The GC's BAT thread

[gutterclub 2,729]

Closer pic

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Looks promising! I have to wait to see what else you do to it before I can give my opinions. I think you are really off to a good start on this one!

[alj 38]

I agree. Good start.

The entrance should addressed. (Since you attempt a re-creation. If not, the entrance wouln't be that bad.)

On the photos that you show I see a quarter circle / smooth curve on both sides of the entrance. It is that Art Deco element that makes the building interesting (even if it was "fake" Art Deco). IMHO, you should aim at recreating it. Though BATters more experienced than I am could point you better to how to do it than I can. But I would try to create a cylinder, chop it to one quarter and attach it to the rest of the front wall's first floor.

Edit: the model is ca. 16m x 30m, right?

[Jasoncw 11,839]

In the BAT4Max thread in this forum, there's a link to where you can download BAT4Max. With BAT4Max installed you'll be able to do BAT previews (which are a lot more useful to see than perspective renders), and you'll be able to get some proper lighting set up. This way when you do preview renders you'll be able to make better judgments about what looks good and what doesn't look good.

I think that this building is a good building to start with, but I also think it would be a good idea to make this a perfect recreation. It's a very simple and straightforward facade, and it would be easy to tweak or restart until it's just right. The idea of restarting it or tweaking it over and over might seem daunting right now, but it won't soon.

[gutterclub 2,729]

I'm having a few troubles with BAT4MAx which I will address at the weekend when I have a whole load of time to get cracking with this. Also, I think you guys are right on the recreation front, so will start addressing the front then too.

I have some time over the weekend when I am "working" nights.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Ok, so I'm having a go at batting a basic box tower and chose the 75m Telco Tower in Auckland to base my building on, with a couple of slight changes (the RL building has a horrid solid wall down one side).

Here is the RLs pics of the building

This is what I have so far, I think it will be sitting on a 3x3 lot

Help, tutoring and assistance is very mcuh needed as I am a COMPLETE novice. I am currently using a plane plane of glass with the default maxis glass but darkened, however this really isn't suitable and was wondering if there are any tutorials on making the glass that appears on some of the top quality 3dsmax bats (simfox, scotty, jason etc etc) is it best to use a pane to reflect ground and use arch and design materials? I'm really wanting to go for something like the Seagram or like the Bentall by Scotty below

Any help, pointers, assistance would be great as I am still learning.

Thanks

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Looks Great.

[fabricio83tst 27]

Nice model you chose, looks great till this moment!!! I think the texture of the wall of floor to floor has to be clearer!! To be more realistic with the real build!!! But so is so nice too!!!

[gutterclub 2,729]

I am currently learning and figuring out how to reflect ground planes using some tips Simfox left in the NYBT room..it needs a lot of playing with and more investigation but it definately gives a better feel to the glass, need to make it glossier and need some help on how to make the bottom different to the top etc..is using one large plane the right idea of should each window be individual??

[gutterclub 2,729]

I think I'm happy with how the glass turned out which came form just playing around with settings and editing the ground plane in paintshop, will finish modelling the building/rof junk and add the finalised textures/materials.

[SimFox 800]

You max hadn't pick up Gamma settings from the scripts. You would need to manually open

Customize -> Preferences -> Gamma & LUT

you don't need to do anything there, just click on OK and everything will be right then.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Ok, problem time..

I've managed to render things before no problem and after getting the below issues managed to render a basic box so I think it must be something to do with the LODS or how Max is rendering the building??

Anyway, when I export LODS and then open them in GMAX, export the model as usual and pickup the model in Max. When I go to render it seems to skip the zoom 5 and 4view and goes straight to rendering at 27%..no dea why as I can do preview renders at this level..would the Gamm & LUT affect this in anyway? I have reinstalled BAT4Max and still get the same issue. Below is a pic of the zoom levels in the Lot Editor.

Here are my file locations, all look ok so must be something to do with the model??

