Psander5's BATs

[psander5 195]

SimHoTToDDy: Thanks.  It seems I can't live up to my own promises... I went ahead and arrayed the benches around the circle.  They are symmetrical after all!  Everything else you've said makes sense, and I've taken it into account in my recent development of the plaza.  

crushedcar: It would just about fit a basketball court at ground level yes, but the seating would only be for a few thousand because of the bowl shape of the structure.  Of course, in real life the dome had some internal mezzanines and other structures that would cause problems for such a re-fit, but it's plausibly scaled for uni/small town hockey or basketball.  This being a London building though, its unlikely that it would have come to that use.  It would have probably retained its original purpose as an exhibition space, or possibly could have been converted into some kind of theatre.  We'll never know thanks to a certain Mr Winston Churchill! 

Pinball machines sprang to my mind too when I made them.  'Pinball Plaza' has a nice, alliterative ring to it... though maybe not for the south bank of the Thames

Here's a slightly more significant update than last time.  I've been working hard making 'prop' models to add to the plaza, and I changed the design of the stairs to be able to spread the greenery around a bit more and break up the paving.  

Click for zoom 5 resolution

I've added lamp posts, billboards, foliage, burger vans and some tiny floor mounted uplights.  I set the burger vans back into the shade, but I might bring them out further as they're quite detailed in themselves.  You can only see one of them in this pic, but there's another variation on the other side. 

The billboards have a variety of different ads, all of them random theatre posters I pulled from Google, but they're happily  non-descript in game. 

I'm pondering making some people to scatter around, but I'm aware that they have to be done properly to look right, and I'm unsure if I could pull it off.  Other than that possibility though I think I'm done with the decoration of the plaza.  It's already beginning to overpower the dome in terms of level of detail, and my computer can't handle many more polys.  Even working with layers is frustrating.  I think after this I'll do some smaller things for the near future. 

Nightlighting comes next.  I think I have most of it schemed out in my head.  I'll add some extra geometry to the roof as light sources, the rest can handily originate from underneath the rim.  

Oh, I've made an almost imperceptible change to the colour of the 'plaza pink'.  It has a bit more yellow in it, and is desaturated yet more. 

I need to start making Skylon soon.  I wanted them to be released at the same or similar times.  Thankfully its a lot simpler in theory, but it poses some challenges, particularly in lighting, that I might struggle with. Now I have some props to use the plaza of Skylon should be quicker to complete.  It will be similar to, but simpler than the Dome's plaza, and should only about 4x4 in size. 

EDIT:  Just to prep the way for Skylon, here's some photos of the real thing as it was in 1951:

I don't know if you can tell from these images, but those horizontal markings are open louvres, allowing it to be lit from within.  They might be too small to replicate in SimCity.  It might be tricky to model this after all. 

A couple of years ago there were plans to rebuild Skylon, and someone made some useful renders of the structural details.  These might be helpful to me.  

I'll have some pictures of my model ready for the next update.   

After Skylon I'll do some normal buildings... I promise

[SimFox 802]

It's beautiful, beautiful, beautiful!!!

As for the plaza texture you may try to go with some of the in-game textures... First of all it will bind the thing better to the game - remember you still will need to place it on lot. Plus the color yo have now is still not perfect, it is too colorful, to cryon like...

As far as idea to place people on the plaza goes... I'm not to sure it is a good choice... may be few sitting on the benches, but not simply standing on the open spaces - that would look a bit weird...

[psander5 195]

SimFox: Thanks!  I'll look at the colours issue when I try some in-game comparisons before I do a final export.  The idea of using game textures is interesting, but Max's lighting means it takes hours of tweaking to get the rendered textures to match the game textures - I've done it before.  Its far quicker to do it the other way round in my experience, and tweak lot textures to match the rendered version - I might have a go at making some base textures to go with this.  I'm not a talented lotter so I always go with the standard white plaza, which wouldn't look great on the model. 

You've pointed out something about the people that I'd forgotten... most people actually play the game and like to see it moving!  I myself usually just play until I have a nice looking region view.  It doesn't really matter to me when things aren't animated.  I think I'll leave the people out of it. 

Here's a brief update on Skylon.  I started modelling the lozenge to see if true to scale modelling would work:

 

I know that most times its better to exaggerate small details, but I think in this case keeping the louvres thin and close together seems to me to better.  I'm pretty sure that the one on the right is more realistic, and if it comes out like that after export I'd be quite happy.  

