hkabat-forum-threads Amthaak BATS Thread

[Vlasky 1,803]

It looks amazing! Another hit when it hits the stex!

[Simbourgeois 139]

Oh la la, que c'est beau

Just one comment on the facade: in the good old days the hotel didn't have windows in the middle of each flank of the building, as you can see in this picture. I must say that I prefer the old version. Those balconies (don't know how you call them if they don't come out of the building - niches?) add a kind of a nice accent to both sides of the building, even from the distance, as seen in this picture. But, of course, I am somehow quite conservative and very often dislike modern "improvements" of the origianal architecture. Anyways, here is another picture of this magnificent building; can't wait to have it in my city!!!

Bien cordialement,

Simbourgeois

Maire de Belleville

[Amthaak 1,501]

HA! Cher maire de Belleville, mon ami! Beautifull pics indeed! I will not debate on the subject "old id better than new" and the "contrary", because "on ne discute pas les goûts et les couleurs". Personnaly there are few things that I deeply dislike on the old building like the buildings on the roof and the fire escape stairs on the main facade...! Just for that, the new one was a great improvement. Just my personnel opinion!

But, of course there were things better before and better after, I am afraid it will be an endless discussion

Between you and me I am wondering (as it's a virtual world ...!) maybe I can keep some details wich were nice before and add them to the actual bdg. Create in fact a kind of  "ideal of The Peninsula" (if it exits...)

I can for instance keep the doors open on the top fo the old building in order to have a look on the inside swimming pool...!

Now for all my friends who really spent time for me , I am still looking for pics of the upper parts of the old bdg.

Thanks again fot all of you who support this thread

[Amthaak 1,501]

I know it's hard to find these pics, I spent 2 hours today (at least...) with no success. Well , I started to work on the roof of the old building. Herafter 2 pics, the second one was photoshoped and it is closer to what  should be the final result. I just need to know if it close to reality as I am not very shure of the appearence of the top of the old Bdg.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

It looks very nice; once again you've proven yourself as an excellent modeller. I am just a little concerned about some of the textures though. Some seem distorted. You do know about UVW mapping don't you? If you haven't already, apply UVW maps to your textured objects and in general reduce the size (co-ordinates) to bring the textures themselves into better focus.

Texture applied to an object without UVW mapping:

Same texture applied to the same object but with UVW mapping (box) co-ordinands of 20,20,20:

This is what I can see needs to be fixed up:

[Simbourgeois 139]

Yes, I completely agree, those stairs looked ugly...

Bien sûr, you're free to create your own ideal Peninsula, and be reassured that I will reserve an excellent place for it in the very centre of Belleville!

Today it's Chinese New Year! So Happy New Tiger Year

Bien cordialement,

Simbourgeois

Maire de Belleville

[Amthaak 1,501]

Dear Simbourgeois, cher ami! Thanks for your chineese new year wish! Today for me it's "ma ma hou hou" (has to be pronounced ( ma ma rou rou) which litteraly means , "horse horse tiger tiger" and french " coucy couça " . Etonnant! non?!

Dear Coockatoo! Well of course I know UVW mapping (  however, I don't know unwrap UVW, which seems to be important to know, as , if I well remember,  SimFox advised you to use it for your last bdg).

Let me explain my approach in order to tell me if it's right or not:

Here is a closer pic, I will use for explaination:

For "texturing" part I use essentially

Arch+design materials (1)

then I choose between 3 templates options depending the appearance I want i.e. matte, pearl or glossy finished (2)

(That's of course not including windows, I use for that Transparent material, Glass thin Geometry)

Then I choose a specific map in General maps folder for the diffuse Color(3).

Then I can also add some mapping Bump with a specific map.(4)

This resulting map (1)+(2)+(3)+(4) can be, using UVW mapping "applied " with "planar" or "box" and "multiplied" using U tiles and V tiles .

For instance the "Marble" walls, I use a glossy finished (as I want a little reflection) the I use a Marble map, the UVW mapping box, U tile :3 and V tile:3

I am afraid, according to your post,  that it's not very convincing, one more time, the result on the close pic is okay, but with  the SC4 render, it's not really good. the problem is maybe coming by the fact that the marble map is not adapted, and the U and V tiles factors to high...

