autoVino's bat projects

[autoVino 26]

thanks ofr the comments.

update on the roof.  Tell me what you think, I'm not too sure how a large radio/telecomunications tower would look like on the roof. (this tower is a telecomunications tower) so I just sketched something up.  I"m begenning to think that the extra roof junk that I just added is just that, extra.  I might remove it.  I also added a window cleaning train/cart.

here's some eyecandy render [link]

[Sim shady 12]

I dont know if all that roof junk is too much but it sure is easy on the eyes

[autoVino 26]

thanks, maybe then I'll keep it and see how it goes later on.

here is a preview (a little bit larger than zoom five, but just a tad bit.) [link]

[Cleaner475 150]

Yeah I like the tower so far but the roof looks a bit over the top with the small tower type thing on the top, if you get what I mean, B ut still I really like the building itself,

Richard

[autoVino 26]

well what I'm trying to get on the tower is some sort of telecomunications objects... I mean the tower is called just that in the scene.  But I don't know much about antennas or stuff like that so I'm not quite too sure what to put up there.  But like I said the large antenna is easy to remove (just a matter of pressing the delete button).

started some work on the other glassier tower.  so far its pretty basic so here are two renders [link] [link]

what I'm going for here is the elvated portion to the side of the builidng would be a diner or something to the extent of an erea of relaxation.  The section in the middle is going to hold most of the stuff that makes the building run (wiring, elevators, cooling, heating, etc... although I might put the cooling on top for effect).  The section on the other side will just be more or less open roof with the usual window cleaning train and maybe a couple of hvac units here and there.  I don't think this building will go too well with a large antenna on it so I'm going to avoid that, but the other building gets an telecom. antenna .

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here's some more work:

I made a hvac water cooler for the roof.  The original (refrence) photo was off of a nuclear plant water cooler so... ... may not be exactly what you see on top of a building, but I would hope it's close enough.  Like I said, I haven't much clue on what goes on top of a building... that is what it looks like.

I might need to lower the grid density of the front and on top of the cooling towers.  Right now it's a texture but I'm thinking that modeling it won't be too bad either (I also have another one rendering right now)

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Here's another one that's on the building(s)

maybe I'll just remove the grid on top completly for both cooling towers.  The main purpose of the grid is so that nothing alive gets in there, but I'm pretty sure birds will avoid these if steam's coming out of them.

[Interchange 0]

Personally I love the buildings, but I don't like the way that the very top of the tallest building overhangs on the tallest segment. It just looks like the building is hanging off on some angles, like that render that you showed. Other than that, the building is freaking awesome!

[autoVino 26]

I'll keep that in mind . thanks.

here's some more work and a full zoom five render [link]  the work is in the glassy buidlig.

unfortunatly I have ran out of disk space so all my projects are currently suspended until I can free a considerable amount of space up. sorry...

[Jazzmaster 716]

All looking wonderful, the others said what I would've so I won't be redundant. Great job keep it up!

-Yoshi

[gabry85 2]

Man, these renders are just stunning! Hope you'll solve your disk problem soon!

[autoVino 26]

thanks, all I really need now is to finish re-installing software on my backup disks... I'll just use those until I get a bigger hardrive.

meanwhile (i did re-install 3ds though) here is some more roof junk:

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reworked the fan copper texture a bit... earlier (the default one) didn't have very good "metallic" prperties... and was too yellow.

[autoVino 26]

here's another project in its early stages:

bank one building in lexington

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did some basic shaping of the roof [link]

[SimRabbit 48]

im impressed with your work the renderings are industrial quality.

Good luck with your newest project.

[bbfan02 23]

I look forward to seeing that building in progress on the STEX!

[autoVino 26]

thanks
don't have much time but here's another rendering... a tad bit more work done.

[bixel 1,228]

AWESOMENESSTASTICALRAD

[autoVino 26]

thanks:

found some spare time to experiment... I gave the glass a unwrap uvw modifier... still learning how to work it though.  but here's what I came up with in about 15 minutes:

with this i'ts much easier to work with the glass... that is texturing it and controling how the textures work.  but the night texture and its flow is yet to be perfected... along with the reflective bump...

still quite a bit of work to do on the roof as well

[Jasoncw 11,995]

The windows look fantastic. Where did you get your source images from? My night materials bitmap isn't very good, lol.

[paulvmontfort 617]

yeah i tried night material bitmaps as well. Yours looks much nicer IMHO. BTW, did you get your material to actually cast light as well, since I'm still puzzled how to do that

[allez l'om 1]

beautiful pictures!!!!!!!