Of course, this isn't the finished article.  I need to edit the material to give it some variation, and the lighting is only three default omnis.  They need doing properly.  Then there's the rest of the structure, but that should be pretty simple. 

Compared to my original version on page one, I think this is already an improvement!

[Amthaak 1,501]

WAOW! That's really amazing!

[mightygoose 92]

stick with the original louvres spacing.... much better, this might be something that benefits from HD rendering.....

[SimFox 802]

Actually getting in-game texture to look good to perfect in BAT (at least as far as we're talking flat sunlight areas) is not all that difficult it takes some time - not to long actually the longest time is extraction of the textures from game DATs. What has to be done is color correction taking into account tinting by game lighting and then tinting done by BAT rig. This color correction is done by numbers and takes our any need for guess work.

I have a set of such already adjusted textures, but those were made for old rig (prior to LtbL one) I'll try to make new ones this weekend...

As for Skylon itis a marvelous structure! I personally can't decide on which version is better, both have their strong points. Real life one does, however (at least in day view) look simply solid, which probably isn't the way it was suppose to be perceived...

[mightygoose 92]

guys as a question, is there a tool in max (using 2010) that allows rapid creation of grid like forms, such as the skylons skleton, or even the louvres, or is it done long hand with a big array and manual vertex adjustment..... i just can't believe its the latter.....

[Francis90b 748]

Both versions are wonderful on their own indeed ! Well, the left one shows very well how that wonderful structure should appear at day, while the right one shows how should it appear at night. Maybe you could export both of them and then merge the night views of the right one together with the day views of the left version....just like in the nightlighting method for gmax that was shown in Swat Medic's thread.One scene for day, the other for night, and then you merge the rendered images together .Perhaps that's a tricky way, but you can have all the beauty of the skylon on all the moments of the game! Oh, and on a personal point of view, i'd prefer to have the version which looks best at day. Best of luck with the skylon, it is really catching me.

[SimFox 802]

well, there is always the Lattice modifier , but it isn't really any good as it creates very very messy geomentry that at some level is gonna bite you in you know what with renderes like MR since there will be quite a bit of overlapping and coplanar faces. But if you want something quick and dirty it is one way to go. And for something very small (I mean individual "ribbs") like Skylon it may do.

Another way would be to create a "solid" shape of the Skylon chop tinny bits at top and bottom - to make it open surface, Apply Shell modifier to it, convert to Editable poly, and boolean of all the "empty spaces".

Fransic80:

there is absolutely no need for such merging for Bat4Max TruNite export. Well no need fro any extra steps, cause this is a way truNite actually works. So you can have any geometry you want as long as it fits the outline of the day one...

[mightygoose 92]

i thought boolean was the bane of all exisence? both these methods sound like they are not your preferred method, are you saying you do it theway i described, arraying lots of ribs then resizing individually, or do you not wish to disclose your secrets XD

[psander5 195]

Amthaak: Thanks!  It was a great structure that should never have been destroyed.  We have party politics to blame  

mightygoose: HD always looks nice, but I'll have to see how bad the zoom 5 is in-game before deciding weather to do an HD version.  SD should always be the default though.  This might be too big for HD treatment.  There's an HD render at the end of this post! 

 

SimFox: If its easy I might consider using game textures.  I didn't know you could get the textures directly from the DAT, or at least I don't know how yo do it myself.  The last time I needed a maxis texture I used a screenshot from the Lot editor!  I always do things in an improvised way rather than the conventional.

mightygoose - 2: I don't think there's a quick way.  For Skylon's structure I did the following:  Tapered a cylinder with 12 sides and 18 segments  - converted to editable poly (& welded the top vertices and deleted the bottom poly) - chamfered all the edges and deleted the inner polys to leave me with a polygonal lattice, then used the shell modifier to give it thickness.   For the louvres I used a clone of the same tapered cylinder, then used quick slice and the midpoint snap to chop it up into smaller segments - selected all the horizontal edges (quick slice handily selected them all for me) - used 'create shape from object' then gave the new shape (a series of splines) a rectangular thickness in the rendering rollout.  Then I mirrored everything to complete the shape. 

I don't know what everybody else thinks about that, but it works for me.  Its quite tedious though.  I use edit poly a lot in this kind of way.  Sometimes I do it when it would be better not to, but in this case there was no other way as I saw it. 

