BATs Currently in Progress

[ianpaschal 77]

stupid page flip... i'm posting to try and see jason's comments

[Ferrariguy1000 43]

[Edited, picture was waay too big. Please stick to the rules when posting pictures. ~ T Wrecks]quote>

uh, I don't know how how do that.(shrink it to that size) anyway, sorry for that.

[Fresh Prince of Wmbg 44]

go under paint. 

then load your pic.

click image and go to strech/skew

strech the pic till you meet the requirement of 800X600

[nycc06 229]

this is an in-game pic of my latest project, the Eclipse Tower. It has been uploaded to the stex, but for some reason is not working correctly, cause none of the pics are showing and the download does not work. Anyway this shows what the bat actually looks like. 

[patriots_1228 51]

i think the concrete peices on the end are kinda ugly. rest is nice though!

[toxicpiano 125]

looks great, don't change it

[shinkansen1 84]

What are you currently doing with the rest of the buildings in the Austin Waterfront development complex project?

[mightygoose 92]

that looks awesome

[nycc06 229]

just to update, the Eclipse Tower is now working and is live on the stex. 

shinkansen1: The rest of the Austin waterfront complex has been on hold since April, however i am planning to complete the project sometime early next year. I am currently working on a new version for the Austin City Bank Tower, hopefully being released early next month. The remaining projects include:

Austin City Bank Tower V3

Ausitn World Trade Tower V2

England Tower Hotel

BDHQ Tower

Austin Capital Tower

Seriah Tower

[jayo 44]

64 Buckingham Gate:1 Year of work,4 Trys.I'm happy with the finished product.Although i need to add doors to the base and a little roof junk.Any suggestions about the roof junk.In reality theres not much so don't go overboard

[patriots_1228 51]

do whats in Rl "AH..derr"

good work

[Jasoncw 11,840]

You've been working on it for a while, but it's still not quite done.  The proportions and dimensions are still pretty off.

Based off measuring the building on Google Earth, and using Emporis.com's height measurement, and correcting the height for SC4, this is what the massing of the building should look like, rendered at zoom 5.  I didn't measure the lobby itself (the modeling I put there is just so the top isn't floating), but the height of the lobby is about 1/7^th of the total height, based off of the photos from Emporis.

The roof junk looks fine, though the roof could use a custom texture.

[toxicpiano 125]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw You've been working on it for a while, but it's still not quite done.  The proportions and dimensions are still pretty off.

Based off measuring the building on Google Earth, and using Emporis.com's height measurement, and correcting the height for SC4, this is what the massing of the building should look like, rendered at zoom 5.  I didn't measure the lobby itself (the modeling I put there is just so the top isn't floating), but the height of the lobby is about 1/7^th of the total height, based off of the photos from Emporis.

The roof junk looks fine, though the roof could use a custom texture.quote>

by what number do you multiply real height to get sc4 height again?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Scaled vertically by 133%

[srsedate 118]

Jayo: I would add some kind of roof-access, and maybe some pipes.

[jayo 44]

Jasoncw-Yeah,i haven't scaled it yet.A question,how do you know when you've scaled by 133%?

[Gn_leugim 853]

you can see when you use the scale tool.. in the button.. when you see 133, you reached 133% on that scaling

[SimFox 802]

Ok, since the whole scaling thing had poped-up again I want to make all of you aware and a bit beware of the Scale tool.

What has to be understood is how scaling works in GMAX or MAX. It DOESN'T really change the size of anything. Instead it is like a permanent modifier that sits on top of everything. So if you have scaled your OBJECT 133% on Z axis that means that ANY modification you make to it AFTER that will also be scaled 133% on Z axis. This include all the cool and really practical things on sub-object level like extrude , bevel, chamfer etc. In the end it can and most probably will get VERY confusing. So to avoid such a problem do either adjust all your sizes (those of consequence) right from the start, or apply scale only on sub-object level, or scale entire model only as a last thing you do to it before export.

Given that there is no such thing as LAST and that on sub-object level scaling doesn't always work adjustment of basic sizes (like, say floor/ window/ railing etc) is a most practical solution. I would also recommend to limit those adjustments just to major elements. Adjusting all the smaller thins, like say window frames or thickness of the railing etc isn't necessary. Firstly those are too small to see any difference. And, secondly, I don't think it is very good idea to remove any last bit of evidence that on subconscious level confirm that we looking down on the model.

