Francis90Bats

[Francis90b 748]

PROJECTS

-Generic tunnel ventilation shaft model 1

In Progress:

-Commercial buildings 1

-Cross river tunnel (phase I)

-Federal style and greek revival rowhouse sets.

LENGHT SIZE OF MY MODELS

Some of my models aren't BATed according to SC4 LOT size.Here's a list, with their relative lenght:

-Commercial buildings:

• 26 W 38th street:7,6 mtrs.
  

-Rowhouses:

• Jones:6,4 mtrs.
  
• Henry:7,2 mtrs.
  

_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________

The BAT i'm currently working on is a a generic tunnel ventilation shaft, based on the ventilation shafts over the southern tube of the Lincoln Tunnel in NYC.

Here are the four zoom 5 previews, in clockwise order from top left S,E,W,N.

And here is the south preview in a white background, you can use it to test how it fits in a generic SC4 landscape (or in any pic you might have).Cutting and pasting a SC4 render into another image is not difficult nor time-expensive, but it might be tedious...so i've thought i could simplify the job for you .

Feel free to share your mind.

  Edited October 22, 2012 by Francis90b  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

My mind is shared to say I'm glad to see you have a BAT Thread now!

I saw this in another thread, its a really nice BAT! I think the texture of the advertisement needs some work. Like to look more old and weathered.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wow!!! I'm also happy to see a bat thread from you, and you bat look great.

[harishna 847]

Very original!

About the ads look too faded to me, I'll reduce the transparency and saturation, and maybe add some dirt, you can even fake the impression that the paint has come off in certain areas...

[Vlasky 1,803]

Wow! I'm very glad to see you opening a BAT thread! Bravo!

As for BAT, it looks amazing. I find it very unconventional. About Ads, I'm not sure, I've never seen few smaller ads lined up like that, so maybe go with one big ad? What harishna said I agree with. Also, maybe bring those ads closer to the edge of the wall.

ps Ahahahahaha I see you added grime, and you were right, nothing wrong with subtle grime

[madhatter106 3,931]

What happened to your other BAT thread, Francis90b? It was chock full of all sorts of goodies...

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Yea, Madhatter106 is right, I just hope this thread does not die like the others as well as the bats that where in it.

[Francis90b 748]

Thanks everyone, i will work on the ads...if you ask me, i'm the first person who is not convinced by the current situation.

This is an example of a building with multiple ads.

I've tried to light the building:

But this is almost completely foreign territory for me...i'm actually surprised it turned out like that, and not worse.Feel free to share your minds.

My old BAT thread contained "goodies" that laid on an HD that blew out almost one year ago.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Look good, to me, I do not know why I keep look at the bricks, maybe they look smooth, I can't say right not so do not listen to me, someone posted below knows the truth.

  Edited December 22, 2011 by Aaron Graham  

[Jasoncw 11,949]

If you can you should check the real building, because I'm not sure that this is the kind of building that would have ads on it.

It looks like the main thing to work on for this BAT is the bricks, since everything else is so simple. I would increase their contrast.

[Francis90b 748]

Speaking in general (and not specifically about this particular BAT) i think that bricks in a brick surface should be barely noticeable, their contrast not too strong (and honestly, i'd try to make the contrast on my own bricks lower than the contrast you can see in many brick BATs, even good quality ones).

But i think that i might have pursued my own ideas a little too further in this case, so i take note of your advices and i will see what i can do about that.

My ideas notwithstanding, i agree with you about the fact that some increase in contrast might be a good thing there.

[art128 4,622]

Looks great, I like it. I've only one building of that sort and I really need more, so your creation is very welcomed.

[SimHoTToDDy 2,939]

I'm with Jason, I don't think this type of civic/public building would have advertisements on it.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

In that case maybe you can increase the contrast of the bricks, but then make the bricks smaller.

Or you can leave the contrast the same, and you can decrease the "Blur" setting of the bitmap from 1.0 to .1 or even .01. This will have max render the bitmap more clearly. Doing this will increase the render time but it's a small BAT.

