BSC - VIP / Girafe's skills on the BAT

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

It's always fun to see your thread!

[supremec 77]

Hard work! I'm very interesting about your creations, they are so perfect

  Edited September 26, 2011 by supremec  

[urielgarcia 344]

Girafe - Hi - your bats are awesome.I really like your work with VIP. Your group's three recent additions to the STEX are superb (the same goes for those at SC4devotion)!

On another note, may I ask your help (please forgive me if the request is inappropriate) - I am one of those persons who cannot access Toutsimcities. Is it an incompatibility issue? I would really like to add French automata and well, I've seen great ones using Google Image from Adrianou but all his automata are on www.toutsimcities.com. Do you happen to know how to contact Adrianou? Can you help me out please? I'm really begging. I really appreciate your help. Thank you.

G'day

[Girafe 1,729]

Girafe - Hi - your bats are awesome.I really like your work with VIP. Your group's three recent additions to the STEX are superb (the same goes for those at SC4devotion)!

On another note, may I ask your help (please forgive me if the request is inappropriate) - I am one of those persons who cannot access Toutsimcities. Is it an incompatibility issue? I would really like to add French automata and well, I've seen great ones using Google Image from Adrianou but all his automata are on www.toutsimcities.com. Do you happen to know how to contact Adrianou? Can you help me out please? I'm really begging. I really appreciate your help. Thank you.

G'day

Hi thanks for your kind words.

Adrianou is not active for 3/4 years.

You can find what he released there

http://www.toutsimcities.com/downloads.php?member=2057&page=2&page=1

[urielgarcia 344]

Hi Girafe - thank you - I finally got it - i hope

[Girafe 1,729]

I have been quiet these last days.

I am working slowly on the night lighting of Gan, moreover I burn my GPU with 3dsmax and had to buy another one...

I decided to go to something bright and white, as it seems to be the case but pics are rare and for time the tower is not 100% occupied so I can only imagine what it could be in the future.

Where I am, think to fixing few details on the roof and focus to the lighting of the ramp and the exterior gates.

  Edited October 8, 2011 by Girafe  

[art128 4,624]

I... I just love the night lightings... Excellent job Antoine.

[Vlasky 1,803]

It's looking amazing! Maybe just pay attention to lighting up some lites on floors in between. For now it's either absolute dark on the floor or it is completely lighted up. So Maybe turn off some lights on lighted up floors, and turn on a few on some dark floors.

[Delecto 941]

Excellent début petite Girafe.

It seems you haven't used self-iluminated textures but Omni lights. Can you tell us more, this interests me truly.

Sam.

[Amthaak 1,501]

YES! I am with Delecto on this question too! Brilliant my friend (sans jeu de mot...!) Glad you can work again!

[_marsh_ 1,118]

Just beautiful work. It is an amazing building.

[harishna 847]

Too bad you burnt your GPU.

I love how natural the lights look, few suggestions: I think the ground plane is not working for the night scene, the material sued for the entrance looks a bit weird in the night scene and the light for the two "mechanical rooms" on the roof looks to come from unrealistic sources.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

AWESOME work!. Love it, I think you should do more buildings although I love your trees!

[Girafe 1,729]

Thanks for commenting. I will try to explain you how I did even if I have absolutely not the pretention that's the best way for lighting up GAN or another building.

At first it's important to understand how GAN is built:

I cut each floor in 4 parts A,B,C & D as it seems that they are "open-space" so lighting will work with these 4 parts.

Secondly I cut the grounds of the floor from the ceilings. Ceilings are too cut in 4 areas.

I extracted few floors (3 or 4) to be completely dark as they are in reality

I selected randomly 65% of the ceilings (around 100 1/4 of floors).

I splited randomly these 1/4 of ceilings in 4 groups - I put to each of the group 1 different material (self illuminated with just a variation of the intensity 0 to 4)

When one 1/4 of ceiling was lighten up I selected the 1/4 of ground which corresponds to it and apply a messy texture (each lighten up floor has the same material however my UV mapping is different) it allows me to not have 50 textures.

To give more color to the ground of the floor, I decided to switch on the self-illumination (tiny one).

So each floor is lighten up by ground and ceiling.

