Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Thanks everyone, I'm glad you like it.  Once I get a better picture of the back alley area I'll be able to finish it.

In the meantime, I started a new building.  It's a modern building to freshen things up a bit.  It's a 2x3/3x2, and will probably be a CO$$$ (sorry, lol) because it's going to be a bank.

http://img177.imageshack.us/img177/9021/bankprev1li4.jpg

The narrow side is the true front, while the other side with the glass could also be the front (signs will be on both sides).

The two things sticking out of the roof are two sets of elevators.  Inbetween each on each floor is a small lobby.  The area with the small horizontal windows are bathrooms, which have their entrances in the small lobbies.

I still have to do the main lobby.  It's going to be one of those set back glass 60's lobbies, similiar to One Woodward Avenue, or 211 W. Fort for example.

There are some goofy rendering problems, which is why there are those funny squares.  I figured out how to fix that once, but I've forgotten since.

The lower roof area will have some potted bushes, and the roof will have some roof junk, and maybe a skylight.  It also might have a little patio on it, but I'm not sure yet.

I'm going to be using this as an experiment for a glass texture technique that I'll explain more in depth later.  But basicly, it's rendering a floor full of office furniture with all of the fancy rendering settings, and then readjusting it in photoshop to include it in the glass texture, making it look like all of the interior is modeled, while it actually isn't.

I'm not sure what color the walls will be, but I'm thinking about that green color that's common in the euro tileset.

And this building will be wall to wall, with my usual distance from the edge of the lot, so it will line up with other BATs of mine.

I'm holding off on texturing it right now because I think that you need to make your materials the right way in order for all of the fancy 3dsmax rendering stuff to work.  I don't really know what that right way is.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

ok, I gotta admit, I haven't worked on the tutorials I was talking about for a month.

But today I just went through all of my pms, and about half of my posts (the more recent and knowledgful half) and copied and pasted all of my tutorial-esque posts into a Word document.  It added up to 12 pages, which doesn't sound like a lot, but it is.  Later I'll edit this, and the super-huge BAT school file into the tutorials I listed a few pages ago.

I'll post them here for thorough critiqing as I finish them, which is still going to be a while.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

ok everyone, what is this?  I know it's furniture, but what is it in the BAT?  The smaller one is the same thing except rendered closer to how it would look in the game.

[+Guest]

Thanx Jason for "All" the awesome lots.

[nofunk 1,933]

Hey Jason, just wanted to pop in real quick and say Penobscot and Vinton both look fantastic!!

[ACEfanatic 7]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw

ok everyone, what is this?  I know it's furniture, but what is it in the BAT?  The smaller one is the same thing except rendered closer to how it would look in the game.quote>

Haha, sweet.

The question is - how does it look from the other rotations?

-ACE

[ACEfanatic 7]

/pagefilp bug

[Jasoncw 11,841]

BlackBeard: Thanks!

Nofunk:  Thanks, I hope to finish the Vinton pretty soon.  I just need a picture of the back alley area, and then I'll be able to finish it up pretty quick.  The Penobscot will take longer though, it's been a few months since I started it, and back then I thought I would be a lot farther than I am now.

ACE:  heheh, it looks weird.  But the shapes are still interesting, and when I make my windows, they're usually pretty deep, and you can't see a lot of the glass anyway, so at least on my buildings, the sides won't look too bad.  Plus it's in darkness.

Once I make a lot of furniture and arrange some rooms, I'll modify all of my glass textures (in my unfinished BATs) to have furniture inside.  It won't be as clear as what I just showed, but instead it'll be my normal textures with these faded in a bit.  It'll add a lot of depth, but it'll still have my window's usual qualities.

[atomik 0]

Can't wait to see what progress you've made on the Penobscot. It looks great so far!

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Thanks.  This week has gone by really fast, and has mostly been spent doing school related stuff.  This weekend I won't really have time for Sim City stuff.  The next week I'll have time for smaller things, but I won't be working on the Penobscot much, because I'd like to do one chunk of wall at a time, so I need a decent chunk of time to do it all in.  If I do it across a few different sessions, I'll forget what I was doing and I'll get lost when I look at it next.

