C88 Productions | Projects by: Ceafus 88

[Darknono35 3,138]

Good job on this beautiful brick building. it's very nice

[dubaidude303 1,126]

Looking excellent! 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

You did a wonderful job, I wonder what the back of the building looks like in the game.

[Ceafus 88 1,887]

Ok guys, I bought a new PC, which means new BATting, woo right? Anyway, I think its time i come out from hiding and return to my ST roots, and with the people I really enjoy being with and have posting/helping me.

 

So, here we go

 

[Titanicbuff 1,262]

hate McDonalds but love the model- now I'm confused

[Sldvn 10]

I love the detail! Can't wait for it to be released.

[Haljackey 17,394]

Micky-Dees!

 

Very nice! Would make a fine addition to any big-box sprawl town.

[GeometryMath Algebra 614]

Nice! I rarely give requests, but would you mind if you could BAT a local restaurant here in the Philippines? Probably this:

 

(P.S. I've never seen someone with 1,000+ posts request so I probably am the first one. :P )

[Darknono35 3,138]

Great to hear something about your work.

Great BAT so far, and useful for our cities, keep it up

[dubaidude303 1,126]

It looks awesome!!! This is great!! It is about time that we have a better looking McDonalds on the STEX!  Can't wait! Only request I would have is just make this a normal plop version without using the extra-cheat codes to plop it, please  lol

 

Keep up the good work!   

[Ace3 1,209]

Hey! We have one of those just down the road. Glad to have you back Frex!

[urielgarcia 344]

Ok guys, I bought a new PC, which means new BATting, woo right? Anyway, I think its time i come out from hiding and return to my ST roots, and with the people I really enjoy being with and have posting/helping me.

 

So, here we go

 

Looks wonderful - great addition and welcome back from hiding for a while!  We need that sometimes.

[Bipin 3,403]

Lovin' it! No pun intended, for I really am loving what you've done here. You have really captured that new, modern albeit inexpensive aesthetic of contemporary McDonald's franchises. My only suggestion would be to add some very slight bump mapping to the brick and stone. It's pretty simple; just get the brick texture, desaturate it, invert values and finally up the contrast so the grout is black and the brick is white. Bump maps from diffuse maps are that easy, but I'm sure you already know!

[Sunv 156]

Wow, very nice! Can't get enough of these suburban BATs 

 

^^ I'm lovin' it   

[Ceafus 88 1,887]

Thank You everyone!!!

 

The bump map has really helped it I think.

 

 

I keep looking at it wondering whether I should make the UVW Map smaller now that it has the bump map, the bricks just seem to big to me, what do you guys think?

[Sunv 156]

Yeah, the bricks look a bit too big and bumpy for my taste.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I would leave off the bump map for the bricks.  Bump maps aren't really something that's based on physical dimensions.  Basically what's happening is in the render, a pixel on each side of the contrast in the bump map (the borders between black and white) get either brightened or darkened (technically its normal is getting perturbed but anyway).  If you do a zoom 4 or a zoom 5, the bump effect will be similar in each, and if you make the uvw map smaller or bigger the bump effect will also be similar.  In other words a bump effect for mortar is always going to be at least between 2 or 3 pixels wide, even though the mortar which you're trying to show as recessed is a pixel wide or less.

 

So bump maps for brick mortar isn't something that works out very well.  Bump maps are best for features that are large enough that having a bump effect a few pixels big is still accurate.  For example something like this (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/38/Palazzo_Strozzi_03.JPG).  Although as you can see, once a feature is big enough for a bump map to be useful for it, it starts becoming big enough that you should consider modeling it.

 

Aside from that, for bricks, the grooves between bricks are only going to be about .01 m anyway, which is way too small to be visible in the render.  Even after exaggerating the mortar enough to be visible in the rendering, the depth is still too small to really be visible.  If you wanted, you could use a displacement map, which would actually create geometry, but if you did that you would find that the grooves you'd be making would be too small to be visible in the render.

 

If you want to do something more to the brick, you could use a glossiness map instead.  This would add some visual richness.  With a glossiness map, white is equal to a glossiness of 1, and black is a glossiness of 0, and greys are everything in between.  You would make the bricks grey and the mortar a darker grey.

 

Something else you could do, is in the texture, add some subtle variation between the brightness and darkness of the bricks.  This will add some contrast to where the bricks meet and make each brick more distinct, but without making the mortar thicker.

 

But really I think doing these kinds of things for brick is generally unnecessary.

