Using Gmax, advice, tips and feedback.

[MaxisBrian 6]

6459978,

 

Texture creation and mapping is an area unto itself, and I think we're pretty close to going into that. Let me go a bit more into mesh modeling and elaborate upon what's been covered already, then we'll launch into texturing.

[Professor Pickles 0]

MaxisBrian, got a question for ya'. I do 2D/3D animation for a living, so I've got the full 3D Studio Max suite at home. Are there going to be any type of BAT plugins or utilities for those of us with the full Max software, or is gMax the only way to go?

I know I'm certainly in the minority of SC4 gamers, but it'd be great if I could create buildings in 3DSMax rather than having to install gMax as well on my computer.

[Buggi 684]

*claps for pickles first post*

 

Brian. Could you by-chance create any new industrial buildings? Maybe ones with realistic job figures?

 

I mean, the truck plant? I think Ford employs more than 70 people How many potential industrial buildings were put on the chopping block due to time?

[6459978. 106]

Here's another Toronto building i've roughed out. This one is half of the Royal Bank Tower downtown (it has 2 triangular parts). Apparently there's actual gold in the glass, giving it a goldish hue.

 

[twoleftturns 0]

MaxisBrian,

 

What are some of the differences between Gmax and 3DS Max?

 

I have a 3DS Max quick start guide, and so far the menus look the same as those in gmax. However, I haven't studied the book closely.....

 

Will I find a 3DS Max book useful in understanding gmax?  

[MaxisBrian 6]

twoleftturns,

 

You'll find gmax to be a slightly watered down version of 3DS Max. Most of the functionality of Max is there, but with the conspicuous omision of a renderer! There are a couple of other features missing in gmax, but nothing we can't live without.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Pickles,

 

I wouldn't count on being able to work in Max to get buildings you can put in the game. It may be that you'll be able to export from Max to some other file format that gMax will import, but you can't import Max files to gMax. BAT will accept whatever file formats gMax does.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Cerulean,

 

You know, the wire mesh screen wouldn't show up even in the closest zoom, so you might not want to put too much effort into that. Even if it did show up, you might not be able to get the opacity (I think wanted to use an opacity map for that?).

[cerulean 15]

good point...thanks...do you think regular vertical tube steel railings would show? I guess I havent seen much railing in game now that I think about it...ill probably just raise the wall and put a single pipe rail at the top then...unless anyone else has an idea ??

[cerulean 15]

another question, in the rendering you posted of the low rent building there are things in the windows...im supposing furniture in the rooms?...is that mapped or modeled?

[Karybdis 34]

Just realized I posted importers in this thread. sorry. Cold getting to my head.

Thanks for the great help maxisbrian. I think I'm actually going to have to give 3d modelling a go with all this help on the table

[DuskTrooper 314]

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

On 10/7/2003 3:58:40 PM MaxisBrian wrote:

 

Ah, here we go. This is the low wealth I was talking about. For something like this you can't really tile the roof texture, but need to make the bitmap correspond with the dimensions of the roof surface. What I do is shoot a top-down render of the roof, take that into Photoshop and start painting. This way I can see just where the roof structure will line up, along with the parapets, etc. I go in and cheat shadows here and there using the render as a guide.

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

Cool!  it looks like you mixed an apartment and the private school!

How did you do the windows?

[MaxisBrian 6]

The glass material is actually a blend of a cityscape reflection map and a procedural brick for faceting the image. The faceting makes the windows appear to have different things going on inside, like shades, curtains, furniture, etc.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Oh, and Cerulean, the vertical balusters would indeed show up, and I make these all the time with renderable splines. Make the thickness at least .1 meter.

[GouRou 2]

EDIT: all fixied

[cerulean 15]

yeah i cant see em either, but i can imagine what it looks like cuz ive done stuff like that before...but hopefully he will repost it...

[GouRou 2]

No way to remove posts =/

[rubik3 116]

"Brian, can you again clarify about making a rectangle show up as a solid face, not a frame but a face...like as you described for the glass of windows...the problem i have is that they render from 1 side but not 2 sides..."

