802]

Patriot:

Exactly what do you mean?? Water material??

[Jasoncw 11,843]

I thought I posted here again but I guess not.

Anyway, yeah, it would be a really big file, and it would just be made in Photoshop.  It would take some time, but it is possible.

http://www.artisticalternatives.com/stoneblock_2.jpg

vs.

[SimFox 802]

Well first one would be awfully repetitve and it would be obvious as there are realtivelly big expanses of the wall. Second one is from darksim and should be procedural because of that.

But I don't understand why do you say that edges of my blocks are rough? They are perfectly smooth, they just can not be rough as it is Tiles map.

[Jasoncw 11,843]

I'm not saying you should use either of those textures, but to me, your tiles look rougher, instead of cleaner.

If the lines themselves are actually perfectly straight and even, then maybe the value or color of the blocks themselves are the same as the lines, and are blending into them in strange ways, and that might be what's making them visually rough (to me anyway).

[patriots_1228 51]

yep thats what i meant. but that doesn't look like just a plane with a water texture, it looks as though you actually modeled each little ripple

[SimFox 802]

Of course it is NOT a plane; it is a volume - basically a box. And there is NO such a thing like water texture just like there is no Glass texture. If you those type of materials to look realistic NO bitmap texturing will help you! Never ever! Basically it's totally transparent material with water IOR (index of refraction) 1.33, Fresnel reflections, color based on depth (sometimes referred as a fog color), no diffuse color (or black diffuse to be precise) and solid shadows with caustics.

Ripples are there because there is a very simple noise map in bump slot. But this is purely optical illusion. Geometry wise it is very simple box.

Edit: forgot to mention that this material is built on Arch&Design template which available in MAX9 and will work only with Mental Ray

[mightygoose 92]

i would say simfox your water is abit loaby...

[SimFox 802]

Mightygoose:

loaby?? what does that mean?

[bixel 1,223]

hahahahhhahahah. I dont know what it means either, but he's British so he's prolly making fun. Just ignore him.

[2ch.net simplayer 180]

that's not nice.... lol

To me, water looks all right. What I am not quite sure is the pool-sides. Probably it's just not textured yet. I want to see that area partialy wet and people sunbathing :-P

[HONG KONG 74]

I think SimFox has done this pool as a place holder, because the real looks in such a way.

[villagemayor 0]

Haven't been here for more than a month, and One Silver Sea is really coming along. I like it!

[patriots_1228 51]

wow. i never knew a box could do so much. thanks for the lesson

[mightygoose 92]

i have pretty much got your glass setup figured out, all i need to figure out now is how to put that dispersion or fog colouration in...

as for loaby......

the bump map on your water... the ripples are too big.... for ripples to occur in that fashion the pool would have to be filled with treacle.... just need to reduce the noise size on the bump setup...

 here if you look at the final water setup the two photo's one above the other, the top one is very loaby and unatural... the second is much better. however the light parameters of this water is well out of whack.... i will go back and sort that out....sometime...

[bixel 1,223]

Are you still working on MetroHarbour View? I still cant get my IslandHabourview exported 100% but I do have a 13meg model with zoom5,4,&3 working. Autovino's script keep getting errors when I run them. Maybe I should use max 9??