SimFox's non-Asian BATs

[SimFox 802]

well, lighting setup is dependent on the rendering engine you plan to use. What is you version of MAX and do you have any 3rd party renderers??

PS

"Red" is off for Moding

[bixel 1,223]

Well its about time. Hip Hip!! Hurrah! Hip Hip!! Hurrah!

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Oooh, an in-game pic! Wow! That looks really great - I had feared the BAT might look to "alien" to the lot and vice versa, but that test lot shows the transition is actually quite ok. This one should be interesting!

[SimFox 802]

well, T. it's just first lot that came in a LE - I think it is of bank of BoC...

Bixel... ;-)

There are couple of issues with that render . the shadows are way to deep - that is a result of on a fly system unit change, but this problem is resolved already and it will look better (blend better)

[SimFox 802]

Bump Bump

Ok long and tedious process of manual export is over. and here is Red with TruNite:

I think TruNite looks good, it blends into the night scene seamlessly and you can't actually say that there is something special had been done to the building, it just looks good and that's it...

here are thumbnails with links to large pictures:

[bixel 1,223]

Congrats you finally have a building in the game. Now GET IT ON THA STEX ALREDDY!!! XD XD XD XD!!!!

[DarkEldar 6]

SimFox: well, lighting setup is dependent on the rendering engine you plan to use. What is you version of MAX and do you have any 3rd party renderers??quote>

I am running Max9 with no third party renderers, i actually can't find any free renderers except a Vray demo at chaosgroup.Oh an that building is looking fantastic finish the lot and bring it to the STEX

[autoVino 26]

what? my moniter's not big enough to display the images?   I guess a 22' isn't enough, lol...

Looks great.  I assume that if you did manual export you also did the day views with the "inch based gi", if that makes any sence, right?  

I agree completely, it blends in really nicely with the scene.

[SimFox 802]

Autovino:

he he... it is full screen of my 23" apple...

About export. I've decided not to waste time now to find reasons and workarounds, but did as you have correctly mentioned "manual" export - basically I made a dummy export with override material and no FG or GI and lowest AA imaginable. This took about 15 min. I used it to generate necessary file structure. Then I made "staged" renders of all views and zooms day and night. Night as you see it TruNite with NO sun. all the very soft shadows are from sky alone. I believe it improve night appearance of the building great deal.

Then I allied my renders with dummies in Photoshop and sliced them and substituted the slices in those directories created during dummy render. and when all were in place went back to MAX and finished export process.

[kd5rax 82]

The manual export is a great idea...  Too bad itd take a really really long time to slice and dice for 1 WTC...  There are almost 400 folders in the output section....  400 images to slice would take a very, very long time

[SimFox 802]

Slicing/dicing could be done really quick, but the placing and renaming files manually its time consuming and run hiogh risk of mistakes. Of course one can make a sort of .bat thingie to automate it...

But yes it is a great way to work - you have extra levels of control and freedom

I'll Make a TruNite version of Lippo now (probably tomorrow) but then I would have to look for some sort of solution to make the process faster and still flexible...

[SimFox 802]

Bump,bump

The Red is on STEX  (LINK) under the alias of MoscowRed - not very imaginative i give you that, but I couldn't come up with anything better. Ther original doesn't have any name at all and is know as Selhskohozjaistvennaja 16 - Even I have trouble to pronounce it! And the meaning is sooo mundane it isn't worth translating - (but I'll do it anyway - building 16 on Agriculture street)

Street is name like that cause it is near by of VDNH - huge Soviet era exhibition center/park. at first place it was known ad agro-industrial exhibition so streets built around got "themed" names...

Here are two shots of real thing both by Bolik:

I absolutely LOVE the second one!!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

So how does trunite work?  You render the nitelites without the sun, and then use the building's transparency mask (copying and renaming the files?) so that the game uses the full night render directly? 

Do you do the night render by moving the day folder out of the output files folder, and then doing another render, but with a lighting rig which has no sun?  And then do you just make the two batches of .fsh files separately and continue inserting in the reader as normal?

Or by manual export do you mean recreating the slabs and all of that kind of stuff?

I'll actually be doing a lot of rendering in the next few weeks so I'm wondering. 