 

If you have a solid plane on one side and nothing on the other you need to apply a unify normals modifier to it, Or you can apply a 2-sided material to the object, Or you can configure the viewport to show both sided.  The option is yours but I find doing it by material the easiest way.

Using six faces for one pane of glass is going overboard so I'd suggest using just a simple plane with one of the above options.

Instead of modelling the railing I would suggest using a bitmap to define transparency of the object.

 

"...but with the conspicuous omision of a renderer!"

 

Is GMax plugin compatible...for example can you use add-on rendering engines such as Brazil or VRay?

 

"Oh, and Cerulean, the vertical balusters would indeed show up"

 

Ahh the benefit of modelling in Architectural Desktop.  Roofs?...no problem AutuCAD takes care of it for you.  Railings?  Easy as pie.  Windows and Doors?...the program comes with about a hundred different styles with infinite customization options. 

 

Time to start looking for a decent .max converter for GMax.

 

Here are some links for you guys to get started with.

 

www.3dlinks.com - Great links to free textures, models, and tutorials.

www.3dcafe.com - Quite a large area for freebies...has an even more impressive professional area.

http://www.animax.it/animax/frame1.html - some of the best high quality textures out there and its all for free.

http://perso.club-internet.fr/lemog/# - more high quality textures from the real world.

http://www.planit3d.com/index.htm - great models in various catagories...has quite a bit of landscaping.

[cerulean 15]

can he edit the post and put a new pic in?

[cerulean 15]

"Ahh the benefit of modelling in Architectural Desktop.  Roofs?...no problem AutuCAD takes care of it for you.  Railings?  Easy as pie.  Windows and Doors?...the program comes with about a hundred different styles with infinite customization options.  "

 

That might be true, but GMAX is FREE!!! how much does ADT run these days, 4, maybe 5 grand...I usuallly do model in cad, at work, but dont have time to do SC4 models at work...besides if you can model in CAD Gmax isnt too hard to pick up...

[rubik3 116]

Actually a license for ADT is less than 3 grand (If I remember correctly we paid $3400 for the ADT and 3D studio Viz licenses)...still too much for any novice modeller out there.  But if you are a student you can get an academic version for less than $500.  Or if your slick like me you'll just have your employer pay for it .

 

Yes you can model in GMax but what will take a normal modeller a half hour to do in GMax will take me less than 2 minutes to do in ADT.  It's a productivity issue for me.  When it can take a month to completely detail and render a large skyscraper, a few minutes saved here or there can really add up.

 

I mean GMax is nice and everything...hell its freeware, but it's not geared towards the architectural needs that SC4 modellers are going to need.  All I can say is that it's not going to be easy for a novice modeller to create Maxis quality buildings with only GMax at their grasp.

[cerulean 15]

thats true, I too can model much faster in cad even without ADT but i invite the challenge...besides it is yet to be seen how the models will transfer...I posted a house in this thread that I "3ds"ed out and imported into gmax...its functional, and from what I could tell should work just fine...

 

It would be cool if Maxis could get an ADT type program to sponsor them or to let them use their software, but im sure thats not going to happen...

 

And while in not nocking your modelling skills, I personally prefer spending the extra time to model railings that are more true to my design ideas rather than just whatever the supplier modeled and stuck into ADT...hell if it were up to me id model every brick...but now thats fiarly unrealistic isnt it...though someday...when those 15ghz 12Gram cpus come out

[6459978. 106]

Sorry if I might seem a little impatient, but can anyone tell me how to add textures?

[DarkMatter 21]

Brian, I have a real quick question. Where do you guys get reference material for objects, like say the HVAC units for roofing and such? I've been looking at some of the HVAC stuff on buildings around the city I work in, and your models are VERY accurate. I don't have a digital camera, or even a normal camera for that matter, that I can snap images with. Even if I did, I doubt these companies would let me walk around their roof letting me snap shots of their HVAC, piping, ducting and other stuff.

I'm just wondering if you have some good web sites or books that you use as reference for these kinds of things. Something that has images or sketches of these objects from all angles. I havn't had much luck looking around on the internet myself. Thanks much.

