IDS's (mostly) Minnesota BATs

[gutterclub 2,729]

So good!!!!!!!

[mattb325 28,880]

Both of these buildings are incredible! They'll be going straight in my plugins when released. 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Yeah I think the metal (and pylons) looks much better now. Metal is one of those things that you can tweak for forever. Just because of the way the game is it feels like it's impossible to get 100% perfect. And the yellow lines are a good call.

The new building looks great but yeah the colors are definitely slightly too pink. You'll also want to look closer at the materials. In real life the beige stone appears to be a matte finish while the red stone is very polished. You can see it in photos like this one where the glass and the red stone are clearly reflecting the surroundings while the beige stone isn't.

Excellent work again!

[IDS2 3,346]

Thanks everyone!

I have redone several of the materials, most notably the red and beige stone. The red stone is now noticeably more red (hopefully sufficiently so) and now has quite a bit of glossiness, which is most notable at the street level and the cutouts in the tower. I lightened up the panel divisions of the tan stone, which should help make everything look more cohesive. I also tweaked the window glass, redid the atrium glass and surrounding area, the awnings, and the covered plaza area.

One issue with this building is that the shadows on the covered plaza basically require there to be modeled ground so that the building doesn't look funny in game. Additionally, anyone with a sidewalk mod (or who makes a custom lot) would get an ugly line separating the plaza from the rest of the lot. I'm thinking the row of potted plants along this boundary will help to blur this line and act as a natural boundary for the plaza. I'll have to do something similar for the side entrance into the atrium - I'm thinking a couple more planters as well as benches, trash cans, etc.

I'm by no means set on everything, so let me know your thoughts. Nightlighting should be relatively straightforward, but due to the sheer size of the building, I'll probably try to use self illumination for most of it. After 4 smallish buildings in a row, waiting for preview renders of this one requires a bit more patience than I'm used to. 

This one was a lot of fun to model despite it being a somewhat unremarkable 80s relic IRL. I think most people look right past it, and like most of the stuff I model, that's part of why I chose it.

I've been modeling like a madman behind the scenes, but I'm trying not to succumb to my old habit of posting preview renders and not delivering on them until years later, if at all. 

[matias93 7,535]

wow, nice!

I wouldn't mind so much about the border between the modelled sidewalk and some other sidewalk mod. Given that those maxis tiles are modelled in several other BATs elsewhere, I've come to assume they are just some trendy architectural preference, instead of some immersion failure; such things happen in RL cities all the time.

Now, speaking of sidewalk textures, the one on the low roof would be great for some high wealth squares and such; I've seen @tariely using one similar on her work. Maybe you could release it too!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I've noticed looking at the building in google maps, that on the front side of the building, the first row of windows that are right next to the lower roof, in real life not all of them are windows, most of them are filled in with the red stone. It looks like the two central bays, and then the first three windows/blocks of the next bays, should be filled in with red stone.

Also you've done a good job with all the vent grills around the building.

[IDS2 3,346]

Thanks matias! That's sort of what I was thinking too. Here is the texture I made for the lower roof. I actually had the best results doing it all as one piece. 

Jason, good catch! I'm glad you noticed that. And I'm glad you like the vent grills, because I spent a lot of time on making them and felt stupid for spending so much time on something so small 

So here's one more day scene. Added a couple planters, made a couple texture tweaks, fixed the windows above the atrium that should have been stone, and removed the antennas from the penthouse (they were fine, but I found them distracting and personally prefer the building without them). 

And I finally put together a night scene!

I may make a few last adjustments to the brightness on some of the floors, but overall I'm pleased with how it looks.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

What a masterpiece!

The nightlights look great in my opinion.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

lol well I know about vents from personal experience!

Night looks great. The way you've done the office floors works really well.

For the skylights though, I don't think they look right. It looks like they're refracting the insides of the courtyard. In the "Advanced Rendering Settings" rollout of the glass material, make sure that "Thin-walled" is selected and not "Solid". If it's set to solid it thinks you're trying to make something like a diamond where you have a solid object that's refracting light, instead of normal flat panes of glass. A few of my own BATs have the same problem.

[IDS2 3,346]

Thanks JP

Good call Jason, I think I've fixed the refraction issue:

I like that you can more clearly see the Roy Liechtenstein mural in the atrium now

Does the level of light coming out of each skylight seem okay? It makes sense that the back set of skylights don't have much light coming through them, and I think the main atrium skylight matches the light level of the front entrance pretty well.