[Blazerhawk 162]

Holy Crap! A Simfox release, wha??? BTW those pictures had me thinking of Cities Unlimited.

[Sim shady 12]

Congratz on your 3rd release to STEX!!!

[SimFox 802]

Thank you, thank you :-)

Jason, you are very smart guy!!!

You're on a right track, But first couple of words on how night lighting works in game and different versions of BAT (Gmax and Max ones). THis is good to know when you do your night lighting to be better antisipate what you gonna see in game.

So let's start with game.

Day time view is very straight forward - rendered image is mapped in that in S3D board. B&W alpha is used to cut off the render background - black or what ever you have there. changes from day to night with a transitional Dusk period (and dawn from night to day) are done with some sort of overlay system. Unfortunately it is NOT controlled in Lighting exemplar, but probably in Effect directory. And Gizmo who made the mod refuses to release the knowledge he has about the stuff... sad... knowledge must be free to grow!! So game basically tints (as you would in photoshop) the day view. Nigtlighting is that pasted on TOP of that tinted view. using the mask from Night view render - simple cut out if we are speaking of nightWindows, or night libraries without GI or more complex grey scale alpha mask if some real lights or GI are involved. Mask ONLY covers the parts of building affected by lighting (mask is generated with lighting rig turned off btw) so you finally have a composite - tinted day view with lights on top.

BAT for GMAX

in case of classic NightWindows - it doesn't do full blown night render - that's why it is so much faster. What happens is that script simply alters pixel by pixel by mixing in this color RGB 128,128,191 and then renders only FLAT piece with night texture on it - same as would be background or map in the screen mode in MAX. This map is places BEHIND the the model (gmax is culling off all that you can not see from current camera) and also its effectively removes objects named NightWindow so you can see through to that screen.

When nitelites are used render works differently - full featured night render is done. For that pass Lighting rig is completely turned off Only light in a scene comes from nitelites. this render is saved and alpha mask is derived from it. In game it is used for that might view TOP most layer. where are some issues with this setup. During this render the lights are turned down to 0,1 intensity - eg very dim. So sometimes these lighted parts at night are dimmer than non-lighted - look a bit silly, but there you have it.

BAT for MAX

here system was altered so that 2 extra passes are needed with export. One is a perspective 256x256 one for technical purposes to generate slab template - I also think it is redundant nowadays as it says in a script that it was introduced to counter the greyscale bug found in MAX4.2!! Another is Night View renders - there are basically two independent passes - one generates the full night vioew - but this is not same as in GMAX. this is more alike the situation in game - with all the lights in Lighting Rig present and shining. and then it is followed by night Alpha mask - that is in effect the copy of the GMAX night pass with the difference that it only generates greyscale alpha. By the design it should - to make even mask - strpp all the material and apply one neutral grey to the model. In reality due to changes in material structure etc in new versions of MAX it doesn't work. Thanx God it doesn't crush the export! So where in GMAX we have one pass in Bat For MAX we have two. a first one with the fiull night view is a redundant twice over - first of all it does something that game will do on it's own and all areas rendered that are not affected by niteletes are complete waste of time in this setup. Secondly that pass does in fact contain needed alpha and more! The image you see in render output window is in fact a composite of many channels. one of the is a lighting channel. So it is possible to completely recreate GMAX setup with only one pass by storing ONLY the lighting information. But this is all but academic as i don't think the original approach is a way to go, as it preserves that odd looking "night" in game. Situation is more or less tolerable on simple box shaped buildings where practically NO on-Bat shadows exist, but becomes very odd on structures with complex geometry - just take a look at Taj Mahal - games built in wonder/monument - see at night those shadows of minarets INSIDE of the light spots?

So now you should have brief introduction to mechnics of night lighting in the game.

The purpose of truNite is to remove the source of those shadows (at least the sharp well defined ones) during the night view. This is done as Jason have pointed by turning the SUN (only sun) off during night view render and then using total mask (day alpha for instance) to bring the entire night render view as TOP layer in nigh composite. This doesn't put ANY extra strain on game or takes more space, as the entire night view images are stored in the game anyway, . Actually it makes it EASIER for the game as now it uses simple 2 bit b&w mask instead of greyscale one -hence significantly reducing the calculation load. And we have a better and what most important more controllable night view.

