BAT - Troubleshooting & General Discussion

[KurtangleTN 10]

Yeah they all light up, just seems to be mine. Other BATs I have work great.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

I'm having some major issues with UVW maps.

This is a house I am currently working on. I will open a BAT thread once I have something worth showing off. However, I'm having some major problems with UVW maps.

I have created a floating rectangle to show you what I mean. See, you can see it fine on the left side...

But the same thing is transparent on the right side! I have noticed that the right and back walls are much darker, and I'm unable to make windows on them because the UVW map just isn't working!

Any ideas? I could really use some help.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Planes only have one side. You'll need to rotate the plane.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Well, that worked perfectly! Seems I'm an idiot.

Thanks, Jason...

[edmonton_stinks 5]

Sorry for double posting, but I have yet another question. Is the default glass texture any good?

The big window on the front of the house is the only one I have textured so far. It doesn't quite look right. If anyone uses the default glass texture, will it look better in the render? Or, if someone has a better glass texture, could you point me to it?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Ideally that texture would be photoshoped into a custom texture, along with photos of windows, and other stuff. If you just want to use that texture though, select all of your glass, group it, and apply a UVW Map (found in the modifiers menu). Once applied, change the UVW Map from a plane map to a box map, and make the dimensions something big. That texture was designed to be spread across larger buildings.

Check out the tutorial in my signature for how to make good window textures.

[delija21 295]

can someone please tell me what am i doing wrong????

By delija21 at 2008-05-19

[Jasoncw 11,840]

You can select your glass, clone it, and rotate it 180 degrees. That way it will block out the light that is hitting the outside of the building and making those vertical lines.

You can also make the blinds more transparent.

After that you can experiment with the intensity and color of the lights.

[SimFox 802]

One more thing, to simulate bouncing light you may switch from spots to omnis, Providing you'll follow Jason's advise on glass.

[Need4Camaro 50]

I am making a prop that needs to overhang atleast 1 and a half of a tile but I do not want to make it a 2 tile prop in the Lot Editor. Is there a way that this can be done? If so how?

[nosx 0]

render it at an offset, in other words move the LODS about away from the direction you want to overhang, this will then allow it to overhang more

[Need4Camaro 50]

I'm creating my first BAT and I modeled it with GMax. The BAT is 1 tile large (16X16 METERS) and uses lighting. Here's what Im running into...

When I try to export the BAT in ANY quality... it will load up to 13% really fast but then it will try to load the previews and there it will just get stuck there.. ...the previews dont display anything but a blank screen, all except for the thumbnails... Whats going on? why dos it just get stuck?

[ianpaschal 77]

It will take different amounts of time depending on the BAT but you can almost guarantee it will take a long time. What are your computer specs? Especially if it's an older computer you may have to just let it run over night and let it chug chug chug.

[Gn_leugim 853]

it depends on 2 things:

1-size and detail of the model (with this i mean not just volume, but also detail and number of objects in the scene)

2-how good your machine is..

[Blazerhawk 162]

Check Scale. I know my first buildings were way out of scale because GMAX uses a grid that gets larger the farther you are zoomed out. Otherwise patience and a good computer are the only solutions.

[Need4Camaro 50]

I've figured it out... My scale was WAY off, reduced it and fixxed

[Need4Camaro 50]

They show up find in GMax/Bat and I even select the option to say it lights up at night on the plugin manager. Whenever it gets dark though, it never lights up, even when power is applied. I named the lights...

nitelite1
nitelite2
nitelite3
nitelite4
nitelite5
nitelite6
nitelite7

No spaces at all...

What should I check?

[un1 41]

You probably don't have the update from SC4.com... I dont but I'll need it for my new CJ, there's already a thread for it though...

[Jazzmaster 716]

Hmm, it may have something to do with how you named them.  "nitelite" is just a prefix, and probably needs to have the name of something after it (like "niteliteSpot01" or "niteliteOmni03").  Some other things to be aware of is that a) you need to let the game run for at least a few game days in order for it to turn on, and b) if it's a prop, and not a building, you need to open it up with something like the SC4 Tool or ilive Reader to turn on the option that says lights up at night or whatever.

Also, sorry I haven't stopped into your CJ lately (I was sidetracked by a number of things) but if you still have the patience for me, I'd love to finish some more highway signs etc. for you.

[Need4Camaro 50]

Yeah sure, stop by - I have several sign requests waiting on the back pages

[cyrushaha 0]

I am a newbie on BAT. Recently I use Gmax to make a predestain bridge, my problem is how to make the 4*4 bridge overhang on a 1*1 lot ?????

I try to use offset (from what i understand is move the whole building further away from origin), but when it render some part of the building disappear.

Also, in Loteditor the building won't show up until the lot size is bigger than 4*4, is there anyway to let it show up at 1*1????

[JakeMD 107]

When you render the offset, you must "refit the LOD shells." to do this, enter your BAT menu, then click the Paramaters rollout.  Find the Refit LODs button and click it.  It may prompt you that it will destroy the old ones, but thats ok.

You must have the lot big enough for the model at first, but later, lot resizing (making it smaller) will enable you for overhanging.

As for me, I have a problem of my own.

Click me for the picture

I need a mesh to be two sides, but its an extruded spline, (line) and only shows on one side.  I forget how to fix this, any suggestions?

[cyrushaha 0]

Finally someone reply my question. following your advice i manage to solve the missing part problem when rendering but when i try to follow you say in Loteditor, it won't allow me to save....

I have attach a picture to explain what's going on

[Jasoncw 11,840]

SWAT-MEDIC:  In the extrude modifer panel on the right, there should be check boxes for start and end caps, and you want both of those to be checked.  If they are already checked (they probably are), then you forgot to weld some of your vertexes together.

cyrushaha:  Move everything back the the center of the lot, and refit the LOD, and export again as normal.  Then make a lot for it (it doesn't matter what the lot size is right now).  Open the lot in iLive's Reader (which can be found in the Modds & Downloads section of this site), and in one of the exemplar files, there is a property called "Occupant Size".  You want to edit this property down to something that will fit on the lot you want.  After doing this and saving, open the lot in the lot editor and you can go about making your lot as intended.

This will trick the game into thinking that your building is smaller than it really is.  This property is used in the game for things like the construction scaffolding, and in the lot editor it determines the size of the grey footprint.

[cyrushaha 0]

thx Jason and SWAT now i can put my first BAT in game. I have a new question, how to let the lot place in transportation menu but don't require any road connection??

[I9113N 4]

After a long time of looking at various tutorials, i have started a new BAT. So I start with a basic rectangle, and apply the texture that i'm going to model off of. Here, you can obviously see that the texture "bulges". Any ideas?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Go to Customize>Preference Settings, and in the viewport tab, try changing your Display Driver, and see if a different one works better for you.

[I9113N 4]

It says i don't have any other drivers...

[ScurkCity 0]

I'm running into the black box problem.  Here's how it looks rendered in GMAX and as a building in Lot Editor: 

I imported it into a R$ building with the plugin manager, with mostly default values.  I didn't mess with it in DatGen either.  It was rendered at medium quality, and I sized it to within 16 meters  or 1 tile.  The model is about 5m-squared in GMax, and the base is centered at xyz=(0,0,0).  I checked the model's frames in DatGen, and they all looked fine.

 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I9113N: There's a way to fix that, but I don't know what it is. Try searching google.

ScurkCity: Select your building in gmax, and go to File>Save Selected. Save it as something else. Open the new file, and export that.