Using Gmax, advice, tips and feedback.

[Dirktator 2,320]

First of all, I''d like to welcome MaxisBrian to Simtropolis.

 

MaxisBrian is the lead artist for Simcity, and he has been following your Gmax work recently.  MaxisBrian would like to offer some help, tips, and advice on modeling and texturing with Gmax, and start us off with some good solid techniques for modeling buildings.

 

He will be covering the topics of basic modeling and texturing, along with the all-critical UVW mapping.  He will also try his best to answer your questions when he can.

 

You should start to see him around the site, most likely in this forum very soon!

 

Use this thread as a start to share your thoughts about your Gmax experience so far, what you''ve found useful or frustrating and give MaxisBrian a warm welcome while you''re at it!

 

cheers!

[MaxisBrian 6]

Thanks for the nice introduction Dirk!

I have been following along with the progress you all are making using Gmax, and it is inspiring to see your level of enthusiasm and resourcefulness. We are hard at work on making this tool something that will ultimately be powerful and robust, but at the same time accessible to the average user. Like Dirk mentioned, I will be tuning in when I can to see what you all are coming up with, and also offering occasional tips and tricks that we have come to rely on here on the SC4 art team.

Gmax is, as many of you know, a slightly simplified version of Discreet's 3DS Max, the single 3D app we use to create all of the models in Sim City. Even though it is dumbed down a bit, it is still a very complex program, and if you get to the point where you can build anything recognizable at all you are doing great, so stay with it!

-MaxisBrian

[Larsz 7]

It is awesome of you to participate in our community. Welcome MaxisBrian!

 

-edit

I forgot to post my question. Should we be paying attention to scale? I would imagine that if we make a really nice model that we like, we can tweak it to make some things work but what about scale?

[Buggi 684]

Hey Brian!

Funny, Mike's never mentioned you. Has he mentioned me? @_@;;;

[Screwballl 196]

Howdy Brian and welcome!

 

One of things i was curious about is the scale also and how it pertains to direct or indirect conversion into SC4, what is the scale that yall use? Is there a way that us creators can crate a building and port it into SC4 possibly via the Lot Editor or is there something else that you guys use for the gmax to SC4Lot file type conversion?

My latest building was created from a real life building, it used to be called the First Federal Building in Rapid City, SD but as it has changed owners, I'm not sure what the current name of it is. I am hoping to import this building and a few others into SC4 if possible...

 

the building in question is towards the middle of this screenshot

[ApathyNinja 17]

Great to have you here, Brian. Expect a lot of questions from us

[mikeyb66 30]

I would like to give Brian a warm welcome and ask: Will it be ok to make the models in 3DS Max and them import them into gMax to get the right file extension or will we be able to use files straight from 3DS Max?

Can't wait to see the final results of your building screwball, it's looking good so far.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Hey everyone,

Thanks for your welcome to Simtropolis, and thanks for your interest in the BAT we currently have in the works here at Maxis!

The first thing I will say is that this is a tool under development, and as such there will of course be a limit on what it is safe for me to tell you about it. This may have less to do with the usual need for discretion, in this case, and more to do with the fact that I don't want to give any false impressions concerning what the community of future users might come to expect as a result of any comments I might make at this early stage. There's always the chance that there could be discrepancies between what I shed light on now, and what eventually gets rolled out (if you don't have the patience to read through this sort of disclaimer in its entirety, please just come away with the gist of it!

I have noticed that some of you are looking forward to a complex/powerful BAT, with capabilities comparable to Max, and others appear a bit more timid about the daunting prospect of having to learn a complicated 3D app. We are in the process of evaluating just what face to put on Gmax, what we might cut out and what we might emphasize in the way of features. I'll get more into this as we get closer, but here is where my disclaimer wants to be well noted...

I will answer what questions I can, and will mostly be wanting to guide you in what we have found to be solid techniques for producing assets for SC4 using 3DS Max. You essentially have the tools at your fingertips right now to produce (close to) the same level of detail we adhere to internally.
Any time you commit to learning Gmax now is going to directly pertain to the experience you will have with BAT when it is released, so keep at it.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Sorry guys, I didn't respond to the questions concerning scale. Here's what you want to do to set up the Gmax environment:

-Go into Customize/Units Setup, and make sure you have Generic Units checked (default)

-Go into Customize/Preferences, and in the General tab set it so that 1 unit = 1 meter

-Go into Customize/Grid and Snap Settings, then to the Home Grid tab and set the grid spacing to 1

This will sound goofy, but if you then make, say, a typical ranch style house with an 8 foot ceiling, the walls would want to be 4 meters high in the Gmax environment in order to simulate this. Because of the camera angle (line of sight) we have found that we need to exaggerate the heights of buildings vertically in order to appear plausible in the SC world. The footprints along x and y should be true scale though.

