nybt-forum-threads PBGV's BAT Thread

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Good to see this one back. I can't wait to see this on STEX, this building is your buildings is very important to me and the NYBT.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

OMG, yes, please! It's good to see you again - I wish you luck finishing that beauty up and exporting it.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Looking great, hope you get round to finishing this and hopefully the others. It's a shame we haven't seen you around for a little while

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Oh my! It's great to see you back with anything! And that's a sure beauty.

I hope to see some more of you!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

I do not really check on birthdays buy I scrolled at the bottom of the page after i clicked on forums and I seen that today it's your birthday so Happy Birthday team mate!!!

Please to not mined the name unless you what me to Photoshop it out.

  Edited June 7, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[madhatter106 3,931]

Those are the wonkiest polygons that I've ever seen on a cake...

[PBGV103 729]

Haha thanks! That's one tall cake!

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I didn't know it was your birthday!

Well happy belated Birthday!

[PBGV103 729]

I'm still waiting on all the parts to be released for my new computer, but I've been playing around with max a little in the mean time. Here's a little test I made. It's a sphere with a water material applied to it and a torus that's been modified a little with a metallic material. As you can see in the last image the render for these two objects took quite a while, and to think some of you were doubting my need for a new computer... haha

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Well, there is no doubt that you can crank up settings so high that it takes aeons to render. When we look at BATting, the question is always whether this is necessary with regard to SimCity 4. Much stuff won't make a really visible difference even in zoom 5 (although you may see some subtle differences if you know where they are, if you really really want to, and if you enlarge parts of the render and compare them side by side with other renders). Other details will be lost altogether. If I see that people like nofunk (Carew Tower), Jasoncw (Bank of America), paulvmontfort (ICC Hong Kong), and SimFox (Seagram Building) have been using "upper middle class" desktop PCs to crank out larger 3dsmax BATs which I wouldn't exactly call shabby or blurry or void of details, I know that a monster rig is apparently not needed if you are willing to be a bit easy on resources.

However, this is all idle talk - we've been through this several times, and it's pretty obvious that you are totally focused on getting a monster rig no matter what, so you will get one, no matter what. I think we have all accepted that by now, and there is really no use to spend any more effort on that discussion.

I hope you'll get that rig together, and I sure hope your BATs won't end up in the "The Ones that Never Made it to the STEX" thread, that's more important now, I guess.

[maikeli.1 12]

How progress on 277 park ave and the other projects?

[PBGV103 729]

I think (hope) I'm done with the day scene on 270 Park Ave because I exported it and it took 36 hours. I'll redo and probably finish the night scene tonight and then hopefully get someone to test it out for me soon. I also had an LOD issue after the export, but fixed it.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Stunning piece of work.

[weixc812 509]

Amazing and lovely!

[darn42 1,268]

... daaaanngggg

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Lookin' good! and I'm looking forward to having it in my game.

Hopefully your next BATs you optimize more though because 36 hours is way too long for an export.

If I see that people like nofunk (Carew Tower), Jasoncw (Bank of America), paulvmontfort (ICC Hong Kong), and SimFox (Seagram Building) have been using "upper middle class" desktop PCs to crank out larger 3dsmax BATs which I wouldn't exactly call shabby or blurry or void of details, I know that a monster rig is apparently not needed if you are willing to be a bit easy on resources.

Nofunk's computer couldn't handle the final export for Carew Tower so I exported it. I forget how long Carew Tower took, but US Bank only took a few hours (3 or 4? I forget) for the export. I have 8 GB of RAM on a 64 bit system.

imo, based on the materials and size of the building, it would take less than 8 hours on my computer if the materials were done as I would do them. 36 hours is really a super long render.

