SimHoTToDDy BATs

[mightygoose 92]

HUH??? Quadruple sequential posting.... a word at a time... lool

make that seven posts in a row, thats gotta be a new record....

[thingfishs 416]

well, if you are more or less what !?!

(btw thanks for that concise summary of the steps of making prop families, it will be useful for me too; what a contrast between that post and these)

[Renedius 25]

some one gets too much posts

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Originally posted by: mightygoose

HUH??? Quadruple sequential posting.... a word at a time... lool

make that seven posts in a row, thats gotta be a new record....quote>

Sometimes the forums do that, reveal each word with a new post. Nobody really knows why… T-wrecks didn’t post 7 times in a row on purpose.

The record as far back as I can remember was Fern244, who managed to make 35! (yes a whole page!) posts in a row. It wasn’t his fault, crazy ol’ ST sometimes does strange things.

Anyways, I cleaned it up. Sorry for the mini-hijack Todd.

[DazzaDazza 29]

well the buildings look grate, I like the variations of the same building allows to crate a more realistic cluster of the same building

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

WOW!!! I like your Apartment buildings it perfect.

[delija21 295]

Maybe you should just stop with modeling and lotting of other versions and just release these beautys before you continue with other versions...otherwise you are never going to release them,and that's not really a nice thing to do ))

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Thanks everyone!

Mightygoose: I don't quite share your enthusiasm about that particular model, although it is a really cool building (Thats why I picked it in the first place). I'm slowly fixing some of the issues I have with it, hopefully I can finish it at one point or another.

Cockatoo: Thanks for cleaning things up! I have had worse in my old CJ

Delija: Well the modeling was pretty much done, everything was a matter of moving parts around to form the setup I needed. I modeled things modularly so I could do that quickly when the time came. I just need to add nightlights on the two Shorter "long blocks" and I should be able to move things along.

As if anyone were wondering how far along I am, here is an accurate (in SC4 terms) layout of the city so far.

There are only 2 or 3 models you see that I don't plan on releasing, one of which is that useless FAR version.

Remind me never to use FAR for roads again, talk about a nightmare

So much done yet so much left to do...

[Painkiller 0]

Dayum nice recreation of the city. I'm assuming that you BATed all those awesome models? Keep it up.

Regards,

Painkiller

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Huh? Has anyone kept a screenshot of my unintentional multiple single-word post? I've never seen anything like that, and my reply displayed properly on my computer. Odd stuff.

"We need an old admin and a young admin!" 

[Francis90b 748]

That was quite an impressive shot, Todd. Seems like to see the whole city taking shape ! How's about the Philadelphia rowhouses you did model some time ago? (hate to ask this way, but i'm really interested about them )

[Delecto 941]

Outrageous, grandiose, exaggerated... ...talk about a recreation my friend, this is an exact replica.

Good luck!

[nofunk 1,933]

OK seriously? I just looked up Pripiat on Google maps... Todd you are ridiculous! Your re-creation is incredibly accurate.

What's really interesting, looking at Google, is how all of the city streets are missing from the map. They really do want this city to disappear.

[Roger51 381]

WOW that is brilliant stuff there, going to look awsome once completed

[nofunk 1,933]

Originally posted by: SimHoTToDDy

I don't plan on making these HD, I just wanted to show some detail.

And on that note, here are some more

quote>

Todd! Buddy! Whatever happened to these?!

[psander5 197]

Nice reminder nofunk! I remember wanting those too

That game view of Pripiat is superb! It looks like quite an endeavour!

[Roger51 381]

Great work, and wonderful realism in all your BAT's, and those W2W (??) look great, wish you could release those

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I'm a little late, but it's great to see Pripiat all laid out like that. It'll look amazing once you get all of the flora and stuff put in there too.

[Evillions 552]

You really should release the FAR version, there's barely any FAR compatible buildings and people tend to use it especially in gritty Russian cities. Besides, you should release all of them, they look ready.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Ugh! Quit dragging my skeletons out of my closet! I put them in there for a reason!!! (I'm looking at you Francis and Nolan!)

I'll get to them at one point. The only reason I stopped was the poor scene management on my part. None of the models were centered when I copied them to do different color versions, I didn't keep track of the roof texture, plus I forgot to move the chimney for the mirrored versions etc. etc. etc... I want to get back to them, really badly I might add, I just need to do some house keeping on them. I'll probably Fix up a Regular one plus a corner building, then re-do the variations properly. In retrospect, I really don't like the materials I used on most of them.

I'm Still working on my super secret project, so most everything is on hold until I finish that. The thing is I am running into memory problems. Whether or not they are actually memory related or just some shortcoming on my part is still in question, but everything seems to be pointing to issues with the scene. I keep getting a "Mem 0.3 Fatal 031008: Can't Allocate xxxx bytes" (may be 0.4 in some cases, and the size is in the tens of millions of bytes range {MB, yes?}). My scene was around 330k polies, but I simplified it my merging objects and such to around 180k and it still happens, both numbers are still pretty low for this to be happening from what I can tell. The error occurs before the last bucket / final gather starts (Simfox can correct me on the terminology of that one), which seems to be suspicious to me. I can render each of the 7layers my geometry is on with no problems, but it brakes when I try all of them at once(which makes it seem like its something I'm doing wrong).

