hkabat-forum-threads SimFox Construction & Research

[crazyarchitect 7]

That is a very interesting building indeed

[SimFox 802]

:-)

well it is certainly controversial. I'm happy that Tianjin is finally bids farewell to mediocrity so unfit for such an important city. This tower will be symbol of new age of boldly going... well where places like Shanghai Beijing and few other had already gone... oh well better later then never.

As for the way it was made... I wanted to make it for quite while now, (form the moment I saw the first designs I fell in love with it) but editing thousands of the hand... how should I put it wasn't feeling me with joy. But in the end it wasn't all that difficult. Of course there are some shortcomings but with the scale of SC4 they are not noticeable, actually they wouldn't be noticeable even at zoom6 (meaning 2 or even 3 x the zoom5) but I just know that they are there. I did't use any scripting with this one since I had NO algorithm and creating one for one tower along wouldn't be reasonable. I though to may be contact MAD (beijing based architectural agency) - authors of the tower , but somehow I just started making tower Friday night and by Sunday it was pretty much done. What I did is created 4 flat walls out of hexagons and "painted" selections on them. Inset the polygons, created necessary edges for bending and stuck everything together and put shell modifier. That's about it. It looks more intimidating then it really is.

As for illuminating with self-illuminating material. Yep! It is the best way to go for creating defuse light typical for much of the lighting we see around us. It isn't physically accurate, but more accurate than standard lights with no decay, plus it is an Areal light with very very soft areal shadows. best of all it is practically free! since it isn't a light per se it doesn't really add any calculation time. Of course you MUST use FG for this to work since it is FG rays that are carrying the "light" or to be precise brightness information. So if you have FG on already lighting with such a material would add any extra calculations. But the material should be set properly it should be sort of High Dynamic range for best results. You can fake it with curve in output. That is, naturally when you deal with some bitmap with a patterns - like those I use in windows of my residential towers.

Biggest drawback of such a lighting is that light "source" must be of relatively large area to provide enough samples for FG, otherwise it wouldn't give much light (only few FG rays will hit it) and/or you'll get spots for same reason, particularly if you try get more "light" by increasing multiplier of Self-Illumination.

All that is mostly applicable for Arch&Design materials. I used this method also before them, with Architectural material, if I remember correctly , but I don't anymore remember all the specifics.

BTW, Bixel, I've written scripts that automate truNite export, so that all it now takes is two mouse clicks - no need for any external software, regular expressions or moving files around. Also I have got rid of 3rd technical export. all it takes now is just 2 passes/exports. would you like to beta test it? I need people with different versions of MAX to check the compatibility.

[TV-VCR 14]

Superb choice for a new building SimFox! I wish you the best of luck

[TheCrybKeeper 300]

Concerning Sinosteel in Tianjin;

Now this is really cool design! Very unique, yet attractive. It deserves a video tutorial, so I can do these great windows. Yeah, I am plugging The3DResource for SuperStar also known as SuperNova. I believe, he deserves our support though, as a long time dedicated member of Simtrop. Supe is on his way to military training and my prayers go with him on his journey. Meanwhile, he is trying to let all of us ST modders' show the novice gmax'ers how we do all of this.

So, please click on my sig and check out Supe's most innovative offering. It has truely  opened my eyes to what Gmax and 3dsm can actually create.

[panthersimcity4 162]

That building just screams "Got milk?"

It is kinda ugly but still pretty neat! Definetally not as bad as, say, the Ryungyong Hotel in Pyonyang. *vomit*

[tankmank 853]

It's certianly unique a bit disorientating but overall nice

[thebanjo 0]

OMG master piece ! Love this people, and I-mad firm !! Are you making the smaller one ?

Can"t wait !

[dmscopio 225]

very awesome building you got there. this is a very celever design and i am glad that you are batting it. Looking forwards for more progress on it. keep it up!

[fusion_lemon 2]

oooops... seems that I've missed a lot of amazing progresses while I'm fed up with piles and loads of work at school~~~

and it is more than a month~! O_O"

[_Atticus 10]

How is progress on these buildings going?

I'm curious 0_0

[SimFox 802]

well, I'm in a bit of stunned and depressed mood right now...

I've just lost about 30Gb of photos from China due to HDD crash.

Does anyone has any knowledge or suggestions about restoring data from Mac OS HDD??

[toxicpiano 125]

I take it that you don't boot camp then (you should it's insanely useful)

Loads of options here:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&safe=off&sa=X&oi=spell&resnum=1&ct=result&cd=1&q=data+recovery+for+mac&spell=1

One such option which looks promising:

http://www.boomdrs.com/

[bixel 1,223]

http://www.macintosh-data-recovery.com/?gclid=CLboqsPktZcCFQMCagodxgvkiQ

http://www.prosofteng.com/

http://www.stellarinfo.com/

[SimFox 802]

Toxic Piano... done those... Didn't work. I mean I can Google things.. I just though thta some one may have personal expirience... I, for instance had similar problem with on e of the PC Disks. it was total gonner. Even BIOS wouldn't see it. But a little mirracle programm called Zero AssumptionRecovery managed to save ALL data from it, while many other were totally useless. I though that may be for MAC there is something similar... I still haven't tried Disk Warrior since I need to run it from MAC OS eg getting and installing new disk into my Powerbook...

Bixel:

this looks interesting Flashing "?" at start-up is exactly what I have!

