Xannepan goes Paris

[xannepan 513]

Hi there,

 

I didn't have much time to play with BAT lately. But here's my newest creation, the first one of my PARIS building set.  I have upload the model at the BEX.

 

Consider this as a beta version. Therefor this is still a landmark. Night lights are no good yet. Also I eventually plan to make buildings from this set according to wall-2-wall principle.

 

Any advice, comments etc are welcome. Tell me what you think of proportions/textures etc.

 

I have also uploaded the BAT model, so if you are interested in joining me in creation of PARIS buildings, you can use this a an example. I apologize for the chaotic naming of objects.

 

I just also discovered a great link to photo's of almost all PARIS buildings; http://photos.pagesjaunes.fr/

 

 

-xannepan

 

 

[Cobb32118 239]

Xannepan, I wondered where you had gone!  I was happy to see your return with this awesome Paris building on the STEX.  Great work as always!

[fredval 26]

It's great you focus on Paris buildings... I'll be able to use it in all my cities.

You've already done an incredible job so far.

 

 

[teekanne 0]

it's a very good idea to make the buildings according to w2w principle

great building !!

[hogmeister 7]

Hi Xannepan, I am really glad to see you back, and in such style as well. Great work, I particularly like the semi enclosed pavement caf

[DvdGStwrt 5]

My help may be nothing more than a nuisance.

The texture and the proportion is correct. The problem with the tile size is that you would be left with wider than realistic buildings if you go with the correct height with two tiles.

This corner one can mold easily with side ones. but you will be left with an ally gap between the buildings on a straight run IF you stick with the correct width to height. Now what you could do is make two buildings and set them side by side on a 3 tile wide lot for the straight sides.

Understand? This way your corner building here would represent the proportions of your France design, you would end up having 2 buildings per lot (strait segments).

There are few buildings in Paris which are wider than they are tall - Too few for this. Most are deeper than they are wide. The lots along the street are roughly twice as deep as they are wide, thus the buildings are usually wider than they are deep.

There are a few exceptions, some are not as deep but make up the rear space with private gardens/courtyards.

This same principle repeats in many cities, San Francisco Victorians though side by side looking small are usually very deep, no front yard but plenty of garden space in the rear.

IF you carry the Paris Set far enough, you should also include a 3 building on a 4 tile wide lot, this will give the variation of width. I also believe that there are alleys which are very narrow between some of the Paris Buildings which provide access to the center courts of blocks. I may be confusing this with Rome, again its been a few decades since I been in Europe -

If you are planing on making these RCI plopables, you should mix up the lots between R&C. Though in most of these buildings in real life the Residential is above while street level is shops, you can get the same effect in game by having R&C side by side.

As for Lighting. DO NOT light up the exteriors. Be mindful that in Paris the upper floors are residential, they are lit from within. The street level is well lit with street lamps and small signs - These are respecting the residents who do not want glaring light shining through the windows at night.

In your photo of the buildings you can barely make out the tasteful lighting, single bulbs in a simple lantern shining down from just above the windows and doors of the shops.

Also note the drastic difference between the red shop and the white shop front - Carry this notion through your buildings - though they are clashing next to each other, this colouring is used to bring attention to the individual shops. Many of these buildings will have two shops on the ground floor. In this middle building in your photo the central door is the access to the upper floors (apartments).

I believe are Parisian Friends will confirm that there is also alley access from the rear of these buildings and that each building has a nice tidy garden or courtyard with iron balconies in the rear and fire escapes providing nearly every apartment with a place to place a potted plant or a place to get some fresh air.

Also many of these buildings will have laundry lines strung behind from building to building - That may have changed over the years, used to be that these lines were on pulleys allowing folk to hand their laundry outside to dry.

Also note that plants on the balconies is a mainstay. You even see a few trees in your photos.

In Game there are store fronts, these can be randomized on Commercial buildings, they colours may work well for you in your set which may save you a lot of time attempting to design a lot of commercial store fronts for your ground floors.

Cheers

David

[xannepan 513]

Thanks guys for all the adivce and comments. Keep them coming!

 

Now that i've found the website of the paris yellow pages, i'll have a lot more examples to work from. For the building above i was lucky to have pictures from different angles, so in that respect it is quite realistic. I still am trying to get the gmax file posted....

 

-xannepan

[jtportland 184]

beautiful building xannepan, although it did look alittle unfinished with just the corner lot, so i fixed it up in LE
here's a pic of what i came up with:

[vil 3]

I almost laughed my head off. No really these americans (sorry Robledo i mean the northern ones) are funny. Its a beautiful and no doubt profesionally made lot and its probably going to be popular with the crowd but its totally distracting from the objective of somehow making SC4 grow a european city.

 

Im SO glad xannepan is working on this type of building. The link in the top post is also great - its not just about paris but sevaral french and spanish cities. 