The UI for the Memory limit in MAX 2010 is gone, so I can't play with that (it supposedly chooses the appropriate value), however I might try a manual override in case I am, in fact, running out of memory. Also tried the 3GB switch, but I don't believe I got it to work. The "During startup, select the 3GB option. If you do not select the 3GB option, the system will default to the 2GB total memory setting." step in the tutorial to activate it is the only part giving my grief, where does this option appear to select it?

Should I just keep connecting things and hope for the best or is there something else I should try?

[delija21 295]

Hi mate....i don't know what OS you are using but here is tutoriali've used for rendering my blok63, and it worked perfect. Just remember to rurn it off after rendering

http://www.cadforum.cz/cadforum_en/qaID.asp?tip=5551

[Odainsaker 2,135]

Originally posted by: SimHoTToDDy

Also tried the 3GB switch, but I don't believe I got it to work. The "During startup, select the 3GB option. If you do not select the 3GB option, the system will default to the 2GB total memory setting." step in the tutorial to activate it is the only part giving my grief, where does this option appear to select it?quote>

I had alot of grief with this part as well, and hopefully the solution for you will be a easy as mine was.  There is an XP option, never specified in any of the little online guides, that specifies "Time to display list of operating systems: ___ seconds."  It's default on my system was set to zero seconds and then further disabled, hence, the startup operating system selection option was never displayed.  The settings should be found in:

My Computer-->Properties-->System Properties-->Advanced tab-->Startup and Recovery settings-->System startup box

Zero seconds, and disabled as well...lots of hair pulling, towards which I think the techies deliberately set this up just for laughs.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I've been getting that error too.  I don't really think that I should be getting that error, and I don't think you should either.  One time I was rendering something non-BAT related, and I was watching the memory usage go higher and higher, and it got really high, and then it crashed, and I think that is really where it should be crashing (the scene's rendering settings were higher, it had more polygons, and the materials were more intense than with my BAT scenes).  Your scene is pretty wimpy, and shouldn't be a problem.  One Woodward Avenue has been causing that problem a lot while exporting, and it's not as wimpy, but I still don't think it should be crashing.

Amthaak was also recently having memory problems.  I'm trying to think back to when I first started having this problem, and it was in January, which was when I started using the latest BAT4Max, but it's also the first time I was working in big scenes in Max 2010, so I don't know if it's just coincidental, or if there's something wonky in BAT4Max which is somehow causing memory problems.  But I don't know enough about either to be able to say anything meaningful about it.

Througout January I was also having another error ("Attempt to Access Null DB Tag"), and I searched the internet forever, and finally found this list of mental ray errors and suggestions for fixing them, and I think I finally fixed that problem.  http://thnkr.com/wiki/index.php?title=All_known_mental_ray_error_messages

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

You are a life saver Odainsaker, I have been in that panel many times but never thought that the solution was right there

It works, but I'm still not convinced that is an end all solution to the issue at hand here. I watched MAX's memory usage raise at about 300KB/s after the first bucket (at which point is was going anywhere from 100kb to 3MB/s), by then end of the last bucket / before final gather the memory usage had climbed to around 1.3GB, but once it started the FG it dropped down to 1.1GB and seized to climb at all. Its like it isn't releasing any of the memory as it goes along, culminating in a error when it reaches its maximum. I'm not really savvy of what is going on here, I was only introduced to the term "voxel" yesterday so Simfox can probably tear me a new rear end in technicalities. I do not think, however, that it is a coincidence that this is happening to a lot of people in 3ds max 2010.

[Gilikov1994 4]

I love your work Todd!

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Thanks for the support Gilikov!

Ok, so after working on Fisher Body 21 for some time, I needed to take a breather. I actually just did a system restore and needed to re-install everything so I haven't BATed anything in a while Francis and Nolan, on top of wanting to do something easy, convinced me to work on my dear old small shops/rowhouses again. Here is the progress on the new textures:

I'm keeping these much more organized so that I don't go though the hassle I did last time. I'll get to the more colorful ones in time, don't you worry

I'm also thinking of putting the wall ads in as props, so all I have to do is put a few families on the lot.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I see corner buildings... very good!

[art128 4,618]

Wow, looks great, will fits well in my rural cities !

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

T Wrecks: I actually made those a while ago in the first batch, but never showed them. Whenever people make rowhouses, they (almost) always forget corner units.

Art: I was thinking more small town centers, but back when these were built they were essentially an island in a sea of farmland.

I added 3 more, thats all I had time to make today, but it is spring break so I should be able to get some more done

[nofunk 1,933]

I wub them.