Howling's BATs

[topcliff 1]

Dang, you're good at this! You're the next generation of W2Wers! I hope you continue this, as these types of buildings are desperately needed for our cities! Leonardo

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Here's what I meant about making it brighter:

In real life it would either be aged white bricks, or grey terra cotta bricks.  I'm not saying you need to do it this way, this is just what I was imagining before.

For the window texture, try increasing the contrast, and making it brighter.

For the sides, the way that the building sticks in makes sense (so that there can still be functioning windows there if there was a building next door), but I don't know if buildings really do it like that.  For the Sim City environment, there will be some compromises sometimes, but in general, things will look fine.  For example, the Audubon Building doesn't have many windows, but it is still ok in the game.

For wall to wall buildings like this, usually the elevators are put along the side walls (the "common walls"), which is why on some buildings you will see tall vertical windowless areas on walls.  Mechanical rooms or bathrooms might have windows, but they would probably be smaller windows.  So you can have large empty spaces on the wall, as long as everything is arranged convincingly.

[Howling 10]

@topcliff

Thanks, i'm glad you like 'em. I hope to fill that need for ya'!

@Jasoncw

Common walls, yes! I love those! Sometimes you see (for example on photographs on Flickr) sides of buildings which are 3/4 concrete and the rest is bricks with a few windows. Or what about bricked-up window arches? I love those walls and I love the grit that a city like New York boasts in some parts. This is what I want to bring into SimCity 4. Ugliness, basically. Though search for something like "New York soho" or "east village" and you get wonderful houses and buildings with lots of detail (I love the ornaments, the fire escapes, the forgotten graffiti, posters on walls hardly anybody sees and those airco's sticking out of windows). This is so horribly missing in SC4. It's all seperate. Wall-to-wallless.

The white bricks work better on a different building I think. This building was the result of some excercises in BATting. Also it's one of those rather bland steel-chassis, brick-exterior type buildings that were mostly constructed in the late 70's and 80's - mostly in Europe I think. Though new building i'll definitely make more American.

I had some problems night lighting though, my computer isn't able - apparently - to assign different levels of nighttexture intensities. I searched and searched and found an article in German that said basically that the function works. "but not on every computer". How & Why is a mystery though.

Anyway, here are the pics. I will release a growable and ploppable and - yes - not stuffed into a single .dat.

[Sim shady 12]

cant help you with the nite lighting issues, but i have to say great job on this building so far I can't really tell from this lot if you have done this or not, but a while back a thread called "Wall to wall standards" tried to determine a set length for BATers to set their W2W buildings on lots...though it looks like they never really came to an agreement on what that length should be. 3 meters seemed to be the popular response, which is apparently 2 tiles deep.

[Spike345 20]

Wow, finally someone specializing in what I think the game REALLY REALLY needs, thanks! and I hope you dont give up that easily! There is a lot of these buildings that can be created! GoodLuck, I will keep on eye on this.

[brtim2 11]

Someone else, somewhere, at some point, commented on something not looking quite right. (I think. Or maybe they were my thoughts from a page back.) Anyway, even if this some person didn't, I'm going to.

:This is me understanding you changed your building. This is also me hating myself for reposting your picture, but also realizing that it's on a different page and I need it as an example. That being said, it doesn't make it right. Don't do.

Ever.:

While your building is well amongst friends, it stands out as an odd one. You do have some gradiation in there. Good. However, I must use the two 'friends' as an example. Take the brick one to the right. The brick is not the same color all the way throughout, even with the gradiation. There are smudges, splotches. While, with my untrained and very naive eye it looks like just a brick pattern that happened to have a dirt smudge built in, the dirt might actually be positioned around the windows. I can't tell. I don't know who it's by, so I really don't know.

And the white building has the same look. The brick has some dirty spots that are subtle and break the flat look. Also, it looks like those protruding pillars are purposely placed with patterns of prickly pears. Sorry, got in a rhythm there. But each of the front pillars looks like they are the same (tiled) brick, but of different shades. Again, not trained to see these, just what I see. If it was intentional it's something I would have never thought of it, but I like it's look. Shows certain parts weathering faster. Shows a more natural look.

Also, are you using brick? It would be good to tile it up a bit more. It makes it look weird in design, but you can see the bricks of the building next to it. Right now the blue is flat. Even painted brick/stone/anything that is mortared together would have some relief.

Anyway, I've noticed there are a lot of one sentence posts and don't want Jason to be the only one offering advice and such, although he is more the master of the subject than I am.

But it's all looking good, I'm quite a fan of it. And I do like the red fire escape on the back, much more interesting than having a black, boring one.

