Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[josefmayor 8]

I like Detriot, partialy because Eminem is my favorite rapper, and it's a cool city.

My dad goes to detroit for wrestling about 5 times a year or more.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I think the reason why Detroit has such good architecture (even after the depression), is that most of the buildings are special.  In new york, buildings like One Woodward Avenue are nothing special, and are given a generic apearance, while in Detroit, since they're rarer, the buildings have the "I'm special" mentality to them while being designed.

jseofmayor:  it is a nice building.  I don't plan on doing it though

blahdy: thanks, I'm glad you like them, hopefully they'll make it into your game soon.

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[wolverine 12]

Keep up the great work Jason. 

Speaking of Eminem, I always enjoy watching the movie "8 Mile" and have parked a couple times now in the parking structure/abandoned theater where one of the battle scenes was filmed.  It's also featured in the music video (Don't Lose Yourself"  The building's name is "The Michigan Building," part of Bagley properties LLC  I also think this would be a cool building to create and isn't too complex.  Unfortunately, it has a weird footprint geometry that would probably look strange in SimCity.  I'd like to take a stab at it sometime.

BTW, maybe we can BAT all of those Shady Records billboards you see all over the city, LOL

BTW x 2, I plan on being downtown next week if you need any pictures.  I have a couple of parking tickets I need to pay before they become a bit more epxensive.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

the Michigan building only has one diagonal side, so I guess it's not too bad, but yeah, I think it's better to do the square ones first.

ah, bad timing, right now I don't need any pictures, but thanks for the offer.  Actually, I might model the lobby of One Woodward Avenue, so if you have or can take any pictures of the insides of that, then I'd appreciate it.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

It's about time for a new picture.

Worked on the base and fixed some scaling issues (it's taller now).  I still need to do a lot.  This picture is actually a little old (I forgot to post the reply), so since then I've started on the base windows texture, and I've put a revolving door in the entrance.

I think the fountain is actually supposed to be a flower bed.  I think I've seen it with flowers in it before (I really don't remember), but in the picture I have it looks like fountains...

[T Wrecks 10,209]

What a wonderful generic box building BATted at Maxis quality level.

[JBSimio 152]

Looks good.  I really like the fountains.  I can't remember either if that's what they are or not.

JB

[Andreas Roth 607]

Maybe they were fountains once, but people threw their trash in them, so they decided to put flowers in them instead. Anyway, GREAT textures (as always) - even the most boring box building looks wonderful if you do it right!

[jacqulina 162]

looking good good job

[spa 968]

I really like this tower. I don't download many skyscrappers any more because there are just too many of them but this one will definitely make it into my plugins. I love the texturing of the windows. Just wonderful work.

[ACEfanatic 7]

Ah, international style. Hate it in real life - love it in the game.

Idea - maybe one is a fountain, and the other a flower garden? Or a seasonal switch.

-ACE

[josefmayor 8]

I like it Jason! Looks like a 1x2 or 1x3.

I'm still waiting on that theater!!! I can definatly use this in my city.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks everyone

josefmayor: well, the building itself is a 2x4, and the landmark lot should be a 2x6 (including the plaza in the front, and the incomplete parking garage entrance in the back).

For the parking garage entrance, I was thinking about making it into a seperate parking garage lot too, since there aren't a lot of parking garages on the stex.

The fountain is indeed a planter, so today I think I'll finish that part off.  I also need to tweak the glass on the bottom some more, and I need to fix up the roof.  I need to do the parking garage entrance as well.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Here's the garage entrance so far.  It turned out that if it was a 2x1, then the slope would be too steep, so now it's a 2x1.5 or so.  The back part is almost exactly like the real thing, but the rest isn't.  It's based off it though.

It's also designed to be transit enabled with a street as you might notice.

