Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

If you read the tutorial, or even just look at the picture in it, you would notice that there is little if not any difference in appearance (so long as you tune your bitmap well enough). Even a lot of super fine modeling is better off being textured, because SC4's barbarically low resolution will turn it into a pixelated mess (not to mention it is way easier to model). That being said, 3dsmax and, more importantly, the magnificent lighting capabilities that come with it, those details tend to come out much better.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Well, yesterday evening I took a break from One Woodward Avenue (in the BSP thread) and started a new BAT, with reflective glass.

I've been wanting to try out this kind of 1980s mirrored glass for a while now, and SimFox's thread inspired me to finally try it out.  Originally I was going to make a building that was comparable to the one that SimFox is working on, but the design changed and the glass situation isn't really comparable at all now, but that's ok.

It's going to be a 6x4 CO§§

For anyone interested in the glass...

It's an Arch & Design material of course and for now a reflectivity and glossiness of .85 (even though it should really be a clear reflection it made the reflections too specific looking), the color is a dark blue, and in the BRDF rollout the 0 degree reflection is at .25. 

In the bump slot is an RGB Multiply, with Noise in one slot (but it's not very intense and I don't know if it makes a difference) and a bitmap in the other.  The bitmap is the proportion of the window with a black outline around the edges for the buldging of the individual panes of glass.  In the scene the glass object just has a "Face" UVW Map.

The ground plane has roads and random roof screenshots and some other stuff thrown in.  I extruded some "buildings" so that so that there would be more verticals in the reflection and to cover up the roads.  You can see below.  This also gives an idea of the lot layout so far.

[Hanson784 165]

Absloutely amazing work! I couldn't tell if that was a render or a picture for a second.

I wish I had 3ds max so I could make proper glass reflections, still stuck with regular old BAT. Is this building one from Detriot?

[nofunk 1,933]

Lookin' good!

[SimHoTToDDy 2,938]

By far one of the more realistic reflection simulations. Seems like a cool little office too.

I should get with the program and just say "Lookin' good!" like the rest of the team

[psander5 195]

I like the building first and foremost. It's just the kind of building I like these days, large(ish) footprint and low floor number. I like your description of how you made the reflections too. Its getting close to the time where I want to be having a go at something like this too, so all these recent posts dealing with reflections and glass are quite helpful.

It's interesting that you've created a Google Earth style environment to get your reflections. It certainly gives the reflections a realistic sense of depth or volume (If that even makes sense). I'm not sure about the pattern created by the bump though, It looks great in patches, but there's a repeating pattern, particularly at the top and bottom, that doesn't quite sit right with me. Perhaps it is realistic though, and I'm just used to seeing more wavy, ocean ripple-type glass in Sim City.

Blimey, I'm even confusing myself posting this. Anyway, I watch this project with intrigue!

[SimFox 801]

Yeah! I see what you meant in my thread...

Unfortunately this doesn't really look like glass. More like th polymer they've used to build Beijing Aquatic center or Munich arena. Reason fro this are those very blurred reflections. Normal glass is extremely smooth - this means absolutely glossy reflections (very clearly defined non blurred).

At some cases one may get away with such blurring - but that is normally when the surface of the glass i broken into smaller peaces and viewer may assume that edges are simply not caught in the each particular reflection. However here you are virtually giving one very large mirror...

Another reason why it looks more like aquatic center is the bump you've used. The whole point of bump is to account for imperfections in glass surface. These imperfections (like unhappy families in Anna Karenina) imperfect each in totally unique way. Yours however seem to be perfectly imperfect and all the same. Again like those are sort of polymer pillows pumped with air creating same curvature.

If speaking about blending into game you gonna have major problem here, Having some structure so clearly defined in the reflection is great for fixed environment presentation, but I'm afraid in game it will not work.

[Crackdtoothgrin 0]

I like the reflections so far. However, in the interest of making things beter, and not a shot against your work so far, the window panes set to 'face' means that the bump mapping will be less variegated and, in fact, ends up being uniform. Assuming you've set a standard naming or color convention, it would be easy enough to select half or a third or whatever number of windows and apply duplicate materials with an altered bump map to give them variety. And you wouldn't have to do it by hand either. There's a script for it I use, or a couple, depending on the situation. Try scriptspot and looking up "random select" if you haven't already gotten yourself a version. In either case, looks good.

[nofunk 1,933]

Simfox, I love that you've compared glass imperfections and Russian literature! I imagine Jason was trying to blur the reflections because it is hard to anticipate where in someone's city this building would go, and if it is clearly reflecting different buildings than its surroundings, that might look strange.

Todd: Don't worry; you're comments are always lookin' good!