EDIT: Immediately after posting I noticed that one of the windows at the front entrance appeared to be brighter than all of the others surrounding it. Turned out to just be an incorrect material ID and I was able to fix it, so just pretend it matches the other windows in the preview 

EDIT 2: Also, I'm going to thicken the roof over the atrium a little bit so it doesn't look so paper thin. Right now, if you look through the skylight, you can basically tell that it's just a plane, so I'll extrude it down on the inside a little bit (like in this photo).

[IDS2 3,346]

The end result:

It hides a bit more of the mural, but I think it's for the better.

[IDS2 3,346]

Something from Hawaii:

The way the glass slice at the top reflects the sky bugged me at first, but I'm sort of getting used to it. I did try removing the sky from the scene, but that honestly made it worse. I'll probably keep the sky in the scene, but I may have to play with the glass a bit more to compensate for it. I like the glass overall, but there are a few spots where I still think it looks weird. I think it might help if I brighten up the color of the mullions a little bit.

I also may take another look at the stone material's reflectivity. It's actually already quite reflective and glossy, but it's sort of hard to tell. I'm fine with the way it looks now, but it may need some adjusting when I do the night scene so the environmental reflections don't look weird.

I was also hesitant to include the palm trees, but the real building is in downtown Honolulu and I feel like they're an integral part of the design (I also don't think I would want to render a second version without them).

[brancra 1,114]

14 minutes ago, IDS2 said:

Something from Hawaii:

The way the glass slice at the top reflects the sky bugged me at first, but I'm sort of getting used to it. I did try removing the sky from the scene, but that honestly made it worse. I'll probably keep the sky in the scene, but I may have to play with the glass a bit more to compensate for it. I like the glass overall, but there are a few spots where I still think it looks weird. I think it might help if I brighten up the color of the mullions a little bit.

I also may take another look at the stone material's reflectivity. It's actually already quite reflective and glossy, but it's sort of hard to tell. I'm fine with the way it looks now, but it may need some adjusting when I do the night scene so the environmental reflections don't look weird.

I was also hesitant to include the palm trees, but the real building is in downtown Honolulu and I feel like they're an integral part of the design (I also don't think I would want to render a second version without them).

Alakea Corporate Tower. Early 90s postmodernism. Very nice IDS2, you've captured the building's lines beautifully!

[Bastet69008 1,102]

Oh God I've been waiting for this moment for 9 years since the Honolulu CJ project by @sumwonyuno 

Great surprise and veeeery good work!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Looks great as always!

For the glass facing the sky issue you can try this.

In the "Advanced Rendering Options" rollout of the glass material, there's an area for reflections. The Max Distance option makes it so that nothing from outside of that range will be reflected. So if you made that 5 meters, the glass would reflect the facade parts right next to it, but it wouldn't reflect the ground plane, because it's further than 5 meters away. If you put a really big number in, then all of your scene will still be reflected, but you'll effectively replace the default sky with that texture.

And then you can also put a texture in there. At the very top of the bitmap, there's a selection for either "Texture" or "Environ" and you want to choose environ, and then you can choose a mapping type. So if you download a spherical sky map you can put it in there, and choose environ and spherical, and the result should be that your upwards facing reflections reflect your sky texture.

I've never done this for your situation before though, so I'm curious about how it turns out.

[Girafe 1,729]

looks nice, keep the palms

You can right click on them, select properties and then return black option, it will give a little bit of contrast to them

[IDS2 3,346]

brancra - Thank you very much! I actually completely forgot this building existed until recently when I found an old photo I had taken of it from a trip many years ago. I was looking for another postmodern building after AXA so it worked out perfectly. 

Bastet - Thanks for turning me onto that CJ, I hadn't seen that before. Pretty cool to see him starting to make his own BATs toward the end. I wish I had known how to BAT back when I was posting CJ entries!

Jason - That did the trick! It took a bit of experimentation to get it looking the way I wanted it, but the hardest part was just getting the sky map to look right. Thanks for pointing out that feature, I'm going to have to play with that a bit more in the future.

Girafe - Thank you very much, a good trick to remember 

 

An updated day scene, with the sky-facing portion looking far less blue. 

And a night scene. I may need to bump up the glossy samples on the granite for the final export, but overall I'm pleased with how it looks. I may play with the lobby lights a little bit.

