hkabat-forum-threads SimFox Construction & Research

[SimFox 802]

It is a bit on hold for the moment... To be honest I have great doubts about it exportability in one piece, to my shame I haven't tried it yet. But although the model itslef is with mothballs, then development process is still going on. I've done other small projects to test some techniques hat will be applied to the Metro Harbor view as well.

So all that left is Zoom 2 and 1; the smallest ones, right?

I've mentioned before about possibility of doing it manually. What I meant is that you just do set renders so that it matches the exports in pixel per pixel exactly. Then in photoshop you crop it with a mask generated from a export of test LOD. And then you just dice the image. Basically it is sort of crude version of what is autoVino's script is suppose to do. Crude cause of the manual croping and dicing. But the later (dicing that is) could be automated. The most manual procedure would be aligning and croping. But that also potentially automatable in Photoshop. One advantage this workflow has over the traditional export and also autoVinos adjusted script (apart from it apparent failures, but that has to be investigated further) is that you have yourself a whole undiced image in Photoshop!! This offers HUGE opportunities for postproduction editing! It could take BATing to new astronomical heights in quality and realism; or the Unrealism if that what you prefer!

[bixel 1,223]

I totally agree - knowing that the model file is a bunch of bmp's which you can see and alter I even thought about adding the nitelets by hand so-to-speak in photoshop. But as it is its too much of a bother.

[SimFox 802]

exactly... it is too much to bother because it is in pieces... but if you have one whole image, that some siimple Photoshop Actions could be defined for some alterations in order to keep them uniformed. This could also be used to say sharpen Zoom5 level and may be blur a bit smaller ones to make for an areal perspective... Plus all tht night effects that could be much faster to create in Photoshop or some compositing software then to set and render them in MAX! The possibilities are great!

[SimFox 802]

Bump Bump

Coming the full circle!

This building was my first attempt at 3D modeling about 1,5 years ago. Beijing Silver Tower.

That time around I had to abandon it mainly due to being unable to solve the riddle of the totally reflective gazing of the structure.

Now With experience gained by working on some of mine and other's projects etc, etc, I've felt that I MUST bring this one to life in SimCity it is my sort of homage to my early days enthusiasm... oh those were the days....

Anyway here is first Mat tests comments and critique is welcome , as always:

and a blast from the past:

[bixel 1,223]

Wow - what a difference!!! Cant wait for this one.

[Antoine_SC 25]

hehe we can see that you have improvd your skill good good good

[IGGYMAN 101 1]

I will put in as real, If I assign myself as a contractor... ....a multitower OneSilverSea doodle

[autoVino 26]

awesome! (and I'm just crazy about those caustics )

[Sim shady 12]

Holy crap, you skills have improved dramatically It really is amazing how good you have become with the BAT

[ajay_law 1]

You have the skills to pay the bills!

[SimFox 802]

Well here are some updates.

I've been grilled on a stack for reflections being too specific and people were even counting the floors in buildings reflected... So I've changes some settings, another thing that I've discovered is that game DOES lighten the look of the model even AFTER it has been rendered. To be precise it isn't really lighting and not by game.. (he he I know odd, but there you have it) change happens when 16 million color image is being squeezed into 256 color, when FSH compression is taking place. As a result image becomes sort of washed out... This process is absolutely none transparent and I believe done with very inferior algorithms of yesteryears. If anyone knows of structure of FSH files and can tell of any way to manually control the process It would great help!

So The original preview shown here had been significantly downgraded by the process. To fix it I've made darker and more contrasty, hence less subtle tone shifts. That should work better with such a conversion and here are results as it looks in game:

South elevation:

East elevation:

North elevation:

West elevation:

so as you can see silver tower turned into sort of black tower, but could still be referred as Silver because of all the external metallic architectural detailing. Darker glass makes anything reflected less recognizable as lots of brightness information is destroyed in the reflection plus higher contrast I think makes building stand more defined and actually fits somewhat better into contrast scheme of the game.

If this looks tolerable I can consciously predict that it will be on the STEX this coming weekend

[CarmineHilton 6]

Fabulous! But it really looks weird next to the original buildings

But it looks just amazing!!

Loves It...

[bixel 1,223]

oh man that is so nice. Your render is very sharp and crisp as well. Also you have some nice metalic action going on ther.. did you have an environment map?

[SimFox 802]

CarmineHilton:

As for weirdness... well I guess ills - so that like in real cities in SC4 we could also build very different in feel areas and of course to bring into game the look of common modern CBDs.

Bixel:

You're up early or is it late??

Nope..

Environmental maps don't work with orthographic cameras - ones used in BAT. That is HUGE draw back . would it be possible to use them many things would have been MUCH easier.

So it same ol' plane on the ground method used for the first time in Lippo.

Crisp... well that is an illusion because now everything within the building is of very high contrast - creates feel of sharp edges. Otherwise it is same Lanczos, but with very high settings of 4 to 256, so it would pick on the smallest detail and preserve it. I did it to keep the lines on the glass of entrance lobby. There is no lattice there (at least Lattice as sort of metal frame holding glass in place) just like in the original the entire structure is ALL glass the "window" planes are held in place by another panels of glass positioned next to them at right angle. - so the dark lines you sse are the edges of that see glass supports and they are all of realistic 1 cm thickness. Well the lines there are a mixture of the edge and the surface and all reflections/refractions, Caustics ets - anyway I think it looks pretty realistic...

