BL's BATs - Now Using 3ds max!

[thepokemaniac 18]

I've been making my own highway signs recently, and I've never been able to get them in the quality you do. Is there any way to get them in ultra high quality like yours, after you render them I mean? Thanks!

Adam

[fonzyfb73 39]

Those are some nice signs and the Ohio RHW signs are great!

Hey, is it possible to make some California-style freeway signs because I haven't seen any around here and I'm really bad at batting since the signs I make don't render out right. Here's some examples.

[Vahr 341]

Geesh, since when has this become a request thread? 

fonzyfb73: Sorry, I'm only doing Ohio signs for now. But I might consider it eventually.

thepokemaniac: I use simfox's HD rendering script. You can find it at SC4D (can't remember what thread)

twinsfan14: That's on the agenda, possibly for the second pack.

And also, to anyone who commented, rated, and/or downloaded, thanks!

[Ryan B 35]

Vince, maybe I can take some of those requests.  We'll see what I'm able to do.

[Vahr 341]

Ryan: That would be nice, more signs! 

Anyways... I have something in the works (aside from Ohio signs and fixing my ERHW cosmetic mod to be compatible with v4.0 (I'm dropping the new models idea)... and its not transit related *gasp*

LINK to building (3800 Embassy)

Bing View

What I have so far (textureless)

I only have a few reference pics, but I do go past it every morning on the bus, so that helps. Some things will be fudged a little to get it to fit properly.

EDIT: More

[Ryan B 35]

 Vince, I don't mean to steal your thunder here, but I was able to go ahead and BAT a representation of all three signs fonzyfb73 requested.  Here's a picture of two of them:

Coming soon to the STEX!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Looking good! It's nice to see you working on something non-transit.

[Vahr 341]

A little update.

(temp roof, only there to fix the lighting on the window bars)

EDIT: Dug these up too.

[Vahr 341]

...and as nobody has replied there are no replies.

Well I've gotten 3dsmax... this is what I have so far.

Otori Medical (if you get the reference... lol)

Without groundplane

With

Door detail

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

It looks awful, you should be ashamed about what you are bestowing upon the world. Leave ST now.

Haha you know I am kidding, keep it up!

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

I get rather tired of telling people to do this, but its probably the best thing I know to do.

Go outside (or find a picture, if you are a lazy sum'gun), find a building you like, and model it exactly as it is. Proportions of a building and the proportions of it's elements are extremely important for a building to look like a real structure. Right now, it looks like some sort of overly simplistic glass & lattice box nightmare (and I mean that in the nicest way possible). Its nice to see you in 3dsmax, but it doesn't do a whole lot of good if you have floors as thick as a stick of gum

You should count yourself lucky to have the late grate Tonks in your thread!

[Vahr 341]

Tonks: lol. You should be ashamed of your humor. Leave. NAO. GOOD DAY SIR.

Todd: ...I knew I was forgetting something with the floors. They're only 0.02m thick Once I get the floors fattened up and add interior columns and eventually walls, I'll start detailing things, fix the tiling roof (I was being lazy), add roof junk, etc.

Oh, and you can come down as hard as you want with me. Its more useful than "oo pretty nice job *clap*"

And a question, should I merge the two-story-tall lobby windows into one tall window instead of having it divided in the middle (and maybe add trussing on the shell)

[Slashback 136]

Originally posted by: Blue Lightning

EDIT: Dug these up too.

quote>

Since noone replied, i will do it. What are these for? They look good, but i can't imagne what it is... Help me

[edmonton_stinks 5]

ImVhOzzi: They are part of an urban waterslide network, which provides a wet 'n' wild alternative to riding a crowded bus.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Originally posted by: edmonton_stinks

ImVhOzzi: They are part of an urban waterslide network, which provides a wet 'n' wild alternative to riding a crowded bus.quote>

Obviously...

Gosh, some people just can't wrap their heads around modern forms of transit  these days.

[Vahr 341]

That was a good one.

Well its actually an elevated pedestrian (or maybe even bike) walkway.

[Larks2242 251]

Excellent work Blue, are you planing to make a bike path, cause i'm not sure how that would work out although it would be very realistic.

[edmonton_stinks 5]

I'm not usually a fan of elevated structures, but a bikeway might actually be pretty cool.

[Vahr 341]

Replies

Larks: Well the elevated ped path is probably wide enough for bikes.

Lattice be gone! (at least on the front face, still need to renovate sides and do the back)

I should probably add some lights in the lobby...it seems pretty dark in there.

