BAT - Troubleshooting & General Discussion

[aspireman 5]

Got a question. I now found out why my buildings weren't showing up in the Lot Editor. It appears they are much larger then I expected (10 X 10 lots). I'm using GMAX to design them. Do I have to half size these models? I'm using the typical 10 ft per story. So after finding that out I down sized the model by half and re rendered it. I now see my model in the LE, but it still takes up a 10 X 10 Lot, even though the building is no where near that size. I'm getting close! Any suggestions? Thanks for your help!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

It's in meters not feet, so you might have been making your floors 10 meters high.

[BIWDC 2,296]

Yes you need Gmax installed & If you don't Have the sc4 deluxe edition then the BAT

can't be installed.

You would need to find the Rush Hour Expansion Pack on Ebay or Amazon or

elsewhere or get the Deluxe Edition.

You can buy the Deluxe Edition from EA on origin here:http://store.origin.com/or

on steam from Valve or even from Here:http://www.gamersgate.com/ .

(If you buy it from those places you won't need the updates I mentioned in my 1st post

above).-If you buy The digital version that is.

  Edited May 13, 2012 by BIWDC  

[madhatter106 3,903]

Got a question. I now found out why my buildings weren't showing up in the Lot Editor. It appears they are much larger then I expected (10 X 10 lots). I'm using GMAX to design them. Do I have to half size these models? I'm using the typical 10 ft per story. So after finding that out I down sized the model by half and re rendered it. I now see my model in the LE, but it still takes up a 10 X 10 Lot, even though the building is no where near that size. I'm getting close! Any suggestions? Thanks for your help!

It sounds like you scaled the building down, but you still have the original LODs, which are 10x10. Unhide everything in the model, then delete the LODs, and then gmax will regenerate them when you preview/export next time.

[mntoes 270]

Or select /tools Bat/parameters and pick "Re-fit Lod's" . Select yes to delete the old lods and the new ones should now be smaller. On a side note are you modelling at the correct zoom level? If you look at the bottom right near "Animate" does it say "grid =1 or Grid=16". If not I suspect you are not zoomed-in enough for SC4 scale.

[2farnorth 26]

I have a few questions about LODs.

1Are custom LODs needed for a TE'd train station that is semi-transparent?

2Does a custom LOD have to be all one shape, or can it be a group?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The LODs are the actual 3d geometry that shows up in the game. The renders are 2d images which are basically overlayed on the LODs in the game. So you'll have to make a custom LOD and depending on the situation it can be hard to figure out how everything needs to be in order for the BAT and trains and everything else to interact correctly in the game. And some situations aren't actually possible, and you have no choice but to either change your BAT or have things overlap weird.

I think LODs need to be one object. Right click on one of the objects, convert it to an editable polygon, and then in the menu to the right, use "attach" to attach them all into one object.

[aspireman 5]

Having trouble with texturing a shape. It's an octagon re shaped as a rectangle so that the four corners are at an angle. It's actually a roof. I have no problem texturing the sides, but when I texture the top it only has 3 points not 8 like its suppose to. Any ideas why?

[harishna 847]

I posted this in my thread, however I still haven't been able to fix it. I was told I can fix the fsh files with ilives reader, however I got no experience with the program and so far I haven't been able to find how to fix it, so could someone a) point me in the right direction or b) help this for me? many thanks!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Try moving some of the vertexes of the LODs around a bit, make a new .SC4model and try exporting with that instead.

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

I have this odd problem with my textures turning really dark when I preview or export:

The colors are supposed to be like this:

Thanks

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The bitmaps might be the same for those two renders, but if you want them to look the same the materials will need to be the same too (reflectivity, glossiness, etc.).

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

Thank You Jason, I was just unsure of what the issue was.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Can anyone tell me what to do when, in Gmax, a BAT file "failed to open"? I tried seeing if there was an autoback but there was none... Any known fix to this? Or do I have to start over? :/

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Can anyone tell me what to do when, in Gmax, a BAT file "failed to open"? I tried seeing if there was an autoback but there was none... Any known fix to this? Or do I have to start over? :/

Lol... you need to just get Max already. File corruption is one of Gmax's biggest problems. If you haven’t configured autoback properly or you weren't doing incremental saves or backups, you've probably lost your work. If you're in Win7, you could try restoring a previous version of the file (right click in explorer > restore previous versions) but there's never any guarantees that a version will be available.

[Aran 10]

Hi guys.

I've dug around this thread for a while tonight and haven't found a solution to this yet. Maybe I've overlooked it?

