Zero7 BAT Studio

[zero7 68]

I've been thinking about starting a BAT thread on ST for a while ... enough thinking about it  ... here's the BAT thread.

I've got two models I'm actively working on at the moment:

Maxwell Gardens Metro - a w2w subway station. Some detailing to be done on the day view.  Lighting is in its early stages.

Day view.

Night view

Alongside this I'm working on an industrial building that is in early build stages (roof textures are placeholders).

[Alex_Bervoets 91]

Looks good for a starter! Keep up the good work...

I love the subway station (maybe adding a bus stop too would be handy?)

[Lugnuts 3]

The models look very nice so far. The station needs more roof junk with better textures, but you are already working on that. The industrial building looks good so far, may I ask what type of industry is it?

[fabricio83tst 27]

i liked both zero7, i'm question myself what kind of industry it will be?!

[Evillions 552]

You're back!!!

I'm a fan of your BATs, but if you have Max 2010 or newer. Can you help me out on something? My question is how do make nightlights in 3dsmax2010 or newer? Such as using those nighttime window textures as nightlights? Moreover, how do I get the omnidirectional lights just in the night render? 

I've been asking that same question SO many times to professional BATers here such as SimFox and Simhotty.  I just need to know how.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Glad to see you here! 

For the wall to wall building, will it line up with other wall to wall BATs?  I like how the canopy gets folded at night.

Those kinds of vaulted ceiling industrial buildings must be a UK thing.  I feel like I've seen them a lot in that context, but I don't think I've ever really seen a building like that in the US.  I think they're cool, but sort of peculiar I guess, lol

Originally posted by: Evillions

I've been asking that same question SO many times to professional BATers here such as SimFox and Simhotty.  I just need to know how.

quote>

...and your question has been answered SO many times too.  If you'd just follow through with what people have told you, you'd know how to do it by now. 

[SimFox 800]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw

Originally posted by: Evillions

I've been asking that same question SO many times to professional BATers here such as SimFox and Simhotty.  I just need to know how.

quote>

...and your question has been answered SO many times too.  If you'd just follow through with what people have told you, you'd know how to do it by now. 

quote>

I'm sure he believes that there is secret button "make beautiful lights" and we all know about it and hide it from him on purpose...

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Glad you decided to set up shop!

I think your materials on the station (and your materials in general) are too similar and low contrast with respect to each other. Everything looks like it was carved out of the same chunk of clay. This may also have to do with how plain the bit maps are as well. My advice is; add some more life to the bitmaps through subtle variation, gradients, or even location specific 1:1 details like water stains on the brick & concrete or dirt/stains on the roof next to the walls.

The model is fine, however (as Simfox has told me recently) it looks like a miniature you would buy in a hobby shop more than a "real" building. All that aside, it still looks pretty good.

Originally posted by: Evillions

I've been asking that same question SO many times to professional BATers here such as SimFox and Simhottoddy. I just need to know how.

quote>

...and your question has been answered SO many times too. If you'd just follow through with what people have told you, you'd know how to do it by now.

quote>

Yup... And it really isn't very difficult once you understand the "hows" and "whys". Making the "night window textures" is only a matter of changing out day bitmaps/materials with "night" ones (the same as if you were making and applying new day material), and checking some "self illumination" boxes. Nothing I do is difficult or complicated enough for me to be called a professional, trust me on that one.

[SimFox 800]

PS just noticed, your night lighting isn't adequately strong imho.

Light at night will never be so dark for normal human perception. So it all looks like very badly exposed photo - hugely underexposed one. the only time of day when there could be such relative brittleness of exterior and interior lighting is in an early twilight. Yet it would most definitely look to human observer MUCH brighter.

It is especially the case of the metro station part of the bat. But also both shops look dull. You may sort of say well, those are already closed. And that may be right, but it just doesn't look that good. And still even then difference in relative brightness of exterior and interior illumination would be much much stronger.

I believe this JasonCW's work is really what things should look like:

quote>

I hope he'll forgive me for using his work in this example...

