Twinkle, twinkle, little BAT...

[madhatter106 3,905]

@benvoliothefirst - ZOMG a three-year old?  You don't sleep anymore probably, let alone play SC4...!

Finally forced myself to sit down and texture this one, which was modeled about the same time I became fixated on putting water towers on everything.  I loved the modeling but was  not looking forward to the texturing, as it's really...well, really brown.  The original building is pretty brown, too; thankfully it had these great burgundy window and door frame casings, which really gave it some personality.

This one I really like.  An interesting little building, and I bet it would look great in-game.

[benvoliothefirst 36]

9 hours ago, madhatter106 said:

This one I really like.  An interesting little building, and I bet it would look great in-game.

Only one way to find oooooouuuuuuutttttttttttt....

Kieran is amazing, he sleeps like a champion, has all his life. He's my little dude. I never wanted kids but he's the best thing that ever happened to me. Like Bob Ross said, "Happy little accident!"

[madhatter106 3,905]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 8:33 AM, benvoliothefirst said:

Only one way to find oooooouuuuuuutttttttttttt....

Kieran is amazing, he sleeps like a champion, has all his life. He's my little dude. I never wanted kids but he's the best thing that ever happened to me. Like Bob Ross said, "Happy little accident!"

How big is the plug-ins folder for Kieran's cities...?

[madhatter106 3,905]

Found a modern office building pic in the depths of my swipe file, and was messing around for an hour or so to come up with the following.  There are two "variations" that I ended up with for the upper floor; the one on the left is very similar to what the building looks like in real life, whereas the one on the right is something that I was messing around with and thought might look better (and give me the opportunity to do some great little patio details).

Which works better?  (I doubt I would have the energy or devotion to do "both," though.)

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

One on the Right IMO, also that could work as a suburban hotel IMO.

[benvoliothefirst 36]

I agree!

[MillionSeven 47]

Great! Love this kind of buildings!

[Hotwheeler 409]

The right building is the winner for me.With that penthouse and those large balconies,there is a lot of room for decorating and detailing.

[Jasoncw 11,933]

I agree it does strike me as being a suburban hotel.

If I were personally designing the building I think the original penthouse makes more sense aesthetically, but the patio opportunities from the change would also be good, so I think either way is good.

[madhatter106 3,905]

Thanks for the input, all.  I do like the original (left) version, though I am a sucker for lots of rooftop patio details, and the right version would allow for that.  Will continue to mess around with it.

Here's the last older style building with the penthouse add-on, finally textured and lit.  This was a bit of a chore.  Tempted to keep loading in details.

 

[edwardjeria 503]

woaaaa great detail

question, the building is fictionaty o base in real life?

[madhatter106 3,905]

The ground plan is inspired in part by @Aaron Graham and his fabulous NYBT buildings.  The elevation details are copied from a building picture in my swipe file.  And the penthouse detailing is copied from a building I saw while zooming around downtown Los Angeles on Bing Maps a while back for inspiration.  So it's a Frankenstein Monster of sources.

For anyone wondering, this next (forthcoming) office pack will have either twelve or fifteen buildings in it - including the twelve 2x2's and 2x3's and 3x2's already showcased.  If it goes to fifteen buildings, it will have the little slender 1x2 with the great Greco-Roman façade details that I still have yet to finish and texture, as well as a couple of other 1x2's that I haven't gotten to the point of sharing yet.  Almost all of the initial twelve are rendered - they just need to be PIM'ed, lotted, modded, query-written, and tested; the stuff I don't want to do at the moment, but will have to force myself to do.  (Because BATs finished and sitting dormant on my hard drive unshared are pretty much useless to all, including myself.)  I could possibly save the 1x2's for a later pack - indeed I had considered really doing a bunch of these, because we need more 1x2's that are taller and better than those awful Maxis shoeboxes, and it's a BAT size and configuration that seems to be off a lot of prior BATters' radar.

As far as custom content available over the past decade or so on the varies exchanges and sites online, the thing that amazes me is that despite the camp/kitsch factor inherent in the Maxis style, not many BATters have taken a shot at doing Googie buildings.  Indeed, a search of the STEX for "googie" turns up less than I had anticipated, which amazes me, as they would fit in so well with what Maxis was trying to do with SC4.  (As well as being just outright fun in their own right.)  Some of my early CS$ little guys were toeing the line or on the periphery of Googie, but not blatantly full-tilt.  So I got to messing around in gmax  for a couple of hours, having fun diving into the whole aesthetic of it, and doing far too many searches online for tidbits of inspiration. 