[Vlakhaas 13]

Xannepan has exposed one major issue for me in the 6x6 city blocks design ...

Now I have a question ...

Will it be possible to make a 1x1 corner building ... ?

I will also need fairly narroe building for the inner pedestrian avenues if we do not want to build in a way that creates a courtyard in the middle of the 6x6 ...

We will also need filler slices with pedestrian access to the courtyards in the center of the 6x6 lots.

[+Guest]

exellent building you made.

[MrCinatit 30]

aye, i had thought we'd lost you, xannepan, but i guess you were here all the time, getting prepared for another marvelous creation. only advice i can give...keep it up.

now, i have to go searching for my socks, as they have seemed to have been blown off.

[Born78 4]

Hi Xannepan!

 

Let me first say that it's great to have you back here.

I wish you could be with us more often. But I know that you have a slow connection to Internet and you have a lot of other things to do too.

 

Ok.

 

Let's now talk about your model.

 

It's as usuall a very detailed....but also well textured building. Here's a picture that shows that we have about the same heights and scales for our buildings.

 

 

But there is one downside with your model. The scales are importent. But for w2w buildings also the sidewalk is very important. According to your model size...a lot with your building will...if it's placed on the lotedges, have about 12,7 m sidewalk. That's a very wide sidewalk which will give large open areas in our cities. European cities are much more denser. The distances between the buildings on opposite sides of the street is not that long. Champs de lysees (I don't remember how it's spelled) is wide ofcourse. But it will look strange if we have a whole city with champs de lysees. The meassurment 12,7m (well about 12,7m. I didn't meassured it exactly. I'm a bit busy right now so I didn't have time to meassure it more exactly) is a noninteger number. I think it's better if we use a integer number as sidewalk meassurement since it easier to remember.

 

I think that Vlakhaas is happy to see that you want to use 12,7m sidewalks! But we Europeans in the w2w thread wanted to use 3m sidewalk for $$/$ buildings and 8m sidewalk for $$$ buildings. It seems like as if Vlakhaas accepted these meassurements too.

 

My building is 25m high from the ground to the bottom of the roof. I choosed that meassurement since it's a good scale but also a integer number that is easy to remember. It's a 25m high building with 5 floors..that is..every floor is about 5m. It's seems that most of the w2w BATers here will use about the same scales and heights as you do..so don't wory about that.

 

 

It's nice to see you here again and I would gladly continue the discussions of w2w buildings which we started a long ago.

[xannepan 513]

 

I have finished another paris building. I have put it twice on the 2x2 lot above together with the earlier corner building. This should agree with wall-2-wall standard. I have used a sidewalk width of 3 meters.

I'll post the gmax files also (tomorrow).

 

I wish neon lights were possible for the green cross (which you often see in Paris' pharmacies). I tried a rectangular green colored night light 'including' only the cross but apparently the inclusion/exclusion option doesn;t work with lights.  Does anyone have any experience with this. Alternatively, maybe someone could design some neon props....

 

-xannepan

[xannepan 513]

 

Paris building no. 3! I was really surprised how good this looked when placed wall-2-wall.

 

I varied just a little bit with floor size and building height, just to make it a bit more like on the real paris pictures (see link above).

 

There is a small gap or overlap between to buildings next to eachother.Also a bit variation in sidewalk width. It's a bit difficult to make this more uniform... but to me personally it's not really a big deal.

 

 

I will post the gmax files + textures... but please be patient... I'm connected by dial-up and especially the textures (even when zipped) are large.

-xannepan

[Alkaola 18]

one word AMAZING

[hogmeister 7]

Wow, that collection of buildings is fantastic, and you put them all together so quickly, your the DT of European style buildings.

[messytaco 1]

Date: 5/7/2004 3:35:49 AM
Author:

I almost laughed my head off. No really these americans (sorry Robledo i mean the northern ones) are funny. Its a beautiful and no doubt profesionally made lot and its probably going to be popular with the crowd but its totally distracting from the objective of somehow making SC4 grow a european city.

Im SO glad xannepan is working on this type of building. The link in the top post is also great - its not just about paris but sevaral french and spanish cities.

quote>

I think he was just having fun with the LE. I don't see this as justification to smear either his name or the name of every citizen of the United States.

Personally I find it saddening that there is no W2W group for American-style buildings. I suppose that Europeans envision the United States as one large mall, but the fact is we have hundreds of cities with small streets and wall-to-wall lots. I would love to see people develop a Philadelphia/New York/Boston building set, but all American designers are making is skyscrapers.

Sorry to go off topic. Xannepan, your buildings are beautiful as always.

[JEC 100]

i extremely happy that someone is making Paris buildings, and i'm glad it is you Xannepan. however, the wall textures (in my opinion) look to dirty and too yellow for Paris. other than that, it is fantastic.

