nybt-forum-threads PBGV's BAT Thread

[Sgt Pepper 864]

You could just use a texture for that fence part, since fully modeling it out right now seems pointless since it is hardly noticeable.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Great Job!!! it looking to be one of my favorite.

[PBGV103 729]

Well, I have looked everywhere for pictures of the roof top plazas on the lower portion of the building with no luck. So at this point I'm just going to guess at where the doors are. It's kinda dissapointing since everything else is so close to RL.

Edit:  I found out the real cause of the black box issue I was having.  Apparently it's a memory management issue.  3ds max divides renders into squares that are too big for memory allocations and when it hits the limit it just dumps all of the data for that square.  I guess the moral is don't use huge or complicated textures and avoid having a ton of objects in one tiny area.

[SimFox 804]

Nope you are wrong with your guess about black box issue, as well as with the culprit. Max has nothing to do with it, rather it is a fault of MentaRay. And this is issue with Final Gather. When no inverted normals, or coplanar surfaces are present it is could be caused by insufficient info for that particular spot. Notice how they have gone away once you've put in the plaza near them - you have provided additional data for FG to calculate the brightness values for that spot. Also notice how these are appearing out of direct sun light - another point in support for FG theory.

Whole point of buckets - tat what those "squares"! are called is memory conservation. And if at any time Mental Ray will run out of memory it will pop up error message clearly stating that and Max will close. But sometimes (more often than many think) even those error messages are signs of a defect in your memory than actual lack of it. Also moral about complicated textures is a no go. Texture can't be "complicated" it is a flat pictures - there is nothing complicated about it.

[PBGV103 729]

Ok, sorry I meant material, not texture. As far as the Mental Ray or Final Gather goes, why do some of these black spots show up on objects that have been there unchanged for several day, and previously rendered perfectly fine? Also, sometimes when these spots show up right after I've added something to the scene, I can remove what I've just added and the black spots will go away. It all seems very inconsistant and confusing honestly.

[SimFox 804]

Quite an opposite. It is very consistent! It would have been inconsistent if those black spots would come and go with nothing at all changed in teh scene. Yet as you have pointed out your self the are clearly linked to the changes you make.

Generally every time you alter anything at all in the scene it may, and normally does, alter FG solution. And those black spots are exactly that - issues with FG. Basically it is missing data to display things properly at that point.

I would very much recommend you to read on FG, or watch some tutorials that explain it or other analogous GI methods. It is a good background knowledge that could spare you tons of aggravation later on.

Here is one:

http://www.thegnomonworkshop.com/store/products/tutorials/jpa_series/

Click on Indirect Illumination Tab

Generally look through the other tabs as well. For the price of a movie ticket you'll get quite a bit on knowledge which is practical (if you want to continue your hobby) and entertaining as well.

And here is a resonably good shot of the roof of your building:

[PBGV103 729]

Thank for that great picture SimFox,  it helped a lot, and I'll have watch those videos when I get a chance.  Here's the latest on 425:

I'm still trying to figure out where to put the doors on the lower roof levels, e.g., where the plants and tables are.

[SimFox 804]

I don't think you would need to concern yourself with the doors- I doubt those would be doors clearly identifiable from the distance of Zoom5. And they don't really matter architecturally. I also doubt there are any tables with parasols there either. Plants yes, but tables not really. What you should do, however is to make the roof tops believable themselves. right now those are like flat table tops. You'd need raise clearly distinguishable (to the level of Zoom4 or even 3) parapet wall.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I agree with SimFox about the roof, though I admit I kinda like the tables but they look too big. Either way though, keep SimFox's suggestions in mind! And I can't wait to see this a night preview and get this in my city!

[PBGV103 729]

From what I can tell theres barely any parapet, only a railling.  I found this pic on bing maps, doesn't the circled object kinda look like a table?

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Possibly, just with a greenish/yellowish umbrella...

I can't stop looking at that last picture you posted...

[PBGV103 729]

Ok, I've gotten rid of all the errors (I think). So as far as I'm concerned I'm done with the day view. Now I just need to learn how to use trunite.

