Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[Jack_wilds 550]

luv it... its as neat as the Inland Steel Bdlg.

[Vlasky 1,803]

I'm thinking about the granite and will it appear too saturated when in the game? What I'd also like to see is some sort of transparency on that glass. It's a very very nice building. I kinda hoped it would have remained a mid-rise, but I like it like this  

[Cockatoo 2,256]

The reflections you've got on this one are really interesting. How do they compare to the actual reflection angles we'd see if using real models? Could it actually be possible to fake this with a simple ground plane?

[Charlie_Zane 963]

The glass looks amazing! The red pavement looks interesting!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

MTT9:  Good     I think the red granite is something that is common in real life but not as common in SC4.

 

Jack_Wilds:  Thanks! 

 

Vlasky:  I think you're right.  I've desaturated it for now, but near the end I'll have to do some final tweaking.  This kind of glass looks opaque from the outside unless there's a really strong light source from the inside.  Sometimes if you look very closely at these buildings in real life during the day you can see the ceiling lights if they're on but other than that you can't see anything.  And then at night you can see more.  And it would have been a midrise but the massings I was thinking of looked even more like Cockatoo's Comalco Place, so I looked at different massings of this type of building from real life and came up with this massing and also decided that it should be an overscaled skyscraper like the ones in Houston or Los Angeles.  The kinds where evil oil companies and insurance companies live.

 

Cockatoo:  For that preview I figured out the angle to make vertical lines, which is why the ford building is sticking straight up instead of being sideways as it normally would be.  So that's how to straighten out the vertical dimension.  Later I'll try to remember to measure and post that angle here.  And then for horizontal dimensions (the "roofs" of the fake building masses), the ground plane itself is horizontal so just normal rectangles work.  The other thing is that if the building were really reflecting buildings, it's reflecting the back side (the shadow side) of the buildings, so the "walls" of the fake building masses should be dark.  But I haven't gotten around to implementing any of this yet.  I think what my ground plane will end up being is a collage of in-game screenshots, not oriented in any particular direction, with a few layers of fake 3d boxes so that some of the right kinds of lines appear in the glass sometimes.

 

City_Master:  Thanks!

 

 

 

So since the last update I've worked on:

 

The ground plane, making the images more generic.

 

The red granite pavers, desaturating them.

 

And glass, changing the bump map.  My bump map had plenty of broad distortions, but the distortions that follow tightly around the edge of the panes wasn't strong enough so I changed that.  Does the glass look too billowy now?

 

Then I worked on the ground floor in the back of the building which will have some retail spaces, a parking garage entrance, and a smaller office to the main lobby.  The glass will be clear in this area.

 

And again, click on it to make it full size. 

 

[Gn_leugim 853]

coming along pretty nice I say

[MTT9 187]

It looks really nice. Looking foward for more

[libellibicus 396]

Very nice BAT. Loving the red granite...a smart choice.

[gutterclub 2,729]

I think I actually prefered the old glass, I like the defined reflections (albeit usimg a more generic ground pane) this bump gives it more a hazy feel and feels like the glass is a bit bubbly..if that makes sense?

[Girafe 1,729]

I think I actually prefered the old glass, I like the defined reflections (albeit usimg a more generic ground pane) this bump gives it more a hazy feel and feels like the glass is a bit bubbly..if that makes sense?

 

I share this feeling, I prefere the old glass

[Darknono35 3,137]

I love your glass, and I use your building as models for the mine, but, I may be say a stupidity  , but may be adding a slight transparency, to leave appear the inside of the levels, I think it isn't totally opaque in the real life.

I can't wait to see more about this one

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks guys I'll keep on working on the glass and the ground plane.

 

I definitely won't be making the glass partially transparent though.

 

http://goo.gl/maps/v8VmG

 

This street in Detroit conveniently has a few good examples of the kind of glass I'm making.  On the building to the right no matter how hard I look (and I'd like to think that I have a good eye) I can't see the inside and I can't tell the difference between the spandrels and the windows.

 

Moving south, there is another building to the right with the same kind of glass, and I also can't tell the difference between the spandrels and the windows.  The exception are a few panels where they appeared to replace a few pieces of glass with new glass that didn't quite match.

 

And then moving south again, there are a bunch of buildings but there are a few different kinds of glass.  The two short twin towers to the left have the same kind of glass as the previous buildings and you can't see inside at all, except on the shadow side if you look closely you can see the lights on the ceiling shine through.  But other than the bright light sources you can't see the inside. 

 

To the right are 4 towers that have dark glass, but it's smoked or tinted glass and not mirrored glass.  This isn't the kind of glass that I'm making.  Another example in Detroit is http://goo.gl/maps/RZd9h which is also not the kind of glass that I'm making.

 

Now, if you go into 45 degree/bird's eye view and look at these buildings, it's a little different.  For the first two buildings I mentioned (the ones that are only a few stories tall) they still look perfectly mirrored at all angles.  But for the two taller ones, you still can't tell the difference between the windows and the spandrels, except for one rotation where you *can*.

 

 

So I think considering all of that and also considering what we typically think mirrored glass looks like, I'm not going to make this glass partially transparent.  But on my model the spandrel glass and the window glass are actually two different materials.  The spandrel glass has a flat dark grey diffuse color, and the window glass has a subtle bitmap (a traditional window texture), and when I work on the glass next time I can try to make that less subtle.

 

I'll also continue to work on the bump map and the ground plane.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

First of all, nice work on your latest BAT. Every one of your BATs is a piece of art!

 

---

 

Now, I'd like to kindly ask you for some advice. I've been working on a BAT of my own lately and it turns out pretty well, except for one thing: the roof:

The textures don't really look right and I'm a complete layman when it comes to roof junk. Do you have any tips I could use to finalize the roof of this building?