[toxicpiano 125]

flashing '?' ? interesting. What version of OSX are you using? I know you can google, sorry

Are you sure it's not this (or is it more serious do you think?):

http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1440

"If your computer starts up normally after a brief delay, you probably just need to reselect the startup disk in Startup Disk preferences (Mac OS X) or the Startup Disk control panel (Mac OS 9). It's normal to see the flashing question mark when a startup disk has not been selected. In most cases, reselecting the startup disk is all that is required to resolve the issue.

Tip: If your computer is having a different startup issue, see this document instead.

"

[SimFox 802]

I was on Tiger prior to this, now have moved to Leopard...

HDD seems damaged on the physical level (I bet something with heads, or mechanism that moves them, or, alternatively with electronics that control the process...) so no software based recovery is possible...

So I guess pictures are dead... really pity as I had a lot of foggy Chongqing - trully amazing sight... and new breakneck development in Tianjin that outpaces even Shanghai...

Only Hong Kong had survived the crash (:-) )

I do have HDV videos though I'll try to pull some frames from that. Unfortunately this time it was mostly done in 1080i instead of 1080p I used last time.This was to better render motion but makes pulling frames much more problematic... :-(

[toxicpiano 125]

30gb, huh? do you shoot RAW?

[SimFox 802]

Always!

Well, not technical/referrence shots (of course)...Otherwise this is the ONLY way to shoot!

Plus add here 12Mpix sensor and Gbs are starting piling rather fast... :-/

[dubblebubble898 0]

i love all ur work SimFox!

i love all these asian, i'm chinese so go china haha, buildings

i want to so much more too

also...a bit off topic... i love moscow's architecture, consider that or create another thread haha...

[bixel 1,223]

you are crazy to do photos at that size, but then again when I was shooting photos it was just for building reference, so I didn't need them very big. 360kb was big enough for me.

[SimFox 802]

I've got a bit more time now... hopefully will finish this one soon:

modeling is almost done - only lower roof top patio is left. Some texturing and tweaking , nightlighting... but that is relatively easy...

[Jasoncw 11,843]

Looking fantastic!

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Wow, the amount of detail... by which I mean vents/grates/lattice is almost obnoxious, but I love it!!!

I guess all I have left to say is 

-Todd

[spa 970]

That looks really great. The details are awesome and the roof is just wonderful. It's a great bat. Only one question, why are you modelling the grass planters that are set off from the building? The would work better as props so that your building could go on a denser lot if people want.

[SimFox 802]

Spa:

Well, yes they are modeled, but I will most probably make them "flat props" so that shadow could be cast on them.

At them moment I'm considering how shall I make the plaza in front of building (there where all the shops and restaurans are. I want it well light at night. But the only way to do it in SC4 is to BAT and Light it in MAX. But in daytime I would like it to be textured so that there could be "natural" games shadow on it...

Does anyone have any idea/suggestion how such a thing could be accomplished?

[bixel 1,223]

God that is gorgeous. It really makes me wanna work on Taikoo place and make sure its perfect before release. Lately I think my quality has gone down.

[JakeMD 107]

Wow i'm very impressed. nice job!

[art128 4,618]

It looks really fantastic my friend ! 

[SimFox 802]

Bixel, you're not fair to yourself... Since I had an intimate access to one of your latest I have to strongly and publicly denounce you self-putting down. Your attention to details, sizes and relativity is at all time high... in terms of modeling I think only area that does need attention is your bases, but this can be said about practically anyone's work, including myself. We here tend to look up, while in real buildings a lot happens down.

But the ones of your most prominent subject - HK high-rise residentials - those mega complexes are particularly challenging. They do, in a way, brake with any logic or stylictics you may know by looking at normal city as we know thn in the western world. Heck even mainland China is much more "europen" in this respect, particularly Norh-East of the countlry which is VERY european, even scandinavian at places...

After spending some times around those HK Behemoths and seeing what they do to the fabric of city - destroying it like cancerous growths I don't really hold much appreciation for them no more. Particularly luxury ones. The whole thing is like making nice corner at expense of overall room, devastating at that.

So when you trying to make base look nice...it's next to impossible - speaking of ground level - cause there isn't really anything nice about it. It doesn't have ground level - there are dead walls separating upmarket lifestyle from the rest of place. so when you are at the place where several such complexes are grouped - Like around the Olympic Station ( One SilverSea, and some of your complexes) street scene is a nothing short of wasteland (with surprisingly poor condition of roads themselves... All the nice details are behind rather tall walls or on top of podiums that are 15-20 m in the air. Originally some city planners saw this nightmare coming and many of such podiums were forced to be a public spaces. Even so you have to know of it and purposefully go there. if you don't... But even that wasn't good enough for residents who in a constant stream of law suites are closing their little piece of paradise from everyone else. Traditional Chinese Wall city coming back.

Fortunately in the mainland attitudes and stronger hand of authorities seem to be different that maintains much better urban environment. If anything the move there is reverse.

Even in HK itself there are better areas, surprisingly those tend to be a lower wealth ones! Or on the Island itself (as opposed to Kowloon).

All that said, please understand me correctly, I'm not talking down HK. I love the place. It's wonderful and very diverse and offer bags of truly urban experience. Just some of the new developments threaten this very fabric of the city.

May God has mercy o this wonderful place:

[mcarch 15]

Oooo, nice!