Something else, in general, for many of your materials you'll want to enable Ambient Occlusion. In the Arch & Design material, if you scroll down to the special effects rollout, it's in there along with the round edges effect. If you google ambient occlusion you'll understand what it is. I usually use a distance of a few meters. There's a checkbox for making it more accurate (instead of using black (or whatever you have as the color) to shade the inside corners, it will sample the color of that surface and base the color of the shadow off that). Normal AO doesn't seem to increase render times much, but enabling the more accurate color will increase render times, so use that when the default black shading looks unnatural.

[Francis90b 748]

Thank you.

I have set the blur to 0.1 and enabled Ambient occlusion for all of my materials.

I did put the signs on the blind side just to make it a bit more interesting, but honestly i always had some doubts about wheter they were realistic or not.

If everything is fine, then i think i might export this before the end of the year .

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I think you got the bricks right, it looks great.

[Amthaak 1,501]

I like these bricks very much too!

[Francis90b 748]

Christmas update:a pic of my next project.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

*love*

Is this based on another tunnel in New York? Specifically the one in Downtown? Ah, I forget what its called...

[Girafe 1,729]

your projects look nice, and you show good basics on the BAT

For the ventilation tower, I would be dirtier for this kind of job.

For the other project, it looks promising, trees are nice (where are they from?)

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I agree that the first building could use some more grime. It's a top-notch model, crisp and detailed, but IMO it looks a bit sterile.

Another thing I just noticed is that you covered the tops of those thin separating walls inside the vents(?) with different materials/textures. On one side (lower side in the upper left preview), this makes it hard to grasp the structure. The walls in the other vent have their top sections covered with a different, brighter material/texture, which makes it easier to see what's going on up there.

[Francis90b 748]

This is a comparison between the first set of textures for this building (used on the previews of the building that were shown in the "BATs in progress thread) and the one i'm currently using:

The main difference between them are four layers of grime added to each texture, and covering specific spots.

The assumption that a building might be more or less grimier according to it's function might be correct, but it covers a very limited aspect of a more complex reality...other factors are as much as important in determining the outcome.

I'm afraid i see no difference between the two vents, TWrecks....would you please point them out, maybe with a pic?

The second model is actually based on the Brooklyn-Battery tunnel shaft in Lower Manhattan, but it is not going to be an exact recreation.

I liked the "general shape" of the original building, but there were a lot of small details i wanted to change, and doing a re-creation wouldn't have allowed me to do that.

  Edited December 26, 2011 by Francis90b  

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I hope this pic is better than my lousy explaining skills.

[art128 4,622]

that last tunnel vent looks great! it's funny because the other day I was over NYC in google earth and I saw it.. then I though it would have looked really cool in the game. And today, Tada!

Also, I do agree with Twrecks about the separation barely visible on one part of the vent building.

[Ceafus 88 1,898]

Wow. Stunning, I will use these in all my cities, Great Work my friend!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Looks great.

[Francis90b 748]

Time to dust off this thread ...

This is the definitive version of the generic ventilation shaft.It is a different model, but i consider it as being the same project.

I could have a glimpse of the old model in game, and it looked both underscaled (x,y) and overscaled (z).I knew i took some liberties over it's measures, so i preferred to start it over again.

This is the render:

and this is for you to test in game:

Feel free to share your opinion .

EDIT:the dumpster might be a sign for those who might have seen it on another model...but i wouldn't want to talk about it for now .

  Edited March 24, 2012 by Francis90b  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Hello beautiful ventilation shaft!

Great to see you back up again after your ABBT project. My concern would usually be the saturation...but I can't help but think it'd actually match well with the Maxis buildings.

Nice work.

[Francis90b 748]

Night.I've chosen not to lit windows out, cause i think they probably wouldn't IRL.

I'm going to export this.

  Edited March 25, 2012 by Francis90b  

[MTT9 187]

Nice, simple yet very good. It looks very dark with so little lighting but i also think thats how it should be.

I also like your "cross river channel", looks very prominsing.