SimFox's non-Asian BATs

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I got my colors by trial and error.  I just did a lot of renderings and tweaking.  On my computer, there is a little bit of lag in the game between when the blue overlay is added, and when the nitelites are visible, so I just kept on editing the rig until it was generally smooth.  After getting something that blended as well as I could reasonably get it, I just stopped working on it, and have been using it since.  If anyone wants to see or use the rig, I can send it to them.

So, are is the self illuminated material on the ceiling (to light up the floor from above), or is the floor itself a self illuminated material?

The shadow thing isn't actually something I discovered, I just didn't know it, lol.  If I remember right, when making a prop in the Plugin Manager, in the common tab, there is a "Is Ground Model" property, which either needs to be true or false.  One means that it will be something major, like a building, that casts shadows, and blocks helicopters.  The other means that it will be something like pavement, which casts no shadows, but will receive them.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Originally posted by: SimFox

T Wrecks:

I’ll make one without the lot. For a long time I was thinking of making some sort of series of props. I would like to hear you ideas on that subject as for what is needed and missing and also the dimensions of the stuff.

Also I remember that Jason had found the way to get shows onto the Lot Editor added props. It would be very nice to hear more about that…

quote>

A prop pack, eh? Well, that's a nice idea. I'll do some brainstorming and report back in a few days.

As for the second paragraph, I'm pretty sure you are referring to the marquee props for Jason's 'Regal Theater'? Well, he basically copied a part of the building and made it a separate model. Then he varied it (the lettering, in this case) and exported. I then made props out of these pieces, which, when placed at exactly the right position, would integrates seamlessly with the background (the main building model). The rest was a very easy procedure; I made a so-called adhoc prop family out of the props, which caused the game to randomly pick one out of all available props whenever the building shows up. The modding and lotting part is really a piece of cake, but I don't know about the modeling part. I can imagine that the LOD work wasn't all that easy, but that's Jason's department.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

ahh, yeah, if you mean the marquees, then yeah, I just made a new set of LODs that only included the marquee. Of course, part of the building that was visually within the LOD was also rendered. The LOD was actually just a box.

[SimFox 802]

Bixel!! Great! This BRU seems to the ticket! I had something similar but it didn't have regular expression engine... And without it it is pretty much worthless in case like this.

[bixel 1,223]

yeh the BRU seem like the best one. Hopefully this will speed everything up for you.

[SimFox 802]

OK!

It is done.

Bashnja na Naberezhnoj C is exported.

This is a version with BATed lot, this was necessary to realize the design I had in mind. I think I've done pretty decent job matching both brightness levels and hue to the game. However not everything is 100% fine. Parts of the LOT extend under the ground level (below 0) - those of the "pools" - and; I believe, cause those odd "shadows" on the side walk in front of lot:

it is especially obvious in day view, but night one has it too:

does anyone has any idea how to deal with them?

[mcarch 15]

Are you talking about the pools of water and the lights inside between the pool and sidewalk/grass? And the black lines in the same spot? My question would be, wouldn't the pools of water be lower than the grass and sidewalks?

OR, which I have noticed, the shadow on the maxis sidewalk in the first photo and the last is due to the lot being higher than the ground (because of the slope in terrain - nothing due to the actual lot itself). Its like when you plop a school/police station, hospital, etc. on a hillside, you get that box/dirt/grass thing on the sides.

Also, just curious, what are those little lit up stars on the lot?

[Godzillaman 21]

That looks amazingly realistic! I really want it!

[Odainsaker 2,134]

If we look closely at the fifth picture in the post (the daytime base close-up), you can see that while the tower casts a shadow towards the right, there is another shadow along the base sidewalk edge being cast towards the left. The odd backwards shadow is somehow resulting from the pools in the model being rendered below ground level. I've seen this before and have even somehow done it myself in gmax. If the tower itself were modelled half above ground level and half below, you could even get two building shadows...the above ground building shadow casting normally down to the right, and a below ground building shadow seemingly casting up onto the ground plane and extending to the left. SimCity's planet is in a binary star system, and one of those suns is underground!

I'm curious as to what the solution is a well.

[SimFox 802]

Well I can think of one, but it is quite labor intensive, so I wounder if there is something else - like editing some property in either Plugin Manager or in iLive reader...

So if anyone knows of such a solution, please come forward...

Yes Odainsaker you're absolutely right. This issue is caused by the way the shadows are "cast" in game. They aren't really shadows of the LODs. In stead just a skewed "profiles" of the buildings. and once something is below ground or 0, naturally direction reversed 180 degrees. The actual geometry is not shown cause there aren't LODs there to map rendered image onto. But the image itself is there.

