Harishna's BATs

[Girafe 1,729]

What an interesting tree the jacaranda, I didn't know about its pink flowers.

It gave me the taste for trying something

Around 10 meter high

  Edited May 17, 2011 by Girafe  

[harishna 847]

Ahhhh lovely work! Would you mind give me an insight on your technique for modelling trees and I would feel honored if I can use one or your models instead of my plain boring trees...

Jacarandas are beautiful trees especially when blossom and even that are originally from tropical areas in America you can find them in many places around the world, Brisbane Australia is full of them

[sumwonyuno 42]

What a beautiful tree! I believe I've seen those trees here in Hawaii too.

harishna, how did you make those red lights on top of the building? Thanks.

[harishna 847]

Hi Sumwonyuno for the lights I first modeled them, and applied a texture with the self-illuminating selection and finally used the glade modifier, not sure if this one can be used in Gmax

some testing, should I modify it to fit with w2w buildings?

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

some testing, should I modify it to fit with w2w buildings?

I think so you should, because It's touching the walls of the near by buildings.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Reckon you should do a few lots, some of Madhatters stuff comes in 1x1 and 2x1, can git both w2w and on its own that way. Lookin' good mate

[harishna 847]

So for the pharmacy I guess I should make it fit to the other Mexican BATs from LBT I hope Heblem can help me on this (will 1.6m do?).

Now I did a day test export for the library took me something like 18hrs just to realize that I forgot to turn off the lights and that the LODs were a little bit bigger than they should have been(that is why of the not matching parking and green grass) and finally I also forgot to scaled by 133% haven't say this here is how it looks comments on any other that what I have mentioned more than welcome

PS it seems that the scale thing doesn't looks so bad so should I still scale it up by 1.33?

  Edited May 23, 2011 by harishna  

[anotn 223]

This looks very good, the red color fits very well with the game palette, I'm comparing it with the red brick texture on the lot in the left upper corner. If I must point out something to improve that would be to maybe match the texture on that little street leading down to the garage to the texture you use on the lot, however that is not at all necessary. It really is a beauty you got there.

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

It Looks Amazing, I Cain't Wait For It On The STEX.

[harishna 847]

So I asked Girafe about his lovely trees and he kindly offered to contribute to my UNAM library BAT by adding some of his beautiful creations. So before I hand it to the more capable hands of Girafe I decided to showed it in its current state. Not much has changed mainly the roof textures I change the tone (redder now) added more contrast and added a bump map. I also added a couple of details here and there like the access ramps...

So speak now or...

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

Looking Good Harishna, I Love The Detail You Put Into It.

[Gringamuyloca 47]

I have been watching this thread since page one...

The time you have taken on the Library to "get it right" has been very well spent! The textures have depth and are not too bright, and the scale of the textures is just perfect in my eyes! A big thumbs up to you and the helpful posters along the way.

I think you should be very proud of the results you have achieved in this endeavor!

[Ion_Cannon 677]

It looks wonderful, you've spent alot of time getting everything right and it's paid off.

[zahrul3 472]

It should be scaled up to whatever you like it, but in real life it would look twice as taller than the tenement. On commercial buildings, ideally the roof height is 4.5m(most maxis mid/low-density), since you have all those pipes in the ceiling sandwiched between floors.

Also, the LOD is a little bit offset to the parking area, or you lotted it in a hurry so the back doesn't touch the roadside when it should have. The signature texture is also blurred in SC4, for some reason. You should have completed this BAT some time ago, but I didn't really see much more improvement on textures. Flat roofs that are uneven(one side dirty one side clean) looks quite out of position with Maxis buildings, and it isn't realistic to the game as it could be rotated anyway you/the game wants it.

Subtlety is king....

[harishna 847]

Gringamuyloca: Thanks very much, may I ask about your nickname?

Ion_Cannon: I appreciate your kind words.

