nybt-forum-threads Vlasky's Hell's Kitchen

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

^And please remember that it's convenient for you to listen at mommy .

Eat your vegetables!

[Vlasky 1,803]

Eh, it's been a long time since I posted here but as you all know by now, I've been busy in the mean time.

Well Midtown/Metro Theater is safe and intact yeah, exactly, no progress on it. But while I was working on Manhattanville Project , I had done this little garage building, located at 524 East 73rd Street. I have added some other details 2day, and I have a few more to add before I can say that modeling is done. Here it is:

There however is one question. Should I be adding models of cars, having in mind that this building can be used in classical looking cities than there would be a problem of what kind of cars I should add, which leads me to another problem, should I be adding those more advanced models of RL cars, or simply use models that bixel has put on stex? What do you think about model and the cars issue?

[Kifflom112 355]

Amazing.

[Francis90b 748]

It's nice to see it here!

Cars- What about exporting first, and then add cars later as props?

This way you can put the cars you wish to, and people might change them if they need/want to do that.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

It's looking good!

I would probably do the parking lot in the Lot Editor, that way there can be a wall to wall version of the main building. I mean, the main building itself is a garage of course, but that way people could have a fully urban garage.

If there are going to be cars on the roof you could use Bixel's or you could search the internet for free car models of whatever style and quality you're looking for. For some reason there are a ton of free car models floating around the internet. What style they should be is a good question. If someone were making, a retro city, there'd be a lot of other non-retro stuff so it probably wouldn't be a big deal. If they were doing a CJ they could just photoshop it out. In most contexts a garage full of old cars might be the most out of place.

And if you really wanted to you could even put car props on the roof like the maxis garage, but rendering them into the garage would look better.

[PBGV103 729]

Francis, that would require extremely complicated LODs, basically shrink wrapped to the model.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Looks great.

I want to say more but I have to think.

Please do not make this project die if you do I'm going to be very, very angry. What every happen to that Broadway movies you where making at the beginning of your thread??

  Edited August 27, 2011 by Aaron Graham  

[Seraf 1,238]

Garage building looks of course very nice, but I don't know what I should think about making a parking in max. The only thought about it I have now is that like PBGV said: probably there will be problems with LODs.

And I want to see Metro Theater finished!

[Vlasky 1,803]

Zulu2065: Thank you!

Fran: Well that option is always open. what I was interested in was seeing rendered cars in scene, because they look so much better imho

Jason: You are right. And I listened to your advice while making my decision how I should do it. I will place the most generic cars so that they don't catch attention that much. Also when I showed this garage to Todd and Fran in DAS BUNKER they advised me to make it w2w so it fits urban environment better. PBGV103: And that might be too advanced for me

Aaron: Nothing is dead. Midtown/Metro Theater is only on hold till further (when I learn how to make materials). When I finish this one, it will wait for the same thing, but I plan to keep busy till then, so no worries

Seraf: Well I just made what's in RL. I will now show you what I've done so far, but there's probably gonna be two version

So this is what I've decided, I will be making two versions: One that has parking lot next to it, because that lot makes it 2x3, and is true to life, so people recreating NYC can use it. Second versions is gonna be "urban" version. For it I have loosely recreated half of the building which is near the garage so it makes up for a 2x2 tiles w2w lot. However both version will have cars rendered with them, except in night time I plan on having no cars whatsoever (not on parking nor on building) I will have fence all over the building so there won't be any problems about cars from day view showing in night view. For now I've put few cars just to get the basic perception how it's gonna look like once there are cars all over the place. SO what do you think?RL version:

"Urban" version:

I have seen that bad alignment in 2nd version and that bad part on penthouse, I'll fix it.

  Edited September 1, 2011 by Vlasky  

[PBGV103 729]

Actually it would be pretty easy for you. It's just basic poly modeling; however, the game has major issues with LODs more complex than a 6 sided box.

[shinkansen1 84]

I am very confident that this will turn out to be one of the best quality BATs when it is complete. That being said, there is something I have always wondered...

If someone whose car is on the upper level of the structure wants to get their car down, what would they do if another car is below theirs?

[gutterclub 2,729]

Looking great but the cars look a little tall and stubby..

[PBGV103 729]

Looks like a purple fiat and a yellow mazda.

[Vlasky 1,803]

Shinkansen1: Thank you. It's a long way to completion. I really don't know how they get out. especially in this new york garage. everything seems so packed that it looks impossible to take one car out without moving all of them out as well. Here, look at the satellite image of this garage:

Gutterclub: I agree that the cars look a bit odd, but I only applied 133% vertical scale on them, so I'm not sure why they look like that. Here, I rendered the models of cars separately:

PBGV103: As you can see from renderings above, models are: Purple- Renault Clion, Yellow - Renault Megane, Gray - Infinity, Beige - some Nissan

[PBGV103 729]

My dad has that Infiniti FX35 and they do look a little odd. The Infiniti looks squashed vertically at 100% and horizontally at 133% which makes me think that the initial dimensions of the car are off. I'd check those because there's no way a SUV is the same height as any sedan or econo-car.

P.S. they don't sell Renault, Citroen, Opel, SEAT, etc. in the US. So if this is a NYC garage you wouldn't see those cars, but I doubt anyone would notice or be bothered if you left them in the model. Actually idk why I bothered telling you that

  Edited September 4, 2011 by PBGV103  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

That Art-Deco parking garage is beautiful! I must...repeat must have it.

I was and still am going crazy waiting for that Industry block...now there's this...In that long absence of your's...had I known what you, Francis and Todd were up to....oh my....