Francis90b: That thought crossed my mind when I made that image!  With truNite you can do it easy enough, so I might try it out.  Personally though I'm favouring the right hand version for both day and night.  I'll explain why below. 

   

I've added the cables pivots and anchors to the model now.  It is complete as far as components go.  I might tinker with the scaling of some bits though:

I'm working on the true scaled version, rather than the exaggerated version for now.  It would only take a few minutes to swap out the geometry though, so It's still open to a different decision.

I'm favouring this version because It is realistic when considering the viewing angle.  It's true that when seen at a perpendicular angle (like from far away ) you would be able to see daylight through it, but from around the Festival of Britain site (less than about 45 degrees) it would have looked more solid. SimCity's angle is always within range that would make it appear solid.  I think the only reason it had louvres was so it could be lit from the inside, whilst still appearing to be a heavy metal object suspended in thin air during the day.   The photographs I posted show it looking solid too. 

Plus, with the exaggerated louvres zooms 4 and downwards start to look a bit noisy. 

Like I said, It would be easy to change my mind, or to have my mind changed for me at any point  

Just for fun, here it is in HD (if you click it).  

I just have the materials to do and then decide weather to raise it onto a platform like its companion the Dome of Discovery.  It was quicker than I thought it would be to do most of the modelling on this. 

[mightygoose 92]

interesting, i would have thought you would have created the skeleton the way you created the louvres.... create shape from selection with all the edges selected, then make the spline renderable before converting back into a new editable poly... that's how i would have done it, but the method you use for the louvres fascinates me(the spliting and snap to midway bit, if it is not too much trouble would you mind elaborating on that somewhat maybe with the aid fo a picture or two...

[art128 4,618]

Amazing ! The dome is truly excellent ! I'll use it for sure in my region. Also, I'm really liking the skylon.

[Painkiller 0]

The details of the arena are stunning. I absolutely like the symmetry with variations here and there. And, the skylon is coming along great and it's a vast improvement from your very first attempt. Keep up the great work.

Regards,

Painkiller

Edit: Was albeit ambigious in my comment.

[psander5 195]

mightygoose: Sure, see below

art128: Thanks! I'm glad you like them

Painkiller: Thanks.  I'm glad you like the symmetry.  It was worrying me, but it's nice and easy to use symmetry around a circle like this.  

My computer has finally broken... terminally  My graphics card has died (something to do with the crash I mentioned in a previous update), which means I can't launch SimCity any more.  As a result, I can't test any exports or modding, so I can't release these for a while.  Max and Photoshop still work though, so I can continue to work on these and other projects.

I have the option of using some hand-me-down PC components (they would actually be an upgrade to my laptop), so I can get back up and running fairly cheaply, although the stuff I still need I can't really afford just at this moment, so I don't know when I will be able to release anything.  For the time being my computer still does everything else I need it to, just not games... so it's not really an essential expense

_____________

No updates today then, just this for mightygoose: 

To make the louvres of Skylon, I started with my tapered cylinder as an editable poly (all pics are clickable):

Then I selected all the polygons, activated the snap to midpoint and the quick slice command, and began slicing the polys, effectively turning my 18 segment tapered cylinder into one with ... a lot more... segments.  It's worth pointing out that I could have just started with a cylinder with more segments to begin with, but I didn't know how many I was going to need, so I just started with enough to make the taper work smoothly.  Plus, 18 was the right amount needed to make the other elements of the structure.

Immediately after slicing all the relevant polygons, I switched from polygon selection to edge selection.  Because of the quick slice actions, and because I did them all in one go, all of the new edges are already selected, which is handy, so all I need to do select the original segments' edges (using the selection type as - Window / Crossing - helps here):

I created a new object via Create Shape From Selection and gave it a rectangular profiled thickness in the rendering rollout:

By the way, I think this should work in Gmax too (I haven't checked), but to get the louvres to show in the render you'd have to convert them to an editable mesh.  From memory though I don't think there's a rectangular profile option in Gmax, just radial.

Sorry about the quality of the pictures too.  It seems that, bizarrely, my graphics card took with it the ability of Photoshop to paste from the clipboard, so I had to use Paint.

[SimFox 802]

I'm afraid you problem run somewhat deeper then Video card. The inability of Photoshop to receive stuff from clipboard is way beyond what video card can do/screw...

