autoVino's bat projects

[CarmineHilton 6]

10 Pages... That's Hot!

Haha, you could send some teasers to Las Vegas and sell it 4 BIG money

[Mr. Glamazon 9]

Good morning, AutoVino! 

(Congrats on 10 pages!)  I really love the good work on this complex, the cooling towers are incredibly realistic, however, I think the critique I will offer concerns the roof texture.  I really just don't like it!  I guess to me it seems a little overwhelming en masse, maybe if it were lighter?  Anyway, that's my two cents. 

Have a great day! 

(And concerning render times... my computer did the strangest thing the other day. Usually it takes about two hours to render a building on my computer at zoom five.  Lately, it's been doing them in a half an hour!  Furthermore, I never had the graphics capabilities to keep all the windows showing while moving it around, because of terrible lag times with window renderings, but lately I haven't had an issue with it!  I'm kind of wondering what's going on, it's the queerest thing!  LOL.   But I do not envy you!  It will be a monster render!)

[autoVino 26]

CarmineHilton Haha, yeah, but first I have to pay autoDesk BIG money for the licence to do that... yeah. I'm a man of ethics

Mr. Glamazon The roof texture was just a learning expirience .  Now I know how to work procedural textures (yes!...)  I do agree that it looks a bit... odd.  I'm going to look at some realistic roofs for casinos (in this update) and see if I can incorperate it into my casino.

Haven't been very active lately... I'm home today, and not at sports because of a high heat index... everything got cancelled.

Anyway, here are some examples of real roof junk, this is on the convention center portion of Mandalay Bay Resort.

Here is an example of some technology that I gound at a casino.  My best guess would be a powerplant or a very powerful cooling system, probably the latter because a powerplant usually creats emmisions, this one doesn't.  It could be very likely nuclear, but those requiere some pretty strong cooling systems and are usually located by a large water source... besides Las Vegas has the Hovver Dam.

Here are some tests that I did with the roof.  THese may look very bad, but this is because they are not final (they take about 5min rendering time each!)

(they're of decent loading size, so I'll just link them.)

https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x62/autoVino/3a.jpg

https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x62/autoVino/2a.jpg

https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x62/autoVino/2.jpg

https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x62/autoVino/1.jpg

https://i187.photobucket.com/albums/x62/autoVino/3.jpg

They are some varients, but I don't think I'll keep them.

[bixel 1,223]

That is some funky roof junk and cooling systems.

[Sim shady 12]

well im back from hawaii. It was fun catching up on everything i missed while i was gone. Nice job on the roof so far

[Jasoncw 11,840]

One thing I really worry about this BAT is the scale that you're working at.  I'm afraid that zoom 5 (and maybe even zoom 4) will look really underdone.

For example, the speckles on the roof are probably pretty huge.

I think it would be best that once you figure out the massing and general color scheme for the whole, that from then on you only do previews at zoom 5 and zoom 4 when you work on it.  I know it will take longer to do preview renders, but you'll just have to be careful with your output window size, and you'll have to hide some objects, and lower the quality settings on your renders.

On any big building this would be hard, but it's especially hard here, since Casinos are naturally poorly scaled (real architects seem to have the same problem).

One way to help keep in touch with a good scale, is to paste your zoom 5 previews into zoom 5 screenshots.

[autoVino 26]

bixel Yeah, but it's not visible from the Las Vegas Blvd...
Sim shady Hawaii... lucky.  I personally loved that place, sun burn or not, lol.
Jasoncw Thaks for the advice.  I'm personally redoing the roof a tad bit, something that will be more realistic.  The speckles on the roof may be of decent size, but I wouldn't say huge.  I uwed a huge image to put them on there.
full zoom five renders, I'm afraid, are not yet possible on my computer.  I don't have enough memory to creat and store such large images.  But as I said earlier I thinkg there was a cheap trick around this.