Zahrul3: Thanks for the comments I will focus first in the ones I consider relevant; the texture not being even that is true not sure on how "bad" it will truly look in game, you have to keep in mind this is a landmark not something that is going to be plopped 1000x times but still I think is something to be considered (Simhottody?)anyway I will look at it and see if I can make it look more appealing...About the "signature" texture being blurred I wouldn't worry so much I think that is just that I took print screen from the game and the image lost resolution while saving.

Now to the "extra stuff" as I already said the parking and grass surrounding the building of the in game test was just added because I didn't fitted the LOD's properly and as I said the whole thing will be scaled, I don't know if you didn't cared to read my post or you have an agenda...

The dimensions and floor heights its something that was discussed some time ago with SimFox as I commented back then the floor height is currently 4 meters which is based on the real life proportions of the building. Furthermore I know that in the real life building the floor height is below the average you will expect, I have been inside the building and I can tell you the floors are small. The reason for this is because this a library not a commercial building, and the upper floors -the ones in the tower- are not offices this is where the book collections are, while the reading room is on the ground floor.

About completing this building some time ago well I have a son, a PhD to finish and I do a lot sport in my free time and since I am just learning to model and no one is paying me to finish this on a given time well I prefer to take my time,

No idea what you mean with the rotation thing you lost me completely there...

Subtley is king, thanks Simhottoddy, I mean Zahrul3

I appreciate your comments, I know you have good intentions you just have to work out on how to deliver your message a bit better, cheers mate.

[Jazzmaster 716]

Harishna, I do honestly appreciate the time and effort you've put into this. It's really great that you've been perfecting this building, it's very inspiring for people in all 'fields' of SimCity 4 (BATing, lotting, modding, game playing). I've been anxiously awaiting this piece, as I have a hispanic district east of my downtown where I think this would be a real gem. Perhaps by the riverside. It's beautiful and we should definitely appreciate that you've taken the time to perfect it instead of just rushing it to the STEX.

Take your time and take it easy mate.

[Gringamuyloca 47]

Harishna

I do not BAT so maybe my opinion is 'suspect'... but I think it really 'sits' well in game, and I think it will find it's way into a wide variety of cities and regions. I truly do not understand Zahrul3's post... it seems mean-spirited and spiteful, not at all well intentioned... I hope he takes your advice to heart and finds a friendlier way to communicate his thoughts.

Gringa muy loca ...lol... I heard those words so many times while I was down in Costa Rica; my neighbor's 17 year old son thought I worked too hard (I was always doing something...) and would call out "gringa muy loca" as he would walk past the yard... soon almost all the boys, and then the men (funny, none of the women did) were calling me Gringamuyloca. ( very crazy white woman) The nickname followed me home to Canada... I guess it fits

[gutterclub 2,729]

About completing this building some time ago well I have a son, a PhD to finish and I do a lot sport in my free time and since I am just learning to model and no one is paying me to finish this on a given time well I prefer to take my time,

If there was a "like" button, I'd have clicked it for this.

@Gringamuyloca - most of his posts seem spiteful and mean spirited but I think it might be down to both age and English not being his first language.

[Gn_leugim 858]

nice work here

[Jasoncw 11,841]

About completing this building some time ago well I have a son, a PhD to finish and I do a lot sport in my free time and since I am just learning to model and no one is paying me to finish this on a given time well I prefer to take my time,

If there was a "like" button, I'd have clicked it for this.

@Gringamuyloca - most of his posts seem spiteful and mean spirited but I think it might be down to both age and English not being his first language.

There is a like button and some of us have already pressed it.

I think the white pavement (used for the steps and the courtyard) is too bright. And I do think the building ought to be scaled up. To me it feels kind of small, especially knowing that those maxis buildings aren't very big themselves.

Also, you've mentioned your rendering times before, but if you have any room at all, go to the bitmap of your mural material. There, find a parameter called "Blur" which is by default 1.0. If you lower this to something like .2 or .1 it will make it A LOT sharper. This value is basically how sharp it bothers to render the bitmaps, and at 1.0 it's lazy and is only doing a mediocre job. The other parameter is the filter, which you can choose between pyramidal, summed area, and none. summed area is the higher quality filter and it's the same story as blur. Making these changes will increase rendering time, but turning the fitler to none will reduce rendering times. Turning it off will make the texture look a little grainy/noisy, since max is no longer trying to blend the pixels of the bitmap together for the render, it's just picking a pixel and going with it. But this is just fine for textures that are naturally noisy anyway.