Hmm...I guess I'll broaden this a bit. If you guys have a list of reference material for things like windows, roof "junk", sample houses, etc. that has proper dimensions, and would be willing to share it with all of us, that would be awesome. I'd like to start working on some of the small extranious things, like roof junk, or yard junk (i.e. low-wealth childrens swimming pool, planters, etc. etc.), windows and window frames, complete with curtains if neccesary, furnitures that can be seen through windows, anything thats small but can be used over and over on many buildings. These small things are what add realistic detail, but some of them, largely windows and roof junk, I havn't got a clue of the proper dimensions.

[rubik3 116]

"And while in not nocking your modelling skills, I personally prefer spending the extra time to model railings that are more true to my design ideas rather than just whatever the supplier modeled and stuck into ADT..."

 

Well all of my railing styles I have accumulated so far, well over 30, are all custom made and have all kinds of custom modelled pieces and profiles inserted as blocks into the railing style.  Thats gotta be my favorite part of ADT is the unlimited customization features...though it still lacks in some areas (nothing beats the modifier stack in 3D studio)

 

"hell if it were up to me id model every brick...but now thats fiarly unrealistic isnt it."

 

Not really because i've done it before....though not on a whole structure just for close-ups of corner treatments.

 

"Brian, I have a real quick question. Where do you guys get reference material for objects, like say the HVAC units for roofing and such?"

 

Darkmatter, check out http://sweets.construction.com/ .  You can find tons of specs and links to suppliers in pretty much every material catagory.

[Tachyon 0]

I have a quick question: Do you necessarily need to know gMax?

Because currently, I use Cinema 4D. As far as I know, 3DS accepts C4D files and Cinema can save the models in the 3DS format. So the question I'm really asking is if BAT can accept models made in other programs (including gMax and 3DS Max). Or do they have to be made directly in the BAT?

[MaxisBrian 6]

Tachyon,

 

Yes, we've hitched our wagon to gMax, and that's what you'll need to learn if you want to use BAT. We are looking into the possibility of releasing pipeline tools for exporting building DATs out of 3DS Max, but there may be complications/issues that prevent us from doing so. We'll know soon and I'll try to keep you up to date.

 

DarkMatter,

 

Anything goes for finding references. We have a library of good architectural picture books here in the studio we can tap, in addition to the indispensible Google Image searches for specific needs. In fact, you can find just about any imagery you would ever want there alone. Also, we often look at the series of coffee table books, "Above New York", "Above Paris", etc. The obvious benifit to aerial photos of cities is the similar POV we have in the game. So you see alot of rooftops, which are very important in SC.

 

6459978,

 

It's weird addressing someone as 6459978, but what can you do?? Texturing can be intimidating, and the first attemps are usually frustrating but I'll go into this a bit. The important thing to do is make sure you have a texture mapping modifier properly applied to the geometry, and adjusted to suit the particular texture. Let's say you want to apply a brick texture to walls. Apply one UVW map modifier to ALL of the walls at the same time. In other words, apply the modifier to the selection instead of each wall individually, and make sure to check "Box" for the mapping option. If the texture/material is a bitmap, you'll want to adjust the dimensions of the UVW modifier to match the dimensions of the bitmap. One of the most common problems people have when texturing geometry is that they don't properly adjust the mapping modifiers, so textures appear squashed or stretched in various ways. When you first apply the UVW, it will size itself to the geometry (or selection of objects) and you'll need to go in and adjust the size until the texture looks good in the viewport. You can create procedural textures as an alternative to using bitmaps, which is a whole science/art unto itself. I myself usually go with textures I create in Photoshop, as I feel I have more control. Bring in a bitmap in the Maps Rollout:

 

Then apply the texture to an object or selection and experiment in the viewport with moving/scaling the "Gizmo" of the mapping modifier.

[MaxisBrian 6]

For those just getting started with texture mapping, here are some bitmaps I have optimized for you guys to use if you like. They are suitable for tiling, and are all 256x256 square, so you'll want to make sure your XY and Z dimensions are equal numbers for the UVW mapping modifiers you use with them. I'll throw in a bump map too so you can play with that.

 

Here's a basic brick:

[MaxisBrian 6]

Here's one for stone blocks.

[MaxisBrian 6]

Here's a bump map for the stone.