There are 3 omni only on the roof and 2 of them are wrong (due to the ground map - don't know why for time).

I can consider your demand Vlasky, I have to check what I can do by adding omni in totally darker floor, but the job is not easy...

Harishna, I am obliged to keep my ground map, it allows me to have "night reflexions" of the environnment unless you know another way to do this job.

My last version for time:

[harishna 847]

I think yous should keep a ground floor however I think you could try a different map or play a bit with the one you already have and see how it looks. Particularly I get the impression that the orange/brownish reflections on some parts are too strong for the night scene. For the parking entrance lights you can make the cones overlap each other a little bit.

[anotn 223]

I like this, very good! Maybe you can have some more variation in hue on the nightlights. I like the reflections harishna is talking about it really looks like the ambient light of a city, unfortunately light of that color is not present in SC4, but IMO that does not matter.

[Girafe 1,729]

Thanks for the comments.

Project is going really slowly :|

I fixed the 3 omni on the roofs, now I hope they are fine.

I delete some of the brown / orange areas on the ground plane.

I am fightinh with the lights on the ramp and the ramp itself. I have small glitches and don't understand them. I think my modelling is the cause but I didn't find a way to do it automatically so I modelled it manually...

Few garden spots are not showing, fu... spots - didn't find a plausible reason too.

I have to add more details at floor 0 for giving colors (I though about carpets maybe increasing the plants...

I didn't come back on the lighting of darker floors. I will do this at the end I think.

Where I am:

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

It would be better if you would show us also a day preview. But as far as I see this looks great!

[harishna 847]

I think it looks much better now!

[Amthaak 1,501]

C'est très joli...! Very realistic! Bravo! Can we have a look to the other sides?

[Vlasky 1,803]

It looks spectacular. Great job!

[Vlasky 1,803]

It looks spectacular. Great job!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

looks great.

[SimFox 804]

looking good!

Few points, though you may want to take another look at.

1. 
   
   
2. these look a bit odd... This way it is much better than generic omnis that were quite horrid; but still these are kind of not to the point and the hue/light temperature is a bit too green, perhaps... I think you should try some IES profiles.
   
3. main lights are good, but they sort of lucking a bit of life. Look dull, in a way. I think there is no much point in giving self-illumination to the actual floor if you have light ceiling in fact it could counterproductive as it would interfere with light fall-off. But you could actually play with contrast of the actual floor texture - splat around some white. This way you would increase resulting brightness bringing some life to it
   
4. more like here
   
5. what are exactly these? I mean we see the supposed lights, but not the effect there of...
   
6. the light spot look like there is a single light bulb in a generic mate fixture there You really should give both more brightness and better light distribution to this important area. Generally I think there should be more light around the base.
   
7. I would rethink this material
   
8. These would more logically look at the corners, as to give actual dimensions of the structure (I know that the real ones are in the same location, but I just think it may look better...)
   

Also the ground could be both a bit more colorful (with some yellow/read spots) and more finely textured/spotted meaning light spots could be smaller, may be more linear in nature...

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

I think the entrance could do with light, maybe lamps or stuff like that.

@SimFox: I think there would be too much lights if you would put them to the corners.

[Girafe 1,729]

Thanks for your comments,

@Simfox, I didn't know IES lights, they are interesting and tried few of them. Do you have any advice for their use for sc4 use?

1. So the 3 lihts on the roof are now IES lights, they are not excellent but are a little bit better than previous ones.

2. I changed the lighting, correct lighting bugs on few floor and changed the mat of the blinds which is much better now IMHO.

4. they were simple sunken spot but indeed they hadn't any proper lighting in the scene. I added IES profile lights which correspond to them (from Holophane).

5. In fact it was an Auto-illumination, I changed it to 2 IES lights but I am not confident with them.

6. I turned it to a metal one.

7. I will change them at the end, it's a small detail.

[Girafe 1,729]

Final version (darknite):

  Edited November 5, 2011 by Girafe  

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Looks great.

[Delecto 941]

[Amthaak 1,501]

Beautifull! can't wait to DL it! Is this beautifull cross an "avant gout" of your next project...???

  Edited November 6, 2011 by Amthaak