nybt-forum-threads Aaron Graham's NYBT Residential Thread

[_marsh_ 1,118]

Great new projects! They're looking great already and since it's by you it's safe to assume they will make amazing buildings in the end.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Heblem- Thank you!!!

DragonAnime- Thank you!!!

Skyscraper241- Thank you!!!

_marsh_- Thank you!!!

Park Tower Apartments

Okay guys back to the NYBT thread, someone has to also hep keep NYBT alive. Aright, I have worked on the Park towers a little bit , I have a question does the windows look good this way, yea or no, I want to finished this building so I can make more buildings.

  Edited February 18, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[gutterclub 2,729]

In terms of the frames, the windows look great..but they need something to reflect or fake the reflection as it looks like they are all made of white glass. Go for something similar to your usual window texture, or try using a ground plane with a city backdrop to reflect.

Other than that its looking wonderful as always!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Thank you, I am using ground plane but for some reason it's not showing up on the windows. I could add the textures on the glass to see if that can help a little and another thing I can do it to make a circle around the building and extrude it about the height of the building and add a city backdrop to the extruded circle.

  Edited February 21, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Park Tower Apartments

Okay guys, I have added the trees and the bushes on the ground floor again, all I have to do on this model is fix the cutains on the other sides of the building re-texture the HVAC unit, decrease the reflection on the small roof junks, make new rail for the front of the building by scratch again, texture the garage area and do the night lights not the windows, I did that back in 2011 around august I think. I have to add direct lights and a few omnies here and there.

I hope you guys like the glass texture now, I tried my best to fix it the best way I can, oh yea and do not mine the black lines on the faced of the building I will remove them.

  Edited February 21, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[Jack_wilds 550]

great improvements in the tweaking ... notably the greenery... but, what is that pink surface by the planters suppose to be I think its very close to a soonish release...

[T Wrecks 10,210]

The model is wonderful, the bricks are very convincing in my books, and the flora looks splendid to me - I think you hit the sweet spot in terms of hue, brightness and saturation.

The problem with the windows (or rather the gound plane) remains, though. How exactly are your settings? Maybe another 3dsmax user can help you.

Another spot that doesn't look quite as great as the rest of the building is the roof IMO. Something with the textures doesn't sit quite right with me... maybe it's the strong contrast between them?

[gutterclub 2,729]

Have you tried darkening the ground plane, adding a little splash of colour other than grey, flattening the plane (i see what you are trying to achieve but I think with the way it casts light back with FG etc it will need to be flat (Simfox or someone else could clarify this a lot better).

I have tried in the past adding more noise in the bump field for the glass and also using a uv map on the gorund plane say, 100x100..this gives a different affect.

The rest is to die for! Can't wait for this beauty

[PBGV103 729]

The plane looks like it's being reflected but that your glossiness and/or reflectivity aren't high enough.

[Francis90b 748]

Maybe it isn't reflective enough...or maybe the settings are correct, and it should actually look this way...

[Girafe 1,729]

Flora insert on project like this is a little bit different to Flora planted with Mayor Mod tool.

Your leaves should be larger, even on small trees. It allows to have more density. You will take your foliage click right on it and select property, mental ray tab, return black option checked.

For more and complex infos about Flora, there are part of discussion between Simfox and me on my thread on devotion

For the brick, I admire your work but to be honest I am not confident with this building but don't know why, question of taste maaybe.

Anyway amazing job as always

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Jack_wilds- Thank you, it's getting close to it's release.

T Wrecks- Thank you, I'm just playing around with the glass to get a good result. I can tweek the roof textures a little, and I'm thinking to make that lower roof texture a little lighter like in real life.

Gutterclub- Thank you, I have use ground planes before, i am not new to it as matter of fact I have used it on some of my other bats. I have made the ground plane darker and I did some other stuff to it.

PBGV103- I have my reflection and gloss at the highest settings, so it could be the transparency. One the render below I have made the transparency setting lower and as you know I do have a map on the glass to help it a little, but to me in the render below I think I need to transparency to be a bit highter or something, I'm sure soon I will get it the way I want it to be.

Francis90b- Thank you and yes I think you right, I have did a bunch of renders and not much change, look at SimFox 500 5th Avenue, you see that the relfection is not so strong and in the dark areas the ground plan or glass map shows of in thoses area.

Girafe- Thank you, I was going to get to the leaves, they where looking to small to me, an I can be leave I forgot to go to the mental ray tab on the flora on this bat project, but I will get to that.

Update coming soon

Park Towers Apartments

  Edited February 22, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Park Towers Apartments

Okay here are the night lights, I still have to add the spot light on the terraces and work on the glass a little more. Not much I have said but it's almost done, I can't believe it, and I have started this last year thank you to Heblem.

  Edited February 25, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[kellydale2003 2,276]

*drools over keyboard*

*cannot find drooling emoticon, so inserts random one*

[Jasoncw 11,941]

To make glass (or anything else) more reflective when the reflectivitiy is already at 1, go down to the BRDF section of the arch & design material, and increase that. Reflectiviity is dependent on the viewing angle (the graph shows between 0 and 90 degree viewing angle), and the graph shows what percent the reflectivity is at. The angles at which we view things in SimCity is in the middle of the graph, so you'll want to move the curve up in the middle.