For roof edge, I use a matte finished, and I add a bump map to create an apperance of "irregular" appearance of durty/pollution/humidity/mouldy effect. I used UVW mapping "planar" with U tiles: 3 and V tile: 2 (5)

Hereafter some pics in complements to my "foggy" or "froggy" explainations 

I put between "", my tanslation, which might not be correct, so, sorry for any confusion it might  occur.

(1) , (2) , (3) , (4)

(5)

Example of maps I use for diffuse Color

Marble

roof edge

As I already said, for these maps I use multiplying factors for the U and V tiles.

I can sometimes make my own map. They "cover intirely the object and are not "multiplicated"

old Bdg diffuse map, for instance:

Example of special purpose maps/Bump map for roof edge:

Thanks for your advises and comments

[SimFox 802]

^^

those stairs?

What stairs? where?

PS

my message was a bit too late as it refers to one by Simbourgeois...

As for the Amthaak message...

Sorry to ask (I guess I did it already many times) what is your version of 3ds Max?

Regardless of that, I wouldn't recommend using those Pearl or Glossy finish presents. In most cases at SC4 zoom levels all you get is much increased render times. Of course in some cases such material may be justified but you should really understand both the need of it and practicality (eg would selecting such finish actually make any visual impact).

Glossy finish isn't one with little reflection, but rather with a very blurry reflections.Actually the whole term is wrong as it is inverted... Really glozsy reflection is a moirror one. So what people are calling glossy is in fact something with reduced (nt added) glossines. Problem is that that blurriness, that will cost you a lot of render time, will be negated by scale of things (including in some cases the distance between reflecting surface and reflected object. In normal rendering there are several effective optimization techniques. But those do not work in BAT due to orthographic nature of cameras used.

Same goes for Bump Map. In SC4 it is only practical (imho) for distorting reflections, not actually creating any visual detail.

As for individual materials. I think you should rethink your marble first of all. It just doesn't work. Period. At close up the repetitive nature of the bitmap is striking. At game zoom it will all turn into messy goo.

I've already several times voiced my objection of your use of non-standard zooms to preview (and show) your progress. You don't seem to care for those remarks though. But I still think I should bring it up.

The real problem here is hat you spend tons of time doing something that is wrong - you think you've achieved some effect, but in fact you didn't. Once the model is rendered in proper zooms (say zoom5) it all be either gone or working very badly.

I know I sound sort of nasty, since most of the rest just come here to add another portion of "Oh-ah's"

General rule of thumb you shouldn't use Plannar mapping for anything that is not 2d eg have any perceivable hight. It look messy since your map is simply smeared on 3rd dimension.

[mightygoose 92]

i would agree in fact with simfox on virtually every count. Your texture work he's being left behind compared to your batting. I feel that your UVW maps need work and that many of your textures are over saturated. i will have another look for photos of the old roof and back.

[Amthaak 1,501]

3dsmax 2008:

SC4 render zoom 5 south & East

[Amthaak 1,501]

I'm just currently working on some trees  (Palm) to add on the top of the old Bdg!

[tcx 170]

wow those palms look great !!!!

I've been looking for tutorials about modelling palms, do you have links? or can you do one tutorial, please.

[HONG KONG 74]

The palm trees are really very nice. I'm curious how it looks in comparison to those in game. will you publish them also as props?

[Roger51 381]

Great palm trees, hope to see them in-game.

[Amthaak 1,501]

Thanks for your comments about the palms. They are just generated using the onyx garden suite, very good tool indeed...! (thank you SimFox, BTW, I really do appreciate all your comments, and certainly even the ones which push me to ameliorate , I re discover your excellent tutorial Forces of Light and the Geometry of Shadows, evrything is already said, sorry again , I should be more attentive...).

Hong Kong: good idea, I would like (when I'll have time) to make a god mod tree for palms. Unfortunatly, I don't know how to do it. Well if somebody has some knowledge (and want to share..., I know, there is less and less people sharing these days), He (or she) is super welcome...!

[tankmank 853]

Those palm trees and tropical plants are uber amazing

[Amthaak 1,501]

F2 - It might surprise you to know that:  I like batting!

A small update before starting the new tower:

And for the pleasure of the eyes (mine at least...!)

That's what I call the "chineese touch"...!

[Roger51 381]

That is amazing, can't wait to see the top half.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

100% Win.