And can anyone explain why my top floor is light blue while the rest are... well... dark blue-green (excluding lobby, thats clear glass)?

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Green vs Blue? Its all reflections. The top floor has a different material above it so naturally it is a different color.

I'm still going to stand by my initial advice to go out and model something from the real world. This is still looking extremely bizarre. The ratio of floor space to the size of stairways seems disproportionate, the floors are still paper thin, the glass layout makes this look like an aquarium etc. It seems like a neat project, but I think you need to get more comfortable with architecture before you can make wild leaps in design from the seat of your pants.

[Vahr 341]

Very true points... I'll shelve this and come back to it later (probably ending up redoing the entire thing XD) and probably work on 3800 Embassy (though I do need to finish rewriting FLEXFly code... that takes more priority right now)

I suppose this could be called a practice run to get used to 3ds

[Sky Guy 163]

good luck!

P.S. I am getting impatient for those bridges on page one- lol, jk.

[Francis90b 748]

Well, it's a good start, but i might really suggest you to re-consider the height of the floors and the ceilings....

I might want to give you an existing data to base on.In Italy (where i live) the minimum thickness allowed for an usable floor is 0,26, for a walkable roof is about 0,30 and for a non-walkable one of 0,25.How thick are your floors?

[Vahr 341]

So I've taken up this building

Knowing that its 109 meters tall, 28 floors, and that each floor is 4 meters (1.5 meter thick floors, so actually 2.5 meter floor height), I've scaled this and used it to make the model

I'm omitting those odd dark matte window squares though.

Size of base/reference image: 4 x 3 SC4 tiles (64m x 48m)

[Sky Guy 163]

Looks great!

[SimFox 802]

well You've picked up a building that is very easy to model, but will be very difficult to make look truly good. Such totally reflective glass wall is notoriously difficult to marry into SC4 environment. Of course you can just leave it blue box, but then it will not look like a glass. If you make it properly reflective it would look at odds with it's surroundings in the game. This is made especially obvious by the fact that building has totally flat walls with nothing to break the reflections. At any rate I wish you success with it, who knows may be you'll break the code here!

On the separate note. I think you have selected far from efficient way of actually modeling it. Note, I don't say wrong way - there isn't really a wrong way in 3d, but not efficient one. For instance, you're modeling the interior of the tower, interior that will never be seen. I'd say you need to model ONLY exterior shell and use night maps type of night lighting on this one.

Speaking on the actual thing already modeled, your lattice grid is wrong (if compared to the original) "interfloor" space should be greater. In your model it is roughly 2:1 while in real building it is 1,5;1 - very noticeable difference that, given that this grid is virtually only expressive element of the facade, significantly alters the look of the building. So instead of the doing something that is useless, eg will not be ever seen, do right something that will be.

When doing nightligting, keep in mind that floor plan you've shown here.

As a conclusion overall it is a good effort so far.

PS

May be you can consider removing links associated with pictures, since they lead to same exact pictures... a bit pointless and confusing...

[Vahr 341]

Simfox:

Heh yeah, I'm going to have to take a while on figuring the best way to do the glass... I might go with a subtle reflection on dark blue (almost black) glass. Just enough to make it more realisitic but not so much that it will look out of place (though I can't help it if someone plops it in the middle of a forest )

As for the interior, the columns and floors are there to help with the placement of the glass facade, I'll begin removing them once I complete more of the facade. They weren't too hard to make anyways, I just traced the base, extruded, then latticed the floors. Though uh, about those night maps... When I installed BAT4MAX onto 3ds 2010, a popup told me that Night Maps have been turned off or something to that effect due to unsupported version. Is that just talk or would that actually affect my night model?

The interfloor space... the upper panel/between floor-ceiling according to the model is 2.5m and the lower panel is 1.5m. 2.5:1.5, or 1.667:1. It might just be that SC4 orthographic projection squash, as the lower panels are actually square (1.5x1.5). I'll probably need to scale Z by 120-130%.

Oh, the linked pictures are just a habit of mine from CJing, I always link to the full size if I have to downsize the image to post.

EDIT: Accidentally flipped the ratio around.

[Timmystwin 201]

looks good. The bike pathy things look good also, but an urban water slide? wow..... now theres an idea.....* goes off and plans*

[RQTect777 11]

Could you make some 45 and 90 degree turns??!?!?!

If you did that would look really good

[citiesxlfan42 27]

Hey Blue, nice bridge! It looks great. Keep it up!