Well, this project isn't dead, it's still alive (so are the many other projects that I started) it's jsut that real life is pushing hard.  Parties, Sports, and girls have found themselves at the top of my to do list, and simcity dropped down to the bottom (school is also beginning to go down there too )  I'll try to do work, but it's not working.  This project is just in a state of repose (I might work on it during this Labor day weekend)

[Sim shady 12]

Yea..about that sunburn....I was so tan i looked like a latino lol, but right near the end i accidentally got sun burned and now my beautiful tan peeled off

School started this week, and i feel your pressure. Between prom, cross country, basketball, and all my AP courses....i do not see myself having much free time this year

[autoVino 26]

haha.. yeah, sunburns are no fun, and they seem especially easy to get in Hawaii...

anyway, I did go over my work limit and I had no free time this weekend... been working and working on homework, sports, etc this whole time, sorry...

[autoVino 26]

finally an update...

anyway, It's about time I took my mind off of working and just doodled around... this is what I came up with (the building in the middle...)

[Sim shady 12]

Looks interesting. Doodling can always be a fun stress reliever

[autoVino 26]

Yeah, it's also a great way to just get out a bunch of ideas stuck in your head.  (running also kills stress a lot, and usually generates new ideas for me )

anyway, I just got a huge 22 inch moniter , and my video card is having troulbe keeping up with it when in 3d... it has to turn off for a second each time I change something in 3d, so I can't bat until I get that fixed.  sorry.

[DarkEldar 6]

Oooh a 22 inch what brand is it? my 22 inch is Samsung which is a pretty reliable brand.Nice lattice also.

[SimFox 802]

AutoVino; do yu have this problem in Direct3D mode? Only in Direct3D or in OpenGL as well? Is it nVidia based card?

[autoVino 26]

in both modes.

My card has an ait logo, and it's called visiontek xtasy 9200SE.  I have no clue what is going on (I'm not very computer oriented, I only know how to use some applications...) , it happens the same in media players or when plaing video media as well.

edit: problem solved!  My video card can support two moniters at the same time, and it was trying to do that with this moniter, the option was turned off and everything workeds fine!

@dark eldar:  It's an envision wide screen.  Takes up a lot of the wall that my desk is against (flat screen, haha)  Also, I didn't use lattice on the building, I used a tool that basically arrays along a path (displace tool ,or something like that), very useful when trying to array along a curve and when you want the same distance inbetween the mullions.  I'm gonna try to apply the same to the hotel/casino, make the main hotel tower look a bit more "natural" as it was before.

[SimFox 802]

yeah... Lattice makes for a very nasty dirty results...To be honest I don't understand why evenh they put it there - typical marketing gimmick.

auto_ yeah the wonders of wide screens!! :-)

I've for a bout 1

[kd5rax 82]

Simfox: What Nvidia card do you have?

Autovino: Woah, thats an old aging card...  Poor thing.  If you intend to run that monitor at its native resolution with the kind of stuff you're doing, you should look into a newer card.  If you have Agp I'd reccomend a Nvidia Geforce 7600 gt or ATI Radeon x1650 pro... If you only have PCI, well, you might end up having to compromise your monitors resolution with card performance and run it at a lower setting....  I can help out with computer related issues as I've recently built my own computer (this thing is a MACHINE) and I'm pretty well caught up on current hardware.  What kind of computer do you have?

[SimFox 802]

kd5rax:

Do you mean PCI like regular old PCI, or PCI-e. I'm sure hes card is AGP which is an aging standard and it would be very hard to find modern decent and not overpriced card in that form-factor.

I have 7900GTX with 512mb onboard. I bought it about a year ago, and it was pretty stupid of me... I've never used it to play any game that could take advantage of the power of that GPU and now it is old since it doen't do DirectX10. for same money I could have gotten some entry level nVidia Quadro that would help my Max Viewport performance. Cause now apart form onboard memory I have very little to non benefit. Since then I've changed my CPU (from E6600 to Q6600 b3 and then to Q6600 G0) got 2gb extra memory (4Gb total) but I'm stuck with this videocard. It was pretty expensive then and totally worthless today, I mean it would be very difficult to sell it for any decent amount now when DirectX10 is here. The moral - don't buy into the hype!

[autoVino 26]

@simfox: 30"?!  why not go ahead and make a whole wall your display... that thing is huge, I'd be getting more exercise turning my head from side to side then from the 15k I run each day... lol  As for video card drivers, I have a dated (2004?) version of it, the driver, so my computer is not very up to date.

