BAT - Troubleshooting & General Discussion

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The help stuff shouldn't effect your exporting. If you go back to where you got Gmax, you can also download tutorials and manuals and that kind of stuff, which I think is what you have missing.

For your exporting problem, select everything in your scene, and go to File>Save Selected. Save it as something. Then open the file you saved, and export that.

[energeticmouse 1]

this might not be relevant, but this "roadbuilder1" guy gave me a private message about pressing the print screen button to create a pic for my event stadium, is this how you do it? or is it ctrl+v?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

To take a screenshot of your screen, you press the print screen button, which is sometimes labeled "prnt scrn" on the keyboard. This will take a screenshot of your screen, but you will need to paste it into an image editing program in order to see/use it.

[Arg777 0]

Ive done the BAT Tutorial and it was good to help out a beginner but I was wondering how you create buildings such as skyscrapers whose wall consist of only windows. Like buildings when you look at them appear to be made out of glass. The tutorial showed how to make the standard wall with windows in them, but how does one create skyscrapers with only windows for walls. Can someone explain this to me. 
Thanks

[Gn_leugim 853]

now that's something I want to know also.. ^^

[delija21 295]

I think it's easyer to make skyscraper wall than standard wall for the house or some mid-rise buildings. I don't know if this is the best way to make scyscraper walls but this is how i make them........first make a rectangle of any size you want...if your model is going to be 100m high and 20m wide than make it 20x100 and apply UVW Map to it.....than you can make lines and play with them to make the framing of the wall and windows......i think that's it......i hope you understand what i'm trying to say...my english is not very good

[patriots_1228 51]

What I do is I make one big plane/box (depending on how lazy i feel) that represents an entire facade of the glass tower.

then i use the line/rectangle/lattice tool (depending on how lazy i feel) to make "frames". Then i will delete the plane, and make each individual window for nightlighting purposes. if I am doing omnis, I will just leave it as one big plane.

[mightygoose 92]

in gmax i always did it so that a vertical bar on a skyscraper would be a rendered spline, as would each horizontal element and that the glass would be a huge plane....

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Instead of thinking of that tutorial as teaching you how to make "walls" it's best to think of it as teaching you how to make "geometry that resembles a wall". You just need to apply the technique to making "geometry that resembles a glassy building facade".

The hard part about doing glassy buildings like that, is that everything really needs to be perfect for it to look good. Your window frames need to be the perfect thickness, and they need to have perfect proportions and perfect scale in order to look good. And then, the texturing is even more important, and is harder to do a really good job on. There is a tutorial in my signature though, which can help you out.

[WillG_75 19]

I apologize if there is already a topic or tutorial on this, but I need help with lighting. How do I go about making good outside lighting? Whenever I try to make a porch light or spot light, it makes the whole house dark in the viewports, and when I render the lights, it shows up during the daytime render too. The light boundary is also very tight and doesn't look like it's glowing, rather just a lighter circle. What am I doing wrong? Also while on the topic of lighting, how do you get interior lighting like this? I assume that it's something that only 3ds max can do, but would still like to know for future projects.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Spa uses Gmax.  The glass is transparent, and inside he has lights.  The insides have textures on the floors which look like something when they're lit up with a light.  The furniture may also be modeled.  It takes a lot of tweaking to get good looking results using those techinques, so it might take a while.

The BAT Essentials tutorial in the omnibus explains what all of the useful properties of the lights are, and that will help you get the lights to do what you want them to.

If your viewport gets really dark after placing lights, right click on the viewport's label ("perspective" "top" "right" etc. whatever viewport you want fixed), and go to configure.  Then go to "default lighting" and either do one or two lights.

[Gn_leugim 853]

hi.. i guess that there is no way to solve this but trying don't hurt. i tried to open a bat and it replied to me: "File open failed: "C\xxx\xxx\xxx.gmax""

is there something I can do? the model was ready to render :,(

[SimFox 802]

yes there is... you have autosave function in GMAX, so in stead of opening that corrupted file try one of 3 autosave files.

With any luck - namelly if that corrupted file is one you were working on the latest you'll have 3 copies of it

[Gn_leugim 853]

great.. where i can find them? ^^

EDIT: I found them... ty ty ty ty ty!!!

[WillG_75 19]

Thank you for your help Jasoncw. I tried out what you said and got some pretty good interior lights. Now I am just going to have to figure out a good way to texture the interior. I may end up contacting spa though PM for some help.