I need pictures of the alley behind the Vinton Building before I can finish it, which pretty much means I need to go downtown and take a picture myself.  There's a slim chance of this happenening this weekend and a decent chance of that happening next weekend.  Once I get a good picture though, I'll be able to finish up the model in a day or two.

Ardecila converted One Woodward Avenue for 3ds max for me, so I can do the lighting now, but unfortunatly 211 West Fort couldn't be converted.  That, along with the new building I made a few days ago will be rendered pretty much once I texture them.  But I'm waiting to learn how to make materials (textures) the right way, so that I can do the fancy lighting and rendering stuff.  The same goes for "The Pylon" and that big flat black building from a while ago.

211 West Fort will probably be finished with less-than-perfect nitelites.  The garage part is already done, but I want to make a few quick changes and re-render it (which doesn't take long at all).  I also need a certain style of small tree for the planters in front.

I think that's all there is to update on.  Are there any questions about any projects?

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I finally took some pictures of the Vinton Building and Penobscot Building's alleys.  I won't post them here, but if you want to you can look at them at http://www.flickr.com/photos/19268495@N00/sets/72157594330254516/

It'll give you an idea on how those parts of the buildings will look.

[sorchin 18]

Hello Jason: The inside furniture I believe will look excellent. I love being able to see inside the buildings although because of virtual memory it can be tough on some computers (like mine)..

Looking great..

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Thanks.  Once I get more furniture finished and stuff I'll release the textures so that more people can add them into their textures.

I started on the alley.  There's a fire escape covering the 3rd and 4th window (from the left) on each floor.  Some of the windows are bricked in in such a way that they seems to block the fire escape.  But the most right column of windows is guessed, and so is the right half of the roof.  It wasn't possible to get a picture of those parts because of the angle, the fire escape covered those areas.

Oh yeah, those panels on the other side that look like cement from far away are actually granite.

My wireless mouse is low on juice (I haven't recharged it in a while), so I don't know if I'll get much more work done tonight.

[marc 13]

Very nice work! As usual, your texturing skills are simply some of the best out there- I am looking forward to your tutorials.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Thanks.  Here's the first part of the tutorial.  The first part pretty much goes through how to set up your texture, and then the next few parts (not done yet) continue from that point, covering how to approach different things (windows, walls, and roofs).

The skill level is "intermediate."  What things aren't clear?  Which parts need more explaination or more pictures?  Should anything be reworded in a particular way?

It's not arranged in steps, but by concepts.  I think it'll be easier to look something up without re-reading the entire tutorial that way.  It explains the concepts, not specifics, and I'll asume that you all know most of the specifics.  If you think a particular specific should be included, then say so and I might put it in.  I just don't want the tutorial to get bogged down with the details, because it's already going to be pretty big.

To comment on something, quote it, and then write your comment underneath that particular part.  You can also bold, italic, or underline something in the quote if you want to bring attention to it.

There are a few pictures, but I don't want to bother uploading them all at image shack, so they're attached to this post.

---------------------------------

How you texture something is different depending on how you modeled it. Because of this, it’s best to completely finish modeling something before you start texturing it. If you texture something, and then make a change to the model, you might need to change the texture to account for the change, which is extra work.

- Cityscape Backdrop -

Before you start any texturing, go into Sim City 4, and take a lot of screenshots (either using the in-game camera, or the print screen key on your keyboard). Open them all in Photoshop, and edit them together so you have one giant screenshot of your city. The screenshots should be at zoom 5 (the closest zoom before the buildings get blurry). The screenshot should include Maxis buildings that are similar to what you’re making. Don’t include many custom BATs.

If you do a preview render in the BAT, you can take a screenshot of it, and you can paste it into your cityscape. You can use the Magic Wand Tool to delete the black.

You don’t want to compare your own buildings to other people’s custom buildings because you want your buildings to blend in with the default buildings as well as possible. Comparing your building to a Maxis building will give you better information than comparing your building to a custom building that was compared to a custom building that was compared to a custom building that was compared to a Maxis building. It’s like playing the game “telephone” (where you and your friends stand in a line and pass a message down the line, and it becomes distorted by the end of the line).