[PBGV103 729]

I usually set the reflectivity function by IOR and set the IOR to 1.4-1.6 for normal glass, higher for more metallic or thicker glass.

[Jasoncw 11,941]

That's what you would do to be correct, but to cheat and get more reflectivity you have to set it manually.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

If you're doing day reflections on the windows...

you gotta do the night! ;D

Here's an example map that I used for Bank of Moscow.

edit: make sure to take off global illumination and all that good stuff in the object properties! (:

  Edited February 26, 2012 by kellydale2003  

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Kellydale2003- Thank you, the night map is not doing much to me!!!

Jasoncw- Thank you so much!!!

PBGV103- Thank you!!!

Park Tower Apartemnts

Here's a dark night all I did is add the lights to the terrace, I will try to make a day render.

Here's my Settings for those you wants to help me out.

  Edited March 2, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[PBGV103 729]

I don't think you want the reflectivity curve to be flat like that. Try setting the reflectivity to 0.9 instead of 1 so you don't get completely mirror like reflections. Then set your reflectivity fuction to "By IOR" and set the IOR to a 2.0 or 2.2. Leave everything else alone for now.

[Jasoncw 11,941]

Yeah, it shouldn't be the same at both ends. However you do it, the graph should look like the one that is made when you use "by IOR" with the IOR set to the IOR of glass. So it should still be low on the one end and high on the other, but to make the glass more reflective you make the low end higher. Like he said right now you have a mirror, it's equally reflective no matter what angle you look at it (think of your bathroom mirror, it's equally reflective no matter what angle you look at it).

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Make sure the night map is self-illuminated just like a window night map.

Edit the object properties by right-clicking on the reflection plane/object, and make sure there isn't a glow on your building by editing those properties properly. (:

[Seraf 1,239]

Lovely work on nightlights Aaron, wish I'd be able to make it so good

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

PBGV103- Thank you!!!

Jasoncw- Thank you!!!

Kellydale2003- Thank you!!!

Seraf- Thank you!!!

Park Towers Apartments

Okay back to the Park Towers Front, the building is giving me more hell than any other building I have batted and it's because of the glass is not looking 100% to me this building will continue to be on hold because of the glass is not right.

I also think it just could be my ground plane textures that are not good enough for the glass to reflect to. Feel free to post some good ground planes of New York City for this bat I would love to finish this one, I think this building will keep me from release other NYBT bats, like the Beekman Hotel Tower, the modeling has been finished for months a lot of months now ans it's needs to be on the STEX.

Red- I like the glass texture, it looks beautiful.

Orange- The texture glass does not have that gloss affect like in the red, only thing i have to say is it's has a lot to do with the angels on the glass and that's why the glass that is circled in red looks a lot better.

Park Tower Glass Settings

  Edited March 20, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[gutterclub 2,729]

Maybe try this image on a 500mx500m flat ground plane

It might not be the most realistic glass but try the below settings, just to see what it comes up with. I'm definately no whizz but it sometimes gives me decent results.

Reflect 0.75

Gloss 1.0

Transparancy 0.1

IOR 2.0

Then just a noise map of size 8 in the bump map slot with 0.4 on the bump setting.

I then cloned this and made the noise size 7 and then set these 2 materials to alternate windows.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Thank you, for helping me I like that picture it has other colors in it. I have forgot about adding noise to the glass, I should try that, I do not do it on my smaller bats, something about taller buildings?

  Edited March 20, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Park Towers Apartments

Okay here, I think I like this windows, it have to look good with PBGV103 buildings, I have added the green box because my mission was the windows and plus I wanted to have faster render.

I may end up playing with the curtains a little more because I think there are to many curtains that are all the way up.

One thing I do not like is putting my building next to PBGV103 my building looks like a child to a grown man and tit to me loses a lot of value, it would be cool to bat larger but I know my computer will get upset at me for that.

  Edited March 22, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[ilikehotdogsalot 311]

Coming along great

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Ilikehotdogsalot- Thank you a lot for stopping, that helps me from not double posting.

Walesbridge

Here's an update on the walesbridge it goes with two apartments. If anyone thinks this building is new then your wrong, this building has been on hold for months now like a lot of my building I have created.

  Edited March 28, 2012 by Aaron Graham  

[T Wrecks 10,210]

@ Park Towers: I actually think I liked the windows a bit better before. Could the problem (comparison between orange/red circled areas) arise from reflectivity settings, especially reflectivity vs. angle? Mind you, I'm just guessing here... what's true, however, is that we look at the side windows from a very acute angle, whereas the front windows (the ones directly facing the "camera" / our eyes) are viewed from a rather obtuse angle.

I would feel more confident if one of the experienced BATters could shed some light on this issue, though.

@ Walesbridge: I love the model so far, it looks like the building will be full of interesting details to look at in the end.