BAT's by Grant

[granto93 4]

Bat's By Grant

Most of you here on Simtropolis already know me for my many unsuccessful CJ's, now im entering the world of BATing...which will hopefully be successful . Im a relative newbie at BAT but thanks to my good friend toki.s ive learned alot of the basics and will hopefully work my way into more complicated models in the future. I really don't know what prompted me to do this, it was just a spur of the moment decision and with lots of help and inspiration the results have been pretty good so far. I welcome the toughest of critics to tell me how to improve and offer you're wealth of knowledge.

My first project is the Fortis Tower in my hometown of St. John's, Canada. It is a relatively simple design to get me started off but im very impressed with what ive achieved so far.

Below is my almost complete version. As you can see i do not have any texturing started or roofjunk and the like but im working on it

Thats all for now! Please leave a comment if you have anything to say

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Looks good for the most part. Just a few questions. Is the picture re sized, or on low anti-aliasing? The render makes the edges look very jagged. Walls look a bit thin, but it might just be the picture quality throwing me off. Oh, and what is going o with the shadows at the top of the utility shack, there is nothing there... hmmm...

I'd say you are doing a great job, but I'll have to see how you texture this up

-Todd

[granto93 4]

no, the picture is not resized but the quality is very low. i had to do the preview render on draft because i was having a bit of problems rendering etcetra, also it might be the way i resized the model. Ill get that checked out And the shadows, there is supposed to be an antenna up there but for some reason it never showed up. I guess its all part of learning

thanks for the support!

[JakeMD 107]

Wow Grant, Didn't think you could BAT, Great job so far!

And the shadows, there is supposed to be an antenna up there but for some reason it never showed up. I guess its all part of learningquote>

I suppose you made it out of a spline? Make sure you add an edit-mesh modifier on there, to make it show up in the render.

[art128 4,618]

great start on that BAT Grant

[allez l'om 1]

Your BAT gets a greatful start!!! for a firts BAT, it's already perfect!!

[jacqulina 162]

great looking building

happy new year

[Gn_leugim 853]

that's a nice choice for your first attempt looking forward to see more..

[Francis90b 748]

I agree with the post above, this is a nice try.Since you need to do texturing, i would suggest you to download a free but good program to tweak your textures.The program is called the GIMP and works somewhat like photoshop.If you need some textures to start, you can search for pics of the materials you would like to use and edit them until they looks nice.

[granto93 4]

swat-medic: ah, thanks for the reminder im still new so i will forget some things.

art128: thanks

allez l'om: haha! thanks man but i wouldnt call it perfect yet still alot of work to do.

jacqulina: thank you jacky! happy new year to you too!

Gn_leugim: thank you.

joint1: yeah, i already have the GIMP. for the next few days ill work on coming up with something in the texture department. thanks for the advice!

anyways guys, just a small update for today. ive worked a little bit on some roof junk and put in a couple doors. im by no means finished but id like to know how you all think its shaping up.

[Gn_leugim 853]

the doors look good.. although a preview image would be better to say..

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Looks good. I think the antenna on the roof could use more of a base/ structure than just a line. They kinda look weird. You may also want to add a bit more of a wall on the utility shack so it doesn't look like a box so much. Don't over kill, just add about as much as the back of the building and it should be good.

Can't wait to see textures

-Todd

[granto93 4]

another little update for you guys. last night i got started with the roof textures and pretty much finished off the roof junk. i like how it turned out

a preview render for you...

[kant01 5]

Looking really good! Roof looks great. I like the detail and the discolored blotches. Looking forward to seeing more

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Looks very good, my only complaint is that the texture seems a bit noisy in the lightest white spots, but that might just be the image quality. Anyway, nice job.

-Todd

[Francis90b 748]

I agree with SimHoTToDDy, maybe you can lower the contrast to fix the noise on the lighter parts, but it looks quite good so far.

[spa 968]

Hey grant, didn't see your thread until now. I'm impressed. This is a good starting bat and well chosen (nice and boxy which are the easiest to do). Have you textured the walls yet? If so try adding some noise (not too much). It's pretty plain. If it's not textured yet, ignore me Anyway, it'll be great to see some St. John's buildings in the game.

[nihonkaranws 88]

Good start there Grant. However, I have a few suggestions...

Concerning rendering time, I see you are using a cylinder primitive for your ladder, am I right? If you plan to use multiple cylinders to act as a railing along the building's roof, your rendering time may become quite long. I suggest that when you hold 'shift' to duplicate, you choose the 'instance' option. This will make an exact duplicate of your cylinder/tube, therefore allowing Gmax to render only one cylinder, but duplicating the information. This can cut the long rendering time (due to several objects) in half, and even 1/3, 1/4, and so on... But make sure you only use instances if you do not plan to change the duplicates. (Whatever you do with any object will happen to all its instances.)

The building on the roof doesn't seem to have a door in it, but no need to worry about remaking a rectangle, attaching to a doorway, and extruding. Simply use Boolean.

Place a box about the size of your door, but extended out widthwise, and select your main wall, go create > compound objects > boolean, and hit 'pick operand B'. Now select your box, and done! You can do this again if you want another door.

