Cockatoo's BAT Thread

[Cockatoo 2,256]

TEH JUMBO! Floating restaurant in Aberdeen Harbour. Expensive yes, but worth it.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Are those yours? :l

[bixel 1,223]

Wow what a fantastic trip - I bet you had so much fun!!! How was the food? Hrmm getting hungry just thinking about it.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Originally posted by: kellydale2003

Are those yours? :lquote>

Um, yeah. Did you see the last page?

And Bixel, the food was GREAT! Cantonese is fantastic (although I won't touch some of the weird stuff eg. chicken feet). Eating out in most places is pretty good value for money too, but we got ripped off a few times. You gotta be careful!

[SimFox 802]

my version of Hail the motherland (flipped)

Are you already back home?

Where in HK did you stay?

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Aww no I didn't see the last page because of the page flip.

I officially hate both of you I live in the middle of the praries in Canada. Not much here, so for me to BAT these towers is like something fictional, but you guys are so lucky! haha.

How was it? Was it hot? Crowded? Smelly? lol - Details!!

[Amthaak 1,501]

I really miss HK...! the 4 characters zhong "something" jiu dien, sounds like an hotel name! lucky guy! But now, holidays are finished and you have to work again ...! BTW, what about your next Bat...?

[Ke|is 3,333]

Cockatoo

INCREIBLES FOTOS !

JAJA

[Rearviewmirror. 3]

Great photos Cockatoo.

[ilikehotdogsalot 308]

Ooh! Looks like you had a good time in Hong Kong!!

[villagemayor 0]

ahh memories of Hong Kong I didn't go to Aberdeen last time should go there and do the touristy things there. Great photos!

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Hey thanks everyone. Pity I couldn't stay in HK longer, it's such an awesome place.

Anyways, not much time for BATing (or even ST) over the past few weeks. I've had a fair bit on + last week I finally got my new computer which it taking a while to set up.

Now on Vista with an AMD Dual Core processor and 4GB or ram (which should help the render times a bit, before I was on a 4y.o. single core XP machine with only 1GB or ram.) I also made sure the guy put in a real nice graphics card.

I'm not even going to bother installing Max 7, I should have 2008 up and running within a week so I can look forward to much quicker export times, less BAT4Max errors and overall better looking renders.

[grbac80 5]

Nice time you had in HK. BTW. great news Cockatoo, we'll see some stuff from your new rig. . One thing, try W7.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Awesome upgrade!! I'm thinking of upgrading in a bit too. I'm on a compaq laptop 2GB of ram and a kr-happy video card. With all the raytracing and possible caustics of the New World Trade Center...I think it'll be time for a good upgrade. But Welcome back....wherever you live

[villagemayor 0]

My friend was using the beta version of Windows 7 months ago and said is very stable and was very happy with it. I am wondering if SC4 will do well in Windows 7.

I have just booked a flight to HK for April next year yay! I will take some pics so hopefully by then I can upload pics too.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

You've read my mind. I've actually been seriously thinking about upgrading to W7. Haven't heard much bad about it at all so far, it's just all praise, maybe Microsoft finally got it right this time?

I'm actually fairly happy with Vista SP2 at the moment though, it's stable on the whole and runs all my programs, but I want to get the best windows OS possible. Is it worth the money and the time for the upgrade? How compatible is it with programs written for the XP era, same as Vista? What dose everyone think?

[kellydale2003 2,276]

My uncle is a computer technician and said that W7 is very stable and works like a charm - Who knows maybe Vista will put SP3 out sometime and make everyone have to return to a restore point again.

[grbac80 5]

MY experience is that it is as stable and fast as XP, if not even better, with a lot lot of new stuff that are helpful or fun to use. After I started using it since it was first beta out, XP never saw me again. There were some gliches in the begining but that was all sorted out with each new version. I believe that said enough. I was sticking with XP before as I'm a performance freak, that's why I didn't go with Vista(even though I bought it, heh). But not anymore.

So far all programs, drivers and most important SC4 of course works like a charm. For some you don't even have to have drivers coz W7 has loads of them. Hope this helps.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Okay, I've installed Max 2008 on my new system... got it all up and running, BAT4Max is working fine, Let there be Light is working better than fine.

But I think I'll bet the stats do the talking.

To my surprise I could open all of my Max 7 files in Max 2008 without any serious issues at all. (All that happened was I was prompted to re-save the file). I previewed the SCBB and also to my surprise I realised that the issues I had experienced with LtbL in Max 7 had disappeared (colours weren’t oversaturated, no black smudging etc...)

Day:

Maxis Night:

Dark Night:

I then exported it with the exact same file I used with Max 7 and...

Old system:

Windows XP

1GB Ram

Max 7

Total Export Time: Approx 28hrs

New System:

Windows Vista

4GB Ram

Max 2008

Total Export Time: 1hr 15min!

I'll be releasing an updated version of the SCBB without letting Max 7 murder the render quality soon, I just need to fix one little issue. Then it’s on to the AIG. I also have a little something else in the pipeline that I’ll show soon.

[Amthaak 1,501]

Very impresive! May I ask what is your processor (CPU), and what is your video card type/performance (Video RAM in particulary)! I personnaly have 3 GB of RAM, and I am far from 2 hours for Day Export...!
Hum...! A "little something else in the pipeline", you make things "little" now...?

[Cockatoo 2,256]

AMD Athlon x2 250 Processor 3.0 GHz with NVIDIA GeForce GTS 250 Graphics Card (1GB Memory).

And ha, no, it's not actually little as in small, it's an expression. "A little something".

[SimFox 802]

generally for rendering Intel CPUs are kings by fair margin. As for the memory concern - you never can have too much of it. But you have to remember that you need 64bit OS and Application to take effective use of it. I have Intel Q6600 overcloaker to 3Ghz, 8Gb of DDR2 800MHz 4-4-4-2 RAM, Vista x64 Ultimate and, naturally 64 bit version of Max 2008 and Max 2010 Design.

Rendering time also heavy depends on optimization of both model and materials.

[Larks2242 251]

Cool BAT Cockatoo!!

[art128 4,618]

Looks excellent !

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Started this last week, it's Aurora Plaza in Shanghai!

Model is almost done, apart from the base. Then it's time to texture. I feel like I'm gonna be able to get this one done quickly, so it could be out within a few weeks unless texturing that massive glass facade turns into a massive pain in the ass. Time will tell.

[mcarch 15]

Love it!

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Looks awesome! I love being able to see the shadow of the window frames cast on the glass as it goes from light to shadow side.

[JakeMD 107]

Your skills have improved soo soo much!! Very nice so far, I love it.

[HONG KONG 74]

The color is gold my friend ... the challenge is probably the lighting

[Jasoncw 11,840]

It's coming along well (and fast!)!