I'll set up a quick lesson for making walls for any building type in a minute if you can hang on...

[G4ce 0]

Just wanted to welcome you to Simtropolis Brain. It's great to see you guys helping us out like this, really kind of you. Don't have any questions yet, but I will eventually.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Hey thanks G4ce.

Okay, let me show you how we make walls around here. Note that there are always numerous ways to make the same thing in any 3D app, of course, depending upon which particular features you are most comfortable with, but for making walls I think you'll find this option the way to go:

Start out in the front view, and turn on your 2.5D snap along the bottom right of the screen, set to Grid Points (grid lines should be every meter). Now use the line tool to make the outline of the front wall you envision, noting that you'll want to make the floors in incriments of 4 or 5 meters as you go up along Y.

Then draw in a rectangle where you want the first window (bottom left) and let's make it one meter off the ground, 1m wide and 2m high. Then you can array this across the width of the ground floor along X, by selecting the window rectangle and going up to the Array tool up top and punching in the parameters. Make sure to check the Instance option, which will make all of the copies produced change whenever any of the individuals are changed. So once you have all the first floor windows in, select one of them to mess with size if you like, and watch all the others change along with it.

What you could then do is select all the first floor windows and array them up along Y, with the spacing set to 4 meters. Now you've got the front wall and windows delineated as splines, and you can go ahead and attach all of the splines as one. You may need to colapse the first one to Editable Spline if you don't see the Attach button. Avoid colapsing to Editable Mesh, though you may want to put an Edit Mesh modifier on the wall later on.

Now that you have a single editable spline in the shape of your front wall, slap an Extrude modifier on it, with -.4 as the depth. Your wall should appear as a solid, with the front right at 0 along Z (depth). Now move your wall forward along Z however far you like, but try to have things conform to the 1 meter grid. This will make things alot easier, especially as the buildings get more complicated.

You could now "copy" or "instance" the first wall, depending upon whether you want the rear wall to be identical to the front, and without moving the new wall (Shift-Select with Move pointer copies any geometry, just don't move it, but only touch it with the pointer). Then set the pivot point to 0,0,0 in the world, then deselect the set pivot option and hit Mirror (to the left of the Array tool) with Y selected in the dialog, also making sure Use Pivot Point Center is selected (top center in menu). You should have a back wall identical to the front, and equal distant from 0 along Z.

You might then leverage the front wall again in order to make the side walls, in pretty much the same way if they are to be the same as the front/back walls. With the walls having pivot points at 0,0,0, you could select/copy one with the rotate tool (with Angle Snap Toggle set to 45 or 90 degrees) and creat the side walls as copies of whichever you have selected, and watch them rotate into place upon copying them. So to re-cap this last step, you want to select/rotate the front or back wall while holding down the Shift button. This makes the copy and brings up the copy dialog box where you can check Copy or Instance.

So now you can go back down in the modifier stack and easily edit the walls if you want to add more window openings, change their dimensions, etc. Notice that when you do go back down in the stack to Editable Spline (or Rectangle) the solid appearance from the Extrude modifier goes away and you have only the base spline. In fact, just make sure you colapse any rectangles to Editable Spline at some point, just because it's easier to edit later on. Oh yes, you might want to make on or two of the ground floor openings more in the shape of a door.

Now you should have four walls with recess openings where you can go in and insert windows and doors. I like to make the windows the same way we just made the walls, with edidable splines/extrude modifiers. Just quickly, if you want to keep going with this:
to make a window, go into Front view, turn on 3D Snap/Vertex, snap a rectangle into the first window opening, then under Mesh Settings hit Generate Mapping Coordinates, and check Display Mesh. This gives you a quick frame, that you can then copy again for other window details. For instance, set the new frame thickness to .2 and give it 4 sides (you could also punch in an angle of 45 if you like that look better. Move the frame back into the wall a bit to give a better sense of depth and dimension.

Copy the spline you just made, and let's make this your window sash. Move it back into the building (along Z) .2 meters and move the edges in a bit so it fits inside the window frame. Copy the first window sash you just made, downscale and scale down again along Y, then move up to the top inside the sash. Copy this and move it down underneath. You should end up with three rectangles, one outer one and two inside it, above and below one another. If you attach these three (making sure renderable spline is turned off) you can then slap an extrude modifier on it, -.1 should be good, and you've got upper and lower window sashes. Draw a rectangle in the middle of it and put a UVW map on it and there's your glass. Instance/Array all of this (grouped would be a good idea) across the first floor, then up, the same way you did the window openings for the walls, and you've gotten yourself a good distance towards making a great building for Sim City!