The great thing about living in Los Angeles is that there are a few of these Googie style buildings still standing.  Not as many as there should be, though...

This one will require a lot of effort when it comes to detailing and nightlights.  The interiors near the windows will need to be modeled, so you can see the tables and booths and seating and stuff in the night views, but if it's done right, it will look dynamite. 

[benvoliothefirst 36]

Very excited to see the progress here! I learn so much in this thread.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wonderful work man, keep it up. 

[IDS2 3,368]

Here in the midwest, it seems any examples of Googie we had (which made up an admittedly small repository to begin with) have been leveled or remodeled beyond recognition. I'm glad to see that Los Angeles still has a decent collection, and I think your model fits the bill quite nicely. I think you're spot on regarding the Maxis tilesets - the great thing about this building is that I can definitely picture it alongside quite a few of the Maxis buildings, and especially with the more kitschy ones like the Shorty Burger or Sobchak Lanes landmarks. 

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

I cant wait, I remember @ancientsociety doing a lot of Googie style stuff.
 

 

His style was similar towards yours too.

 

[Krasner 1,062]

@madhatter106 great to learn about an architectural style I didn't know about and that apparently, had not much influence in Europe - or I simply didn't notice yet Looks good so far ! I guess it will receive fancy colors ?... As it, without textures, it reminds me of the many 70's / late 70's buildings that are so common here, especially in public services. But usually, it's brown with grey and brown with grey, lol.

[madhatter106 3,905]

These have been sitting in my Dropbox for ages...

 

 

[Lucario Boricua 7,031]

It's been ages! Wondering which amazing works have yet to become threads of the urban fabric of our virtual cities.

[Rott 2,351]

Nice buildings, especially that second last one!

[nofunk 1,933]

So, how do we get those out of your Dropbox and into my cities?!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wonderful work. 

[Jasoncw 11,933]

I'm happy to see a post from you.

[madhatter106 3,905]

17 hours ago, nofunk said:

So, how do we get those out of your Dropbox and into my cities?!

Well, therein lies the trick - a great many of the past fours pages' worth of BATs were rendered and plug-in-managered a while ago.  Now they are in a folder ready for the modding of the custom queries and the lot editor.  However, I'm working on a Windows 10 laptop and despite having the old SC4 discs, it of course won't load the actual game itself because of the old regime copy protection.  So currently I would have to deal with getting the game as a download (which I kind of despise, as I already bought it once ages ago) and dealing with the install before I could even test them out.  And then there's the testing, which I must admit I find exceedingly boring by this point in the creative process.  Plus I barely would play the game anyways once they were finished...

So if anyone would be willing to test them once they're modded and lotted (though I doubt the lotting would be excessive or too varied on these), let me know.  

It's also a matter of time management - despite having lots of "free time" due to the "safer at home" initiative here in Los Angeles, a good chunk of my day is maintaining my business and trying to see how we can keep it afloat and weather through this proverbial storm, even though we've been closed due to the state and municipal mandates...

[Gn_leugim 858]

Hey Madhatter!

Glad you see you again, curiously I checked your thread a few days ago to check if you were active or not. Anyway, what stage would those go for? I've been playing a couple of cities lately that might be on the right tier. and like you, free time on hands :| Let me know if you need my help.

EDIT: now that I remember, I use a modified version of CAM, donno if that is a problem or not :\

And also, best wishes to your business as well, I know from family example how though this times can be for some types of business :\

 

[madhatter106 3,905]

Another one from a while back that still needs to be detailed and roof-junked and textured.  Probably the grandest and certainly the largest BAT I've ever done so far...

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Epic stuff once again! Good to see you're still at it. If it's any motivation for you, I have been modding and lotting my way through your low-wealth commercial stuff like a maniac. You made simple lots on purpose so they'd blend in with Maxis, and it sure works. However, I play with some nice prop and texture packs anyway, so I thought I'd give my entire plugins folder an overhaul and make some lots that use these dependencies. Residential is done, and low-wealth low-rise commercial (which is about 60% your stuff and 20% JMyers) is done as well.