[Odainsaker 2,134]

When it comes to scaling things up vertically to look good within SimCity, I am finding the XForm Modifier far more convenient than using the Scale tool outright.  Select all of the model (or group the entire model and select the group), apply the XForm modifier, move the XForm modifier's Center to the ground plane, and then use the Scale tool on the XForm modifier's Gizmo.  This will apply the scale.  For an individual object, you can still go down its modifier stack and work on it without the XForm modifier and its scaling applied.  Furthermore, by selecting everything again and deleting the XForm modifier, you can remove the applied scaling and restore everything to normal.  It's actually faster to do than it is to describe, and makes previewing easier without risk of accidently and permanently scaling a work-in-progress model.

I learned this the hard way after making such a permanent scaling mistake on what was once a carefully measured model.  Given the confusion created trying to measure new objects against objects completely out of whack (even after foolishly trying to use the Scale tool again to roughly reduce permanently buggered vertical members down), it was actually easier to just start over from scratch.

Oh well...meanwhile, what did I work on this week?  Primarily it was working on lighting rigs.  It was totally cool of Jason to post his own CamLightRig, and that spurred me to experiment when I realized the pitifulness of the rig I was currently using.  Here is the Vogue Department Store, with just a tad more progress on it than was last seen in its Gmax form several pages back:

Generally, they all use the same MAX 9 Mental Ray renderer settings, except for the High Dynamic Range setups which also use exposure controls.  Also, the HDR setups also seem to require me to adjust the Gamma of the textures, otherwise the materials washout and bleached as Gamma gets over-applied.  I'm no expert, so I fiddle with texture map output settings until I like what I see.  I did not craft all the textures for each individual lighting rig, so they are simply straight textures for normal sun rigs, and a single set of gamma adjusted textures for HDR rigs.

1.  Is the original CamLightRig that comes with BAT4MAX and follows the setup used in the BAT plugin for Gmax.  I have no idea why some of the texture patterns become so garbled or so dark.

2.  HDR IES Sun/Sky.  This is what I had been using thus far, but we can see how unsatisfactorily grayish the result has been.  The sparkle and highlights are gone.  Obviously, I skipped something in the custom rig tutorials somewhere, or maybe it was because this was a carry-over from another project that had a different lighting condition.  What was I doing?

3.  Jasoncw's CamLightRig recently posted on the STEX this past week.  My ornaments are yellow again, and some of the patterns in the texture maps are revealed.  Why was I using Rig 2?...I don't even remember the chain of decisions that brought that legacy mistake.  It's interesting to see how some lights fall without shadows as well as how other shadows are defined or scattered given the multitude of lights.  This is probably also the more accurate of colors and lighting effects for SimCity, but then SimCity can be a bit too luminously colorful for my taste, and with so many divergent BATs anyway, it's not an issue to me.  I downloaded someone's giant 1280x3696 City Journal mosaic of solid dense buildings where the variety of colors and lighting were hopelessly bewildering!

4.  Non-HDR IES Sun/Sky.  High Dynamic Range rigs with exposure controls and other Global Illumination settings make previewing nightscenes and nightlights for me complicated, as the results are apparently not WYSIWYG, so I tried stepping back to an older rig I had once made following SimFox's and Autovino's tutorials and apparently forgot about.  However, this is regaining that grayness or desaturated washed-out look that I often see in a number of BATs.  I'm also not a fan of the smoky shadow splotches made around the signage in some of these setups, though I did not necessarily play with their rigs' shadow settings.

5.  HDR MR Sun/Sky.  The pale gray desaturated effect bothers me, so in tinkering around, I adjusted the logarithmic exposure control contrast setting from its default 50 to between 70-80.  Maybe too much as some areas are getting too dark, but the colors are reappearing, though the colors are too awkward SimCity.  The IES Sun settings had a mild peach color, and the MR Sun rollout does not seem to offer a color swatch, but I can see that some bluish textures now have a slight greenishness.

6.  HDR MR Sun/Sky with a some color correction to shifting green/blues to peach/pinks.  Maybe a bit too much pink, and some adjustments are still needed, though at the moment this is the current rig, and you can see I have done more modelling.