Don't be discouraged if much of this didn't make sense; I'll be happy to clarify any problem issues if I can. Let me know what you come up with!

-Brian

[MaxisBrian 6]

I forgot something important...

NAME EVERYTHING!!

Every piece of geometry you create should be named. You will be going back in sifting through thousands of objects looking for windows, doors, what we call "roof junk" (pipes, HVAC units, fans, etc, on rooftops) when it comes time to texture them all, and you will want to be able to be able to use the Select by Name option!

[cerulean 15]

HI BRIAN...

You probably dont have an answer to this as such, but I do a lot of modeling in autocad...why? im an architect and its easier for me in general...

my question is whether or not the fact that i am modeling in cad and importing via DXF and or 3DS files will have an inverse effect on importing into sc4? or will it even be possible (I realize you might not be able to nail that answer down for me at this early stage, but your best guess would be helpful....)

and thanks for forumning with us

[MaxisBrian 6]

I can't answer that at this time, but I'll see if I can find out.

[cerulean 15]

really the only reason i wonder is cuz the models are "tesselated" I think thats the right use of the word...meaning they are not solids...i think they are 3d faces...i can get materials to map easy enough so im hoping it wont be a problem

and another question...is Maxis going to provide a materials library? I am good at mapping and creating materials, but im sure it will take some practice to make them look good in SC4 especially with what you said about height scales being slightly exaggerated...

i dont know how 3ds or gmax works in this respect, but in accurender which i use at work for modelling there are pre formated brick and tile settings for materials where you can set joint thickness and brick height for example...i bet 3ds has something like that but i havent messed with 3ds since 3ds4 (not max, DOS hehe)

well im sure you're busy over there so answer if/when you get the time and thanks again!!

[Changingsoon 0]

MaxisBrian,

Currently I'm more experienced in using Rhino 3d, or Cinema 4d. Would I be able to export those files as 3ds format into Gmax then into SimCity 4, or would all modeling, texturing, rendering etc. have to be done within Gmax. Thanx

[rybolton 135]

Brian this is as far as I can follow you.  It was a bit difficult to follow you this far... 

 

Could you help out with a slightly more detailed description of the last bit?

 

[rybolton 135]

Okay I worked on it a little longer and this is the result.

 

 

Textures courtesy of Half-Life... 

 

As for the instructions, I just used the ones I could understand and left out the ones I hadn't figured out...

 

Notice the texture problems on the sides of the walls?  How can I fix that?  Is it possible to give faces individual texture properties?

[Ma8thew 77]

Great building Rybolton, maybe I'll have a go at this...

[ApathyNinja 17]

You can select individual polygons and then apply materials to that. It'll make a multi-material in the material library as well.

[MaxisBrian 6]

As it turns out I'm taking today off, so I'll try to get back to you all tomorrow if possible.

Talk to you soon.

-Brian

[Larsz 7]

----------------

On 9/24/2003 1:18:24 PM ApathyNinja wrote:You can select individual polygons and then apply materials to that. It'll make a multi-material in the material library as well.

----------------

I tried that? I tried putting a texture on just a single poly and it wouldn't apply. Can you describe that process in a step-by-step?

[ApathyNinja 17]

Sure thing. I had to test it out in gMax, but I've got the technique down now.

So without further ado:

Applying Multiple Materials to Geometry

First, I like to have my materials all sorted out. So for our example, I'm gonna make two materials, a nice matte blue and another happily matte red one. These are gonna live in our Material Library for now. Also, because this is an example, I'm gonna use some simple geometry: a primitive box. (Although you can use one of Brian's handy extruded walls for our example if you so wish).

Now go ahead and apply an Edit Mesh modifier to the object. It's important to use Edit Mesh as opposed to Edit Patch or Edit Poly for a reason I'm not sure of, consult gMax's user documentation for more information.

With your Edit Mesh modifier in place, go ahead and apply the red material to the cube so it's a nice sanguine hue. Then expand the Edit Mesh modifier in the modifier stack (Click the plus sign next to it) and choose Polygon from the list that appears. Go ahead and check Ignore Backfacing at this time if you're so inclined. Also, press F2 to highlight the selection--hopefully it's a different red color than your original material. Now click one of the polygons to select it and apply the blue material to it, then click off of your selection to see you handiwork.

Voila! If my hastily written tutorial did its job, you should have a blue polygon. Also, if you check your material library, a new Multi-Material will have popped up for your later consumption.

So, in summary, the basics:
1.Apply an Edit Mesh modifier to your geometry.
2.Use that modifier to select a polygon (or a face, if you're so inclined.)
3.Apply a texture to the selection.

After that, it's all a matter of playing with your materials and maps to get the right look.