[zero7 68]

It'll be a couple of days until I've got any significant progress to show, but I couldn't let all the comments go unanswered:

Alex_Bervoets - Thanks.  Glad you like the station.  I'll think about the bus-stop.  I might be able to add one to the lot - I might even make one just for the hell of it and throw it in as a prop.

Lugnuts - I'm not one for lots of roofjunk, probably because in the UK most buildings don't have much.  The 'Costa' could probably do with a couple of extra vents, but I don't think a taxi company and a florist would have much in the way of roofjunk, especially as the active part of the building is the ground floor and ducting is more likely to be run through to the back wall than up to the roof (the taxi company has an aircon unit on the back wall).

Fabricio - I'm not sure what industry it will be yet.  I'm thinking with the light from all the windows and the fact that it isn't the kind of building to have any heavy machinery I might make it something like a specialist furniture manufacturer.  Whatever it is, it will be I-M.

Evillions - There's only two real methods for Max lighting now.  Either self illuminated materials - just use the rollout on the arch&design material - or internal lights behind transparent or transluscent materials.  Just drop them in the scene and adjust the levels.  Other than that, just remember that if you're using the latest BAT4Max you need to have a separate day and night scene and follow the rendering instructions to insert the night version into the model properly.

Jason - I'd been spending more time in the ST forums recently, so it made sense to open a thread over here.  Coming full circle, I suppose!  The station should line up with the station entrance following the line of the w2w and the shops set back.  The vaulted ceiling industrials aren't hugely common - this one jumped out at me as I was scrolling through an industrial area on the outskirts of Leeds - but there are a few about.  Many are smaller and end up as retail units (particular discount carpet warehouses!) and even one this size is lucky not to have ended up subdivided.

Todd - I half agree with you about the look of my textures.  I accept that I could probably get a step-up in realism if I abandoned procedural textures more often so that I could add specific texture details, but I also think that a lot of people overdo it and add things to their textures that could never be seen from the distance of the SC4 cameras, but which 'feel' right because we know they are there.  

SimFox - I like Jason's model, but feel he's gone slightly too far on the bright side with the lights on this particular model.  I think you're right though, that mine are not bright enough, and have increased the lighting levels in the Costa and the taxi company.  For the station, in the previous shot I only had some lighting up at roof level,  I have now added the lower height lighting that actually lights the station entrance hall.

Here's a minor update to the station night view:

The rightmost unit is the florist.  It's meant to be closed with just a dim security light and a mesh shutter over the front.  Unfortunately at the moment it's looking like either the UVW scale is wrong or the shutter will need to be redesigned to make it more solid.  Either way it's not right yet!

[SimFox 800]

you may try to increase density of FG point from default (fro LtbL 1.5 to say 3.) Remember after you make the change use "save" otherwise scripts will not pick up the changes in renderer settings you do in UI.

Dim Lights are fine, but there are few points to remember

1. dim lights are more likely at residentials than commercials.

2. dim lights are virtually always a very local lights.

In your interiors it looks like there would be great many dimm lights that are somehow svery skilfully spaced around as to provide very dim, yet totally uniformed lighting over what is quite a big space. That is what makes it look unnatural. If you say have a table lamp with 40W bulb, it would provide dim lighting but for about a meter or so from that source, beyond that it will very quickly get quite dark.

This i particularly obvious in case of both Costa - that should have either uniform bright lightning of a chippy, or localized, highly variable lighting of a bit more upscale place. And, of course metro station. Right now you look at it an it is abslutelly impossible to get the idea where does that light comes from? Where are the light sources? If the are at the roof of the space how come both walls near the roof and floor are lit virtually same - it is physically impossible . Light diminished with inverse square to the distance of the light. Yet the interior of the metro station seem to be filled with absolutely uniform dim light at which you wouldn't be able to read you ticket. What sort of light source do you use? Is it some standard light s with very much hand tuned attenuation?

[zero7 68]

While I was out earlier I left a street level render going of the florist.  Looks like the shutter is scaled correctly, but it won't work in SC4 - I'll have to replace it with a more solid design.

