nybt-forum-threads PBGV's BAT Thread

[Scaley McSlither 1,714]

Great work here PBGV! The Bryant Park Hotel deserves a little love if you guys go that route!

 

[PBGV103 729]

This still isn't a request thread, but I have a long way to go with the current buildings before I move on to other areas. I'm just trying to figure out if there is any way to make animated buildings work.

I might be done with the exterior of Metropolitan Tower. Next is modeling the interior, which I'm sure will take forever. Let me know what you think.

[Vlasky 1,803]

I think it looks great. However, it might be just me, but, I have the impression that more blinds are closed or almost closed than open. 

[PBGV103 729]

And you would be correct. I was basing it off of this picture where most are closed. It's a residential building, so avoiding peeping neighbors makes sense. It also looks like some of the floors have darker blinds which make them look open, whereas mine are all a single color. I may have a few more closed than the picture, but I thought it was close enough. Do you guys disagree? Should I make variations in the darkness of the blinds?

[Vlasky 1,803]

I think that actually it looks very good as it is. Gives some sort of dynamics

[Scaley McSlither 1,714]

Sorry - that wasn't really a request, just meant it more along the lines of food for thought. Keep up the awesome work!

[PBGV103 729]

I'm running into an issue with lighting where the light passes through seams between the inner and outer window frames. Basically the inside and outside of the building are two separate objects, but the vertices overlap so there isn't an actual gap. I'm guessing 3ds max is accounting for light bending around corners and recognizes those edges as corners, but I'm not sure what to do to solve the problem. Any ideas?

[darn42 1,268]

Can you post a picture of what the problem looks like?

[PBGV103 729]

I played with the shadow parameters and restarted max and the leaks are 95% gone now. Unfortunately I'm not sure what actually helped the problem. I'm using photometric florescent lights because they're supposed to be more realistic, but I'm not sure I'm happy with the results so far. When I was in NYC I noticed most lights have a fairly yellow tint, some blue. These are more orange from the wood floors. I'm assuming this is how they should look since I was viewing those windows from the ground while these are viewed from above. I'm still not entirely convinced though. Maybe it will look better when the furniture is in the model. What do you guys think?

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Wow, it's great!

I loved that reflections.

[PBGV103 729]

After only adding photometric lights, a zoom 3 render that used to take 30 seconds takes over 5 minutes. Do you guys think photometric lights are worth it?

[Vlasky 1,803]

5 minutes is too much, oh come on, you can do it

 

Anyhow, with the approach you've taken I think you absolutely have to add objects in there. Also maybe tweak your night map for ground because those green patches that show up on facade are not nice.

[Jasoncw 11,953]

Photometric lights are basically what you should consider standard lights, so I'd stick with those whenever possible.

 

Another option, and the option that I would personally prefer, is to use a mr sky portal, with the color controlled by the mib blackbody shader (you can google this to get the setup). This gets the soft diffuse shadows required for simulating interiors which should hypothetically have a bunch of different light sources in a room. They take a bit of time to render, but you can also reduce the shadow samples (which in this case even having the samples too low might not be bad because it would make the lighting less smooth and more busy which would be good for the overall impression).

[Fargo 577]

The day reflections look a little funny to me

[darn42 1,268]

I don't think photometric lights would be necessary. I think I posted about this in another thread some time ago, but you can get similar results with omni-lights with a fraction of the computation time. Since this isn't close up and we don't really see the edge of the falloff (which is where the photometric map becomes important like with car headlight spots) but all we really see is the diffuse of the light. For omni lights just set the falloff to inverse square, mess with the color but keep it pretty unsaturated and close to white, set the far attenuation (which limits distance calculations happen). Also, since I believe you have something like 32 gb of ram, increase the max quadtree depth a little which speeds up ray-tracing at the cost of RAM.

 

I'm not sure what you mean by the mr portal. I get that would be a way to set the color of the light (and thanks for introducing me to the blackbody shader ). Are you trying to say have them isolated from the windows and place them like rectangular lights on the ceiling? I can see how that could work, but it would only be able to do ambient/diffuse shadows since it doesn't cast any direct light itself. I still think that would be too much render for the viewing distance regardless.

[PBGV103 729]

Jason, you're saying the mr sky portal option would take more time than photometric lights? Right now zoom 5 day renders take 12 minutes while night takes an hour. The way the lights look now is growing on me. The two bluish floors in the base might be turned a little less blue, but I'm liking the variation in the color of the lights. It looks like what I saw on my trip. Right now renders are only using about 2.5 GB so I have plenty of room. I'll try raising the max quadtree depth. Right now it's at the default of 7. What would you suggest setting it to?

[shinkansen1 84]

Those warm pink lights make it easier to believe that this is a residential tower, up until now I thought it was occupied by offices!

[PBGV103 729]

It's a mixed use tower. The bottom 17 floors are offices, and everything above that is residential.

I tried changing the quadtree depth. 8 makes renders longer, while 9 and 10 makes them shorter, which doesn't seem to make sense from the autodesk article on it. 10 is about 1 second faster than 9 at zoom 3, but 9 is only about 4 seconds faster than 7. I don't think the 0.5% decrease in render time is really making any difference, but for now I'll stick with what I have.

[PBGV103 729]

I didn't feel like working on furniture and was bored of making blinds for CitySpire, so I took a few minutes to throw this together.  I'm not sure why I didn't make this one a long time ago.  It must be one of the most simple buildings in Manhattan.

 

[cmdp123789 710]

It looks awesome! It will be so nice to see this in the stex.. And btw... Wow... You are starting work faster!! Congrats!! What's the last building?

[Seraf 1,239]

I was going to say that considering the building is partially residential it's quite normal for me that most of the blinds would be closed. But Paul beat me to it The BAT looks stunning, nightlights are also great looking, I'm afraid I won't be of any help with the light issues though

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

It's simple but I love these kind of buildings! Nice job you did

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Love the building. 

[Hanson784 165]

Liking the photometric nightlighting since it's more true to how RL lighting. Are there offices on the lower floors of the tower btw? The florescent white/ blue lights reminds me office lighting. Didn't notice the variation in blind colors till you pointed it out; it's good to keep things accurate but sometimes that can lead things being tedious and getting caught up in details which seem to get lost the various views levels of SImCity. Thankfully there's not that much furniture to put in compared to other buildings since I've heard a fair number of the apartments along 57th Street are owned by the very wealthy who reside in NYC for only a couple of months or so and use the place as an investment property leaving it unfurnished

 

Good to see the CBS Building also, you've nearly got it done already! Though, besides Annenberg Building and One Liberty Plaza, it is one of the most simple skyscrapers to make in the city as you said.

[PBGV103 729]

Yep, it's the CBS Building, but no, it's not even close to being finished.  There's still all of the roof, interior, and plaza, not to mention the night scene.

 

Here's another building I started.  I really do enjoy making the facades 10x more that anything else.  I guess that's why I've started and haven't finished so many buildings.  Can anyone guess which building this is?

 

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

I don't know which building is that, just know that it's getting pretty well.

[maikeli.1 12]

Credit lyonnais building 6th Ave?

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

That's damn it, I need to start the batting factory!!!!!

[PBGV103 729]

I wouldn't exactly call it a factory.  I just would rather have these basic shape models in my NYC recreation than the repetitive, tiny Maxis buildings.  When you compare them to these models they look so under-scaled.  

 

That said, I did finish the roof of the CBS building and made this place holder, and I do plan on finishing all of these eventually.

 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

OMG!!!!