[buddybud 63]

thats one freaking cool entrance. well done and look forward to that

[Spike345 20]

Jasoncw, do you think its possible to make that parking lot as a lot on its own? To function like the parking lot in the game? That would be a neat Idea...(just a suggestion) because it looks amazing.

[spa 968]

The parking entrance looks great. A lot of buildings here in Calgary have parking entrances similiar to that. It's something I'll be doing on a few of my own upcoming projects so I'm interested to see if you run into any issues with having it below ground (I have never sunk anything below ground before). Keep up the updates on it.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

buddybud:  Thanks

Spike345:  I had planned on doing that, but looking back it doesn't look like I said it.  Soon after I upload 211 W Fort, I'll upload a 2x2 parking garage lot with 211 as a dependency

Spa:  Thanks.  The only issue so far, is that I can't put railing along the edge because of the way the LOD fits.  You make underground stuff by making sure that the LOD cuts off before going underground, and by making sure that the LOD doesn't cover anything else.  Since the preview renders aren't true renders and don't use the LODs, you'll have to do a lot of draft renders to check if the LODs are right.

Here's a progress picture.  It's almost done.  You can see how it will line up.  I still need to tweak the cement texture to make it match better.  You can also see how the ground textures show through.  I personally don't like it when shadows don't fall on things, so I tried to minimize that problem.

You can see the real entrance at and you can see how I modified it.

[josefmayor 8]

2x4 sweet, I will only end up using the building, or LE'ing it so that it fits in a 4x4 lot.

I need more 2x4s to fit in my city cuz I have a few of them and no matching buildings.

[spa 968]

So I couldn't put a building over top of a parking garace entrance like the one you've made? What I envision is a building with a parking garage entrance going down underground on one corner, but with the building overhead. Basically the garage would be cut into the building.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I'm not sure how much you've experimented with LODs, but what you need to do is make sure that the underground parts don't get included with the LOD.  I'll send you the parking garage gmax file when I'm done with it.  It's hard to explain.

Speaking of the garage, it's almost done!  I still need to match the street texture (that will be useful spa).

I was hoping to have all of 211 West Fort done today and rendered tomorrow, but the time slipped by today.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

This is how it is (ignore the parts that were not visible in the other pictures).  Any critique would be very helpful.

Also, should the car stay or go?

[cowkilla 12]

lookin nice i say keep the car, or maybe turn it into a delivery van

[josefmayor 8]

looks good!

Keep the car. Security

[JBSimio 152]

That garage looks great, Jason!  I say keep the car, too.

Would you mind sending me that file also?  I've been kicking around a couple underground ideas, but LODs still confuse the crap out of me when just reading about them.  Remember how long it took to explain the thing about the signs to me?    I would really appreciate it.

JB

[ACEfanatic 7]

That looks really good.

One thing - the bushes. Maybe add an alpha map, or just randomize the texture to make them look more real and less... plastic?

Oh, and I'd say keep the car.

-ACE

[Spike345 20]

Do you think its possible to have a FedX truck appear randomly?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I agree with ACEfanatic about the bushes. They look a bit too perfectly spherical and smooth for my taste. Oh, and I'm wondering about that yellow light: I couldn't really find out where it comes from. Is it from a lamp that's mounted in one of the walls, or will there be a lamp post above ground that's not included in this underground part you are showing us? Other than that, this is possibly the best underground parking entrance since 6459978's Roy Thomson Hall, and this is supposed to mean something!

[jacqulina 162]

wow thats wonderfull work i like it

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The yellow spotlight comes from the light that's mounted inbetween the two garage entrances above the signs.  It also has an omni by it.  The other lights come from those rectangular lights on the walls, and each of those has an omni.  The guard box has two omnis in it too.  I'll fiddle with the lights some more to make them look better.

yeah, I kinda feel the same way about the bushes.  I might try to just plain make BAT duplicates of the maxis bushes.  That way I'll have them for the future, since everything I do seems to have bushes on it.

Should I upload the garage model to the stex?

Thanks for the input everyone