@kd5rax: heh heh, not only an aging card, and aging computer too... compared to some of the computer out there on the market mine is nothing... our schools have computers twice as fast and advanced as mine.  My computer was constructed by my father, so I have no clue what it is (or how it works, for that reason).

[kd5rax 82]

Autovino: Its a good thing you dont do really really tall and poly intensive buildings (perfect examples, Jin Mao, Burj Dubai, Shanghai Financial Center).  Before too long your going to want a nicer computer... It sounds like your either stuck with agp, or possibly even pci (without the e), which really wont go all that far... 

Simfox: Thats a fairly decent card, but yeah, not for 3d modeling cause it doesnt have the unified shader architecture....  I just got an 8800, and even though its not a workstation oriented card, it handles the viewport rendering of 3dmax flawlessly.  Very nice processor too... I shoulda gone quad... I went with the e6750.  My 8800 was only $250 and it was well worth it...

[ardecila 124]

Wow, lots of interesting products being discussed here. I feel extremely underclassed, considering my mobo doesn't even have an AGP port, much less a PCI-e port.

Fortunately, I will be purchasing a high-end graphics-oriented notebook at the end of the year, before I go to college.  I like the ThinkPad T60p - it's $1600, but you save $500 off of that with an educational discount. 

Hopefully it will have a good cooling system - I've tried rendering on a business-model notebook before, and the results weren't pretty (some of the housing melted).

[autoVino 26]

haha, I'm no video card expert... but I'm happy as long as it works

anyway, here is a render with my aspect ratio 8:5

 It basically uses the same tecnique as the other "doodle" with the spacing tool along a path.  Just like array (with a tad bit different options) but along a path.  I might make this into a bat, but it's just a doodle and still has a long way to go.  As of right now, I'm gonna try to start rendering the infamous egg building.

(hey, I got rid of that ugly blue line around the linked image!)

[OffTopic 3]

Doodling is a very good stress reliever. It works

[Sim shady 12]

Oooh i hope to see your egg building in my cities soon!

[SimFox 802]

KD:

8800 for 250$ OMG! how much memory on board? Where have you got it from for such a laughable amount?

[patriots_1228 51]

yay! cant wait for the egg building. been waiting for it for a long time. good luck.

[autoVino 26]

don't have much time now, but the egg building isn't going as smoothly with night lights as I have hoped...  for some reson, half the lights turn up as red, even though they are set to shades of a light yellow.  I had this problem with log exposure and hdri's, but not with light emitting materials... how strange.  But the good news is that I found a way to optimize the photon emmision so that it takes a tiny fraction to do these calculatsion compared to before!

  

(also completely off topic, I've been getting an awful lot of boxes full of chocolates, chocolate boxes, at school today, lol )

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Usually boxes of chocolate are a distraction (from BATing and everything else), but you can make it work for your benefit!!  Get her into SC4 and you have yourself a BAT work partner! 

About the new building, it's looking good, but the sharp corners aren't working very well (imo anyway).  I'd consider making those walls actually diagonal, so that the end walls are almost perpendicular to the part of the curve (of the other wall) they intersect at.  If you'd like I can make a picture if that didn't make any sense.

[SimFox 802]

the odd color spots some times cased by some mishaps in photon/Fg distribution

Check:

- if your light emitting material is double sided (if so cha it to single sided)

- check the normals of the geometry that material is applied to see if they are pointing to the right direction

- check if there are some coplanar faces in the vacinity of the spots.

BTW what is a jist of that Photon optimization? Photon target?

[autoVino 26]

Jasoncw Haha... but she isn't an architecture type of gal... more ofr business.  But I think I know what you mean with the sharpness of the building, thanks for the suggestion.

SimFox I hope that is the problem, but it doesnt' sound like something easy to fix.  As for the optimization, it's "photon radius" option.  The egg building, because of the curvature, requiers a huge ground plane for a somewhat convincing reflection.  The photon radius just omits a huge amount of the ground plane from photon calculations...