My goal was explicitly not to make anything utopian or overly beautiful, but I wanted more realistically arranged parking, backyards that can actually be reached from the street via small alleys, and - most of all - more variation and stricter tileset control, all without straying too far from the default "palette". The result for low-rise CS$ has turned these little things from a "necessary evil" to something I enjoy looking at just to take in all the details. Speaking of details, you might recognise a building or two in these (fully grown, 0% plopped) detail shots:

 

(Things will look extra nice when my tree mod is added to the mix and replaces all those Maxis trees with Girafe's fine HD flora)

[mattb325 28,880]

It's great to see you back. Especially with a whole slew of gorgeous new buildings. 

[madhatter106 3,905]

@T Wrecks - awww my silly little BATs are doing your lotting justice!  Always glad to see what you come up with.  Hoping I can get around to packing up the medium wealth ones that I had featured a few pages back in this thread and getting them released.  And looking at these, there's a host of stuff I would do differently nowadays - modeling and texturing and nightlighting...

@mattb325 - thanks.  Hopefully I can get these released!  Always happy to see you still BATtin' away, too!

Working up some Deco stuff the past couple of days.  You know things are bad when I'm so uninspired that I have no idea of what do with the ground floor modeling, that I turn to doing the entire rooftop modeling and texturing as well as nightlighting, which mattb325 once described in this thread as "death by a thousand cuts" in gmax.  The good news is that once I do work through that BATters block and figure out what to do for the ground floor, the whole BAT's nightlights will already have been done...so I guess I am that much closer to it being finished?  I think....?

 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Well, I'm still busy assembling a plugins suite - which will be focused on the Chicago 1890 / NY 1940 tilesets for the time being. This has more consequences regarding BAT choice than I thought.

With residential, I found out that single-family homes are okay-ish (not least thanks to Cycledogg!), W2W stuff (small and mid-rise) is pretty well covered, non-W2W apartments are almost nonexistent except for some beautiful wooden ones by spa and preciously few others, and highrises are there, but spread rather thinly.

In terms of commercial, 95% of all those hundreds of (more or less) big-box retailers and restaurant chains are too modern even for NY. Especially commercial services will have to be covered by different building types. Looks like low wealth (CS$) will be mostly small suburban  stuff. There's not much low-rise stuff for CS$$, though. This will probably be covered by more urban W2W shops - maybe not unrealistic at all. Low-rise CS$$$ for the tilesets in question is pretty much inexistent. Urban buildings will have to compensate for that.

Now, commercial offices are plenty on the STEX - but I guess the concept of "suburban offices" is also a bit more focused on the modern tilesets. Standalone (i.e., non-W2W) office buildings for the first two tilesets aren't that many, either - you might be one of the most prolific authors in this department, in fact.

This means that your "silly little BATs" are currently not just some nice-to-have fillers, but form the actual backbone of some commercial departments in my plugins, mainly suburban low-rise and probably non-W2W low-rise to mid-rise offices as well. The overall situation with mid-rise offices is not clear yet because I'm working on this category. However, I'm hoping that NY 1940 will be covered by a mix of NYBT and Jason/nofunk/BSP/mipro whereas Chicago 1890 will be covered by a mix of Jason/nofunk/BSP mipro and your mid-rise office packs. This makes your uploads really substantial parts of my plugins, both in numbers and in function. Some categories would be awfully sparsely populated if it weren't for your buildings.

What makes the overall process take so long is that I tweak every single item I put into my plugins: I re-lot them all, check/adjust stats, assign the buildings to (a) specific tileset(s) wherever it seems appropriate (although some remain all-purpose) and occasionally change a colour hue somewhat for a more coherent look, re-center or rescale a model somewhat, fix any S3D glitches, change exemplar names to make it easier to find stuff, and so forth.

One thing I can tell you: the more I work on your BATs the more I appreciate just how good and how useful they are all around. Some BATs can be hard to work with or will reveal stats that would have been totally off if left unchanged, inconvenient LODs, or any other more substantial problem. With your buildings, I always know it will be smooth sailing, changes will be minor, and they will be so useful. I really can't thank you enough for making these!

I wish I was further along so I had cities to help you testing, but right now I don't have a region or anything.