[Sim shady 12]

Wow this looks amazing in game

the roof does look a little bare though.

[SimFox 802]

well roof isn't done yet... It was just a test of the glazing...

[Antoine_SC 25]

and it's an excellent result !!

[Jasoncw 11,843]

Yeah, that's the same problem I noticed with my small orange brick building a few weeks (months?) ago.  If you look, you'll even find grey blotches too.

On this one, on the west elevation screenshot, on the left part of the curved concrete piece, at the top edge near the corner, you can see the grey spots.

It would be fantastic if this effect could be reduced.  Perhaps the images could be rendered in 256 colors in the first place, so that 3ds max does it instead of that fsh program.

[SimFox 802]

Well that should be tried but I'm not sure about the exact procedure. I still think that color conversion would be best done in specialized software like Photoshop, that is equipped with necessary perceptual filters, capable of tricking your eye rather then simply serving it the "naked truth" as MAX indexed color export would.

[JakeMD 107]

Awsome, I cant wait for that complex your cooking up!

[SimFox 802]

here is a little "texture" update on BST (Beijing Silver Tower):

generally it nears completion, of big things only night lights left, and few arch details...

[bixel 1,223]

whoa!!! thats taking it up a notch!!!

[autoVino 26]

That looks really nice!  Awesoem texturing is all I can say.

[mcarch 15]

Me Likes it! =D

[SimFox 802]

Golden sunset anyone??

[bixel 1,223]

The sunset style is looking really nice. I have some questions about refraction/reflection. I created a glass style building and did a test render in perspective and instead of raytrace I accidentally setup reflect/refract and it actually came out looking absolutely amazing!!! But then when I went to export it was just a plane dull mesh and didn't have the awesome specular quality and groovy reflections like your building above.

I couldn't figure out why I got an amazing render in perspective and then nothing remotely like it in the export. Then to my disbelief I tried to do another perspective render pass for testing and it was dull and boring just like the export. I cant remember exactly what I did and whatever I saw the 1st seems to be lost forever. It was soo damn good looking too and I can't see how I did it. Ahh well. I am exporting it now - I was able to get some of that magic back - but it is still not to my liking - I will post some pics in my thread later.

[SimFox 802]

Well As far as I know Refract/Reflect is a MAP not a material type.

So, where had you put it?? I mean in what slop in the maps??

Second although I never had done anything with tit I think it wouldn't work with BAT because it is reliant on Environmental maps -eg "virtual" geometry for generating the effect. Not sure how exactly via ray-tracing or simple texturing (I think second is more likely and is already reason good enough not to use it), but that is a bit scholastic if we talk about BAT or any orthographic view. Environmental maps rely on every single point in render output having unique all angle between its normal and camera Z axis. That holds true in perspective view/camera) but in orthographic one Z axis is meaningless so necessary calculation can not be performed properly. so every point on a flat plane will reflect same very spot on environmental map - so any flat area will be in flat color.

Why you can not get it working right after the export attempt in perspective either - that I don't know and i would need to see the whole setup to even start pondering about that. One thing may idea is that may be the effect you've see wasn't generated by that map at all, but something else. And later you have just un-ticked something somewhere without paying much attention and so it is gone. Anyway that map NEEDS source to generate effect. It is either environment (modeled or virtual (eg environment map) or you can specify separate images for each of the cubic projections... but this just sounds like a good deal, in reality this means that anything either not box shaped or not positioned very strictly straight will have many trouble spots...

[bixel 1,223]

well. I had an environment map, a real nice hk setting and it looked absolutely fabulous on the glass material, the refract/reflect can be accessed in the maps rollout, hit the reflection check box add in refract/reflect. But you know what the isometric export -- that was the problem, in some perspective view depending on the angle I had an amazing result on the glass - absolutely gorgeous and it was very abstract a very nice melange of colors. I was going to post this in my forum - but since I've kinda started something here might as well post it here instead.

Here is the normal iso result - very bland - you can see some specular and a little refraction/relflection occuring only on the edge surface that has some curve to it - other than that its boring. Also I was experiemtenting with nightlights as well, not a great result their either but its improving.

and here is the actual (rendered) building from China.

[SimFox 802]

well, just like I've said you see those monotone stripes on the facade of the building. each corresponds to flat area. in some way it reveals that you facade curves in "wrong" places well that is if you want to recreate the curve of the original. Same could be said about the size and shape of "sky garden" opening.

But the main issue is that environment maps being in essence "virtual" geometry will not work with orthographic (not ISOMETRIC - that is very different thing) projections.

I would very much suggest you to take a closer practical look at night materials. There is NO way to get comparable results with any other method of window lighting. Using lights is 1) more taxing on the system) 2 given that you shine it on bare concrete floor (or even textured floor) will anyway produce results FAR inferior to night libraries. Those circles could be useful for some situations (say nightclub or something along those lines), but inside of offices look odd and unrealistic

[zane900 1]

True, I'm not much of a Custom Content person, but all in all, these are some of the most realistic BATs I've ever seen! Great job.