All good so far, but where is a catch, there is always one isn't there? Yes there is! The cantch is that partial mask of original design is used to make "seamless" day-night-day transitions - Dusk and Dawn of the game. Lights are typically come on before teh night fall . so you have that pinkish period with lights shining. Game using redish overlay with night mask overimposed. With truNite, of course, the imposed overlay will cover entire building. So it wouldn't be Pinked. Another little problem is that when lights are turned off at about 12-1am in game time truNite building will revert to it normal tinted day appearance. So the Dawn will go normally.

So here is a trade off in a nutshell:

You gain better night view - you loose dusk scene.

Basically this will affect ONLY people who go through the entire cycle and not simply switching between Day and Night.

Also this truNite wouldn't be compatible with any MOD that altres game NIGHT, as Gizmos Day&Night mod that simply alters the RGB values of the mix. When I say not compatible I don't mean that it woudl crash or anything like that simply put truNite building and any other with full alpha will not be affected by that sort of MOD as it literary lies on top of it in the stack.

[bixel 1,223]

hrmm... so sounds like we got redundant script calls. well.... I recently got hire-propositioned to do some max scripting. so in the process of learnering max script for real, maybe I can iron out the crap in the script files later.

[IGGYMAN 101 1]

YOu will continue that way...

[Sim shady 12]

ooh thats big news Bixel

I find it amazing how you guys have figured out so much about everything lol

[autoVino 26]

hmm. I personally think that the scripts need a complete makeover...  maybe we

(you? ) can do that...

But if this can be done with manual export I'm sure that automating it shouldn't be troublesome at all.

[SimFox 802]

Continuing theme of modern residential towers from Moscow here is another one based on building that is under constriction not far from "Red".

Nothing curvy this time - all about angles and sharp edges and color:

let's see if I'll be able to finish this one in 7 day building on the experience acquired from working on RED

[Sim shady 12]

lol the top looks vaguely like a swastika. That is so ridiculous that that military building was gonna get like a huge renovation just to cover up its shape *that looked like a swastika from Google Earth*. Really isnt a big deal in a situation like that....

Anyways, this looks great If its anything close to the quality of Red i am gonna love this

[SimFox 802]

ha ha ha... well developer sayz that it is designed by famous German architect... ;-)

[SimFox 802]

Bump, Bump

Another, smaller residential, so called commieblock, P44TM:

These are just shape studies, although final color scheme will be pretty similar to this as real ones are clad with orange bricks as well.

C&C welcome.

[Saber^ 0]

Originally posted by: SimFox ....called commieblockquote>

 

LOL what a name >_<

Remembers me of the "Plattenbauten" here in Germany, specially the ones in east germany.

[autoVino 26]

wow!  you are a batting machine!  I'm beyond impressed.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Damn Simfox, you really are a great BATer, but you already know that of course. These two latest new projects are as always very good, nice colour schemes and interesting shapes. If it were up to me I'd just tone down the orange and green colour on the first tower just a bit but I haven't seen a photo of the real life building so I don't know what it really looks like. Keep it up Simfox, awe inspiring stuff here!

[SimFox 802]

Cocatoo: orange and green (as well as grey and white) are just place holders. Orange is where the bricks (also sort of orange) will be and roof will be green but of course not solid color as it is now...

I would like you expert opinion on the floor height of this building.

It is smaller than I used on RED and The grey one, but so is the floor height in reality (inner height floor to ceiling is 2,7 and 3,3 m respectably (prior to applying 1,3 modifier). But does it make it look disproportionately short in game??

    

Cause if you think it looks too short I better change it now while it is still relatively easy… I myself am lost on this one…

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Brick windows? I ment on the first tower (Orange and green windows). I know you havn't textured 'commieblock' yet (Nice name by the way!)

[SimFox 802]

No, windows aren't brick ;-)

I see what you're talking about now... the problem there is orange and green (of different hue though) in both. As for that one, the tall 40 storey one, well those vivid colors are the whole design point of the building. Without them it is just a grey lump. So those will stay there.. I may still play with distribution of stripes, but the hues are I think final unless someone will offer another SET, one that will convey feel of freshness and brightness - the very point of those being there.