[SimFox 801]

Originally posted by: nofunk

... I imagine Jason was trying to blur the reflections because it is hard to anticipate where in someone's city this building would go, and if it is clearly reflecting different buildings than its surroundings, that might look strange.

quote>

I do get it, but would you  say it works? Will it not look strange?

There is no way to blur things that much as to hide this HUGE object in reflection. Such glass buildings are a huge pain in all sort of places. My very first attempt at BAT - Beijing Silver Tower is still in "works" just because of this... If anything I'd say Cockatoo's Aurora (straight bits of it) are one of the best realization of such a reflections on non-transparent glass wall.

[nas786 104]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw

Here is a new building I started during the summer.  It still needs more work.  It'll probably be released in 2010.  It's a CS$$$ (a hotel).  I think this render might already be out of date, since I've cleaned some things up since then.  It's a 3x4, and it's wall to wall on both the front and the back, so this would work well to cap off a block of wall to wall buildings.

quote>

What building is this?  Is it done?  looks nice, you and nofunk got dope style BATs, I got so many of ur guys' early 1900's style buildings. 

If you like doing old school buildings like that you should do some chitown ones.  I was actually thinking of putting in a request for you or nofunk to do Wrigley Building in chicago (sick building, got a diagonal AND a clocktower), but have no clue how to post pics in my post.  I'm sure ur busy, just thought i'd sneak in the request, haha...

[nas786 104]

o, the pic didnt show up, it was the second to last building on the previous page

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks for the input guys.    I made the glass more mirror like, and I added variety for the bump.  I also removed the modeled shapes in the ground plane, and I've been working on the ground texture.

Here's what the bump map is at the moment.

Here is a zoom 4 of the Queralt Hotel from the last page.  A few days ago I opened it up and worked on it for a little bit.

nas786:  Thanks!  I'm glad you like it.  It's not done (just check the STEX, when I'm ready to upload something it will be there).  I don't take requests though, and the appropriate place for them is the BAT Request Thread (in the "SC4 - Simtropolis Exchange" forum). 

[SimFox 801]

My God!!

Amount of work you've put in that bump map!!

Well it is doable for such scale building, but for something with 5-10 000 windows it is out of question...

M;y suggestion for such smaller and clearly not downtown (in old dense sense) building it would be better to create natural parking spaces , roads etc around - that way most of your reflected environment could be them re-created in lot editor and you would have perfection itself. The building is short enough to reflect about 2, maximum3 tiles around it...

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The bump map was very easy to make.  I'll try to make a little chart of it.

RGB Multiply

Multi/Sub-Map

Noise

Noise

Multi/Sub-Map

Bitmap 1

Bitmap 1 (with the output inversed)

Bitmap 2

Bitmap 2 (with the output inversed)

The multi/sub map maps are switched based on the material ID, and the material IDs of all of the window panes were randomized using a script from that site crackdtoothgrin posted.  The glass object has a face uvw map so all of the bitmaps are fitted to the panes. 

The bitmaps are just two different bulging shapes.  Last summer I tried to make the buldge shapes with a gradient ramp map, and I'm trying again now, but I still haven't been able to get the right bulging shape.

The building is meant to be urban in that 1980s modern kind of way.  I thought about making it suburban, but I figured that the challenge of the project was the uncertain urban surroundings.  I also don't build suburbs in my cities so I'd probably never use a suburban building.  I've got roads in my ground texture, and some paver textures, but beyond the roads I've got something more generic.

Anyway, I've worked on it some more since my last preview, and it's looking a lot better I think.  I'm going to go to bed now but tomorrow I'll post a new render.

[Crackdtoothgrin 0]

If you want a 'bulging' map fitted to each face, simply make a new document in photoshop scaled to whatever size your window is going to be. I usually use 16px=1m. That being said, fill the image with Shift+F5 and pick 50% gray. If the bump mapping uses the black/white values from 0 to 255 as its guideline, this should mean that RGB 128/128/128 (50% gray) is the baseline 'middle' that we will use to establish our window. You can then select all, and go to Select>Modify>Contract, and pick a size that is about 25% to 33% the size of the map. For a 1m x 1m window, that would be 4-5 pixels. Then, Select>Feather (Select>Modify>Feather in CS4) with the same amount. That gives the edge of the selection a 'soft' falloff, whereas before, any adjustments would have been a clear-cut line. Then, use the Dodge tool to higlight the middle until you get a satisfactory result. Ctrl+Shift+I to invert the selection, and use the Burn tool to slightly darken the edges. Both tools should work best on Midtones and 30-45% opacity. There! Easy smooth bulges without using a radial gradient. I personally never use the gradient tool, as I don't like it.