[SimFox 804]

If people are allowed to this roof, and you clearly intend to envision it this way - whey otherwise there would be umbrellas, there has to be parapet wall of sufficient hight for safety reasons. if nothing else. But generally, umbrellas? Tables?I really hope you'll reconsider that silliness. It that would have been residential building may be. Still your chairs there are hugely overscaled and frankly out of place!

But those are more or less matters of taste and style. (Still I don't see any evidence for the parasols in real building)

There are, however, some issues with model:

It would be nice if you take a look if you can do something about them.

The slanted corners are the major, look altering one.

The situation in a red circle is linked to the width of slated corner. It would be great if could give back to traces the rhythm they had in original. I think it does add a lot to the building.

The barrier on the roof (green arrow) is no where as black as you've made it . plus it's significantly wide (between half and two thirds of the width of the rail track for window washer. and it is of different shape. Not simple vertical box/wall, but slated down towards outer edge. This would be very visible in a model as such slant would pick up sun light

PS why don't you show Zoom5 render And from all sides?

[PBGV103 729]

Well I just assumed that they would be allowed to the roof since there is railling clearly visible from google street view. I did, however, get rid of the roof furniture I thought it looked out of place. The dark grey roof barrier was an easy fix. The only issues that don't seem possible to fix are the chamfered corners. I think they turned out just a little too wide, but if I shrink them it pulls in the walls of the building and makes the corners at the street level way too thin! So I'm not sure how to fix it properly. I'll try to get zoom5 pictures up sometime today.

[Seraf 1,239]

I think simfox said everything about the issues, I can only suggest adding some green on the terraces. Anyway this building starts to look real good

[PBGV103 729]

Here come the zoom5 previews.

[mben92 9]

This is coming along very nicely. i can't wait to see the night render. I will ask this, though: Are you going to add plants to the separate tiers, or would it come out too big? just wondering.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

It looks great! I love it. I don't know what else to say, so we should wait for SimFox...haha

[Hanson784 165]

Very nice work with this one. Reminds me of Park Avenue Tower.

The only thing I would do is tweak the marble texture for the entrances a bit. Maybe it's the image but the texture looks like a solid color instead of having a marbled quality. It's a minor point and it's fine if you leave the texture as is.

I was also going to comment on adding the "425" lettering above the main entrance but it looks like you modeled it out already. It's a bit hard to tell from the image and it's another minor point as the building's lower half will be blocked from view by the skyscraper canyon around it (well, that is when I get around to making surronding buildings)

[mben92 9]

PBGV103, are you using GMAX or 3DSmax for your bats? I think the nightlights would turn out better in 3ds.

[PBGV103 729]

Hanson - Thanks!  I've been thinking about changing that texture.  It look like marble up close but it blends in even on zoom5, just like the black granite around the base of the building.  The other issue I just noticed is that there is only one revolving door on the back of the building in RL, I have two.  I'm kinda worried about changing anything at this point because I finally fixed all of the vray and fg issues.  I'm afraid they'll come back if I change anything. 

mben92 - yes, I'm using 3ds max now.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

How big, exactly, are those cuts in the back side? Will those interlock with other buildings in a nice w2w way (ie, 16m multiples) or will something have to be LOTed specifically to fit them?

If you are not sure about he general appearance still, take a render and paste it into a SC4 screen shot (of similar maxis or high quality custom buildings) to see how well it fits in. Make adjustments to the render until it looks correct, then go back to max and your materials and make your renders look like the corrected, edited one. It may take quite a few preview renders to get everything perfect, but that is what previews are for!

[PBGV103 729]

I replaced the pictures above with the fixed rear entrance. I've rendered it twice before and made custom LODs that aren't complex at all, but they don't seem to be working quite right. I'm still getting the floating/overlapping buildings effect in game. I made LOD3 out of a spline, extruded it to the scene's height, and then used SimFox's custom LOD4&5 command. Should I make LOD3 out of multiple regular boxes?  It looks right the front and back of the building, but the sides are messed up.  Here's what I mean:

[SimFox 804]

Cough, cough...

Custom LODs... Custom means you would need to adjust them. Difference between Automatic LOD and Custom is that in first case simple bounding box for ALL objects in the scene is created and left as is and then copied 2 times and named accordingly, Placed on isolated layer and the layer is hidden.