If I was you, I'd wait to do the cars last, but that's just a personal preference I'd had if I was making this. I can't wait to see some roof details and texturing.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

yeah the cars are something. They do indeed have to pull all the cars out to get to the ones in the back but they have a system for it, and they're very good at what they do, lol

[Vlasky 1,803]

Ok, so after this and that, short absence from ST I am back

And with that, here is my first attempt to fully texture a building on my own. The building is 525 West 48th Street in Manhattan.

I have a lot to do with bricks such as adding a bit of grime and weathering, but something seems wrong with them. Any suggestions what should be changed? Still a few textures left to be made ...

I plan on finishing this one rather quickly and than going back and finishing my old and starting some new projects

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Hey so glad to see you back!

I only have time to lurk but I wanted to say something about this to try and be helpful.

I'm not sure if adjusting contrast would do the trick or make the dark mortar in between each brick less prominent, but right now(especially on the sides) they almost look like shingles.

I'm sure Aaron could help you with bricks better than I. I'm used to metal textures for international styled towers.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

So happy to see you back at bating, now your in a batting race, race to finish before 2013.

Okay for the bricks, I think Sgt Pepper is right depending on what brick method your using, if you are using Jasoncw method you may need to tweek the bricks by playing with the contrast. For the other method with the bricks is an image, you may need to work on the contrast and/or brightness to the mortar of the bricks so they do not stick out so much in the render.

You can also try out my bricks I have used, there is my AG bating thread. here's the link, feel free to do what you please.

[gutterclub 2,729]

The bricks on the front seem ok but they are far too large on the side walls, make them smaller either with the UVW map or making the texture larger..the roof also needs sharpening, it seems fuzzy, like its been dodged and burned a bit too much. Other than that its coming along nicely and is great to see you back

[Vlasky 1,803]

Sgt Pepper: Thanks. Apparently I needed to resize the image and tweak it a bit more.

Aaron Graham: Hey thank you my friend so much! I used JasonCW's method. Hopefully I'll be able to clean my plate, and there's a lot on it Thank you so much for the ricks you offered me. I always appreciate your support

gutterclub: Thank you. I was kinda waiting to finish off roof junk and see how it fits. I was happy with the roof, but lets see how it looks like now.

So this is the final result. I feel like I might be finished with the day appearance. I want to move on to night render so badly. I must stress again, I really wanna finish this one quickly.

[Francis90b 748]

A bit better than the previus version, but still not there...i'd say to still lower the contrast of the bricks, especially on the sides that have quite a "dotted moquette" feel.

Are you sure rust would be so noticeable on HVAC units? I'm not saying it shoudn't be there, i'm saying that perhaps it should be slightly less strong, especially for a building that's still occupied.

What's happening on the ground floor, aside from the garage door? There's a painted wall there i guess, but the paint is so dark that it almost feels like a "block" - perhaps desaturating it and making it slightly lighter would help.

All in all it's not bad (and there are some nice touches, BTW!), but i would advice you against "finishing this quickly"...

[anotn 223]

It looks nice Vlasky, Francis advise is good, lower the contrast on the bricks, the painted bricks could use some desaturation but I don't know if they need to be brighter and the rust looks a bit odd, here you should be conscious about how you place the rust texture what parts of it are likely to rust. The same goes for all wethereing effects on the building. I see you have been doing this for the bricks, it has splash stains at the bottom where it meets a vertical element such as that small roof. However with some of the stains on the roof I feel I can see the brush strokes.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I'm glad to see you texturing!!

- The glass needs to be textured. Gmax comes with a few Maxis textures and one of them is glass. At the absolute least you can just use that. When you make the uvw map, make it so that the horizontal lines on the glass texture line up with the floors. You can also do very quick and easy tweaking to the texture by adding a Color Correction map. So instead of choosing "Bitmap" Choose "Color Correction", and then in the empty slot in the color correction map, you add a bitmap. With the Color Correction map you can make quick changes to hue or brightness or contrast without dealing with Photoshop.

- For the roof, you want the kind of grime you added to correspond to features on the roof, like the roof junk and walls and stuff. Since you're trying to do this quickly I think it would look better with no grime, than unaligned grime.

- The dark area on the first floor should be a little brighter and a little less saturated.

[Vlasky 1,803]

Ok so thank you guys for all suggestions and advice, I've listened and changed all that you said. So here's what I did:

1. I've lowered the saturation and contrast on the side walls' bricks.

2. I've lowered saturation and contrast on the patch of black paint on front facade.

3. I've made rust on the HVACs lighter and a bit desaturated it.

4. I've changed the stain on the roof, actually I made completely new roof texture and this one is even more accordingly to the RL thing.

5. I've changed the glass and put the maps on it instead of Arc&Design material.

I'm gonna show you the picture of the actual roof so you can see the stain and texture on the roof and also the rust on metal parts. I've also made Night renders Hope y'all think this is better :0

[anotn 223]

Looks better! You could add some noise to the stains so the dirt look less clean. In the picture of the real building you can see some of the seams in the roof, I think you should add that too. Very subtle lines as they are not too obvious in RL. The night lights looks nice.

[darn42 1,268]

The seams seem () to be wood panels, and that's why the stains don't follow the usual pattern of dirt. Add in the grain and the subtle lines and your roof will look much better

Good work on this, looking forward to seeing more of it.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

It does looks better, I think you need to do a little more to the grey boxes with brown stains on them, they need some thein else on that texture.

Over all keep it pumping.

[Vlasky 1,803]

look what's on the STEX!!!