Bus Laybys

[Dexter 40]

Hi everyone, this is basically just a small personal project that I thought may be useful to others if I share it.

It's basically just a small set of bus stops that are inset into "laybys", typical (but not as much as one would hope ) on busy roads around London.

They currently lack bus shelter models for two reasons mainly, a) although it's not clear in the above pic, the roadway goes right up to the edge of the tile, so there's not much room to fit one, and, b) I can't be bothered to make a model for one .

Other than that, I was going to release these as they are. There's currently one for avenues, and one for one-way road, for both RHD and of course LHD. Other's may come later, including NWM based ones, but I'll probably need help on that front.

I don't plan on releasing this unless anyone's interested, however it does show how custom-application lots can be used to produce interesting results.

This beast on the other hand I'm not sure where to go with. It's a sort of bus station/taxi rank/drop off area I designed to go outside a busy rail station, but it's lacking something (or quite a few probably) :|.

I have a track record of never finishing anything, so I'm focusing on getting the basic bus stops released before anything else, which to be honest unless any changes need to be made, is hardly any work at all lol.

-Matt

[harishna 847]

looks really interesting! I wonder if the sims will stay on the sidewalk... the textures for the bus station may need a little de-saturation.

[ilikehotdogsalot 308]

Very great! I would use it!

[KCJC 367]

Looks awesome, I'd use all of them.

[DCMetro34 576]

I really like this idea, can't wait to see how far you take it!

[Mithokey 96]

mazing new bus pieces! I would download that in a second.

[Dexter 40]

Hi again everyone, thanks for the positive feedback, just thought I'd show some more progress here:

As you can see I have decided to create two more versions - one for roads, and the other for Maxis streets, although I'm not quite sure about the texture on that one. Streets don't normally have any markings (or shelters usually for that matter), so I decided to make use asphalt for the extended areas, rather than continue the concrete throughout the extended areas. In real life if anything it would be the other way round, and in fact you often used to get the areas around bus stops paved in concrete even though the rest of the street is asphalt, because it resists rutting and diesel spillages. What do you all think; keep it or ditch it ?

You may also notice I have added some shelter models, although they have had to be made as offset props due to the lack of space next to the carriageway, so there's a chance they may interfere with any building that protrudes right to the front edge of the tile, however I'm not sure there are many lots out there that do, and in fact most of the decent W2W buildings on the exchanges have a small strip of pavement to the front, so I doubt this will be a problem for most.

The sign prop has also been made as small as it can be without becoming unrecognizable, and I think it looks much better now .

The only major problem I'm having with the shelter models, is I can't for the life of me work out how to get the glass to be transparent . It ether seems to be fully opaque or just missing completely like in the picture. It's fine when I've tried rendering models with transparent textures, but only when what's behind the glass is in the model if you get what I mean.

Lastly, I'd just thought I show this railway station model I made a few weeks back based off of a station that I use regularly, and again I'm hoping I can get this out the door soon because unfortunately there seems to be a distinct lack of suburban British style railway stations available.

Anyway it's getting late here now, so i'd better get some zzz or else I'm going to be late again tomorrow!

[jayo 44]

Nice progess. Hope to see more BATs from you.

[Vlasky 1,803]

This is very interesting and very usefull in game. Keep up the good work! Shelters need more work and need to be rendered in HD.I'll be stopping by more often

[harishna 847]

Nice station textures need some work, you can start by reducing the saturation and inverting the roof gradient

  Edited September 10, 2011 by harishna  

[nathanthemayor 1,261]

Can't wait to see those on the STEX!

[Girafe 1,729]

Good work,

bus stop textures are really interesting, more european one's could be really appreciated too