The Ireland Project

[SimCity4IE 203]

Small update on the main tower's roof.

 

Also, thank you for the response! ^^

[Timmystwin 201]

Oooooh, vair naice. Bit poor on the texture side

[SimCity4IE 203]

@ Timmy: I'm not finished modelling it yet... 

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Proportions and details, make sure you get them right and you should have a home run on your hands. That and checking in with the peanut gallery should keep everything fine

Hope you don't lose any walls this time!

[SimCity4IE 203]

Thanks Todd! ^^ 

I just have to add roof junk and texture better now. Here's a texture test

[simcity 4 fan123 0]

Nice! It would look good in my cities too.

[Jasoncw 12,025]

You've been using a bitmap for the environment, for reflections, but it's better to use a ground plane with a bitmap applied to it, rather than the environment.  In the environment you can put the mr physical sky so that surfaces pointing upwards will have something to reflect.  The latest BAT4Max does this stuff automatically so I'd go get that.  Another benefit to this is that sometimes the game doesn't do the silhouettes of the BATs perfectly and a few pixels of the background show up, and this way the background is a more neutral gray so those pixels won't stand out as much.

Also, right now the bitmap you're using for the reflections has a lot of distortions in it.  But a better way of representing glass distortions in the BAT is to have a "normal" bitmap for reflection, and then to give the glass a bump map.  The waviness of the glass is what causes reflections to distort, and this way you'll get distorted reflections of normal looking patterns, rather than undistorted reflections of a distorted patterns.  If you have large spans of the glass you should have multiple bump maps so that adjacent panes of glass typically don't share the same one.

Finally, right now all of your materials in general are too reflective and too glossy.  I would go through all of them (except the glass of course, which should be 1 for both) and lower their reflectivity and glossiness.

Anyway, it's coming along.  I'm glad to see you making better BATs. 

[SimCity4IE 203]

Thanks Jason

Could you go through setting up a mr physical sky? Selecting mr physical sky as an environment and changing it in the material editor doesn't seem to be working. I'm probably doing something wrong.

I have the latest BAT4Max, so that's alright. ^^

This is another background without distortion:

Also, one thing is prevalent in many of my models. There are black areas and parts missing in the bottom plane in the past 3 images. How can I remedy this? It only seems to happen in 3ds Max 2011 64 Bit; never with 3ds Max 2010 32-Bit...

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

I meant to bring that up a while ago, oh well, Jason beat me to it. Ditch the environment map, use a ground plane. Just go to Environment ( and replace your bitmap with MR physical Sky, this is found in the same list as "bitmap" along with things like bump, noise, checker etc, it is not a bitmap that you navigate to like your image. Your material editor will not change. Just make a plane, make a material with your reflection image, and apply it to the plane (any use any UVW modifyers as you see fit). You may also want to change some things in object properties that will keep the object from rendering,

You need more detail in the windows (frames and mullions), it looks like the glass is set directly into the walls which looks odd. I imaging a pane of glass being fit into a slot in a brick wall, which is the wrong message when you are trying to accurately represent a building. Details make a building look alive, and not like a plastic model railway house.

Keep up the good effort!

[SimCity4IE 203]

Thank you for your response. The windows are actually separate, but  I need to put in mullions. It shouldn't take too long to do.

Here's my Connolly Hall model. I want to try texturing the glass via this method (using Jason's tutorial of course ) to see how it comes out.

This is the untextured version as of now.

I haven't scaled it to SimCity scaling yet. It's perfectly modeled off of plans (I emailed the office during August but never had time to finish the model until now). I still have to add foliage and roof junk. But I want to try to practice window textures using arch & design to see how it turns out first.

In real life, the windows are black and reflect a lot of the nearby river.

[SimCity4IE 203]

You guys are so epic

  

I'm going to work on the front windows on the ground floor. I was thinking of creating a bitmap of the inside, but have bump maps and reflections to obscure the image.

[Jasoncw 12,025]

opps I came back to this thread a little too late.

Anyway, the noise map you're using for your bump map is too small.  Right now it looks more like ripples in water than broad subtle warping.  It's already on the STEX, but in the future you should make the noise map much bigger.

[SimCity4IE 203]

I see your point; it looks quite strange... I can always do a version 2 in the future anyway. At least I'm learning to fix my mistakes

This is another model that I've almost completed; Cork County Hall.

Obviously this isn't finished texturing; and foliage is still missing. But I'm focusing on making real-looking glass.

[Jasoncw 12,025]

The noise is still way too small.

For now it's fine to leave the glass as is so that you can see the size of the bump map better, but later you'll want to switch the glass out for clear glass, rather than mirror glass. The real building has clear glass.

Actually I've looked and the real building is quite different from what you have here.

This is how the building looks after a recent renovation.

This is how the building originally looked.

It's a lovely building though, I hope you do it justice.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

These are some pretty bats here keep it up and listen to the pros and you will get far.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Yes it vaguely resembles the real one, but resemblance does not a good recreation make.

Details, details, details! Look how rich and plentiful they are on the original! Utilize those real features to make your recreation both more believable and more alive! The closer you are to the origional, generally speaking, the better the outcome will be. You have a lot of talent, go the extra mile and make your work as outstanding as it ought to be.

If you upload this before it is done I'll have to fly over to Ireland and get you! Don't think I won't, I'm crazy!

[gutterclub 2,733]

is right..