(Also, don't listen to Jason, he doesn't know what he's talking about.  I like the palisades. Just tell him there was a financial crunch, maybe he's heard of it: The Depression that interrupted building. And that's why there are two conflicting styles. Two building periods. He might even buy it.)

[Howling 10]

@Sim shady

Yes I think I was around when that whole discussion started. I go for about the 2 tiles deep thing. That boils down to about 1.5 tile when using the tiled base texture, at least so it seems. If not i'm just going to go stubbornly ahead with it - I have lots of ideas for lots of W2W bats.

@Spike345

Haha thanks, I hope I won't! Keep posting

@brtim2

Long, elaborate posts with critique often scare me away - but I like you ended with a positive note. What you say is on the mark. I think jasoncw described a method somewhere to make screenshots of parts of your building and create a texture on top of it in Photoshop - thus creating the perfect base for smudges, smears and all that around openings.

Now don't be fooled! I have lots of beautiful brushes to do just that and I have - only they're hardly visible hehe.... Anyway, next buildings (which will be a lot shorter) will definitely see a lot of grit, ornaments and detail. My Frasier building had lots of spots on the sides - which, in retrospect - are far too large. But hey - that was my first BAT. The second BAT you are commenting on is merely the fruit of an excercise in texturing. Your comment helps though! However I'm quite fond of how the blue reacts to the red fire escape.

Besides, I just rendered it and made it into lots and posted it on the STEX so I don't feel like retexturing. I want to make those buildings that i've already been wanting to make!

PS: Yes, the Thornbush bank was actually once lowrise and they built the office on top a few decades later (is that a good excuse?)

[CDI_spy 5]

Hey Howling... just dropping in quickly to say that your releases have been quite impressive and I hope to get a hold of more W2W!

[brtim2 11]

Good, good. Glad to hear that I only scared you away a little, and not for good. I like how your experiments/tests in batting and texturing will find their way into many, many cities, instead of trying to release a bg blue cube on to the STEX and calling it a Police Station.

I like that you are open to suggestions. And I promise, next time there will be lots of praise to heap along side your deserving building. I just know it is common for me, and people in general, to complain about what they don't like, yet even when something is perfect, they won't make a peep.

Basically, what I am trying to say is, with both of your buildings, I like the style, I think you've done it well, and for someone that has never been to Manhattan (correct?) you have started to do the genre proud.

And I like that excuse. It works well.

[Odainsaker 2,134]

Wow, great stuff here!

This is much too late for the Hightail IT, but for the next project's night texture intensities, you might check the following:

Make sure you are using the Intensity spinner just below the Enable button on the Night Windows parameter rollout. This spinner only becomes activated after you have selected Enable. If you are clicking the Global Intensities, it will adjust all the night textures uniformly, which is generally not what people are trying to do.

Make sure each window glass for the different night window intensities you wish to use is its own separate and individual object. Similarly, you might also make sure they are not instance cloned in a way such that a night window parameter somehow carries over.

If you had already checked for these, and all else fails...you can always model the floors, make the window glass semi-transparent, and try to use lights inside the building! Gmax and Bat4Max seem to have numerous quirks...I just spent a few days in Gmax setting individual intensities for a window pattern, getting them all set as I wanted them with excellent rendered dry-runs throughout the week, and now since yesterday the brights somehow are rendering brighter and the darks much much dimmer. I haven't touched any night window texture intensities, only started adding actual lights to other parts of the model. The new skewed dim-shifted range of intensities still looks good (err, okay, maybe even better than what I originally had), but I don't know why that has happened. And I'm resigned to never know, hehe!

Hmm...its odd, your original lost Thornbush building base was strongly neoclassical, complete with a central and flanking arched bays, but the remade base of the subsequent version, though still geometrical, has in its squashed arches and only 2 bays the feel of Art Nouveau (the sinuous naturalistic precursor to the more geometric Art Deco). Might be something that can be played with.

[Spike345 20]

where are you? I amd aching for an update!

[jacqulina 162]

great progress here

[Howling 10]

@Spike345 Sorry I kept you waiting :-) Bit busy with RL. Here's a teaser though. I want to release a pack of commercial, mid(low?)rise  W2W's. Different styles, different colors, etc.

Two fit on a 1x2 lot. Excellent for those gaps in your beautiful commercial zones. That is; when more of these sets have been released

[crazyyaya 4]

Wow, great job, good to see another new BATer, it puts new life into this site.

[Spike345 20]

excellent! that shall feed my W2W-desire for a while!