Did you model those lion statues? They look fantastic.

[Bastet69008 1,102]

Absolument MA-GNI-FI-QUE!! I love it! I love the palm trees (would be great to release a prop pack ) Are these the final textures?

[gottago 24]

The model looks great but it looks like your ornamental stonework --the banded limestone base particularly, and also the window frames--are just a color and not textured. Most of the materials look flat and schematic, particularly the roof and the stonework details; perhaps you are just starting work on the textures and the grey stone wall texture is the only one finished so far, but if not, you should work more on them, making textures for specific areas and weathering and aging them too animate the building and give it life.

About the roof textures: it looks like the specularity for all the materials is set to default; there's no variation in light/reflectiveness. The stone floor is going to have a different reflectiveness than the metal roof coping, which will be more reflective than the flat roofing, and so on. Right now it all looks like the same material but with different tonalities and colors; there's no "life" to it.

BTW the palms are fantastic.

[Ke|is 3,333]

Amazing work my friend

[SimFox 802]

Lions are fab! care to share t4hem with your brothers at arms (at pixels)?
 

Project progressing along nicely… I would suggest to you now to try to mass the whole thing together, and then to return to the details. Otherwise it is easy to lose perspective. I say this now cause I see you’re starting on the modern tower bit, and you do it from the detail level – not a best approach. Try to go from general to particular, not other way around. I know most viewers like those little things, but…
 

In terms of modeling you have quite a bit of co-planars here and there (corners of the ground floor, green sun shades(?)).
 

Material wise, I share some of the Gottago concerns. His references to reflectivey (I’d add a secular one) are very, very right. It may be a bit more challenging in BAT then normal application because of orthographic view and relative position of light source. None the less it is a great tool to bring something alive.
 

 Roof look dead and totally disconnected from either rest of the model, reality or SimCity. It look more like some level design of the 3d game back from 1989 or so… Try to do weathering the last… I mean you should first have your building in a more or less completed way to properly gage the need of it and particularly the scale (strength of it). Also when you do it you should avoid those blob like effects you have on the roof now. It looks like an army of cats had been naughty on the carper…
 

Main wall material is also a bit off. I mean it, first of all way, way to dark and in your face. The “brick” work should be just a hint, not hit on the head with a sledge hammer. But I assume it is more or less a place holder at this moment, right?

[Amthaak 1,501]

Dear SimFox , thanks for your patience, I am glad you are persisting giving me your advices even if my case seems to become a desperated one (material wise...!).

About the roof (i am not trying to excuse myself), it difficult for me to have an idea of how it is as the pics I have are quite "contradictory":

On this pic , the roof looks grey (maybe some reflection because the rain, or because it's metal?????, anyway very close to the "metallic" (I suppose??) edge of  the roof)

On this pic the central part is light grey (certainly because it's sunny) and definetly clearer than the edge. I tell you, that's make me really confused...!

I followed for batting the first pic because there is a really better definition, but it seems that in term of mapping job I should follow the second one! Well, I am quite lost (desesperated....!)

[gottago 24]

Hi Amthaak,

I'm answering your PM about texturing here. You said you were using the Max material library texture maps (as for terminology, what everyone calls textures are "maps') for everything so far. Generally, unless it's a small object, you'd do best to forget the default Max texture maps and instead build a library of your own, and make object-specific textures from them for each important element of your model. Some of the arch/design maps are good, but almost every texture you'll end up applying will need to be tweaked for color/saturation/tone, and have weathering applied to make it harmonize with the others and mimic the RL building. Otherwise they will simply be schematic, plastic-looking textures, because they are made mostly for use in schematic presentations and are just the starting point for making an architectural model look realistic. You've obviously mastered modeling, but for the BAT to really be a success, you also have to master textures and Photoshop (or Gimp) and spend as much or more time working on them as you do detailing your model. It will pay off big time.

Two of the best websites for good arch'l textures are arroway.de and cgtextures. Both have tons of high-quality textures that you can DL for free--so go through both of them and grab everything you think you'll ever need and then organize it all by material--stone, brick, metal, roofing, pavement, etc.--so you can actually find it again and use it. It also helps to make a special folder just for the BAT you're working on and put your specialty textures in there for easy access and reference. Arroway supplies full texture maps--diffuse, specular and bump--and load them all in the ME; the specular and bump maps are pretty much worthless in gmax but they'll make a difference in Max, even at the small scale of sc4 BATs.