Simfox - I'll see what effect your suggested FG change has.  As far as my lighting is concerned.  In Costa I have two rows of 3x2m photometric fluorescents spaced at 2m intervals front to back at ceiling height.  I think this is a pretty realistic deployment of lights for that kind of space.  Whether the power of individual lights is correct may be open to question - I am missing the templates from the dropdown* which may change settings from what I have selecting the default for a particular light type.

*I think that's legacy of following the original BAT4Max installation when I first put Max on my current machine (before your subsequent updates)

E2A - Template dropdowns now fixed.

 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

You work is great can't wait till you finish.

[zero7 68]

OK, lots of fiddling around with lighting later, here's what I've found.

Firstly, having regained access to the photometric lights template dropdown means I now know that if I put a 100w bulb in the scene it is a physically correct one.  We all know what the light from a 100w bulb is supposed to look like. 

The next thing I did was to go to the day scene and set it to Dark Nite  The result looks like this:

There's a little bit of ambient light which is provided by the skylight in the Dark Nite rig.

I then added a single physically correct photometric 100w bulb to the upstairs room to the right of the station entrance:

As you can see, there is a light visible, but it is extremely dim.  Nowhere near what you would expect to see from a 100w bulb.

As well as providing physically correct lights, Max handily also provide a matched exposure setting, so under exposure I changed to the 'Physically Correct.  Outdoor nighttime; preset.  This gives:

So what was a little bit of ambient light in the original Dark Nite shot is enough to look almost like day under these exposure settings.  Now look at the illuminated window - that is looking like a 100w bulb.  So what we have is the ambient light being much brighter than we originally thought and the exposure had been set to compensate.

Turn this ambient light off altogether and you have:

All the colours are washed out as you'd expect at night.  The mr sky in the environment slot is giving some weird effects with reflective surfaces, but the window now looks like it should for a room lit by a 100w bulb.  

Where does that leave us?  Well it says either the ambient light needs to be ramped right down or the intensity of photometric lights needs to be multiplied up to fit with Dark Nite.   The problem with reducing the ambient light is twofold - first, it takes the values down to the limit of what can be specified - we are talking about an order of magnitude to reduce the ambient light to levels that will work with the physically correct lights;  second, SimFox has done an enormous amount of work to colour balance his rigs with the game, rebalancing things in this way would probably mean an enormous amount of reworking.

So I will now look at it from the other direction.  What multiplier needs to be applied to a photometric light to sit with the Dark Nite exposure model.  

If the ambient light is about an order of magnitude too bright,  what happens if you increase the brightness of the photometric lights by a factor of 10?  Well, the answer is you get very close to what you want.  Using the 'Dimming' factor on the rollout (which is  misnamed as you can also use it as a multiplier) I changed the brightness from 100% of physically correct to 1100% of physically correct.  The 100W bulb is now looking much as it did under the physically correct exposure model, but we now have the Dark Nite ambient light still in place providing a match to the game.

The dimming section of the photometric rollout:

Now to go and rework the actual night view ...

E2A:  One final thought on this.  Although the multiplier has the effect of bringing a physically correct light up to the brightness needed to work with the dark nite settings there may be implications in regards to the falloff rate of light from the lightsource.  Photometrics always obey the inverse square law, but increasing the output by a factor of 10 may result in the threshold at which the light is no  longer visible being reached further from the light source giving a larger than expected light radius.  The higher level of ambient light may mitigate against this, though.

[zero7 68]

In game preview:

  

Still some things to do detailing-wise, like some chairs in the taxi office, but the main work is to add a little interest to the back of the building.

 

[SimFox 800]

Ok there are very many faulty assumption and hence misled conclusion in that post.

Let’s take it step by step.

Originally posted by: zero7
OK, lots of fiddling around with lighting later, here's what I've found.

Firstly, having regained access to the photometric lights template dropdown means I now know that if I put a 100w bulb in the scene it is a physically correct one.
quote>

Essentially a nonsense  – whenever you had put a 100W bulb in a scene it was always a 100w bulb in a scene, not just now.

Originally posted by: zero7
 We all know what the light from a 100w bulb is supposed to look like. 
quote>

Nope we don't and neither do you. Cause the knowledge in this definition simply doesn't exist. So it can't be had.
You may (although I very much doubt it) know how 100W bulb look if you look directly at it. Assuming that atmosphere is not dusty, foggy etc, etc. But ones you don't look directly at the bulb what do you see? Do you actually see light emanating form it? Again assuming clear atmosphere. The answer no, you DON'T. You see precisely nothing.