BTW check out adjusted textures:

more in Bat4Max thread

[psander5 195]

Originally posted by: SimFox

I'm afraid you problem run somewhat deeper then Video card.quote>

Aw!  I thought I knew what disease I had!  Never mind.  This computer is ready for the scrapheap anyway.  It's well outside of warranty so it would be cheaper to get another one than to take it to a tech doctor who, like a mechanic, could charge me anything as I wouldn't be able to argue...

"I fixed it, but your old core flux fantasma-gadget was faulty so I replaced it with a new one, only the one for your machine was discontinued so I had to source it from abroad.  That'll be £900 please." 

Anyway, those textures look useful indeed!  I'll be sure to try them out when you put them up. 

[psander5 195]

I don't think I'm breaking any double post/bump rules... it's been a few days, and I have a proper update to show

I've made some progress on Skylon and The Dome... I think:

Click for full zoom 5 resolution:

Click for full zoom 5 resolution:

And here's a pic of them 'shopped together:

They're supposed to go together in real life, and this is a good way to show the comparative scales of the two structures, although I'll probably lot them separately. 

 

As you can see, I've incorporated some Maxis textures into the plazas.  I'm aware that I've got the scaling wrong on the Dome's texture.  I'll fix that.  I would have used SimFox's excellently useful texture pack recently uploaded, but I'm using Max9, so they're not compatible.  I tried, then tweaked them manually

There's still a few little things I want to tinker with, but I think they're ready enough to move onto nightlighting.  

No doubt there's something I've missed though ...

[SimFox 802]

It looks great!

May be you could toned down your greens... as a matter of the fact the foliage is never really green (as green in computer applications) it always have a great deal of red in it. This in effect it makes it shade of yellow rather then green.

Another thing is a material for the Skylon itself. Right now it doesn't look right. I mean it look all black and sort of dirty... You should think of ways to fake it "proper" appearance. May be set the original color to be brighter (or remove "metal reflections". Cause as it is now... well your original GMAX thing looked better. Had any color photos of the original structure survived?

[DazzaDazza 29]

Well they look grate, I love the roof on the dome, and it looks awesome,

That will be one of those building I put in every city I builded

[psander5 195]

SimFox: I have to admit I didn't really understand what you meant by adding red to make green, yellow  but I did what you said and now I see!  I didn't change it much, but when I superimpose it onto a screenshot of the games greens, my new greens blend in.

After what you said about Skylon's texture, I began to experiment.  The Arch&Design material properties were hiding something else.  That 'dirtiness' you speak of isn't from the texture or material... it's a moire effect caused by the close parallel lines: 

 

This is a render of the louvres with a blank standard material and with no other geometry.  I'm not sure if this moire can be rectified at all let alone how it might be done.  In the mean time I think I'll switch to the other version, with the wider spaced louvres... the moire isn't present in that.  

Edit: I forgot to post this too...

This is the only colour photo I have ever been able to find of Skylon.  I didn't find it particularly useful though.

mrdazza_460: Thanks!  I'm glad you like it!

Further to my reply to SimFox, here's the Skylon with the alternative louvres (click for zoom 5):

I've been tinkering with the material and textures for hours in my usual haphazard trial and error way, and I keep going round in circles.  I thought I'd stop and post this to get some opinions on it before I got too dizzy.   If I carry on with this version of the louvres I think I'll use the other version for the night time as discussed in previous updates. 

[Vlasky 1,803]

speechless

[mightygoose 92]

thankyou for that little tutorial, the work is excellent

[psander5 195]

New Project

The Dome and Skylon are on the shelf for a while.  Lighting is proving to be more tricky than I thought, and adding lights to the dome sent the render times through the roof.  I think I need to overhaul the plants to be less demanding.  I was a little bit liberal with detail.  I don't really feel like doing it for the moment, so I moved on for the time being to this...

Colwick Woods Court:

 

I promised to make my next building more in line with my current ability.  I think this will do.  The Dome was quite ambitious, and I'm surprised it turned out as well as it did.  This is a lot more simple.  Plus it is still in existence and there are some good Google Streetview pics of it.  Not only that, I can see it from my house.  

It's a 1960's prefab building made for council housing.  It's in a pretty rough area, and will be turned into a R$ building for the game.  

There are four of these in Nottingham, but the other three were built about two miles away from this one and by apparently different contractors (they are made of different materials but identical architecture).  I'll be making those too after this one.  It should be fairly simple to get four variations out of this with some re-modelling.