I've installed gmax 1.2 and the BAT. Gmax is installed to c:\gmax\ and the BAT is installed to the correct subdir. The environment variable is set correctly as well. Gmax runs fine on its own, however I'm still getting the GMAXLOC environment variable error described elsewhere when I try to run the BAT. I've installed/uninstalled/reinstalled twice (from d: to c: in case that was the issue) and no luck.

I'm running WIndows 7 64-bit Home Premium in case that matters.

Any thoughts?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

All I know is what you probably already read.

"

Right click on the "My Computer" icon on your desktop, and select properties. Then go to Advanced, and then Environmental Variables.

There should be an entry for GMAXLOC. If there is, confirm that the path points to the folder where gmax.exe is located.

If there isn't an entry for GMAXLOC, click New, and enter GMAXLOC in the first line and the path to the folder containing gmax.exe in the second line.

Common locations would be: C:\Gmax\ or C:\Program Files (x86)\Gmax\ Note that they end with "\". The paths may be case sensitive. If the path is correct but includes single quotes (for example 'C:\Gmax\') try removing them."

[Aran 10]

You're right. That's the same info I've seen already. The entry is there and it is correct. Oh well.

Thanks for the response, though.

[LivingInThePast 364]

So the last snapshot from the Wal-Mart project. Now, the green box, if you scroll up, is supposed to be dark-tinted, translucent glass. Given that this is my first real BAT, I don't quite know what to do for that and I'm tending to avoid working on that right now. Any advice?

(for the source picture, scroll up from the page)

[Fribe 150]

Here's a pesky problem that's been on since this morning: I can't right click any objects in GMAX. Nothing happens, no menu comes up. Did I trip something?

[VicRusty 74]

Hello;

I'm doing a flag as a park. As the flag is the building, it's not showed untill is ploped. So my question is if theres is a way to pre-showed the building before plop it. To know the right direction.

As I can understand, just the props are pre-showed. Can someone help me a little bit?

Thanks!

[JREX87 0]

So I finally figured out how to use a bat....but i have run into the problem of when i place a building only half of it shows up...what am i doing wrong?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Finally some questions that I know the answers to.

VicRusty: Buildings should always be visible in the preview before you plop the lot. Do you mean prop? Props by default aren't part of the preview. But when you make a prop in the Plugin Manager, there are a bunch of tabs at the top of the window with different options. One of the options relates to being visible in the plop preview. iirc it also causes the prop to be queried as if it were part of the main building.

JREX87: First, select your building and move it to the center of the scene. Then after that, go to where you go to to export the BAT (in the utilities tab (which is the tab with the hammer icon)), and in the Parameters rollout there's a button for Re-Fitting LODs.

The problem is that your LODs, which are the 3d geometry that represents your building in the game (your 2D renders are applied to the LODs which are usually just a box). If you go to the BAT Mega FAQ thread I think there's an entry which explains what LODs are and how .SC4Model files work.

[JREX87 0]

So I finally figured out how to use a bat... But the problem I run into is some don't show up wants to take me to open it up somewhere on line.... What am I doing wrong

[Jasoncw 11,840]

If you mean that your building is showing up as a big brown package/present/box with "WWW.SIMCITY.COM" written on it, it means that you haven't put all of the necessary files into the plugins folder. Double check that you put everything needed into the plugins folder. Some things require what are called "dependencies" which means that some files aren't included in that download and need to be downloaded separately.

[domoarigoto 0]

can anyone help me, i have a built a model in 3ds max and i have the pim extended, lot editor and gmax, but i have no idea what to do now, how do i make it a sc4 file and also i believe i need to have the bat4max5 but it doesn't want to work with my 2013 version of 3ds. it says there is a copy runtime error or somthing like that and id much rather use 3ds max over gmax as i know how to use it pretty well if anyone can help me please shoot me a message. step by step instructions would be awsome!

[ReshiramLover 48]

My BAT will NO LONGER WORK!!! I try to render a BAT and it ALWAYS errors out during the 'east' side rendering!!! it renders north then displays the whole east image in no time at all then it hangs for 5 minutes on zoom 5 east then errors out with 'Export Failed Code=12'

 

How do I fix this error??? it used to render all my buildings just fine and now all I get is that error!!!

[ReshiramLover 48]

why is NOBODY responding to me?????? it has been failing NONSTOP for HOURS!!!!!

[darn42 1,268]

1) calm down

2) calm down

3) it takes more than 3 hours for people to respond to your problem.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Haha, chill out man, this isn't a service you pay for! Re-installed?