Optionally, you can also go to Filter>Distort>Glass and mess with the settings until you get what looks good. Pretty easy afterward to use a really soft blur brush to correct the hard edges of the distortion effect, or even with a gaussian blur set to a low amount. Obviously it's dependent on the size of the windows.

EDIT: Also, using the glass filter on a few copies of the image allows you to tweak the settings a bit and get different results within the same file, which can be helpful.

[spa 968]

Wow that new glass building is a big change of pace. It has that anwyere in the world feel to it though which is nice. I know from briefly stopping by Simfox's thread that there has been debate on glass lately so I hope I'm not starting it up again here, but I think the reflection is way too strong and not really believable. Maybe it's that you can see that it's not reflecting a real streetscape that might be around the building or maybe it's the scale of the image being reflected back, but it just doesn't look real at all to me, especially compared to the reflection you do have of the steps on the side. All that said, I'm definitely in the vague glass camp. I prefer buildings without strong reflections. In my experience, reflections tend to stick out in game badly, especially when their surroundings don't match up. I couldn't put your new building, for example, on a street with a park or water on the other side. I like a fuzzier and vaguer approach where you know something's there, but can't quite tell what it is. To each their own though

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Well, I've worked more on the glass building.  I think the glass is looking better now, and hopefully it's getting closer to a final version. 

The last thing I did before doing this preview was getting some trees (which I'll put in in the lot editor) in the reflections.  In order to really judge that though I'll have to make a lot for it.  But before I go back to the glass I'm going to finish the rest of the building.

I also started the planters on the ground floor.  Behind the planters are light wells which let light into the basement floor.  To me that's a very 80s modern kind of thing.  I know that area is visually confusing right now but it will make more sense when I model the rest of what's there.

Crackdtoothgrin:  Yeah, the bitmaps that I'm using I made in photoshop.  I didn't use the exact same methods, but you know how photoshop is, there are a million ways to do something.  The stuff about the radial gradients was actually about max itself though.  There's a map in it that does gradients, and if I got the gradient it made to look right, it would make bulging bumps automatically for any proportion window pane.  If I ever get it right, I'll share it here.

spa:  With the type of mirror glass this is, I can't really change how strong the reflections are without changing what type of glass it would be.  Those are definitely problems with this shape building and this kind of glass, but hopefully I'll be able to work something out which looks as best as it can, given the situation. 

[Crackdtoothgrin 0]

Fair enough. I've just been using Photoshop for years (I've been doing lineart/graphic design/comics/traditional graphite art for 21 years) and it has been invaluable to me during the last six years that I've been using it. So it goes without saying that I'm faaar more comfortable using it than trying too many things in Max just yet.

As for the building, on the side of realism (and not related to glass for once), it would be interesting to see what minutiae you place around it. Is the building and property non-smoking? If so, there should be a sign visible from the exterior around any entrance. On the flip-side, there should be at least one employee smoking area, a likely candidate being your extended staircase. There, you could have one or a couple of the 'smokestack kachina doll' type cigarette disposal units. From time spent as a security guard and as a temp, I've worked in many buildings that fit this one's general profile. If you don't have an 'area' for it, with one or two small benches, then there should be a disposal unit tucked about five to ten feet away from the entrances (in this case, not the 'main' entrance, but the side ones), sometimes next to or beside/catty-cornered to a planter or other design element.

Alternately, you could put it down by the ramp on the sidewalk side of things, but it seems the least likely. Or it could be a totally smoke-free environment. However, I doubt this approach, as there should be 'something' that employees could toss the morning cigarette into when entering the building. Those trash cans with the 'pebble/gravel' covering that I see all over the midwest, with the smoking basket on top maybe? I don't know. I look for little details when I scrutinize things. They make or break it for me.

Also, whenever you get to the lighting, assuming you don't light it with streetlights, there would ideally be two sets of exterior floodlamps on the ramp, one over the entrance of that ramp's "L" shape, and another set over the junction of the ramp's wall and that staircase, with the set containing at least two lights, one for the stairs and the other to illuminate the street below. That would be a primary security concern, as anyone heading down the stairs and turning to their left to head 'north' could be confronted by someone hiding just under the ledge there. Security cameras too, should be visible. When I say visible, I mean it too. Especially around any ground-side electrical/HVAC parts. One of our biggest problems when I worked at places like this were illegal salvagers stealing metal from AC units and so on, so much so that we started to get deputized and carry pistols as a defense against people with guns and the intent to steal...

As for the lot, regarding this security concern, you could easily have a security car or police vehicle in the neighboring parking lots at night too. Just a thought (or a hundred, in my case).

Oh well... I let word count get the better of me again... Looks good so far though. High-five!