You seem to rush everything and the quality of your BATS differ from release to release. Also, there must be a special company that does every building in Irelands satellite fishes as every single one of your BATS has the same dish. You have a lot of potential and skill but seem to have overlook it all for simpleness, you are getting loads of advice from masters in this thread, more than most so use it.

[Cockatoo 2,262]

This thing...

It really irritates me. It's like you've made a beautiful painting and then scribbled all over it with a black crayon. Well that, and it's a tad unrealistic. A lot of what you see form an SC4 perspective is taken up by the roof, I can't stress enough how important to make it look good. I know realistically modelling roof junk is boring and tedious work, but it really can mean the difference between and a 'meh' BAT and a fantastic one.

Another point, I know it's sometimes tempting to texture on entrances as opposed to actually modelling them (I've done it before, quite a bit actually) but in this particular case, I don't think you'll get away with it. When looking at the North view, the eye is drawn to it straight away - it sticks out badly. Besides, think of all the cool interior lighting effects you could do with a fully modelled entrance.

Sorry if this is all a bit harsh on you, I just don't want to see you drop back after your amazing job with St. Basil's Cathedral. You just need to slow down a bit, focus on the little things and perfect your work.

[madhatter106 3,931]

Regarding the cord to the satellite dish - yeah, it's way too long. The haphazard thing doesn't bug me too much, it's just TOO haphazard and too long. Think about the little man that went to install the dish, and then ran the cord to the roof access - is he really going to leave that much slack and extra cord along the way? Is he going to move in that pattern that the cord fell in? Is the wind capable of moving it about when it blows? No, there's way too much cord/cable for it to look believable.

[SimCity4IE 203]

I should really try to work on roofjunk so. There are props for roofjunk on the stex; would it be wise to use those in the PIM-X  tool, or to just model it?

Basil's Cathedral was easier in certain aspects; the roof was pretty much eye candy in general, and I spent a lot longer on that compared to these.

Modern buildings are more tedious to model, especially lots of small items on the roof which is just to take up space. I'll take time to practice on that though. 

I added some blinds on the main tower as a test; it certainly looks more believable, but then the glass barely has reflections due to the transparency....

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

The idea here is that you model what is there, not what isn't. Look how much different your building is from the original! It is just plain wrong in many places.

Roof junk in LE is only useful on simple, generic buildings who wouldn't have a unique roof set up anyway. High profile buildings like this should never be done that way, it would look overly simplified and goofy.

Also, where are all those interesting gold colored mullions on the windows that make the facade so distinctive? That is one of my favorite parts of this building!

[SimCity4IE 203]

I know it's off, but I'm kinda lost in what to do now. Other than extreme practicing and observing...

Here's a test for a small shop from the city centre; Game. It's a W2W building.

 

[Jasoncw 12,025]

The kind of observation that's missing isn't extreme, it's very very basic.  Like, really really basic.

First you need to decide if you're doing a pre or post renovation version of the building.  They're very different so you need to decide which.

Here are the two versions with some things marked on them.

In green circles are the vertical grooves that are in the top part of the building.

Also in green is part of the sun screen in the post renovation version.  As you can see they basically redesigned the facade.  If you're doing this version you'll need to find a better picture of the sun screen and the columns, to see what their shape is and how they relate to each other.  Right now you can the columns as cylinders, but I don't know if they really are.

In blue are these little things that stick out.  They're at the top of the building and also at the bottom of the building.  I think they might be water drainfs for the roof.  Note that these change position after the renovation.

In red, in the pre renovation version the column things are hour glass shaped.  If you're doing this version you'll want to get a better picture of these so you can determine their shape more specificly.  Also note that the horizontal ledges have a similar shape (they're not straight).

Also in red are some window mullions traced.  The bottom part is a dark spandrel panel.  Above that, the windows alternate, with one having a small short window above the bigger one, and the other having it below the bigger one.

In brown are some little block shapes at the bottom of the building.  I don't know what they are.  They go away after the renovation.

In pink the shelf is circled.  In the post renovation photograph it's easier to see that these aren't opaque shelfs, they're actually slotted and act as sun screens.  It's harder to tell on the pre renovation version, but I circled some corners where you can see the sky showing through, meaning that they were sun screens on the original version as well.

In yellow on the post renovation version I've traced and drawn the window mullions.  They're similar to the original ones, except that there is no longer a spandrel panel, now it's floor to ceiling glass.  Also, this time there's a row of short windows along the top.  And the mullions are bronze or something (idk) while they look to be aluminum in the original.

[SimCity4IE 203]

Wow it's been a while since I posted...

I have done more with County Hall; mullions look much better with Jason's help ^^

Also, I made a perfect scale model of Connolly Hall. This time it's perfect. What the hell was I at last time? xD

Link to the real building

 

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

Call it perfect when its done; you still have a long way to go kiddo.

It looks like you are headed in the right direction though.

[gutterclub 2,733]

Looks a lot better, what on earth was the last building..the only thing in common is the name ; )

[SimCity4IE 203]

Update.

I also created a logo for the project on the 1st page  

[SimCity4IE 203]

Fuuuuuurther progress!

[TekindusT 3,809]

Nice to see you're progressing in your mod; I'm doing so with mine (although I've put it in hiatus until the college is over)...

[WillR116 60]

Can I get any of this anywhere? If not can't wait till I do

Will