- Select By: Color -

First, open your model in Gmax. As you model things, color objects according to what texture they will get. For things that will be brick, you might make those objects red. For windows you might make them blue. You can also make custom colors.

You should color things like this because you can go Edit>Select By>Color, and you can select everything in the scene that is the same color. This will make it easy to select everything that needs the same texture later on, so that you can apply a uvw map to everything.

- UVW Map -

Let’s say you’re making a wall texture. If the building is rectangular, you’ll make the texture to fit the longest wall. When you apply a uvw map to it, you’ll make the length and width of the map equal (square) so that the texture will be spread out evenly (the bricks will be the same lengths on all sides of the building. The diagram below illustrates this.

[Texturing 1]

- Setting up your Texture -

Cropping

Look at your building’s longest area of wall directly on, in wireframe mode, so that you can see the outline of what you’re texturing. If your scene is cluttered, you can hide the objects that you aren’t texturing right now. Include things like chimneys and different walls.

Go into the viewport that looks directly at your building, and press the “w” key on your keyboard to maximize that viewport. Now use the “region zoom” tool and zoom in as close to the object that you’re texturing as you can. Press the “print screen” or “prnt scrn” key on your keyboard to take a screenshot.

Open Adobe Photoshop or a similar program, make a new file, and paste the screenshot into it.

Use the crop tool to crop out everything that is not what you’re texturing. Since your file is square, you can’t crop out nooks in your texture, so don’t bother with them. The image should be cropped to be as small as possible without cropping out the outline of what you’re texturing. Here is an example illustrating this step:

[Texturing 2]

- Setting up your Texture -

Resolution

Your texture should be at least the same size as what you’re texturing is at zoom 5 (the closest zoom before it gets fuzzy). So for every 16 meters, the texture should be more than 110 pixels big. Otherwise your texture will have a lower resolution than what the BAT renders at, and your texture might look bad on your BAT. In Photoshop, you can go Image>Image Size to change the size of the image.

- Setting up your Texture -

File Naming

Save this file as something. You should have some kind of file naming system so that it’s easy to find textures you want. I personally name things after the building. For the Vinton Building, a texture might be named Vinton_1a.psd. It’s the Vinton Building, the first texture, and the first version of that texture. I might have more than one version of a texture if I want to make a permanent change (like flattening all of the layers) so that I can have the original. Or sometimes, I might need a lighter and darker version of a texture, so I’ll make two versions of it. When I make a new material in Gmax, and I’m looking for a texture, I’ll start typing the name of the building and the computer will suggest all of the textures for that building. Keep it as a .psd.

- Setting up your Texture -

Aligning your Texture

Go back into Gmax, make a new material in the material editor, and pick your new texture for it. Apply the new material to the wall that you took the screenshot of, and do a preview render of it. The lines from the screenshot should line up with the edges of your wall. If they don’t, go back and recrop your screenshot until everything lines up pretty well.

- Setting up Your Texture -

Gradient Overlay

In Photoshop, make a new layer, fill it with white, and set the blending mode to “overlay.” Add a “gradient overlay” layer style by clicking on the “f” in the black circle at the bottom of the layers palette, as seen below. Set the gradient overlay’s blending mode to “multiply.” To learn more, read Gascooker’s “faking raytracing” tutorial in the omnibus.

[Texturing 3]

Lower the opacity of the main layer until the gradient is very subtle. The opacity should be made slightly higher for tall buildings, and lower for short buildings.

- Setting up Your Texture -

Color Overlay

Most things in Sim City 4 are slightly peachy. Make a new layer and fill it with “pastel red” and set the opacity to 10%. Sometimes things are slightly purple, or some other color. You can use the eyedropper tool and your cityscape backdrop to explore Sim City 4’s color palette.

[marc 13]

Good, thorough start. I was able to follow it fairly easily, and learned something new! (Making a peach-colored overlay; didn't know that helped blend BATs in with Maxis buildings.)

Setting up a seperate layer for gradients seems to work well for fake raytracing, but I have so far only used the "dodge" and "burn" tools to directly apply staining to textures, especially on roof textures. Perhaps you might want to mention this alternative way of fake raytacing.