[granto93 4]

kant01: thank you. i was rather impressed by it myself

SimHoTToDDy: thanks man. i've thought about your suggestion for the roof and have decided to leave it as is for now, though that very well could change before release day. I thought it looked fine but if i get many more comments on it ill definately change it. better to have things done right i guess.

joint1: thanks man, and as i said to Todd, im still considering it. Ill revisit it when i do the very last minute touch ups.

spa: yay! i never thought i'd see the day when the legendary spa was commenting on MY bat thread thanks for the kind words my friend. Oh, and no that render was completely untextured except for the roof. i just keep the splines the colour they are in real life to avoid confusion till i get better. You'll see the textured version today, though it really doesnt look that much different xD

nihonkaranws: no, im actually not using any cylinders, just one simple rectangles....if it makes a difference and yeah, im pretty sure i did use instance for the ladder part anyway. also, thanks for the door tutorial it will come in helpful, i guarantee.

------------------------------

Okay, back to business. I now have for you, my fully textured, almost complete Fortis Tower. The only think i have left to do is nightlighting which i am having a bit of trouble with. Im finding some of the tutorials a bit confusing and i was wondering if anyone here could help clarify and maybe offer some tips for best results. I know my showcase thread probably isnt the place to ask these questions but im willing to do anything to get this done right now

[nihonkaranws 88]

Doing great! However, try to reduce the contrast on your roof texture... And the texture of the white concrete walls is a bit too bright for my liking. For such a big building, you may want a big more, bigger roof junk... Test it out in SC4 and show us, more advice may be given through comparison to other BATs. Good luck my friend! ^^

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

I think it looks good. I have more problems with the image quality than the actual modeling, I can see places that are messy because of JPEG conversion or just a low quality render. Are you setting the preview setting in GMAX to high, and are you keeping the image quality at 100 (or max) when you save as .jpg? I know you said it is hard to do renders, but it is important at this stage to see exactly what is going on.

The white wall texture might be a tad bright, but I think it will be ok. I would say to add a subtle gradient and a bit of "texture" to the wall so it dosn't look like a flat color. Like Spa said, add some "noise". It is kinda like the roof, only FAR more subtle, and far less difference between light and dark blotches. I also agree that there should be a bit more roof junk. Something simple you can do it take your ac units with the fans, scale them up, and stick them on your utility shack, and maybe add another square vent here and there.

Might have to compare it in game to check the brightness, but I think this is coming along nicely. I would give you some lighting tips, but GMAX is very different than 3ds Max.

Best of luck,

-Todd

[granto93 4]

nihonkaranws: thank, you. i plan to do a high quality render in the near future...probably tomorrow so i really can evaluate the textures. They are looking closest to real life right now and thats what im aiming for, ugly or not but i will fool around in photoshop and see if i can grime things up a bit. thanks my friend

SimHoTToDDy: ugh yes i agree i really do have to set aside some time to do a good proper render for you guys. Most of the time i was running other programs at the same time so i really couldnt do a good one without setting aside my other commitments. As i said above, expect to see one soon, maybe tomorrow. And thanks for the advice on textures. Ill get right to photoshop and see what i come up with. Thanks for your continuing support Todd! i wouldnt be doing this if it werent for the dedicated people like yourself

---------------------------------------------

okay guys, i know ive been kind of dead here lately but i still have been working slowly but surely, mostly in photoshop and with roof junk and all that little stuff. I dont have a picture update right now, just a bit of a verbal summary of whats going on and a little reminder that im still committed to this I have started night lighting, after a bit of confusion at first. Once again toki.s along with the help of BAT Essentials bailed me out. As i said in the replies i hope to have a good render up soon but i cant make any commitments. Exams are coming up next week so im hard at work with that..... plus a little party on the side to ease the stress hehe. But yeah, back on topic. if i dont have anything by this wednesday, dont expect one till about mid next week. Some personal stuff occuring in between there, along with exams and yeah...the stresses of being a teenager. But this will get done i assure you guys. ive put too much time into it to not finish it. When i finish i have another little (big) project in mind which will challenge every skill i learned in this process. stay tuned for that

phew, thats about it i guess!

[spa 968]

Hey Grant. This one is coming along. The roof looks fairly done. At this point, what's holding you back is the textures. It would be great to have more varied glass so that the windows differed from one and other and were less like black holes. Your street glass could really use some dressing up and the blue awning like stuff is a tad bright. If you haven't seen them already, I would recommend checking out Jasoncw's texturing tutorials (in his signature) and 6455987's Toronto bat thread (page 16 I think). Their tips will be a big help (they were for me). Here's a few pointers I'll throw out.

1. In setting your window opacity don't use the opacity settings on the right below the color box. In my experience that particular opacity option is useless. Instead, scroll down in the same window and open the maps tab. Scroll down again to the opacity box and click on where it says none. Choose the same texture you're using for the window. To adjust how transparent your glass is, alter the number next to opacity. It starts at 100 which is perfectly transparent and goes to 0 which is completely opaque. I typically set the glass on my models in the 20-40 range so that you can see some details from my floor textures

2. To liven up your textures search for a random pattern like tree bark, rust or something else like that. In an image editing program that supports layers create a new layer and use the random pattern. Set the random pattern to overlay and adjust its opacity. You'll probably also want to play with the layers colour, brightness and possibly the contrast as well (often times I find its easy to completely desaturate the pattern layer). Play around with the settings until you get something that works. If you get it right, you'll find the difference is pretty dramatic.