Anyone have any ideas? Pleeeease

[gutterclub 2,729]

SO, I think it wasn't rendering properly as it was including the gorund plane in the render even though it was set to invisble to camera...what setting should I use so it still renders the reflections but doesn't include. I used an enviroment map for the ground plane but that doesn't work as well and squashes the reflections up a bit. I'm very new to this so any help is appreciated.

[fabricio83tst 27]

OK cheats i have learned on my own in max are: 1)press always day button! 2)ungroup and unhide all things less xrefs before render

Are you using max2010? Mental ray renderer, vray renderer(you shouldn't) or standard max renderer? The paths where installed max can't has empty spaces on there names!

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Can you post bigger pictures of your rendering error? It's hard to see what it actually looks like in what you posted.

A ground plane is literally a Plane in your scene where the ground would be, and this isn't the same as an environment map.

Can you also post a new preview render, and also a screenshot of max, showing what you have set up for the ground plane and environment map? It's hard to tell exactly what you have done so far.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Hi, I'll try and articulate my problem a little better, it was early!!!..as far as the lot editor pics go that is literally it..nothing at all at 5 and 4, a little triangle at 3 and a little line at 2.

This is what it looks like exported when I deleted the ground plane and just use an enviroment map



In enviroment I just selected a bitmap as the eviroment map and rendered without a ground plane. It rendered all 20 views correctly. That said I do not wish to use an enviroment map as I think the ground plane works better


This is a zoom 5 render with the ground plane, the reflections look a little better than using the eviroment map



This is a pic of my max scene



This is the object properties of the plane


Ok..so when I include a ground plane and click on "refit LODS" it creates huge LODS covering the 200x200 ground plane, so I delete the plane, refit lods so it covers the building, export the lods into gmax, export...then add the ground plane back in, select model and render..

It then starts rendering as below (i.e it looks it feels like it isn't rendering at Z5 not like it does at z5 preview render)




I think my issues are to do with the ground plane and and the LODS..as I have rendered things fine without the ground plane.

I hope I am getting across what I mean. There must be a setting in the properties to essentially keep the reflection of the plane but not use it in the final render/when creating lods?

Thanks for the help so far, appreciated and hopefully I will improve. Need to tweek the colours a bit, as you can see next to the Sears Tower it looks too dark yet they should be a similar hue??


 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Sorry I can't help you on your problem, one question are you going to work on you night lights for you building?? Again it looks good.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

LODs can be whatever you'd like. So you can create a box, or extrude a rectangle, and just name the object "LOD3" "LOD4" and "LOD5" and it will use those objects as the LODs.

About the rest of the BAT, it does look too dark. Things that are "black" aren't actually black, they're usually just dark grey. Also, all of your materials should be arch & design materials, and you should use the settings to try and approximate the material. Because even things that aren't reflective like glass are still actually reflective, they're just not as reflective or the reflections aren't as sharp. The most useful resource is the "Help" section in max, it will tell you what everything is, and if it doesn't tell you what you want to know about the program, you'll learn the terms which you can search google for.

[gutterclub 2,729]

I will try exporting again and see what happens, does the lod size not affect the foot print in LE?

I sitll can't figure out why the z5 render in the last pic is so far away, when I export without a ground plane the first 4 views at zoom 5 look like the preview render.

I will get to work on exploring arch and design more and using it for all materials.

Aaron - Yes, once I have all my issues solved I will work on night lighting.

Cheers guys

[citiesxlfan42 27]

I like it, but... I feel it is a little to black and monotonous. Maybe some colored canopies or stores at the base. Other than that, I like it. Great downtown piece. Great work!

[gutterclub 2,729]

Think I'm making progress, used all the materials as Arch and Design, it's great fun playing with the materials..still trying to figure I few things out though..

Here is a Z5 render, think it's nearly done. Just got to figure out night lights, are there any basic tutorials on night lighting?

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

The glass looks a lot better and the other render images.

[gutterclub 2,729]

I'm a little stuck on nightlighting..are there any tutorials on basic night lighting?

Questions.