[6459978. 106]

Nice tutorial! I learned a few things. The bit about the minimum resolution was useful -- I usually have the opposite problem; I have textures at way too high a resolution which just wastes disk space and slows things down. But from now on I can use your guidelines.

And about that peachy overlay!!! So THAT's what it is! I've always had the impression that there's a certain tint to the Maxis buildings (the purple I've noticed for sure on some), but I'd never thought to increase the red. My textures are often greenish which doesn't work so well with the in-game palette.

Well the secrets are out, thanks for sharing this wealth of knowledge and experience!

[ILL Tonkso 1,237]

Interesting,m i shall be trying out the pastal red idea, can we have a colour number to work from? (the 3 3 didgit numbers if you dont know what i mean)

[st louis dude 6]

Is the Penobscot building finished?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Think.

Think thoroughly.

If it was finished, you would probably see a screenshot of the finished building here, right? You might even find the building on the STEX. Or you might at least have read how Jason said it was finished.

Since none of this applies (which is pretty clear to anyone who has read the thread), it is probably not finished yet. Duh.

And to answer your possible next question: It will be done when it's done.

[SimFox 802]

Great tutorial! I’m eagerly awating continuation!! I think may be we should place it on Omnibus or such a place where it will be easy to find… This said I want to add few things. First of all I want to caution people against abusing gradients. STEX is full of grotesk creation where say tiled roof getting 2-3 times darker in a mater of 10-20 m, this is absurd! So moderation, moderation and again moderation! Rule of thumb – if you see gradient – it is too big! Just as Jason said it should be subtle. Another problem is that gradient is not strictly speaking correct thing to apply, here is why – in real life situation similar effect will be most prominent on a shaded side of the building – one lit only by sky. Since such a light is omni directional amount of sky to which any given point on the surface is exposed is crucial. Naturally the more elevated the spot the greater is angle of “open” sky, given that there are no obstructions nearby. Sun, though, being much brighter and always shining from the same angle at any flat surface will to great degree negate this sky. Problem is that when you render anything with such a gradient applied to the texture effect is opposite – gradient is more obvious on “sunny” side then in shade. More light is reflected from brighter areas then from darker ones – hence amplification of the effect in comparison with your “unlit” texture. This becomes especially big problem with the way lighting is done in default setup – Unlike in the real world or in setups that imitate it with have two sets of light not only differing in tone, but also in effect they have. Part of lights are actually DARK lights – meaning that they not lighting the texture compared to what you see in you image editing software, but darkening it. This will always be case when brightness of color of your light is anything but 100%. This concept shouldn’t be confused with light intensity! Also you have to understand that the effect is cumulative. Such a light will darken brighter areas more then it would dark ones principle is same – what you actually see is the light reflected and since darker materials reflect less then brighter ones we have this effect.  Here we come to the second point I want to make – Applying color correction to the textures. I must admit that when I just started BAT the idea did look interesting and appealing. But from what I know now it is ABSOLUTELLY counterproductive. Especially in a way that Gascooker shows in his Calibrating Photoshop for gmax tutorial. Such an non linear adjustment will kill specular highlighting. And makes everything flatter then it has to be. As for pastel red, well building in Simcity has it because light used in lighting rig isn’t white. As I have said above there are two group of lights. First one simulates the sun for reasons I’ll not elaborate about it done with whole bunch of target direct lights of various intensity and 2 colors:

SUN 1	SUN 2	SHADOW 1	SHADOW 2

 

Cumulative brightness of the “sun” in default Rig is 184.5% at the 90 angle and cumulative brightness of “shadow” light is 84% at 90 angle. Effective numbers will be smaller since in most cases angle will be smaller then 90 degrees. So that’s where those tints come. To add them to the texture prior to rendering is hence pointless! Especially depending on the way you mix your layers effect could be very far away from what you get from the lighting.

[ILL Tonkso 1,237]

Originally posted by: T Wrecks Think.

Think thoroughly.

If it was finished, you would probably see a screenshot of the finished building here, right? You might even find the building on the STEX. Or you might at least have read how Jason said it was finished.

Since none of this applies (which is pretty clear to anyone who has read the thread), it is probably not finished yet. Duh.

