Suburban Houses Project

[Stuka 14]

Wellcome to the BAT thread about my Suburban Houses Project! 

My Intention is to create typical mid- or highwealth American West Coast or Texas Suburban homesteads. I am going to post the progressed/final stadiums of my work as often as i can. Of course i would be happy to receive your improvement suggestions, criticism, tipps and help. I'm sure with your support my experience can increase every day.

Thanks for all of you being interested in my labour.

For everyone wanting cities like this one:   

[Stuka 14]

New: The Lakota: My first try to contribute more complexity to my houses roofs.

I promise i will take more care about the textures at the following versions and models!

https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=25699

[NitzWalsh 0]

Why are the pools in the front yards?

[GMT 389]

what's the point of this thread?

seriously.

do a real BAT thread where we can follow your creations as work in progress instead of this one here.

[His Divine Hand 244]

Before you upload anything, you should show it in this thread. The point of this thread is for people to look at the buildings you are making and then give you advice on what could be made better. No one can do that if you don't show it first!

[Stuka 14]

Thank you for enlighting me about the sense of a "BAT thread"...(please acknowledge, that i am pretty new here and have to learn a lot...but with your help I'll give my best of course)...so far I understood, i should post the pre-realise stadium of my model here, to give you a chance to support me with your improvement suggestions, criticism, ideas...what ever. Seriously, that sounds pretty helpful and pragmatic.

In future, I am going to act how you told me. Thank you for your engagement. I do not intend to behave too stupidly.

[Stuka 14]

Of course i need inspirationf or my projects...if i do not want to get on my bike and faring around, i usually use google maps. For example here i found a nice section with less demanding houses, that could inspire me. If you do have any other examples like this, or objects I could recreate - please tell me.

[iuri99 48]

Search Mississauga in Google maps.

It's a greater Toronto Area town, the largest suburban area in world. YOu can find a looot of various styles of suburban houses.

[Stuka 14]

Perfect! Even with golf corses in it! I love building my suburbs with a lot of golf corses. I could never imagine that something like this could really be in Canada, now i agree that it must part of the First World *joke*

Here in germany you can find a lot of bunkers...and barracks...and car factories...but we do not have this culture of suburban living here compared with America. The reason for this is very simple: In Europa there is just not enough space ; )

[Stuka 14]

Please add some improvement suggestions. Someone told me a nice side for textures for example.

[Stuka 14]

I hope this is going to become a nice realization of the American dream. Is there anyone who could tell me how i could create better lots for my Objects?

[GMT 389]

you can try to model repetetive parts of your lots and make them props.

custom textures are always a neat way to get a better matching lot for a building. there's a tutorial somewhere on how to do this, I just can't think of where it is at the moment...

also, I would change the roof a little, so it looks more like this:

[harishna 847]

Hi first try to show rendered images, second is not necessary to show every step in the realization of your model.

Now from the images you showing I can see some deficiencies. The proportions for some components are wrong. The front door is too bulky and the frame doesn't fit. The angles on the the roof are all weird you should have isosceles triangles in most cases unless justified.

[Stuka 14]

Thank you for your engagement, i agree, the door was really the worst model i have ever created

Well, the model reached the final stadium i guess...i am not very experienced in applying textures, maybe that is the reason for these ugly roof sections: 

Thank 

[SimFox 803]

well the main reason for current "ugliness" of the roof is moire pattern forming because the image you have used is to sharp and to small. soften/blur it bit and even a bit brightness levels this should help.

I also think that this building could stand a bit of Z scaling - say 1,25-1,33.

[Stuka 14]

Thanks! Z scaling? So do you think its to high/not hight enough or how should I understand this?

I could remove the "ugliness" ; ) 

Do you agree with my roof textures? I intended to model the structure of the roof tiles visible, that's the reason of the roof structure. Would you agree with it? I proceed form the lines and squared could appear ugly, as well; but I think "flat" textures aren't adequate for this house...i mean, we do not want to use material like tar for the roof 

[zahrul3 472]

The roof is still 'ugly', if you want to know why look at other BATter's thread. For example, Todd just gave me help how to texture a roof properly in the last page of my thread, it tells you everything and how I responded with Todd's piece of help. When people give help to someone, most often they do it straight in the author's thread. There are lots of german BATters(most of them are SFBT), it would be better to understand their help. Most of them are in simcityplaza.de and most of them are also on SC4Devotion.

[Stuka 14]

If they aren't in French anything is fine^^ Ah, i see that you've worked at similiar projects. You know how to create a building with detailed night illumination.