My building has essentially one large glass curtian, should this be removed from the night scene and individual windows added with night window texture/materials added to them?

How would one go about making red (or any coloured) spot lights at the top of their building the way Simfox demonstates so well in his buildings?

I have replaced the ground plane with a night city scene bitmap, this produces a slight reflection on looks ok, is this sort of thing recommended?

I have been making this bat following mini tutorials the likes on Jason and Simfox have left in threads but I can't find much on night lighting.

Any help/pointers/links would be great.

Ta.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

I don't think there are any tutorials on the subject (maybe I'll write one!), but it would be a short tutorial if there was one.  In the Arch & Design material, if you scroll down, there should be a rollout called "Self Illumination (Glow)".  Expand that rollout, and check the checkbox to activate it.  In the rollout there's color, which can either be defined according to some pre-set real life standards, or according to its Kelvin temperature (google it to find a scale of what colors correspond to what degrees).  The color controls what color the light is.  To the right is "Filter" which is where you put your night windows bitmap.

Luminance (how bright the light is) can be controled either with real life physical units, or a unitless multiplier.  Glow options has two options, one for whether or not the glow should be visible in reflections (by default it is on, and I can't think of why it would be turned off, but whatever), and Illuminates the Scene.  This one is important if you want it to, well, illuminate the scene.  The "Help" section in 3ds max explains in more detail.

But the jist of it, is that you put your night windows texture into the "filter" slot.  You can make a bitmap for night windows by finding photos of windows lit up at night, and editing them together in Photoshop.  This part will take a little practice, but once you get the hang of it it's easy to make.

You'll need to model your glass in such a way that you can separate the night windows material from the day windows material.  There are a lot of different ways of doing this, but I think the easiest and most straightforward is to model your glass so that you can detach the parts you'll want lit up (so you'll have two objects, a day glass object, and a night glass object).

If you mean the little red dots that keep airplanes from crashing into the buildings, for this, you can just make a small sphere, with a red self illuminated material.

This is how SimFox does it.  But instead, make this a self-illuminated material as well. 

Edit:  I've written a tutorial about it in my blog.    I hope it reads well, I wrote it sort of fast.

[gutterclub 2,729]

THANK YOU!!!

What a super star, stuff like this really helps the likes of me. Hopefully see some ok results and get my first building released.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Starting to (hopefully) get the hang of night lighting, but unsure of the best settings to use, also only the front has been done, need to add glass to the rest as I stripped the large plane of glass off and added seperate windows. Not sure how to get the red lights at the top to glow real bright yet?

Anyway

The building it is based on has no tennants at present, so not gonna light up much of it..will also add the for lease sign somewhere.

I tried an effect of changing the ground plane to a night scene, made it arch and design material (should the round plane for your day scene be arch and design as mine is just a good old bitmap) and made it reflective which gave a crazy effect below..might give some cool if I work on it a bit?  I.e completed tone down the reflections?

[Gn_leugim 853]

I like much more the first night shot, is almost perfect

[gutterclub 2,729]

Need some help: I've created a night version of the model, exported it using the day model, created FSH's, night convert, night FSH insert but the model doesn't light up ingame. Is this the rifht work flow? The day model is saved as a different name in max but I thought that was ok as long as the FSH's were being inserted into the same model?

[Jasoncw 11,839]

It's ok to do that. But if you installed max somewhere with a space in the path (for example in Program Files), then the thing that automatically inserts the night .FSH won't work. You'll simply need to do it manually using the reader. Open the .SC4Model file in the Reader, right click in an open space, and Insert & Compress, and find your night .FSH and put them in.

The ground plane itself shouldn't be particularly reflective, since, after all, it's the ground. But, sort of by default, you should use the arch & design material for everything, unless you have a reason to use something else. You just need to adjust the settings to approximate whatever material it's supposed to be.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Thanks mate, you've been a great help so far, I didn't think there were spaces but there must be so i'll double check and insert them using ilive. Hopefully should have some progress a bit later.