 

Thanks in advance

 

Best,

Maarten

[Darknono35 3,137]

You're really the master of the Glass Jason CW , this building will be excellent like always.
I like the reddish granite plaza too, it's original  .

Keep it up man

 

@Mandelsoft: Your building is funny and beautiful, my god, you must continue to work on this one !!

To complete the roof, you can use the composite (arch&design / procedural ) to add some dirt and other, or creat an simple texture

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Don't worry, I'll finish this soon  But I have very little experience with Arch&Design textures, so I don't know where to start...

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Well here is an example of how it could look. 

 

 

So I'll explain the standard way that I make my roofs:

 

1.  When my modeling is done (and all roofs are attached together as one object), I go into the top viewport (which should be in the default wireframe mode, and not shaded mode) and take a screenshot.

 

2.  I paste this screenshot into Photoshop, and crop it down to the outer edges of the roof.

 

3.  I save the file and go back into 3ds Max, and apply the .psd as a texture to the roof object, and give it a planar uvw map.  Then do a render.  You should see that the lines on the texture should line up with the roof.

 

4.  I make a new layer, and use a small black brush and I trace the outlines of certain features on the roof.  The walls, roof junk, etc.  I sometimes call this "eyeliner" because it's done the same way and for the same reasons as eyeliner on people's eyes (adds contrast, accentuates certain features, makes it more dynamic, etc.).  This layer is set to multiply.

 

5.  I make another new layer, and use big brushes with low opacities and I paint in big blobs of white and different greys and black.  Then I set this layer to overlay, and reduce the opacity of the layer until it's subtle.  This layer just adds a little more variation and it makes the roof look a little more dynamic.

 

6.  I haven't mentioned it, but you'll also need to put in the texture itself that you'll be using.  Duplicate the layer and fill in all the spaces as needed.

 

7.  You also might want to use more than one texture and mix them together, either to add variation, or grime.  You can use different blending modes, and different opacities, or whatever you want to do to try and get the look you want.

 

8.  You'll want to make a brightness/contrast adjustment layer and a hue/saturation adjustment layer.  These will help you tweak your roof.

 

9.  In your case I made your roof more blue, because it was very brown before.  In photoshop you can either shift the hue using the hue/saturation adjustment layer, or you can make a new layer, fill it with a color (blue in this case) and set the blending mode to "color".

 

 

Also your building looks underscaled.  Make sure to scale it vertically by 133% if you haven't already.  Or double check that the floor heights are correct.

 

It looks good btw. 

[gutterclub 2,729]

I'd also suggest using A&D materials for everything..they are really easy to use and are self explanatory after palying around with them.

[MandelSoft 2,769]

Thanks Jason. Applied you techniques and it looks better now

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Good 

 

 

 

 

Here's an update:

 

[Girafe 1,729]

Glass is better

 

I would add a drop of yellow in the foliage

 

Any future plan for BNF?

[libellibicus 396]

Simply amazing

[Delecto 941]

[art128 4,618]

Any future plan for BNF?

THIS, BNF by Jason would a batoftheyear!

Looks great Jason !

[gutterclub 2,729]

Yep, that glass is the one looking superb

[Darknono35 3,137]

Awesome glass very realistic

[MTT9 187]

Amazing glass

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks guys!

 

I've worked on more stuff.

 

The big issue now is those penthouses.  Their shapes, whether or not they should be on the base's roof, and anything else.  Input is appreciated. 

 

I also added a few floors to the top of the building, and if you look closely, discreetly mixed with the glass on the top floors are some air intake/outake vents. 

 

And as usual for this big building, click on the image for full size (maybe next BAT will be something smaller, lol)

 

 

 

 

About BNF, Girafe is mentioning the building that I was making, I think during the summer, that would be similar in style to BNF and some other buildings by the same architects.  I don't plan on making BNF itself, that would be a massive undertaking.  My building would just be similar in style (clean slim modern european office tower).

 

I don't know if I'm going to do that project though.  I had made the glass material for it (which I plan to use for future buildings), and then I was working on the massing but was having a hard time figuring out a massing I would like on a lot size practical for SimCity.  Francis suggested having two L shaped towers with a plaza between them, iirc, but I haven't worked on the massings since then.  I might or might not.  If a bigger project is taking too long to be the upload of the month (remember I'm going to be doing monthly uploads from now on) then I might decide to revive it for that purpose.  Or if I feel the desire to make a building like that again then it would be natural to pick it up again.  So maybe maybe not. 

 

Anyway, none of the massings looked good and looking back I don't think I posted any of them here.  And even though I tried at least a dozen massings I didn't save many preview renders.  But I'll repost the simple facade set up where I worked on the material.  There are also some nice pavers I made there.

 

[Vlasky 1,803]

You are right, those penthouses mayb need a bit of tweaking. I'd say make it either simple orthogonal on top and sticka logo on it or make something along these lines:

 

And either get rid of those on the base or make only one orthognal which would be taller near the glass for the reflection of course.
As for that nice looking glass, ig you are ver in need of upload for a month, if you opt for high rise I'd suggest something sleek and elegant like this:
 

 

or if you would like a low rise (and god know we need those and especially I don't recall low rise glass curtained walls, something like the buildings from detroit that you showed or like this:
 

 

or even simpler like this:

 

[Gn_leugim 853]

the glass look too much real!

 

and it looks awesome

[MTT9 187]

I would keep the top penthouse shape, and turn it into a helipad maybe, but get rid of the other two on the base.

The plaza looks much better now. Maybe something along those lines to make a terrace would look nice, but i'm not sure if it fits the kind of building you have in mind and i don't want interfere too much...