[harishna 847]

I am glad to see your enthusiasm about bating but wait a bit before calling this done I mean if you want this to look nice. Firs I will ask you if you have check the tutorials? Now about your model I am glad to see you fixed the door, but something I noticed is that the windows and doors where extruded instead of intruded.... you still need to fix the roof, it seems that you got too many pieces and some don't match each other and have a variety of angles, it looks too messy (look in detail at the one GMT made for you). After all this you can play with the textures, by the way have you applied a UVW map?

[GMT 389]

Z scale means exaggerated vertical dimension.

most Batters have agreed to model their stuff with a vertical factor of about 1.25 to 1.33 to compensate for apparent distortion due to the games viewpoints.

I don't quite like this as maxis themselves didn't really care either, but especially for lowrise medium/low wealth buildings this comes handy.

The thing is, maxis did model low wealth housings smaller than they should be and high wealth buildings bigger than they should be... or in short, they did not use 1 uniform scale. therefore one came up with this z scaling "rule" to average.

My personal problem is that quite a few houses where these rule was applied came up way to big in comparison imho.

but in this case at hand, I can only agree, a little biger vertical scale wouldn't harm this building. it looks really squashed due to viewpoints, even tho the scaling itself is correct.

[Stuka 14]

I've never said that it would be totally completed!

Now that you mention this significant detail...yes, the windows are not intruded in the walls...i realised; real houses do have intruded windows...so i am going to cut some depressions...

[JayStimson 212]

I agree. Increase the vertical dimension a tad. Then work on the textures. Otherwise, I like the styling.

[Stuka 14]

As you can see, the nescent homestead grew a little in z direction. I added a little pool and i tried my best to process and optimize the roof textures; i angled the textures in the corner peaces, but the fine structure is still suboptimal... I tried to "soft" and to "blure" the textures, but the effect is not convincing me...I hope you've got further ideas ; )

[harishna 847]

like I said before the roof modeling needs some attention, roofs are the mean thing you see from a building in the game and for this house so far looks really really messy. In the image I am just pointing out some details. In blue I am pointing out some weird aspect of the composition from an aesthetically point of view they look unpleasant. In red I ma pointing out some mismatching, notices how the roof prolong more in some sides of the house than others? And finally in green you can see a difference in height between the roof pieces that creates another mismatch. So far the roof looks like it was done by a drunk architect . Oh and one more odd thing, I like the fireplace but, why is it located next to the garage...? 

[Stuka 14]

Thanks for this aspects! Omg, now I remember! After I had finished the model of the extern fireplace, I had a mighty good gin and tonic. After that, i couldn't remember where I wanted to place it...it is just the wrong side^^

The green part is the part of the roof that is going to be modified in the same complicated way as the roof tile across the green part was modified. Ok, that's easy so far...

Red means: roof too long in x/y direction okay

BUT blue...welll I aspired to create create a roof with a more complicated structure; not something like a four square...do you criticize the FORM of the roof or the technical EXECUTION of the idea?

You didn't criticize the fine structure of the texture, i don't proceed from you like it

[GMT 389]

Like I told you, go and correct the roof accordingly so the textures are places correctly.

I think, after these changes the roof would already look waaaaaay better

[harishna 847]

Stuka: I guess the problem is that you are trying to make a typical suburban house but at the same time you want to make it out of the ordinary and think your ideas are a little bit contradictory and that is shown in your results, it seem that soem parts of the house were added just to make it look different, so I am criticizing a little bit of both the idea and the execution, after all is just my opinion but, since you are just learning to BAT (as I am as well) I would suggest you to stick to something more real and try to concentrate in learning how to reproduce it in your model. Like I said before I didn't commented on the textures as I think you should first concentrate on getting the model right...

[Stuka 14]

I'll make it easy:

well, i got a the grey roof tile texture i used at my previous model...it worked pretty good at "The Cheyenne", you remember? I should take them and turn its colour into red.

[Follarch 327]

Thank you Stuka. You just indirectly showed me what adding a gradient to my windows textures actually is. (which in hindsight makes me stupid cause I know what gradients are lol)

I liked your houses so far! And they're even an inspiration for me to better my suburban homes.

[Stuka 14]

Well, I am just a Guy that had an severe flu and started to read how to use BAT...two weeks ago But I'm happy about having you inspired. I hope I will be able to reach the quality of your homesteads some day!

This shall represent a mediterrean buidling I contemplated to make the typical red brick fine structure visible. 

A little interim result of my work. It needs improvement ; )