[Bipin 3,403]

I too would suggest a glossiness and/or specular level map. Also, consider adding a tiny bit of reflection; select "raytrace" for the map and increase the value to one or two. It will be very slight, but may improve the look of the brick. It doesn't hurt to experiment! As well, the use of a bump map on the brick is largely quite arbitrary. It is more suited for applications such as the stonework (where it looks excellent, I must add). I would agree with both reducing the map's intensity and decreasing the scale of the texture to something more appropriate for brick. Other than that, great work so far!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

All of the raytrace stuff is for use with the scanline renderer, and shouldn't really be used.  They basically allow limited ray tracing in a renderer where there is usually not any ray tracing. 

 

But we render with mental ray which already traces rays (the "ray" in "mental ray") for everything anyway.  The "reflectivity" in the arch & design material (and all the other materials in the mental ray category) actually is reflection, not just simulated shininess.  So if you give a brick material a reflectivity of .2, then it is already subtly reflective. 

[Bipin 3,403]

All of the raytrace stuff is for use with the scanline renderer, and shouldn't really be used.  They basically allow limited ray tracing in a renderer where there is usually not any ray tracing. 

 

But we render with mental ray which already traces rays (the "ray" in "mental ray") for everything anyway.  The "reflectivity" in the arch & design material (and all the other materials in the mental ray category) actually is reflection, not just simulated shininess.  So if you give a brick material a reflectivity of .2, then it is already subtly reflective. 

 

I had just realized that I was giving advice with the assumption that he was using materials imported from Sketchup since that's how I work, which requires a few odd things to be done when it comes to using them in 3ds. As far as Arch + Design materials go, I'm not sure what channels one must go through to achieve very slight reflection. Textures imported from Sketchup seem to be a different animal below the surface, so to speak.

 

Regardless, I'd suggest a very, very slight albeit it still evident gloss to the brick material. Right now it looks too perfect; out of place in a world where visual discrepencies exist in even the most new and/or perfectly manufactured materials. Moreover this can be rectified by adding some variation to the contrast between each individual brick's colours. If the diffuse map isn't procedural, it may also help to add some grime to large expanses of brick not broken up by windows, doors or other items. A quick way I go about doing this is with dirt textures and cutout maps placed on a transparent object (everything but the grime itself) that geometrically mimics the object you wish to wrap in dirt, as if you copied the walls of your McDonald's, scaled them up to 101% and applied this texture to them. The brick would show through due to the cutout maps, but the grime would be retained wherever you wish for it to be. 

 

I'm not sure if these tips are helpful in regards to what your modeling workflow is like, but for me (with the use of Sketchup) this works well. I'm sure much of what I said can be applied to help solve the issues you face.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I don't know what sketchup gives you by default (I thought multi materials with standard materials in them) but whatever it gives you it's giving it to you that way because it's the most compatible.  Especially because you're doing so much stuff with metal and glass you should definitely remake the materials with arch & design materials after importing. 

[dubaidude303 1,126]

Looking good

[Darknono35 3,138]

Great BAT, now I want one Big Mac with french fries and one Coke please

[SimCoug 5,976]

Great looking Micky D's!  Any word on those neat row houses you were working on a few months back?  

[dubaidude303 1,126]

Hope you plan to make more American fast food restaurants in the future! They would be epic!!! 

[Bipin 3,403]

I don't know what sketchup gives you by default (I thought multi materials with standard materials in them) but whatever it gives you it's giving it to you that way because it's the most compatible.  Especially because you're doing so much stuff with metal and glass you should definitely remake the materials with arch & design materials after importing. 

 

I end up making my own materials by changing the parameters of imported Sketchup textures via the addition of different diffuse, bump, displacement etc. maps. Applying Arch + Design materials to Sketchup models seems to not work for whatever reason; they sometimes appear black as if you used the Matte/ShadowReflection material. It's always been pretty hit and miss when it comes to compatibility between these materials and Sketchup models. I find the best way to get around this is simply to use the Generic texture and add your own maps.

[sencillo1 47]

good stuff, really nice someone making smaller shops, too many skyscrapers.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

McCeafus! You could get famous *-*

[IDS2 3,428]

Glad to see you're back Looks pretty nice so far, looking forward to seeing it with roof junk. A small suggestion - perhaps it could benefit from some metal flashing up at the roof line to protect it from weathering. 

[edwardjeria 503]

umm a McDonalds

aaaaaaaaaaaaaa

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