 

You may (although I very much doubt it) know how 100W bulb look if you look directly at it. Assuming that atmosphere is not dusty, foggy etc, etc. But ones you don't look directly at the bulb what do you see? Do you actually see light emanating form it? Again assuming clear atmosphere. The answer no, you DON'T. You see precisely nothing.You only start registering light when it hits any object with defused surface and get scattered  - then you see what is an effect of light.

So applying this logic from what you said above I assume that what you actually meant is that you know what brightness levels of surfaces illuminated by a 100W bulb looks like. Sounds all plausible, but is it really? Lets play a little game, shall we:


 

Would you say the brightness of the bulb in the windows to the left and to the right? Would you say that one on the right is dimmer than one in the left? Yet these are both 100W bulbs in with a “physically correct night exposure” ( I put it in “” cause it utter nonsense as well, I’ll explain why later on). I had white balance fully neutralized just to keep it simple.

How come are they look so different? More importantly would you be able to say that this is 100W bulb in both cases by simply looking at it?

The point is that brightness of the light, not the light source itself, but the strength of effect it will have on the surface is inverse square of the distance of that surface from the light source. In other words appearance of how well this or that space is light depends on a volume of this space. So 3x3x2,5m room lit by a 100w bulb would appear about  4 times brighter lit than a 6x6x5m room lit by the same bulb, given that all the surfaces are same and that light places right in the middle of that space.

But that isn’t the whole story yet!

Here is part two:


 

How about now? What is the power of this bulb? The room in the left looks dimmer lit than the room on the left in first picture, right? Yet this is also 100W bulb. The only difference is that now it’s emitting all that 100w downwards. So the total amount of energy is the same, yet it looks very different simply depending on the direction of its emission.

Originally posted by: zero7

The next thing I did was to go to the day scene and set it to Dark Nite  The result looks like this:


There's a little bit of ambient light which is provided by the skylight in the Dark Nite rig.


I then added a single physically correct photometric 100w bulb to the upstairs room to the right of the station entrance:

As you can see, there is a light visible, but it is extremely dim.  Nowhere near what you would expect to see from a 100w bulb.


As well as providing physically correct lights, Max handily also provide a matched exposure setting, so under exposure I changed to the 'Physically Correct.  Outdoor nighttime; preset.  This gives:


quote>

You have a very loose, meaning altering quotation here. It creates an impression of exposure itself being physically correct - and later on you actually say so. This sort of conveys that this exposure is somehow ultimately correct one. In reality it is nonsense. Exposure simply can't be physically correct, cause it by definition is a distortion of physically existing (and hence correct by virtue of simply being) world. Distortion that is arbitrary and changing in nature to suit particular cases.

Originally posted by: zero7
So what was a little bit of ambient light in the original Dark Nite shot is enough to look almost like day under these exposure settings.  Now look at the illuminated window - that is looking like a 100w bulb.  
quote>

And if you take you camera, get out at the dead of the night and set its exposure at say 30-50seconds (with ISO at 200) you'll get very bright scene indeed, but what does it prove? That it isn't really dark outside?

Originally posted by: zero7
So what we have is the ambient light being much brighter than we originally thought and the exposure had been set to compensate.
quote>

Who are these “we” and why did we think that. The whole thing was design to be visually believable. And there are few conditions it depends on, these condition had determined exact multipliers, for instance, simply because these are the only possible ones. I’ll get later back to it.

Originally posted by: zero7
Turn this ambient light off altogether and you have:


All the colours are washed out as you'd expect at night.  The mr sky in the environment slot is giving some weird effects with reflective surfaces, but the window now looks like it should for a room lit by a 100w bulb.  
quote>

Wrong again. Washed out means desaturated. Here they are just black. Because they don't receive ANY light. Since nothing is received, nothing is reflected. As such it can't be judged to be saturated or not. And hence can’t POSSIBLY be called washed out.