[PBGV103 729]

I think the modeling and the materials are both problems in this case. My computer does have 8GB of memory as well, but an older dual core CPU, which isn't nearly as fast as newer quad core CPUs. It also has a pretty bad GPU which gets very annoying int the view ports when I have a lot of objects visible. I had to turn up the quality settings, sampling, and FG settings to get the aluminum and certain transparent materials to render correctly, especially at zooms 2&3. I guess details just get to small there. I'm sure the modeling could have been done much more efficiently but I made 95% of the model a couple years ago, and I'm still no professional modeler. I usually take the quick and easy way out by using multiple simple objects to compose a complex one, and from what I hear that kills render times. It just seems to take far too long to do things the "right" way and half the time I can't get things to turn out well if I do spend hours on it. I feel like I would really need to take a class in this or something to do it right.

[io_bg 249]

You've made an average modernistic glass box look stunning. Wonderful work!

[cmdp123789 710]

Question is... will it be available in the STEX??

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Well, for this building it's too late anyway - I guess you'll be quite relieved to send this one off to the STEX. In the long run, however, learning & using efficient techniques may take less time than assembling that killer rig after all. Seriously, though, it's good to see you back here.

[JayStimson 212]

Looking really nice.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I hope this is a good sign of a change of heart.

Welcome back! Stunning creation. Perfection is achieved it seems.

[PBGV103 729]

Haha Not quite perfection. The night export took about 24 hours and turned out to have some problems. A good portion of the lights around the base of the building didn't show up so I PS'ed them in, but I missed a few before the FSH files were created, It bothers me but I really don't want to sit through that export again, mainly because I can't use the computer for anything else during the export or it will blue screen.

On a positive note, I'm going to start some smaller projects including redoing the Mutual of America Building and the Lipstick Building. Also, I need a new computer for the major I'm switching into and it looks like that will be happening for Xmas! Still not the super computer I was hoping for but it'll be an i7-3770k, 32GB of Corsair Dominator GT memory, Mushkin Chronos Deluxe 240GB SSD, and a Radeon 7850 2GB. Should be great for SC4 and a lot better than my laptop for long renders.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

You can still export the building manually if you have miss some of the fsh files go in to your C:\Program Files\Autodesk\3ds Max Design 2013\gamepacks\BAT\Outputfiles after you have Photoshop the fsh files, in the Outputfiles folder of the building you have exported and look for the Windows bach file double click it to to put in all the fsh images in the SC4 model file, it's easy.

[darn42 1,268]

32 gb... how much are you using right now? I have been fine with 8 gb for a while now, and the most I've used was 7.

[art128 4,622]

32Gb is quite overkill though. Even MAX will not use them. 16gb maybe but not 32. But if you have the money, why not.

Also I'd suggest you to get a curcial M4, Intel 330 or Samsung 840 SSD instead of Mushkins.

[PBGV103 729]

Why them instead of Mushkin? From what I've seen Mushkin's is the fastest available, reliable, and not incredibly expensive. The Samsung 840 Pro looks like it's just as fast but $70 more than the Mushkin drive. As for the memory, I've used about 7 out of 8GB exporting before and had one model refuse to export because it ran out of memory. Max will use as much as it needs. The idea is to have plenty of memory for 3ds max and extra for any other apps that may be running.

Aaron thanks for the tip, but I can't seem to get it to work. I use GIMP and it won't open the fsh files. Maybe that's the problem but I can't just go out and buy the CS5 suite for this one problem.

[PBGV103 729]

I fixed the missing lights in the bmp file and found the fshwrite app. It looks like DXT3 compression with Alpha is the correct option based on the file it creates, but does anyone else know anything about manually creating fsh files? I only need to replace two.

It seems like no matter what I do fshwrite won't accept the alpha bitmap.

[PBGV103 729]

Thank you so much Aaron! I was able to fix the two bitmaps, turned them into fsh files, made an educated guess at what their names should be, reinserted them, and it turned out perfectly!!!! This means that just about any rendering error can be fixed even if you've already created and inserted the fsh files as long as you save all of your output files.

[PBGV103 729]

I was bored today so I decided to start working on one of those smaller buildings. Surprise!