[zero7 68]

I love what you've done with the bump-mapping on this building - looks great.

As far as dealing with the reflection is concerned I ran in to this problem on my 'MirrorBox Blue' (in 2007 - is it really that long ago?!!).  My solution was to give something close to the building to offer a sharp reflection and then to add blur to the ground plane that would be seen  higher up the building.  The idea being that, to a degree, the sharply reflected elements would draw people's attention from the fact that the others didn't match the environment that the building stood in..

If you want a building that will stand at the roadside in an urban environment I think you'll struggle to combine sharp looking reflections with something that can be placed anywhere.  If you compromise a little and set it in a BATted plaza you might have more success - although the height of your building will always mean that you'll have a lot of glass area reflecting a generic landscape.

I look forward to seeing how you resolve the conflicting requirements.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

It's hard to believe it's been over two months since I last posted here!

For some of that time I was considering dropping the glass building and simply not finishing it, then I decided that I would just finish it really quickly and get it over with.  But it's not very hard to model this kind of facade and the glass material is done, so yesterday I decided to redesign the building. 

For this one I more carefully considered what was getting reflected, areas of interest, as well as the design in general (this one is a lot more realistic).

I also worked some more on Queralt Hotel:

[thingfishs 416]

Those are two very impressive buildings jason. Reflections often don't work in game of course but the ones that do are some of my favourites (one of zero7's buildings comes to mind). That one also used foreground reflections down low and then darkened pretty quickly like this one so that it wasn't at odd with it's immediate external surroundings; I expect I will love this when it's done. FWIW I'm an admirer of your work, often your buildings have a crispness to them that most neighbouring buildings don't have. I assume you use MAX... What is your basic workflow if you don't mind me asking?

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wow!!!! I love both of your models, I really love the second one its perfect. Keep up the great work Jawsoncw

[txrailnut07 0]

Jason, I really like your models. I have many of them in my plugins. I have a question for you? How did you make the pink roof on this model? I have a model I want to BAT that has a roof shaped like this. I'll be watching for more of your releases in the future.

[zero7 68]

Looks like a workable solution to the reflection problem. The sunken plaza looks like an interesting feature, both from the point of view of a focus for the sharp reflection and in its own right.

Looking forward to the texturing of the non glass parts.

[Jack_wilds 550]

awesome...wonderful progress particularly with the hotel -is the pink roof to mimic the sun bleached terracotta shingles of Florida?; glad you reconsidered the glass box and upped its look to what it is now... taking it in a better direction... anticipating its release

Jack

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Thanks guys. 

About workflow:

First I find reference photos in order to better understand whatever it is I'm making.  So I find examples of whatever movement/style, typology, etc. that I'm making.  A lot of the time I end up loosely basing it off a real building, making changes to make it work better in the game or to make it easier for me to make.  So, for example, the Queralt Hotel is actually based off of an office building in San Fransisco.

Then I model the building.  Then I texture it.  Then I might make more changes, or I might add or remove things.  Then I export the day version.  Then I do the nitelites and export the night version.

Understanding the architecture of what you're making, and understanding how you're going to go about modeling and texturing it is the most important part.  Whenever a project is giving me trouble it's always because I didn't do enough planning earlier on.

About pitched roofs:

The red roof on the Queralt Hotel was indeed a tile roof.  But I decided to do a more modest penthouse, since it was going to be too much work to do the elaborate tower right, since not only was I going to have to remodel the tower itself, but I was going to have to model a bunch of additional stuff on the roof in order to integrate the tower properly with the rest of the building. 

[txrailnut07 0]

Thank you Jason for that little tut. Now my building can be made.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

txrailnut07:  No problem. 

Here's a quick update on the glass building...

[spa 968]

Looking good. The sunken plaza is a nice touch. You might have some problems when it comes to rendering with bits of the bottom showing up that you don't want to see. I'm thinking of the posts at the side entrance and the bottom half of the concrete cylinder at the far end of the plaza. Easy enough to fix though since you have good ground cover around it to hide the parts that shouldn't be seen. Just an idea, maybe put some planters down in the sunken plaza. Planters have become a common in these kinds of places, presumably to try and humanize them. I like the glass texture more than before. The reflections are less distracting.

I really like the Queralt Hotel. Great style, size and the textures are spot on, even the glass I really like the details on it on the second floor from top. I have just two suggestions/thoughts: 1. The texture for the stone parapet, on the top side, seems a touch too clean and bright. 2. The support columns are great, but the fact that they seem smaller at the corners makes the building seem a tad odd. I look at it and it makes me wonder how it's standing up. I don't know what to suggest though. Maybe brick up the bays nearest the corners?

Anyway, great work here.