So it is a reflection and it is a reflection of that Physical Sky. You have turned off the Light, yet you left the map in the environment slot – map that is self-illuminated – how else it would be reflected otherwise? self illiumination, btw that is already set to its absolute minimum brightness. That is the reason why Skylight multiplier is set to what it is set namely 0,015 and color with value (of HSV) of 85. I could have simply set it to 0,001 – it minimum allowed multiplier and set the color value to 42. Then it would look just the same with exposure set to “Physically Based Lighting, Outdoor Nighttime”. Notice how notably absent is a word “correct” and how “Physically” is linked to lighting and not exposure. Of course it would be possible to turn it off altogether but the result may suffer in some cases.

Originally posted by: zero7
Where does that leave us?  Well it says either the ambient light needs to be ramped right down or the intensity of photometric lights needs to be multiplied up to fit with Dark Nite.   The problem with reducing the ambient light is twofold - first, it takes the values down to the limit of what can be specified - we are talking about an order of magnitude to reduce the ambient light to levels that will work with the physically correct lights;  second, SimFox has done an enormous amount of work to colour balance his rigs with the game, rebalancing things in this way would probably mean an enormous amount of reworking.

So I will now look at it from the other direction.  What multiplier needs to be applied to a photometric light to sit with the Dark Nite exposure model.  


If the ambient light is about an order of magnitude too bright,  what happens if you increase the brightness of the photometric lights by a factor of 10?  Well, the answer is you get very close to what you want.  Using the 'Dimming' factor on the rollout (which is  misnamed as you can also use it as a multiplier) I changed the brightness from 100% of physically correct to 1100% of physically correct.  The 100W bulb is now looking much as it did under the physically correct exposure model, but we now have the Dark Nite ambient light still in place providing a match to the game.



The dimming section of the photometric rollout:



Now to go and rework the actual night view ...
quote>

So where does it leave us. Well it leaves us exactly where we were to start with.

First of all you have grossly miss-estimated the difference of compensatory adjustment by three times no less. This would be a good reason to doubt the whole “by numbers” approach, as well as claim of “knowing” how 100W bulb looks.

Second, as I have mentioned there are some reasons why Skylight multiplier is set the way it is, namely to work with MR Physical Sky map that is already at it absolute minimum with current setup of Dark Night.

Third, you built all you case on using 100W bulb, omitting the role of fixtures /reflectors. However, suggestion that everything should be lit with naked bulbs is very unlikely and undesirable situation. Unless you’re making Pyongyang buildings, that’s it. If, on the other hand, you include that, or go and use IES profiles –the proper way to work with Photometric lights, you’ll have the whole new ball game. I’ve illustrated how different did 100W light look once you change the distribution pattern. So, you would need to go and eyeball again!

Anyway it all boils down to one very simple fact – unless you are doing lighting analysis it all about how it looks, and not what numbers there are. But even if you do lighting analysis it will all be in really physically correct numbers, like lumens.

Fourth, it’s madness to light up you models like that. I mean putting light source/sourceS in every room you want to be “lit”. It may pass in a small structure like this but in a bigger you render would come to a crawl even on most powerful machine. But even if power is not a problem that the whole Pyongyang issue comes to play anyway!

 

Originally posted by: zero7
E2A:  One final thought on this.  Although the multiplier has the effect of bringing a physically correct light up to the brightness needed to work with the dark nite settings there may be implications in regards to the falloff rate of light from the lightsource.  Photometrics always obey the inverse square law, but increasing the output by a factor of 10 may result in the threshold at which the light is no  longer visible being reached further from the light source giving a larger than expected light radius.  The higher level of ambient light may mitigate against this, though.

quote>

I’m really confused what gives you an idea that changing multiplier would any how affect distribution of light, eg said inverse square rule? Increasing ouput e.g. brightness of the light source will logically increase it everywhere. Basically you are just adding coefficient. You light becomes 10 times brighter at source and it will be 10 times brighter than original at any distance! Say if originally your light is 100 lumens than at 2 meters it would be 25. If you increase it to by 1000% (eg 100x10) than at 2 meters it would be (10x100)/4 eg 250.