The textures you can see are all 'version 1.0'.  They probably all need tweaking before they fit in with the game, but overall I'm happy with them (with the exception of the main and penthouse roof)

I have lots of details still to add such as satellite dishes, CCTV poles, roof junk and balcony props. 

I also need to do some scale adjustments maybe.  I made it according to real world scale.  At the moment it is small enough that it would fit on a 2x2 lot.

One thing I didn't really think about before I started this was my phobia of the lot editor.  Residentials, it seems to me, need much better lotting than stadia and w2w commercials.  For several reasons, I will not be able to lot this to anywhere near the required standard, so I may have to advertise for a lotting partner when it nears completion! 

I've tried to apply all of the things I've picked up in this thread before posting to see how far I've come, but I'm sure there are still obvious things I can correct...

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Prefabs! I love prefabs!

The fact that it can fit on a 2x2 is not the scale issue I think, but rather how short the floors look. Most of the elements look fine (doors & roof fences especially), its just the 15 floors sandwiched between the ground floor and the roof. This reminded me a lot of the Brewster Douglas Projects that I modeled, so I compared them in Photoshop and, although your building has 16 floors, Brewster was still taller by ~4m at only 15 floors. Now, I don't know whether that warrants a 33% scale, but I do think you should scale them so each floor is 4m tall or so.

Otherwise, this is a wonderfully hideous building! I'm not terribly familiar with it IRL, but it looks like you are doing a good job with the model. I really like the texture for the roof on the entrance/lobby. Depending on what you are going for, I think it might work for the main roof (of course with some similar staining that matches the top). When it comes to concrete sides, I don't think it looks bad, but I have found that the results of that type of slab wall usually (in my experience) look better when you model the seams. Just put a few thin bits of geometry (~0.01 usually works, just enough to keep it from being coplanar), that way you can edit the concrete material independently of the seams and the other way around.

As usual, I'll be keeping an eye on this

-Todd

[mightygoose 92]

great new project, fantastic preliminary textures...

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Hey, that prefab looks just like Frogface's Garibaldi Apartments in terms of overall shape - I guess both of you based your creations on the same type of building. You made a good choice IMO; buildings like these should be very useful in game.

[io_bg 249]

Originally posted by: T Wrecks

Hey, that prefab looks just like Frogface's Garibaldi Apartments in terms of overall shapequote>

Exactly what I was going to say

Great work on it!

[SimFox 802]

sweet council block! It is quite remarkable how british were absolutelly unprepared to live in such buildings. I guess the quality of constructions is also to blame, still...

Anyway, I only wanted t say that is when doing lighting use self illumination as much as you can. It is way, way faster and, although is in fact cheating; but gives you minute control! Of course as always when you have a lot of control over things you have to be very sensible about it.

[psander5 195]

SimHoTToDDy: I wrestled for ages about the floor height thing.  in the end i modelled it according to real world scale, meaning they are 2.6m high.  These are very scummy flats, and from what I've seen on our crime shows and gritty poverty dramas on tv, they really do have very low ceilings.  I got the fugures from Emporis, which said the building is 45.1m high and has 16 floors.  Given that the ground floor and penthouse are visibly taller than the habitable floors, I judged the floor height to be about 2.6m.  my version is proportioned as accurately as I could do it by eye.    This is the real building:

Here's the link to it on Google Street View.

I know the 4m rule is quite common, but I'm unsure if it's right for this.  Low wealth maxis blocks are usually similarly scaled from what I can see.  Stretching the floors would make this look too tall and thin.

I agree with you on the roof texture.  I made the lobby one last, and I think I am going to treat the main roof in a similar way.  I should perhaps get some roof junk on first though so I can put the stains in the right places.

I tried out the seams you suggested, but I didn't really like the results.  They were imperceptible until I made them 0.03m thick, then they sort of just washed the line clean.  Maybe that's because I didn't put a material on them though...

mightygoose: Thanks

T Wrecks: I wasn't aware of Frogface's building, but you're right!  Buildings like this can be found in just about every city in the UK and were all built at the same time by the government, so they might even have been the same architects.  

io_bg: Thanks

SimFox: Yep, they served a purpose though I suppose.  At the time we needed council homes, so up they went in their hundreds.  Many have since been torn down, but there are stil lots of them being used as council homes.  Usually they're in the worst parts of town.  

When you say use self illumination, do you mean it's possible to fake spotlights or floodlights, or are you referring to windows?  The Dome doesn't have any windows, so all of the lights I've been shining on it have been physical spotlights... dozens of them so far!