Custom, on the other hand creates same bounding box but converts it to the Editable Poly places t on isolated Layer but leaves it visible , so you can adjust it as you need by manually moving vertices to where they would need to be. Once you're satisfied with result, press LODs 4&5 and you adjusted LOD3 will be copied and layer with it hidden.

About building... You would need take another look at the terraces. To be precise to take another look at the source material and at you model. The picture I've posted clearly shows parapet wall. The railing isn't nowhere near as tall as what you've made. Just look at it and compare it to the height of yur windows. What is that height btw. According to my estimate it is about 1,9m and the typical floor height is about 3,8m with ground one being about 5 tall. This would leave 6,7 m fro mechanical penthouse on the roof which sounds about right.

Anyway, it is also important to understand how those floors are placed. Here is an illustration, it is from different building with height floors, but the principle is about same:

and in this building you're doing the windows aren't floor to ceiling. In that case most probably, like 90% chance they are ceiling to some parapet wall - the one you would be having on those terraces, something like this:

I've marked the ceiling-floor "sandwich" and it's location. Green line is a prove that internal ceiling coincides (about, give or take 5-10cm - totally negligible number in BAT) with the top of the window. Red bar is the height of the window at the ground floor shop. It looks more or less standard size - may still be a bit taller than that. Anyway the door would be on the level with floor, and the blue bar is the height of parapet wall you should have on your terraces. Given that the safety railing would be about 30-40cm tall tops, not about 1,7m you've made it.

So I hope you see now why your doors leading to the terraces are not quite what they should be. I would really just drop them - they are not really a feature of the building, you don't really need them.

I also think your beams at the AC pit are way way to bulky and so are details of ACs themselves. The rim of "tube" where fan sits, for instance doesn't really need to have any thickens, max say max 2cm (to pacify FG may be). It would be just as visible, and would look far better.

PS I think you should do something about color scheme you've used. You have based yours on photos where white balance was very much off - something always to keep in mind. And now it look quite alien in game.

[PBGV103 729]

By the way, Hanson mentioned that this building reminded him of Park Avenue Tower, and I just discovered that they were designed by the same architect, Helmut Jahn. He also designed the CitySpire and 750 Lexington. You can see the similarities between the four buildings. I just thought that this was some interesting history.

[cmdp123789 710]

what a coincidence.... didnt know it hahaha only thing Im gonna say

[PBGV103 729]

Ok, big post this time guys.  First, SimFox, I believe I fixed the issues you brought up in your last post and it seems to have made a huge improvement.  I still don't like the textures I used on some of the HVAC stuff, some of it looks like solid color.  The picture below is the LOD configuration I've been using that follows the outline of the building as close as possible without being too complex.  The LODs are editable polys.  Below that is the latest zoom5 previews.

LODs:

Previews:

These previews were take immediately before exporting the scene.  Here are the in-game results.

Next is something strange.  After I took the previews above and saw no vray/fg errors, I exported the scene, but as you can see below errors appeared.

As you can see there are several errors (circled in yellow).  The loading bay doors turned white, the mullions were chopped up and there are dark spots on the cement wall.  Fixing these should be fairly simple, as long as fixing them doesn't cause further issues somewhere else.  What really annoys me, though, is that, as you can see from the preview above, the errors only showed up in the export.  Nothing about the scene was changed between preview and export. 

Finally, I was wondering if anyone knows how to fix the error circled in red.  That one is a game rendering issue.  It shows up as a grid across everything in the game.  I switched the settings from software render to hardware render which made it less noticeable in some places, but it's still there.

Thanks guys.  Please comment and give suggestions, they are always welcome here. 

[Ke|is 3,337]

Amazing work my frriend !

What is the texture of the windows? I like so much.

[PBGV103 729]

The window material is just a flat color bitmap for the diffuse color (100) and specular color (80), the max noise map for both refraction (2) and glossiness (70), and of course raytrace for reflection (50). I made it just by playing around with the slate material editor.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I hope you notice that the building is kinda floating too. The chopped up mullions happen naturally with the game(though I thought MAX was supposed to correct that...). The loading bay doors turned invisible actually(maybe you accidentaly deleted them?) you can see the lot's base texture through where they should be. So, if the doors right there were planes, you might have to rotate them where the other side faces the road(I figure they'd be like the same planes in Gmax, face one way and you can see them, then turn them around and they are invisible).