And one I saw a few pages back in the official request thread. It's a good filler building and it's only a couple miles up the road, so I figured what the hell:

[gutterclub 2,729]

Absolutely love both of them, love your work buddy!

[art128 4,618]

The sky glass is looking much better now!

 

I like the second building and I will definitely use it.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

The textures and glasses are looking great. Great job!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wow, great work I love that post modern building that was going I wanted to make. 

[Fargo 543]

I want to say your BAT of the Labor Centre is outstanding, but I think we can agree that these midcentury buildings do their job best by blending in.  The night lights look really nice. I actually live only a few blocks from this building and go by it pretty frequently, so it's neat to see it here.

If you are in need of inspiration (and a challenge), two iconic Minneapolis buildings that I'm sure would make Minnesotans rejoice if brought to the STEX are Riverside Plaza and the Foshay Tower. Or if you're feeling less ambitious, perhaps the Witch's Hat? I can't think of any examples of Minneapolis architecture that are more distinctive than these. If you took up my request I would happily go and take any reference photos that you needed. 

[gutterclub 2,729]

Love the United Labour Centre, keep these BATs coming mate, absolutely love them.

[IDS2 3,346]

Thank you everyone!  I appreciate the kind feedback!

Fargo - I would love to do Riverside Plaza at some point, but it's certainly a huge complex that would take quite some time. I actually started modeling that one several years ago (as a giant single model) and got sidetracked when I ran into a few spots where I needed to run over there and get some photos. I did wind up visiting the complex (I only lived about 3 blocks away at the time) but never picked the model back up. I'd definitely consider restarting it at some point, although I would definitely model it on a building-by-building basis this time rather than as one monolithic complex. A lot of the landscaping and structures connecting the buildings wouldn't adapt super well to SC4, and I think most players would get more use out of them if I broke them up into standalone buildings. That being said, I actually attempted the Witch's Hat not too long ago, and I'm thinking about releasing it along with the Washburn, Kenwood Park, and Highland Park towers as a pack at some point. Not very far along yet, but once I finish up some WIPs I'll revisit it.

So, after taking a protracted break from the internet this fall, I'm back to finish up a WIP I posted a while back. I've had the day scene done for ages but completely forgot to do the night scene until now. This one is actually based on a building immediately adjacent to the aforementioned Riverside Plaza, though I've added a second color variation so you can make a complex without it being too monotonous.

I figured that the night scene for a residential building should have a good amount of variation between windows, so I played with the color/brightness/direction of each room's lights to simulate different types of lamps, furniture configurations, etc. How does it look? I can definitely play with it some more if it's too uniform.

I still have a few WIPs that I am going to finish as soon as this one is complete, with the first (and largest) being the IDS Center. I've made some progress on that one that I'll show soon. After that, I have a bunch of facades that I modeled while putting off exporting Alakea (everything that could have gone wrong during the export process went wrong this time around ) plus the aforementioned water towers I'd like to work on. I also moved to St. Paul recently and I'm surrounded by a lot of Victorian era stuff that I'd like to try modeling. Almost all of the buildings I've done to this point (really only with the exception of the theaters and Hiawatha Bank Tower) are pretty darn boxy, and I think it would be fun to step out of my comfort zone. I'd like to keep up the release frequency that I've been maintaining for the past couple years, if not accelerate it a bit going into 2021.

Happy new year!

[matias93 7,535]

That residential building is really fantastic!!! Would it be possible to see a lower version? Maybe 4 or 5 floors. That would be great for big park-like complexes

[IDS2 3,346]

Great idea! Here is a 5 floor version. Does anything need attention or shall I export them?

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

What amazing work you are doing @IDS2. What a nice collection you are making. I will definitely be on the lookout their release.

[Fargo 543]

looks nice, especially the night lights. the shorter version reminds me of the brutalist freshman dorm building at my old campus. my only criticism is that the brick texture is patterning pretty noticeably, especially with the darker brick tone. maybe adding some grime or using a larger bitmap might make it look less monotonous? 

i have often admired that victorian building on selby ave. it's so imposing compared to the surrounding buildings. 

very excited to see renders of IDS and the other water towers!

[matias93 7,535]

looks just gorgeous!

[IDS2 3,346]

Thanks guys 

Fargo, good eye regarding the repetition in the brick. I replaced the bitmaps with a procedurally generated texture - does it look any better?

EDIT: literally as soon as I posted this I noticed one grime stain that repeated in a couple spots - fixed!