So the hard but 100% effective solution would be to remove part of the image below ground. It could be done manually in BMPs prior to their transformation into FSHs, or to be precise what should be removed is part of mask.

mcarch:

the "stars" are lights embeded into the pavement something along the ling of the lights at airport runways, or on some roads.

[mcarch 15]

OH! Ok, gotcha! =)

[paulvmontfort 616]

You could try to make sure the lods don't go below the grid plane in 3dsmax. I don't know if you already did this though, but it's the only solution I could think of right now.

BTW, Simfox, do you still rename all the files manually after the export? A friend of mine wrote me a program that can easily change all the filenames at once. It is in Dutch though.

[SimFox 802]

Paul:

no LODs start at Z=0, but I think may be they should do at say Z=0,2; not for this problem - it is independent of LODs as such; but may be it could fix that "border" like thing that could be see around BATed LOTs.

As far as remaining... Well the program Bixel had found is a mirracle. It has regular expression engine, so it can do just about anything one may wish for!

[bixel 1,223]

You can buy me a pint later. Where are you, Germany? China? I might be moving to San Fransisco soon.

[mcarch 15]

Boy you guys move around a lot!

[SimFox 802]

Bashnja na Nabetrezhnoj C has been uploaded to STEX

Come and get it

[plasticboy 36]

I can't put my finger on this BAT really. It is really well done and was well worth the long wait. You've truly conquered another milestone, Fox . Again.

[Kendiecasttsoi 209]

I am a total dummy in batting. I am too lazy to learn, but I feel obliged to come here and read something about the latest bat that Simfox has given us. Bashnja na Nabetrezhnoj C is getting some controversy for the base, and as a result, its rating is unjustly low.

Now I realize you have been expecting problems before posting. I can't help solve them, but I wish people appreciate your hard work and do not care about that base as much.

[Sim shady 12]

two pats on the back for producing yet another bat that easily contends for BAT of the year good job

[hamsterTK 93]

had you considered hiding the base with some kind of prop? obviously that would deviate from the real version but hey

with your 3d skill I'm sure in 5 minutes you could whip up some blob on a pedestal that would pass as "modern art" and fit where the graphics glitch occurs

[SimFox 802]

Oh, guys... I've forgotten to say, I've fixed that "anti-shadow" glitch. So the version that is on STEX now doesn't have it - you're safe. That is a good news, the bad one, however is that i couldn't come up with any "clever" way to do so and had to manually edit the Alphas of all affected parts. Well, not all just Zoom 5, 4 and 3.

It worked like a charm - as i thought it would and on this tower took may be 20 minutes altogether. Still it's annoying that it has to be done manually. Annoying on principal. And on larger structures could be time consuming and error prone process.

On the bright side (another one) such alpha editing allows for many interesting effects. Of course ideal situation would be if we could break export peocess in two stages view render and slap cutting - that way such manipulations would have been much more efficient and safe. also water had been rendered with higher Caustic settings so it will not look so bloby as inn last previews here in the thread...

[Glenni 1,444]

Oh, and another thing, would you be able to render one which is fairly lowrise(but with the same modeled base?)? 10-15 floors? It would be great for lowrise city building people like me,  i really think this one would look great as a small but fairly large building in one of those typical modern office parks, like the ones you see outside Helsinki, Oslo, or many other European cities.

[SimFox 802]

Glenni:

Actually I'm going to...

I have plans to recreate the entire complex. Naberezhnaja Tower has 3 towers. C - currently done is a tallest at 68 floors, others are 17 and 27 floors. Those shorter towers are like halves (cut along the longest axis) of the main tower. But truth is that hight of the building is hiding the fact how massive it is. For SimCity I've set it to have 7000+ jobs - that is a lot, but real thing has like 15 000!

I also like the idea of low/midrise office parts. In fact I just came from photographing one ;-). Problem though is that scale of SimCity makes it very challenging to be expressive in small size.

I do have one mid-high rise office complex in development for quite a while:

[toxicpiano 125]

Oooooooooh! Will it overlapping the lot so we can use it diagonally?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Looking great! A building in Detroit which I BATed has a similar facade, and these would look good next to each other.

[plasticboy 36]

The facade indeed looks similar to Chase Tower's in Detroit. I love what you're doing with it, Simfox, keep up the good work!      

Kieran

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Cheese graters of the world, unite!

Seriously, that's a very interesting structure and yet another proof that buildings needn't be tall in order to become true eye-catchers.

[SimFox 802]

:-)

that complex is still quite a way from the release stage. It isn't gonna be the next thing.

Here, on the other hand, is one that might be the next:

[plasticboy 36]

Moscow City Hall?

[SimFox 802]

yep, old SEV building (1967) currently Mayor of Moscow Office until new 4x75 storey tower will be completed.