[zero7 68]

Simfox - Firstly, I know the size of the room in which I put the bulb and the case is being made on a comparison of the exposure levels and not different rooms or lighting schemes - the variables in the test are exposure and ambient light levels.

The subjective interpretation based on differing room sizes or light directions are irrelevant in this case.  We are talking about a very familiar scenario of a bare bulb seen through an uncurtained window - the room size is a typically domestic scale  it familiar enough to be able to judge whether the scene looks 'about right' or 'completely wrong'.

Secondly,  the templates dropdown gives access to the predefined and properly calibrated light set, without that I only had access to the rollout with user set values.  Using the template version I know that this has the correct settings for a physically correct 100w bulb.

Thirdly, the reason for calling the exposure model used; 'correct' is because it the one that is calibrated for use with the physical modelled photometric lights.  Using other exposure levels can give artistic effects and I am well aware of photographic principles; the point is that we are not looking at very slight variations here - we are looking at a factor of 10.

I am not criticising your setup; as I said in my text the lights need to be made to fit the scene due to the way things have been set up to work with the game.  But I came at this from trying to understand why the physically accurate photometric lights supplied in Max were not looking as I expected in a Dark Nite scene

Finally the last comment.  

You say:  That the relative light levels remain consistent  - 100 lumens dropping to 25,  1000 dropping to 250 at 2m.  

Now carry on the sequence:

0m (100) - 2m (25) - 4m (6.25) - 8m (1.56) - 16m (0.391)

0m (1000) - 2m (250) - 4m (62.5) - 8m (15.6) - 16m (3.91)

Now, the original light level of a particular light may not matter because it may disappear into the ambient light before it reaches the level at which it is considered unrenderable.  But the renderer is dealing in physical units - it matters whether your units are metres or yards or inches or millimetres.  Will there not also be an absolute level of illumination at which the renderer decides the scene is unlit (or more accurately so dimly lit that it can no longer display a difference between lit and unlit)  - if that is an absolute level, for arguments sake  5 lumens then the light would cease to be visible before the 8m mark in the 100 lumens example, but not until 16m for the 1000 lumens example.

Finally.  In a small building I see no reason why I shouldn't try to replicate real light placement.  For large buildings that is no longer an option and I would use other techniques.   And why be bothered whether a 100W bulb looks like a 100W bulb or an 80W halogen gives the levels your expecting in a BAT?  Because we are familiar with the kind of lights used in many situations, so it's a shortcut to getting the right look - sure you can tweak things to give the right visual effects, but it gives you the starting point, just as getting the RGB values from a photo of a building can get you the starting point for the colours in a texture.

[SimFox 800]

Originally posted by: zero7

Now, the original light level of a particular light may not matter because it may disappear into the ambient light before it reaches the level at which it is considered unrenderable.

quote>

Oh it does matter, that is the ONLY thing that does matter.

Originally posted by: zero7

 But the renderer is dealing in physical units - it matters whether your units are metres or yards or inches or millimetres. quote>

This, on the other hand doesn't matter. Virtually not at all. As long as you model to the right scale, meaning youroom is 2,5-5 meters tall and not 2,5-5 cm or inches tall your photometric lights will work just fine no matter what you system unit is.

The only meaningfull issue here is a precision; but it is such a finer point that doesn't really need to be taken into consideration here.

Originally posted by: zero7

Will there not also be an absolute level of illumination at which the renderer decides the scene is unlit (or more accurately so dimly lit that it can no longer display a difference between lit and unlit)  - if that is an absolute level, for arguments sake  5 lumens then the light would cease to be visible before the 8m mark in the 100 lumens example, but not until 16m for the 1000 lumens example.

quote>

No it wouldn't.

You're mixing two different things here - calculations and displaying result of said calculations.

When calculating anything Max operate in a floating point color space. This space has 4,3 billion shades per each Red, Green and Blue channel. So, the total number of available colors is... well I don't know if there is a word for such a number it is 4,3 billion*4,3 billion*4,3 billion what would it be 795 and 728 (!) zeros! I mean the entire page of zeros after 795!!! So it is virtually limitless number of color/illumination levels.