[autoVino 26]

@jasoncw: I got an original bitmap off of one of the bat threads here at simtrop, but using it didn't always fit my buildings so I would modify parts of it, copy and paste sections of windows, etc so that the bitmap would fit my windows.  Now with unwrap uvw it's even easier!

edit: I also found a bunch on google... that is they were pictures of buildings at night so they reqieuered some modification so that they would be usable.

@paulvmontfort: it's quite simple... that is if you know how to do it.  here's how:

basically, you need a mentar ray architectural material (well, you don't need one, you can do it in standard materials as well, but this material shader is optimized some)

... and this is a given but you need mental ray renderer as well... scroll down until you get to a category called special purpose maps.  there is a section called additional color/self illumination.  Add a glow (lume) shader to it so that it would glow.  Because you're using mental ray it will also emit light in the final gatherer.  This is using 3ds max 9... it may be different in older versions and I think there's an option for photometric light materials in 3ds max 2008.

a few things explained here (that I know of) 

1) this is the glow color... that is the color of the light emmited as far as I understand.  It will influence how the object looks like when it glows but it's not as much as some of the other shaders.

2) the brightness.  This is rather self explanetory.  If you're using log exposure, though, you'll need to up this value.  this value will really depend on the size of the object that glows... I mean that if you have a tiny object, you'll need a bigger value for it to give as much illumination to an object beside it as a large object giving illumination to an object beside it.  This is how photmetric lights function.  A larger area light will give off more light energy than a smaller light of the same brightness.

3) this I think mixes the diffuce color of the parent shader with the glow(lume) shader...

4) this is the color of the surface material when it glows.  so if I make this red the color of the object will be red when it glows.  If I give it a green glow then it may be able to look red and give off green light.

5) this is the diffuse color/mixing with the parent material... I think.  I'm not to sure what this section does though.

6) this is transparency of the glow/parent material.  It does have a subtle effect on the coloration/glow of the material but I'm not too sure how to explain it.

All of these shaders can be given mateirals.  But keep in mind that if you're using log exposure you'll need to "fake hdri" on the bitmap you use... that is make them about five times brighter.  In the output section, enable color map and make the point set to 1 equal to five or so, depending on how bright you want the glow.

here are some samples:

@allez l'om thanks!

[paulvmontfort 617]

thanks for the advice. The funny thing is that I actually already tried that method but discarded it because i couldn't get good results. Now i know why. Thanks for that

BTW, do you perhaps remember were you found your texture?

[SimRabbit 48]

wow vino you are very skilled with 3ds max, i should try out that technique.

[autoVino 26]

thanks.

here is a sample of all my night window files combined into one (compressed) (I have a psd version, but it's too big to attach... even when zipped)

here are some more (bigger)

I don't use this file as my bitmap, I copy and paste seperate windows out of it into a new file that has rendered mapping coordinates (usually also a psd)

[gabry85 2]

OMG autoVino, I was dying for these textures! Thank you so much!

Looking forward to that building! Keep it up!

[Jasoncw 11,995]

I was going to post what I had too, but now looking at it, mine are really bad, lol. Thanks, these will be really helpful.

I'll go on another image search before I texture the next important building I do. I'll see if I can find any from above (so the floors show, not the ceilings).

I'm still really impressed by those windows. They're probably the best windows I've ever seen.

[Jazzmaster 716]

So I see now, instead of moddeling the interior you use bitmap images, which makes it move much faster and look far much better. That's a great technique, I'll have to try it one day! Those are beautiful windows!

-Yoshi

[patriots_1228 51]

thanks for the maps Auto, I will try them out. Just curious...how do I use them? (lol ).

the nightlighting is some of the best I've seen.

[bixel 1,228]

impressive!!!!!! I am going to start experimenting with mental ray, once I can get that down I wil start using some new techniques.

[autoVino 26]

when I have time I might actually model some sample windows and such and render them to create textures frmo that.  Haha, now I feel like I'm getting credit for something that isn't my own work.  Keep in mindthat those were just a compilation of images that I found across the internet (some even here at simtrop) that I modified to my own likeing.  They originally weren't my work.

@patriots: I'll write a tutorial on how to use them when I perfect the methods and have some spare time... mean while here's another render.  I redid the uvwmapping but there were a couple of errors.

the night windows are pretty good, but I think I'll need some even better textures.  there still exist a few errors though.  Once I figure out how to operate the uvw mapping completely I hsould be able to do it perfectly without much problems.

[bixel 1,228]

ok ok ok ok. We get it -- you are awesome. NOW RELEASE DA BUILDINGZ ALLREDDDDY!!!!!!!!!

oh you got a ducky