Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

I don't know why, but the trees look kinda tiny compared to the tower. However, I like it

[Gn_leugim 853]

I know, I know, R&B* Tower or R&B Insurance Offices. ;D

* Red and Black

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Progress on the nitelites.  (Click for full size)

 

[libellibicus 396]

Amazing. The attention to detail is fantastic.  I really love the Entrance/Lobby.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

The night lights looks great.

[AndisArt 2,066]

Lovely nitelites! The lobby lights especially is sweet   For the windows the only thing that comes to my mind is they all have the exact same hue. Maybe try different hues, as that is what happens in real buildings too.

[MTT9 187]

Looks amazing

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Just wondering if you have given any thought to what the floor plan is? The lighting plan should be congruent with an internal layout design. There are a number of places where the lights end abruptly without a logical explanation. Here's two examples:

 

 

Sorry, that image is a little bit small, but in the top example, there's one pane of glass in the bay lit up, but no others. Consider if the floor design should result in this lighting effect?

In the 2nd example, the lit pane has the illusion of depth, we're looking deep into the floor space, but the glass next to it is completely unlit, yet there's no indication of a wall dividing the space.

 

For me these minor details detract from the realism. Hope this helps...

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks guys. 

 

Here's a new day render with new trees from Girafe. 

 

Click on it to make it full size.  Below that is a new zoom 4 night render that includes the new trees, and also has some floors with different hues.

 

I'll go through and tidy it up so that the lit windows are more reasonably arranged , but I won't be changing the texture to fake internal walls.  Even though it would be better, it would take a lot of work, and more work than I'm willing to do on the nitelites for this BAT. 

 

 

The good news is that this is nearing completion.  I'll be rendering it soon and it should be on the STEX within a few days. 

 

 

[libellibicus 396]

Masterful BATting, Jason. An absolute gem. The reflections on the glass are epic.

[Darknono35 3,137]

Awesome building, one more , maybe ready to upload , I especially like the lights of the Hall

[Jasoncw 11,840]

 

 

I might do some more tweaking here and there, but I think I'll be exporting it tonight, and probably modding and uploading it tomorrow.  What do you guys think???

[Jack_wilds 550]

have nothing to nit-pick as the change tweak at lobby level, made it better... its a favorite also girafe's tree work -arboring, made 'em more reasonable/realistic...

[Girafe 1,729]

looks good

[Gn_leugim 853]

it doesn't look good. it looks awesome

[T Wrecks 10,209]

With Jason on the BAT and Girafe on the trees, what could possibly go wrong?

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

There should be a project for high quality batters! 

[art128 4,618]

I'm liking what I'm seeing!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

The trees looks better, and I love the grass at the bottom of the tree. 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks everyone. 

 

 

It seems like whenever I set a day for finishing and releasing something, something always goes wrong, lol

 

I'm having trouble exporting this one.  The first time it had the scrambled .FSH issue.  I massaged the LOD a little bit and reexported but it happened again.  Then I made entirely new LODs and they worked. 

 

And now everything has exported fine except there's a grey halo around the tree line where the grey background is showing through because of the antialiasing.  So I've now turned on the "don't antialias against background" (there's no antialiasing on buildings in the game anyway), but but looking at it as it renders, it appears to still be antialiasing against the background...

 

So we'll see how it goes.  It takes a long time to export. 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Doing the LOD's over again always works, so it's always best to just make a new to avoid more problems.

I have the same problem too. I have to export same building over and over to get it right. For the trees, it's a good thing to make the render background the darkest green from the trees. Something SimFox had said in in older post.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The "don't antialias against background" didn't work.

 

Green background it is. 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

To do a test export you can always export the lower part of the building to see if it works, or you can export the trees to see if you do not have that you do not see any halo around the trees.

[AndisArt 2,066]

Congrats on your new release! (you can check off March now hehe ;-)

 

Just a quick question, for your latest tower, how long would a z5 preview take to render?

I'm asking because your tower is similiar to the GT Tower I'm making, and render times for a z5 are almost 1 1/2 hours :-/

I'm using Bat4Max 5.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Great work Jason

 

All the new high quality bats that have been released of late are getting me back in the SC4 mood, look forward to seeing what you come up with next

[Vlasky 1,803]

Congrats on the upload! I love this new BAT per months thing  

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks guys

 

andisart:  8:42.  I'm using the 64 bit version and I have 8 gb of ram.  If you want you can send me your building and I can look at it to tell you what to optimize.  I don't think there are any normal situations where a preview render would take over an hour.  Even this building, even though it's so big and entirely glass, only took that long because of the flora and polished granite.  With those things hidden it only took 4:53.

 

Ion_Cannon:  Thanks, I'm glad you've been inspired to get back into SC4. 

 

Vlasky:  Yeah the BAT a month plan is working out pretty good so far.  This was a more time consuming BAT than I thought it would be but I still have a lot of time left over to work on other BATs as well. 

 

 

 

Congratulations to everyone who won a trixie, and also to those who were nominated. 

 

And thank you all for the Trixies.  Not only are you so generous during the Trixies, but everyone is very supportive and kind to me all year round, and I appreciate it. 

 

 

And now for boring announcements.    I'm now a STEX moderator.  So if anyone needs something you can ask me, in addition to all the other STEX moderators.  I'm also a moderator for the SimCity2013 forums although that's not really relevant here.

 

 

Thanks again 

[Vlasky 1,803]

...

And now for boring announcements.    I'm now a STEX moderator.  So if anyone needs something you can ask me, in addition to all the other STEX moderators.  I'm also a moderator for the SimCity2013 forums although that's not really relevant here.

...

 BETRAYAL!!!   :P lol

[AndisArt 2,066]

 andisart:  8:42.  I'm using the 64 bit version and I have 8 gb of ram.  If you want you can send me your building and I can look at it to tell you what to optimize.  I don't think there are any normal situations where a preview render would take over an hour.  Even this building, even though it's so big and entirely glass, only took that long because of the flora and polished granite.  With those things hidden it only took 4:53.

Ok thanks I'll send you some of my files. It's the same situation wtih the Tower Verre. I'm guessing it's my laptop. I also use the 64bit version of Max, but with 4GB ram only.

[SimCoug 5,972]

Great upload!  I can't wait for next months 'surprise'