But displaying it... well here we are limited by 8 bit displays (8 bit per channel of Red, Green, Blue) giving total 255 shades per channel and total of 16,7 million colors. Same goes for most digital cameras (storing jpgs). There are some displays that can show 10 bit color eg 1023 shades per channel and total of 1,26 billion colors. My camera stores images in 14 bit color - eg 16383 shades per channel and total of 4,4 billion colors.

So, you see how inadequate current display technology when compared to image creation and even capturing available today. Thats why Color Mapping/gamma correction is so essential, it allows you to bring in "overblown" and "underexposed" bits and bring them into displayable spectrum. Yet this is by definition distortion of natural linear data.

Originally posted by: zero7

Finally.  In a small building I see no reason why I shouldn't try to replicate real light placement.  For large buildings that is no longer an option and I would use other techniques.   And why be bothered whether a 100W bulb looks like a 100W bulb or an 80W halogen gives the levels your expecting in a BAT?

quote>

Good question, but are you asking me? Why? I said right from the start  - eyeball it! I never bother so much with how may Watts here or there. I'm going for "looking right". It is you who is calculating those watts and relaying on 100W bulb to set lighting in your scene.

It is only useful first couple of times you do it. After that it becomes pointless, As it doesn't really give you anything, but quite an arbitrary point from which you would need to go and adjust it. You may as well start form default settings. And after that such over-reliance on numbers may lead to "draw by numbers" syndrome that could really seriously arrest any artistic development, as you get accustomed to punch in figures rather then see and evaluate.

Combo of room size, nature of light distribution in a particular fixture or even the bulb  - don't tell me you live in a place where people have naked bulbs hanging from the wire in their living quarters - I though it only happens in North Korea, will make very big difference - very comparable with those 10 times you have sighted, which in fact are 30...

Originally posted by: zero7

 Because we are familiar with the kind of lights used in many situations, so it's a shortcut to getting the right look - sure you can tweak things to give the right visual effects, but it gives you the starting point, just as getting the RGB values from a photo of a building can get you the starting point for the colours in a texture.

quote>

It is very interesting and illustrative example you have brought up here - checking RGB values from photograph to get a starting point. It is as pointless and counterproductive as reliance on 100w bulb in BAT. But it is much easier to explain why it is pointless.

If simply by looking on picture you're not capable to set your starting point (human brain still far more powerful than any computers are) and you go to photo with eyedropper then you seriously lost. The color you have on photograph had been subject to so many alteration at the scene, during the capture and postproduction, that reliance on those RGB values is ludicrous. It's like playing 64kbps MP3 on HiEnd audio system.

So if you can't get it visually, getting it's RGB will only confuse you further. Again it will develop dependency and inability to see things as they are. You'll be always looking for numbers everywhere.

Now, shall I remind you where we've started?

I've said that lights looked dim, dull and lifeless. To my personal human perception. You went to a great deal of trouble to attempt to prove that the numbers are right. So, as long as numbers are ring it must be my perception that is wrong...

Yet we are virtually in the same spot we have started. And all along I was arguing against such a mechanical approach which does lead to such a mechanical looking image.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

You can throw around as many numbers, and calculations as you like, but if it doesn't look good then all that effort is essentially in vein.

Just look at the movie industry. Any action film worth its salt has a good explosion in it. If however you substitute one of these "explosions" with a "physically correct" rapid release of energy from an actual explosive, you will get a far less spectacular, intense, and awe inspiring bang for your proverbial buck. What does the industry use in lieu of realism? Mostly gasoline and fireworks or whatever will give them the big fireball that people want to see. C4 and hand grenades are not full of gasoline, however that doesn't stop film makers from making it look that way.

I could say the same thing about both the lighting and the bitmaps, sure they may be realistic and correct, but they look cold, soulless, and generally very strange in game.

Besides this is supposed to be fun, not an exercise out of my Physics IV optics course. If we could make art (which is what this all is) by putting a few numbers into a machine then my PC would be churning out Louvre worthy pieces by now.

[zero7 68]

There is very little point in continuing this. If people think my buildings are 'cold and soulless' they can choose not to download them.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Get them finished, Costa Coffee is the cornerstone of rubbish English coffe ; )

[Dannibee 138]

Finsh them, I like it and we need more UK BATs!