 

[jtportland 184]

yea, thanks for the insult vil, i was just had some intrest in playing with the building in LE. and u sure that all american (i mean northern) think the same? maybe everybody from Czech are the same too? please avoid stereotyping, it's not the best way to make friends .

ON topic, xannepan, the new additions look great! keep up the good work.

[RobledoRessainance 36]

Gorgeous buildings Xannepan, and welcome back to the ST BAT forums. Great to see you're standarizing your buildings to the w2w principle. The variations of the sidewalk measure are too little to be noticeable. I think it will be fine.
PS.- @Vil... in case you don't know, my country is in North America too...

[6459978. 106]

The level of detail and texturing here is superb!  You are the undisputed Paris building champion. Please, please, please, keep up this super work. And try to get a job at Maxis; you're better than their artists!

[jtportland 184]

w2w buildings are great! i would like to have more in game . i was experimenting more with your new buildings in my city, and i thought this looked pretty cool...

xannepan, thanks again for these awesome buildings!

[RobledoRessainance 36]

Wow! Look at the posibilities... and they're only a few! Imagine later with all our w2w creations! I think it looks probably like a wall (?) or maybe it's just me...

[xannepan 513]

Okay people. The gmax files +textures are uploaded. Maybe today I'll create 1 or 2 other buildings.

 

[xannepan 513]

Tadaaa... another row building... with a hotel sign.. To bad I don't know how to do neon ligth

 

I have used a slightly different texture on this one, less yellow and more gray. The only minor issue is that somehow the window textures turned out a bit dark. But i gave up correcting this since I had to render this for times due to a problem with the LODS.

 

-xannepan

 

[Caliban 2]

Date: 5/7/2004 11:13:35 AM
Author:

I have finished another paris building. I have put it twice on the 2x2 lot above together with the earlier corner building. This should agree with wall-2-wall standard. I have used a sidewalk width of 3 meters.

I'll post the gmax files also (tomorrow).

I wish neon lights were possible for the green cross (which you often see in Paris' pharmacies). I tried a rectangular green colored night light 'including' only the cross but apparently the inclusion/exclusion option doesn;t work with lights. Does anyone have any experience with this. Alternatively, maybe someone could design some neon props....

-xannepan

quote>

No the include/exclude for lights does not work in the BAT renderer.
However, I've downloaded your gMax model and making the green cross pharmacy sign light up will be simple. Just create 2 directional night lights pointing at each side of the cross. Place them so they don't also illuminate the building and give them a suitable multiplier to be nice and bright.
Its a nice looking model. The only thing I don't like is the moss on the roof. Not because its there but because it doesn't look much like moss, the colour is too uniform. Try getting an image of moss and merging that into your texture instead.

[Lord_Quillian2 38]

Hey xannepan if you want to know how to make neon lights (or the best thing I can come up with) make a texture that has the design that you want to show as the neon light in the colour that you want it, and make the background of the texture black try this out as an example;

 

 

apply this texture to a target direct light, and call the light nitelite so that it will only come on at night.

 

this is what you should get:

 

day left, night right.

 

looks ok to me. If you need a hand with this, PM me.

 

LQ

[xannepan 513]

 

Here's my latest building. Guys, I am experiencing great problems with the LODS. I don't know what happens but I refit them, even reset lights and still I have to render 3 or 4 times to get the building right... the ones that faile show parts of other sc4 buildings. Even reinstalling the BAT doesn't always help. Anyway, this building is almost right expect that due to the LOD problem it didn't fit on a 1x1 lot anymore. So to solve this I put it twice on a 1x2 lot (you see the buildings front and back side facing the street). I hope I will be able to fix it. I so I'll upload an update.

 

Caliban I agree with you on the 'moss' texture. In photoshop it looked better, but the appearance in photoshop is not the same as after rendering. To me its good enough but feel free to change it now you've got the model. Can you post some pictures here of the green cross lit up?

 

LQ: thanks for the advice on the neons.. I'll certainly try it!

 

 

And to all others; I hope you'll be able to use the gmax files to create variations of my buildings. If you do.. please .. please upload... The more buildings we can get in these theme the happier I'll be;-)

Especially the 16m wide buildings will be usefull I hope. Using one of these for a start, small changes to the model can quickly resulst in a completely different looking building.

-xannepan

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[S.A.C 20]

I'm very happy to see you back in business again Xannepan. And I'm also happy to see that you continue to focus on the actual B.A.T-creation rather than providing lots for them - which allows you to produce more of these amazing structures of yours.

Since I'm running a European stylished city with my Olympia, these buildings really comes in handy. I use the LE to provide flourishing European stylished lots for them, with the w2w-principle in mind. Below is an example of the various lots I use in my city. This particular lot is also using Marrast underpass avenue - which BTW is another splendid addition;





Keep up the good work