And to answer your possible next question: It will be done when it's done.quote>

Agreed, that sort of post is both spam and annoying lol. Development takes time, be patient and it will be done when it is done.

[marc 13]

Originally posted by: SimFox

First of all I want to caution people against abusing gradients. STEX is full of grotesk creation where say tiled roof getting 2-3 times darker in a mater of 10-20 m, this is absurd! So moderation, moderation and again moderation! Rule of thumb – if you see gradient – it is too big! Just as Jason said it should be subtle.quote>

Quite true- although I admit I am a victim of such distortion (see the tile roof on the Taubenhaus residence.)

However, in a few cases, gradients are indeed very prominent on buildings. For example, on shingle roofs or walls where water has stained one portion but not another, or on metal roofs where rust streaking has darkened the portion of the roof near the eaves. Also, buildings with light stone cladding have considerably darker staining on the bottom quarter of the facade, darkened by years of dirt splashing up from the sidewalk onto the walls during rainstorms.

I'll try to find some pictoral examples and post them here.

Here are a few examples of uneven weathered gradients. (I know they're all on abandoned buildings, but that's because I pulled all the pictures off of one site rather than hunting through google images.)

[SimFox 802]

Originally posted by: marcszar

However, in a few cases, gradients are indeed very prominent on buildings. For example, on shingle roofs or walls where water has stained one portion but not another, or on metal roofs where rust streaking has darkened the portion of the roof near the eaves. Also, buildings with light stone cladding have considerably darker staining on the bottom quarter of the facade, darkened by years of dirt splashing up from the sidewalk onto the walls during rainstorms.

I'll try to find some pictoral examples and post them here.quote>

It is true! But this shouldn’t be done with gradients! Such an effect is NEVER as even and uniform as gradient is, if anything it reduces realism, not adds to it!

[Jasoncw 11,841]

yay! more replies!

marcszar:  Good!  You said "fairly easily", is there anything in particular that I should be more clear about?  I don't use dodge and burn because I don't like how it changes the colors.  multiply and screen are more "pure" I guess, and overlay tends to make things more vibrant which I usually like, and if I don't, I can make a new layer (filled with grey) set to saturation, and a low opacity to help control the colors.  hmmmm, I should probably add that in shouldn't I, lol.  In general though, I don't want to go through many specific ways of doing things because I think the tutorial would get really bogged down.  I just want to tell it one way so that the concepts are taught.  Anyone who uses photoshop a lot who prefers dodge or burn knows that they could use those instead if they'd prefer.

6459978.:  heheh, I usually just type in a huge number, "eh, 1,000 by 2,000 will do fine..." but some people use really small textures and you can tell on the BATs.  especially when one texture they use has a high resoultion and one has a low one, you can really tell, and it bugs me a lot, lol, so I figured I should put it in.

Ill Tonkso: I'll be using the names of the colors in Photoshop's default color palette.  If you hover your mouse ontop of them, their name will pop up.  I don't want to post the RGB because I'm lazy, but should I?

Simfox: This tutorial is here right now for general feedback, and once all of the parts of the tutorial are written I'll send it over to the omnibus.

Yeah, the way the light makes things that are already bright brighter and dark things not as bright is too bad, but there really isn't a way to get around it in Gmax, which this tutorial is written for.  So while that's important in general, it's not relevent here because no one can really do anything about it.

While how something works can help figure out how to make better results, in the end, the results are what count.  Adding that pink (or sometimes a different color) changes the color of the building to fit the game's color palette.  These colors don't have much to do with the lighting rigs because these colors change from building to building in the game (although it's generally pink)(unless maxis occasionally used a purple sunlight color), they're a concious decision made by Maxis.  It's not color correction either, since it's not designed to really correct anything.  Maxis probably did it to make the game more colorful and cartoony and friendly.