[Larsz 7]

That worked great Apathy! I had been using Edit Poly. Thanks Apathy!

[DuskTrooper 314]

Will there be a set of pre made blocks available to play with in the BAT when it comes out?  Also, some temlpates may be necessary for us to learn how to use the BAT.

[cerulean 15]

ok pic added 

here is my first attempt...i have modeled before and am a little familiar with 3ds but really i model mostly in cad, so this is my first all 3ds model

basically i started by using the Tube Object "builder" thing, and built 4 tubes. then added the torus above which will eventually be a greenhouse...

the base, the part which is detailed (though not finished) is 3 tube segments stacked on top of each other. The lower part of a wall, the window part of the wall, and the upper part of the wall.

then "and this is hard to see at this stage". I found that you can make mullions in the tubes (mullions are window frames) by using the slice feature at the bottom of the "modify" tab which appears on the right of your screen (NOTE select a tube, on the right hand side of the screen is a modify tab for the right menu bar, click it, and scroll to the bottom). setting them to 179.9, and 180.1 or visaversa cant remeber which right now will give you a nice mullion which you can then array.

then i "GROUP" all these things together (after adding materials) and copy them 5 times...

the roof is made in much the same way. I copied one of the groups up, added a cone for the glass part of the roof, used the slice feature again and arrayed the mullions and added 1x1xXXX tubes for horizontal mullions. I then re "grouped" the objects and did a NON UNIFORM SCALE... on them all so as not to lose the thicknesses of the mullions...

so i guess i like gmax alright, but could have done this much more accurately in cad...but i guess for a game its ok not to be acurate to the 1/2 inch...hehe

so tell me what you think? and Brian, if there is an easier way to do any of that please feel free to elaborate...

THINK BLUE cerulean

[cerulean 15]

Here is attempt # 2...actually this model was built for a different purpose...ive been thinking of creating a stock plan buisiness and this is the only 3d model i have for it so far but i do have quite a few plans in the works...

 

the texturing came out ok on this one...the stone base needs some work, but thats not too much to work on...

 

the trickiest part was texturing the roof...i had to cut it into 4 diferent layers (in autocad) so that I could map the texture in 4 different directions...which wasnt hard but it took me a while to figure out that i had to do that...

 

so BRIAN, this is a good example of what a rendered model looks like from autocad...i have to 3ds it out of autocad, then import it into gmax which is pretty easy to do really...I will upload an image of the wireframe so you can see how its broken into faces...whats cool about exporting is that it saves the layer names, so i put each material on a different layer, and i had to add 3 additional roof layers so i could map those objects separately...but that way everything is named like you suggested...

 

I can do models of houses like this in 4 to 5 hours...but id be interested what everyone thinks of the textures, especially BRAIN cuz i figure that going to be a crucial step...

 

have fun

[DarkMatter 21]

My question may be a little too premature, but I guess I'll ask it anyway. From what I understand gMax can't render an image like 3DSMax can (I use 3DSMax myself, so if I'm missinformed, please correct me). I did a lot of research on buildings in SC4 a while back, and figured that you need a high-density mesh to render your "textures" from, and a lower-density mesh onto which you place those "textures" through the process of skinning.

If gMax can't render, how are we to obtain the textures used to skin the lower-density mesh? I guess this all depends on what features Maxis's BAT has, but I think to get the best results, results that compare to the detail, shadow detail, and overall quality of Maxis's buildings, your going to need a high-density mesh from which final textures are rendered, and possibly 20 lower-density meshes onto which those textures are skinned. I've been working on a BAT of my own that streamlines the process of importing 3DS and FSH files, combining them and generating exemplars to make an SC4 building that will show up in the game. Despite my efforts, however, I can't find a way to incorporate any part of the modeling or skinning process into this BAT without severely crippleing flexability. My goal is to make buildings that compare to Maxis's in terms of quality, and the only way I can see to do that is leave the modeling/rendering/textureing to 3DS Max.

[cerulean 15]

well, i only really model for the rendered image so i may just not get what you mean, but if you texture a building for a scale then render it at 20 different sizes wouldnt you get the same effect? well i guess 5 different scales 4 different views...but you knew that...

 

or as i read in one of your other posts somewhere, will it be necessary to have different scaled textures for each zoom level? thats scary...but still it seems to me that you could just create those textures?

 

 

either way, I think that being that the base gmax doesnt render, probably the game specific plugins or whatever the call them, will have the necessary rendering capabilites to as you say skin the model, which i dont totally understand, but I think the bat will include that...

 

[cerulean 15]

darkmatter

 

wouldnt it be possible to have a plugin in 3ds or gmax that would create the type of skin files you need for the game based on the textures you apply to the model?

 

I have no idea how you would do this though...