[zero7 68]

Gutterclub and Dannibee  - it was the debate over lighting that was pointless to continue, not the model.  I'm lotting it today and will release in the next day or two (it's not a growable so not much needed to test that it works in game).

 

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Ultimately, that is the final filter on whether people like it or not. That being said, I'm not here to say whether or not I like it, I'm only here to give you advice on how to improve it, because I want to see you improve. I would not be where I am in my BATing if I didn't listen to the people I butted heads with in my thread. I would never have improved if I just disregarded everything I didn't agree with.

At the very least, I hope you take things under consideration for your next project.

[zero7 68]

Originally posted by: SimHoTToDDy

At the very least, I hope you take things under consideration for your next project.quote>

I will certainly do that .. as my reply in regard to making greater use of customised textures over procedural ones should indicate.  Any suggestions that help enhance realism I'm interested in; adding things (like excessive roof junk, or exaggerated grunge) for the sake of fitting with some of the artistic trends that periodically sweep the BATting community will not gain any traction with me.

E2A - the industrial building I'm working on is visible in Google street view - I've just found out that in real life it's being used as an ambulance station!  It'll still be I-M in the game.

[Jack_wilds 550]

... personally I like it whether or not the lighting is spot-on... as I am unable to zoom street level in the game....

I'm sure I cannot tell what size the lamp-bulb is or where it is in the room or how big a room is as it may not be a full depth room... at this juncture of a project its subjective to the eye of the creator-designer- bat builder... its artistically subjective, so in the eyes of the beholder the subject is admired or not...

creative differences happen as a matter of course and should not hinder or bog down creative process... what one sees may not be what another observes -its in the eye of the beholder... constructive criticism, instructively offered -graciously, is effective and appreciated however, carried too far can become tiresome....

sooner or later a choice is made and that decision on how to make, create and finish a project is in the hands of its creator...and then fudge space needs to be allotted to the game in respect to RL-physics versus Sim-physics... the game is limited to computer resources and how its programed... a bat can be expertly made to the finest detail but will appear fuzzy in game -if it appears at all... thoughts offered to ponder

OK, off the soap-box...

Zero7 good work...

Jack

[zero7 68]

OK, time to get this thread back on track and being about the models.

Here's the latest progress on the industrial building:

 

Next stages are to add doors and windows into the North and West walls and then to start on the skylights for the flat-roofed sections of the building.  All textures are currently indicative placeholders.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

Like Jason, I'm more familiar with American industrial architecture, but this seems plausible thus far. The curved roof completely throws me off though Mind adding some flashing to the parapet walls while you are at it?

I might have to go on a hunt for more of this variety of building. I'm a sucker for a good warehouse, if you know a good location to look it would be much obliged.

[gutterclub 2,729]

There are some great Canalside red brick Warehouses in Nottingham, Leeds, Birmingham and Manchester..

British Waterways building in Nottingham springs to mind? not sure if it would be your thing?

[zero7 68]

Originally posted by: SimHoTToDDy

Like Jason, I'm more familiar with American industrial architecture, but this seems plausible thus far. The curved roof completely throws me off though Mind adding some flashing to the parapet walls while you are at it?

I might have to go on a hunt for more of this variety of building. I'm a sucker for a good warehouse, if you know a good location to look it would be much obliged.

quote>

If I haven't added the flashing by the time I start on the lighting, remind me!

If you want to find some interesting UK industrial head for the big industrial centres of the North of England.  Leeds (where my building is from), Manchester, Liverpool, Sheffield.  You'll probably find quite a lot of interest in Birmingham too.  As with any industrial city just head out of the centre along the rivers, canals and railway lines and you'll soon find the industrial areas.  I can't promise lots of buildings with curved roofs, but you should find a good variety of warehouses.

Here's a little round-topped something from Liverpool to start your hunt .... this puts you in the industrial areas alongside the Mersey, which you'll find by scrolling left.

gutterclub - good suggestions, though I'm not very familiar with Nottingham.  Maybe somewhere for some future building hunting.

E2A  This one is a better example ... here (again Liverpool)