[marc 13]

Hi Jason; To clarify:

Your texture should be at least the same size as what you’re texturing is at zoom 5 (the closest zoom before it gets fuzzy). So for every 16 meters, the texture should be more than 110 pixels big. Otherwise your texture will have a lower resolution than what the BAT renders at, and your texture might look bad on your BAT. In Photoshop, you can go Image>Image Size to change the size of the image.quote>

Most of the tutorial is crystal clear (and I assume it will be even more so with the appropriate screenshots) but the portion above confuses me somewhat. Did you mean the texture scaling should be set to the same size as the object surface itself or does the texture have to be made to cover the entire object surface? (I usually do a texture that corresponds to roughly the same height as the surface, but not necessarily the same width- ie- I let the width be tiled.)

Along those lines, consider rephrasing "...shoud be at least the same size as what you're texturing is at zoom 5..." to "...should be at least the same size as the object the texture will be applied to at zoom 5..."

By the way, how strict is the 16m=110 pixels rule? It may be difficult for some people to find out the height/width/area of a wall in meters (I don't know if gmax has built-in dimensioning tools) and then convert that to pixels, so emphasize that exact precision is not necessary except for  perfectionists.

[SimFox 802]

Marczar: none of those are gradients per se... Just as I've said those are uneven NATURAL spots and splats! Trying to recreate those with automatic gradients will not do you any good.

 

About pixels/meters sizes. Well since you're building everything on your screen you should be mostly concerned with pixel size, not meters when you do your textures. and to get pixel sizes is easy in any image editing package. So do test render of your object save the image open it in, say, Photoshop measure the PIXEL size and create your textures accordingly.

About tiling - ideally your texture should not tile if it has any prominent features - like those weather damage spots and splats. And also for flat surfaces you really shouldn't use anything BUT Planar UWVs.

 

Jason:

1. I think you really should use RGB numbers instead of those proprietary names. First off all not everybody is using Photoshop and even if they are hunting for the particular NAME is 100 times more tedious then inputting 3 numbers and getting right result.
2. More Pictures would be appropriate and appreciated. Especially if they were arranged in conjunction with text and not somewhere after it. This way it will be much easier to comprehend some concepts and you’ll save yourself tons of sometimes simple and obvious questions.

[marc 13]

Originally posted by: SimFox

Marczar: none of those are gradients per se... Just as I've said those are uneven NATURAL spots and splats! Trying to recreate those with automatic gradients will not do you any good.quote>

Oh, I know. I use the dodge and burn tools to add such weathering, since then it can be uneven. (A few other batters look like they might be using these tools too- I wonder what Porkie does to get the incredible weathering on his Paris buildings?)

[ardecila 124]

I dunno - I tend to use gradients on an overlay or multiply or hard-light layer, and then use some distortion filters to improve the look of the gradient, followed by lots of noise and then a gaussian blur. Or something like that. I never just use a pure gradient. I also like to use the dodge/burn tools, they are incredibly useful.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I've been making changes to my copy on the computer (I'm writing this in MS Word for ease), and tomorrow or so I'll put up the latest version with all the edits.

marcszar:  Is there anywhere in particular where you think screenshots should be added?

What I really meant was resolution.  I changed it to:  "Your texture should be at least the same resolution as the object the texture will be applied to is at zoom 5."

The pixel rule is extremely unstrict.  110 isn't even the actual number.  I just figured it out more exactly and it's 103.  I changed the number to be more exact, and I added in a part about it being very unstrict.  Because it's so loose, exact measurements aren't needed (someone could just take a quick glance at the grid or something).  I guess I really miscommunicated something there though, since I'm not talking about the size of the texture compared to the model, but the resolution of the texture compared to the resolution of the BAT render.  Does changing the one word to "resolution" clear that up enough or should I make it more clear?  If so, how would I make it more clear?

Simfox:  The number in meters is derived from the BATs resolution.  I think the number is more useful to someone in that way (the models size tells you how many pixels to make your texture in photoshop) because you model things in Gmax by pixels and you make textures in Photoshop acording to pixels.

A single wall might use a plane uvw map, but an entire building of walls (basicly a box) should use a box uvw map.

I added the RGB value, although I also added a note saying the exact color isn't important.  That was another reason why I didn't really want to add RGBs, since the actual numbers aren't really important.

Is there anywhere in particular where there should be more pictures?  btw, when on the omnibus, the pictures will be where the [Texturing 1] things are, not attached at the bottom of the post, lol.