Like I said before, it's looking great. I'm looking forward to seeing what Girafe does to it.

[harishna 847]

Thanks all for the nice comments!

I worked in the things that were suggested to me, changed the textures for the roofs following Zahrul3 advice and following Jason advice changed the stairs textures and the blur of the facade textures, this one made wonders, thanks for the tip! I didn't tried the summed area but I think with the 0.1 blur already looks hips better. I made the my bitmaps smaller and tried to cleaning my materials to reduce rendering times. But after doing this its is asking me for textures for objects that shouldn't be in the scene anymore...like the trees...is there a way to fix this? I already looked for hidden objects and trying selecting empty areas.

Something extra that I just started three days ago. This is another building from the same university, in this case Torre Humanidades II (Humanities tower II), as the other two buildings I am working in this one sits in the central plaza of the UNAM campus, so hopefully I will manage to make a set of buildings to form a "modular" campus. (Before someone jumps and says hey harishna look at the space between floors I will ask you to look at the real one first here)

  Edited June 2, 2011 by harishna  

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I noticed that the mural on the side of the building is different than the one in the previous preview.

For the new building, the walls are too dark and saturated. Make them brighter and less saturated.

Glass is hard. I think the most important thing for glass is making sure there is something to reflect. Other than that I think you can basically use the default arch & design thin glass pre-set. If the reflections aren't strong enough, in the BRDF rollout you can change the reflections from fresnel reflections to a custom curve, so that you can adjust the reflectivity of the lower angles. In SimCity, if the building is a box, then there are only ever two facades visible and so there are actually only ever two angles that the viewer will see the glass at. Bump maps will subtly change this but the angles are still similar.

[harishna 847]

yes I noticed I forgot to change the mural on one side

I am using exactly that kind of glass but I don't have a ground plane yet

  Edited June 1, 2011 by harishna  

[harishna 847]

Played a bit with the small pharmacy, made a few changes here and there including a chain link fence to the top using two autodesk materials but none convince me completely:

1)I like how this one looks and the shadows that cast but I don't know why the fence becomes invisible when viewed in angle.

2)This one looks fine from every angle but the pattern is lost

any suggestions?

  Edited June 3, 2011 by harishna  

[gutterclub 2,729]

I'll be brutaly honest..its wonderful!! Love the roof texture, love the arcade machine. Great work

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

I'll be brutaly honest..its wonderful!! Love the roof texture, love the arcade machine. Great work

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I Agree, Its Perfect!

[Jazzmaster 716]

I don't know nearly as much about the BAT much less BAT4Max as the brightest people here, but I don't think that the fence is really 'disappearing'. I think it just appears that way because the light grey background is exactly/virtually the same color as the fence, so the fence looks like it just went away. I've had this sort of thing with solid black objects against a GMAX background in the past.

EDIT: On second thought, that might not be the case. Took another look at it and it seems to be different from what I just said. If there's some sort of shortcut to making a meshed wire fence in BAT4Max there may be some 'setting' you have to adjust but I truly am only inferring..

Now that all said, I think your pharmacy looks absolutely wonderful. Love the textures and all the little details in it! Even small buildings require lots of attention and you've definitely given it just that.

  Edited June 3, 2011 by Yoshiisland  

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Depends how you made the fence. I just use a standard material with an opacity map on a plane when I need a fence, but the problem is that planes are usually one sided by default. You can either make the plane two-sided, or add another plane to represent the "back".

[Seraf 1,238]

I don't have any idea what's happening to that fence, but I must say that I really like roof texture, its great!

[gutterclub 2,729]

I think you might even be better dropping the fence, or at least making it shorter..it stands out a little at the moment.