You asked about the roof and your basic stone texture, and I went back through the thread and found pics of each. Here's the roof from an earlier post:

I hadn't actually seen it before I posted, and have to admit I've never seen such a near-pristine roof before--it looks like you could eat off it, it's so clean!--but I suspect such immaculate, perfectly detailed roofs are some sort of Oriental corporate/arch'l fetish. Bref, the textures you have on it now are pretty good, color and tonality-wise, but need more reflectivity to give them a sense that they are metal. The photo is shot on an overcast day, but you can see that the material (some kind of anodized, bronze-colored sheet metal) already gives off an even, pretty noticeable sheen, and this will be even more reflective in the bright sun of SC4. (As for the two pictures you posted above, they must have been taken years apart and the roof was redone between them--it's impossible that one material could look so different in two photos, and you might as well stay with what you have and ignore the other one.) Don't apply matte as you're doing now, but use the standard specularity and glossiness sliders in the ME to tweak the reflective qualities of the texture. (Stay with the default blinn checkbox; it's easier to deal with than metal, which I've never had any success with.)

Specularity is overall reflectiveness, and glossiness sharpens and intensifies highlights. You can see from the pic that the roof material has a fairly high specularity and fairly low glossiness, so set specularity around 30% and glossiness around 15%, perhaps more, and do a test render to see what happens. (I set the "base glossiness" to 10--what "shine" a dull material would give off, since just about any material will have some gloss to it, and apply that automatically to almost all textures, even matte ones, to get some automatic contrast going on. Glossiness is pretty potent, so raising it a bit does a lot). If it looks funny, tweak the percentages in the sliders until you get good effect that gives you some real highlights--a sense of sun striking and reflecting a lot of light, but without burnout.

The stone floor should also get higher specularity and especially for the big central portion it would be worth it to do a 1-to1 texture like you did for the big roof panels and weather it slightly around the edges and where other elements are on top of it to give it more interest.

The texture of the lower level of roof flashing on top of the cornice is too dark and could be lightened 10-15% and given a higher specularity; start out around 20%, with default glossiness, and play with it from there.

About the basic wall texture, here is another photo from an earlier post:

Unfortunately the facade is in shadow--it'd be great to find a shot like this in full sun, btw--but you can see that the building is basically entirely made of a pale grey stone that is fairly cold (more blue than yellow), and that this stone was used for both the walls and architectural details and window surrounds, since there's no color difference between them. Your wall texture is far too dark--it's a medium grey--though the tonality and the scale of the individual blocks are good. If you can't find another that is closer in tone and does not have dark grout lines, you should run it through PS to lighten it significantly (work mainly with image>reglages>correction selective, and begin by lowering the levels of black in the grey and black components independently of the other colors, rather than just using luminosity/contrast, as this will alllow you a lot more fine-tuning; then you can use luminosity/contrast at the end to tweak it, and you might have to drop the overall saturation as well). This should also help to reduce the intenstiy of the near-black grout that outlines the stones, and it can be further reduced by dropping the amount of black in your blacks (I know it sounds stupid) when you are in correction selective.

The combo of mental ray and the sc4 lightrig in Max has a tendency to make renders of light-colored models dull, flat and pastel and washed out, so it's good to exaggerate any contrast you have in light textures and give them high specularity to mimic the effect of bright sc4 sunlight. (I used an off-white plaster texture for my last BAT; initial renders were an ugly flat, dull grey, and I had to lighten the texture to near-white and push up specularity to 50% to get a decent-looking effect of light walls with a sun-struck look--the material ball in the ME looked totally burned out with brightness, but the render looked great).