[Sim shady 12]

this really is needed! The only thing close to this that we have a the low wealth shops by don miguel. Great to see you are going to do some

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Looking good! 

[Howling 10]

Hello everyone,

It's been a while since I last BATted. Though last week I decided to yank old gMax out of the bookcase and - at the same time - try my hand at BATting in 3DS Max. Because I love dense downtown areas. So far there are already great bats out there by spa, Jason, Nofunk, dk2 and others. Still, one craves buildings that one hasn't seen yet.

Now 3DS has not yet worked for me, i'm still learning the lighting and exporting business. So I decided to try and make a new W2W bat in good old gMax.

Here's an example of what I have so far.

It needs more detailing, especially the smaller building, the roof and the rear obviously. There will be a fire escape at the back of both buildings. With the larger building there will be one on the windowed wall and a fixed ladder next to the garage door (hence the extra space there). Is this a realistic approach?

Also, there's the year '1897' on the fries (I think it's called?) at the top of the big building. Is this accurate? My main inspiration are those fantastic high-res photos from Shorpy. Now I know the windows ought to have a more curved top, but for this particular BAT I didn't. I will next time.

The whole lot should be 1x2. I already did a scale test and had to scale the building down because the floors were too large.

I just hope to finish it at the end of the week.

[jacqulina 162]

very nice work your doing

[Gn_leugim 853]

welcome back =) and nice work so far =)

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Nice, glad to see you back! We could always use more BATs in this style, I never get tired of seeing them. Looks good so far, I hope to see how this one turns out.

[De Ja Vu 117]

I like the buildings! The taller one is kinda similar to the one in your avatar

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Wow - I found myself sighing at what I thought was just another bump by someone who hadn't read the forum rules, only to click on the thread and find out that the thread starter is back with a bang! Now that was a nice surprise, and that building you are making there looks good so far. I don't have anything to suggest at this time. Good luck with 3ds - poke around a bit and see what people like SimFox, Jasoncw etc. have to say, they are pretty darn good at it.

[Howling 10]

jacqulina - thanks

Gn_leugim - thank you, it's good to be back. I'm a lurker though, so I might be off again without notice

SimHoTToDDy - thanks man, yeah I agree totally. I love downtowns, the density of them. Hence my BATs.

De Ja Vu - yes it is a bit I guess - hadn't noticed it

T Wrecks - sometimes, miracles happen

Thanks for your replies gusy - I'd love to get some constructive criticism too! It'll only improve the buildings. Here's something that has been sitting idle on my harddrive for two years. The Thornbush Bank building. I re-opened it and fell in love! I want this and the building(s) I showed earlier finished

So far 3DS Max hasn't been sitting well with me. For some reason the program crashes sometimes. If you make one mistake in the process of exporting 3DS Max won't even prompt you with an error anymore. Weird... Long live gMax!

[Gn_leugim 853]

ohh yes.. long live to gMax XD welcome to the club

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Well as for constructive criticism, It would help to have a nice zoom 5 to look at, but I really don't see any issues with what you have done so far. I think this, well, old BAT of yours could use some kind of decoration or something between the section of windows at the bottom of the red section and the rest of the top floor windows, that's something you could either model or texture, it just seems to be bare a bit.

Curious to see some textureing on these, that's where the heart and soul of this style can really shine,

-Todd

[_Atticus 10]

These are great BATs! Small buildings like these are my favorite, because, though they aren't grand and impressive, they give character to cities. I especially like the first one. No suggestions so far, but I can't wait to see more progress.

-Pingangster

[Howling 10]

Gn_leugim - Thank you -

SimHoTToDDy - Thanks! It does need some decoration, i'll do a lot via textures. Also the sides now have windows and one side even has windows suggesting a staircase internally.

Pingangster - Thanks! They do, don't they? I hope to finish more and more just by slowly ploughing through ideas

Here's an update, this is a scale test with the model nearing it's texturing stage. Roofjunk has been added and the sides and base have been detailed. Not included in the screenshots is the back, it's actually a 1x3 instead of a 1x2. Being a tally one, I'd think this is quite normal.

I love how the first floors all line up, except for the corner building ha! Cool, isn't it?

[_Atticus 10]

Your building fits right in with the greats

Now that I look at it a bit more closely, I have a suggestion to make. In my opinion, you building is too vertical; all the details are in the vertical direction. You should add some horizontal stability to it by adding some details (friezes, lines, etc) that go from left to right. Hope you understand what I'm saying. Other than that, it's great, especially the base!

-Pingangster

[Gn_leugim 853]

yap.. the scale is good there =) only the upper windows leave me some doubts =1