There were actually more variations and in-between steps of all sorts, but these were the highlights I remembered to save for comparing in Photoshop.  Though I have described them in order, they were not necessarily actually made in this order, as I had a swirling collage of comparisons going.  A roundabout process to be sure, which could easily end up going in circles, but it was instructive for amateurish me.  The lesson, of course, is make your own rig work for you...now that I look at it, 6 is definitely too pinkishly over-corrected.  Someday I'll finish these things...

(Oh, btw, converting from Gmax to Max can be messy...avoid it as much as possible.)

I hope this was interesting, or at least entertaining.  And of course, great BATs everyone...the Eclipse Tower is ready for all our little Dubai cities!

[SimFox 802]

For simple box shaped buildings it is possible to get away without gamma correction. But once you try to do something with complex geometry (the overall shape not just detailing) Gamma Correction becomes a necessity. Logarithmic Exposure - being one of such tools has some drawbacks (particularly completely arbitrary numbers for contrast etc.) but it has Color Correct feature that is quite handy. One thing that should be kept in mind is that all the bitmap textures will be washed out since they are already in gamma 2.2 and then Logarithmic Exposure's roughly 2.2 gamma is applied on top of it. To preserve the original you should "de-gamma" your bitmaps in Photoshop (there is special Exposure tool) by applying to them reversed 2.2 gamma - 0.454.

For those with Max2008 there is new far superior Exposure control - Mr Photographic Exposure. It is based on the concept that is very familiar to anyone who had used SLR camera. Plus it has controls for highlits and shadows crashing as well as saturation. By default it is also applying 2.2 gamma, but that could be adjusted as well. the only draw-back in MR Photographic Exposure is that white balance is only working (in GUI) in K(elvins) this isn't quite as flexible as completely free-hand version of Logarithmic Exposure.

There is also free third party Gamma corrector for Mental Ray called Photostudio Pro. It is made by MR enthusiasts from Germany (homeland of MR) and is available from either German MentalRay forums or from www.mymentalray.com. It has tone of extra options, and guys had made GUI for full featured white balance with both K and arbitrary white point.

There is a way to make Max not double gamma bitmaps, but it wouldn't work with BAT as is. The scripts will have to be edited. I was thinking to incorporate it in Bat4Max v3 I'm little by little working on...

anywho... new thingie (I guess Odainsaker will consider it washed out, but I just like working with pale colors - they are much easier on the eye):

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Well, I'm personally partial to my own rig, lol, but I think if you did use mine you would need to go back to the bitmaps and edit them to tweak the colors. But there is only one direct light (and also one skylight) and it should be casting shadows.

Also, are you using a ground plane for any of them?

If I had to pick, I would say 3 or 6.

It's looking phenomenal though.

[dmscopio 225]

something i ve been working on:

[patriots_1228 51]

holy shiite!

beautiful work.

[mcarch 15]

I've seen it on your site... LOVE IT!

[kellydale2003 2,276]

  Hey guys, Great BATs so far, as many of you know I'm not uploading to Simtropolis anymore. I will get Bixel to upload ALL my Bats for now one. But that's what I'm not here to talk about, so please don't ask questions about it.

  Umm, I don't know where to start, I've been away for a LOOONG time. And I haven't worked on anything. So I've started something major. I've decided to BAT a whole cityscape. Rendering is already taking a long time. I have a new laptop which is in Mint condition!

  But yeah, I've made boxes and randomly arrayed them and a cityscape would be wonderful. I think most of the buildings that are in the cityscape will be uploaded... Maybe, Maybe not. Dependant on demand.

But I've started half an hour ago, and heres what I got. I was just experimenting with lighting and the glass in this picture.

This one below, I these are the first two buildings of the skyline. Haven't worked on the roofjunk yet, so thats why its not showing I think the lighting is too bright here, and everything but the glass is NOT textured. I think I also might make some under construction skyscrapers in here too O_o.

[bixel 1,223]

kellydale2003: Looks like it could be an interesting project, I need to finish getting Deep Explorer (a model file conversion tool) and once that is done I can start to work on your models. I could simply texture them and export them in gmax - but they will looks so much more prettier coming from 3ds Max.

[patriots_1228 51]

why aren't you uploading to the STEX, but having bixel upload for you? makes no sense.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

I said don't ask

Thanks Bixel, I know they will

[Jasoncw 11,840]

If you're always going to be so fishy, don't be surprised when people get suspicious of you.

[autoVino 26]