[Gn_leugim 853]

you could try use a lot of different textures.. depending on what you are modelling.. the best ones are those who have different colours with well defined edges so it gives the impression of different stuff inside the building

[Andy_108 1]

How do you create realistic and decent looking textures for BATs? I've never been that great at texturing so i would like to know how to make your own really good texture and how to apply it to the model. Any help would be great!

[SimFox 802]

How to make REAL good texture? You make it REAL hard! :-)

[Andy_108 1]

?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

In my opinion, you can spend countless hours on google trying to find good textures, or trying to build a library of textures, without ever finding exactly what you want.  I think you end up spending a lot of time and making a lot of compromises, and you don't really end up with the quality textures you were wanting.

I think I only have about 15 or so textures that I regularly use, and I mostly use these to help make my custom textures.  Everything else is almost made from scratch in Photoshop.  For texturing things for something other than SC4, it take more, but I don't think have thousands of textures is helpful, lol. 

I think the best thing to do is to get really good at Photoshop, and to collect a good handful of quality general materials (these can be mixed together in photoshop to help you make a lot of different stuff).  These textures might include concrete, limestone, stained/worn concrete, etc., and these textures provide general patterns which add texture to the textures you make in Photoshop.  For example, if you look at my roofs on my BATs on the STEX, most of them are made out of:  The Maxis roof texture which comes with Gmax, a photograph of old concrete, my hand drawn details, and adjustments for brightness, contrast, saturation, and hue.  For limestone, I draw the outlines of the blocks in photoshop, and I color each block with a different value of grey (limestone has natural variation), and mix this together with a the pattern overlays that come with Photoshop, plus the other adjustments. 

For more complicated things you may need more textures.  For example, if you want marble panels, you can draw lines for the panels, and you can edit photos of marble into it to make marble panels, and for this you might need a handful of marble photos.

[Gn_leugim 853]

he tried to say that making good textures is hard..

well, I could you give some advices:

1- increase your texture database(mine has 1171 textures and still counting ^^), or find a good one online;

2- to create good textures you also must be good at photo editing, with software like photoshop or alike;

3- read Jasoncw tutorials (you can find the links on his signature )

4- Use and abuse of UVW maps

hope it helps

[Gn_leugim 853]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw

I think I only have about 15 or so textures that I regularly use, and I mostly use these to help make my custom textures.  Everything else is almost made from scratch in Photoshop.  For texturing things for something other than SC4, it take more, but I don't think have thousands of textures is helpful, lol. 

quote>

Guess that was for me ^^ although I have such huge database, I only use a few of them too.. the others are more to use in photoshop as well.. But I don't do so much from scratch like you do.. I use more blending of different textures ^^

[cyrushaha 0]

I have a few questions

1) How to make the edge look more smooth (As seen from the first picture)?

2) I have make the BAT to 16.2m with 0.1m overhang in both side, but in 2 of the direction i can still see the edge between each puzzle piece, how to get rid of that?

3) this is actually about lot editor, how to make sure the building that placed is in dead middle (as the second picture show there is some offset when placing the lot in opposite direction)???

I am new in BAT and i am using Gmax with BAT

thanks in advanced

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Gn_leugim:  lol, well, it's for everybody. 

cyrushaha:

1:  You can't really make the edges more smooth.

2:  I think what is showing up is the black matting of the renders.  I'm not sure.  Try extending it out even further, and make custom LODs which cut off the extra extended area.  If you go to SC4Devotion.com there's a tutorial about making bridges somewhere, and that will tell you what you need to know for these.

3:  I think you have to eyeball it, and test it in the game.  Though you also need to make sure that your model is centered in the scene in Gmax, or else there might be some offsetting as you rotate it.

[cyrushaha 0]

thx Jasoncw

do u mean this tutorial ?

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=158.0

I just read it but I am not really understand, jeronij said there is another simplier tutorial in ST but i can't find it

Is it mean I need to do something with different LOD, if so how to do that??

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Yeah, that's the tutorial. I don't know if or where the tutorial here might be, but that one is pretty good. You edit your LODs like you edit any other object. You can delete them and remake them too. You just need three objects called "LOD3" "LOD4" and "LOD5" in your scene to be the LODs. To see the existing LODs (so that you can delete or alter them), right click, and go Unhide All Objects.

If you want to, you can read the BAT - Mega FAQ, at the top of this forum, which has a bit on LODs and what they are. This can help you understand the concept of what you're doing.

[srsedate 118]

I've had the same problem. I can't get the lights on my props to work either.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

There's a property somewhere in the Plugin Manger for it.

[Gn_leugim 853]

Can anyone tell me how to enable nitelight on a prop? ty =)

[Gn_leugim 853]

still.. no light appears at night =(