Basically, the facades are pretty clean and have more openings  than surface, and the BAT is large, so there's not much point to weathering the wall texture; it won't show much. The sills and coping stones and the tops of the window frames and cornices are going to catch the most soot and are easier to deal with, so make separate textures for them using your lightened wall texture as a starting point. For the cornices, you can pick out a small section about 6 blocks long and 2 high (it doesn't have to be big, but long and thin) and remove the stone courses by using the selection box tool to highlight a thin strip just next to the coursing line and then copy/pasting this and nudging it on top of the dark line to cover it over with stone texture that will blend in seamlessly. You can finish it off with the clone tool then you'll have a basic stone texture that has the same tonality as the original without the coursing lines. Save this, and you can use it to apply to all the small architectural details and the columns, none of which have joint lines. (If the stonework is too notecable and you're getting a patchwork look on these elements, then copy of the texture and apply a gaussian blur to it to make a version that keeps the same tonality but doesn't show individual stones.) Make another copy of the first, unblurrred version and apply some muddy greys and sepia tones to mimic the dirt that will collect and streak on these elements. Add a few somewhat darker vertical lines 2-3px wide to highlight a few of the joints between individual stone blocks, spaced widely but pretty evenly apart, with the last one falling at the left or right edge so that it will tile correctly, and you can use this for your cornices.

When you dirty up a 1-to-1 texture, as you did around the edges of the big open expanse of roof, use a variety of muddy greys and earth tones, and some of them should be lighter than the base texture as well. Build up the dirt using the paintbrush set at around 10-15% opacity, and vary your brushes and their scale in pixels. For really dirty roofs, starting with a first overlay layer of smudging, copying it, and then applying a gaussian blur to the original overlay layer is a great way to start; adding noise ("bruit" in the "filtre" rollout) is also a handy technique. It's good to work using layers and save a copy as a .psd so you can tweak and go back if things don't work when you test render.

Since you modeled the actual grooves (rustication) in the ground floor stonework , you can apply the same base texture without lines to these elements, but you'll doubtless have to make a bigger version in photoshop so it doesn't look blurry and end up tiling. Just copy the texture and make a new blank file that is 6 times as high as that texture (there are 12 courses of stone on the base) and at least twice as long, and paste the smaller texture as often as needed, align all the copies, flipping some of them to get random variations, and smooth out the result with dodge and burn and smudge until you have a big stone texture that doesn't tile internally. You may have to reduce the size of the file as it might then be pretty huge, but it's worth the work as the variiations in stones should nonetheless be preserved and noticeable in renders. Since there are a lot of openings on the ground floor you shouldn't have a problem with it repeating on any of the base elements.

Actually, after writing all this out, I realize that for such a big model, there are relatively few textures--you're lucky!

But do spend the time to find/make specific textures for areas that show disproportionally. For example, the green fill between the awning and the facade needs another texture since right now it calls a lot of attention to itself. And also the long whitish block at the center of the roof, the stairs there, and the other elements like it all should have appropriate textures applied to them--light concrete with some soot splash on the base and other such materials.

[HONG KONG 74]

My computer currently has problems, so I can not post pictures today. .. the link has do work today for me http://yfrog.com/5a35929032380deee821f7oj.....http://yfrog.com/5npeninback1j

[Amthaak 1,501]

Well, Dear Gottago, you really did a great initiation tutorial for mapping, thank you very much for the time you spent for me (I will remenber that for the next trixie...!). I already start to work on the roof textures and also on the wall as you suggest (less saturation, lighter and a little blue) unfortunatly I cannot upload pic (same pb as HongKong...!) I don't have also the "emoticones" ??? I didn't already work on the windows frame... here is the link: (hope it works) Waoo Honk Kong those pics are incredible especially the one of the roof! These ones will be really usefull! Thank a lot!

 

Well, it seems that everything works again. Thanks a lot to all of you (shadow soldiers...) who makes our life easier..

[Amthaak 1,501]

Hi everybody, hope you have a nice WE. I took a (small) brake with the old Bdg, and I start to work on the new one, just an overall, quick / rough work most oriented on the scale issue, I will go further in the details (indore pool, indore palms etc..., etc....), when everything will correct in terms of position vs the old bdg and scale.

I lowered a little the bats on the terrace as I found them a litlle too high...! Thanks for your comments. (about "rought and details" I was joking...)

[mightygoose 92]

superb progress my friend.

[SimFox 802]

It looks fab, I would only recommend to go lightly on teh decor around windows on the tower. It is now way way over exaggerated.

Glass is just spectacular! This is a very cleaver approach. and given that tower doesn't really have much of reflective surface on the side it works grate (at lest from this angle...)

One thing... this glass is totally opague, right? in that case you don't need really model the thickness of the walls. This will allow for easy unwrap UVW solution and ultimate in texturing customization.