Jason's BATs & Tutorials

[jacqulina 162]

wonderfull detail

[Simfan34 11]

Wow. Looks like a REALLY good drawing. And I am honored to have my 200th post in your thread.

[st louis dude 6]

I know this it totally off topic,but aren't they going to renovate the United Artist building and convert it into lofts? Also,has kilpatrick decided to demolish

Tiger stadium?

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Thanks everyone.

It's rendered with the rig that ardecila sent me, and that I modified a bit.

Well, I've sorta given up on the night libraries, but if they can't get me the glow that I want, then I don't really need them.  It was suggested to me that I just use include/exclude with a direct light, and that seems a lot more simple.

heheh, I'm honored to have your 200th post in my thread too.

Unfortunatly, it seems like the United Artist Building is going to be demolished.  There is a really big banner on the building saying "Developement Opportunity", but from what I can tell, the site is being marketed, not exactly the building itself, although I'm sure that if someone wanted to buy the building and rennovate it, no one would stand in their way (as long as it didn't conflict with other Illitch interests).

Tiger Stadium has had a bunch of things proposed for it.  The most likely to happen is a condo/retail developement.  There's some kind of weird arrangement with the Iliitches and the city.  I don't remember how exactly it works, but the jist of it is that they're supposed to be maintaining it, but aren't, and then it's also preventing other people from doing something with it.

The person who's essentially responsible for the demise of these buildings is Mike Illitch, who also owns Little Ceasers, Olympia entertainment, and some other stuff.  The more messed up a building gets the more expensive it is to rennovate it, and the less likely someone will buy the building and fix it up, and he doesn't really take care of his properties.  The same goes for most of his other buildings downtown.

[st louis dude 6]

I wish they would get rid of the Joe Louis arena,it's rubbish.

[Bluepelican31 5]

Looks like 1x1?  This is a beautiful bat.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Yep, it's a wall to wall corner 1x1 CO$$$.

lol, yeah, it's not really very good.  It was built really fast and poorly to keep the red wings downtown, a long time ago.

There are a few areas where people are thinking a new one will be built.  Everyone's pretty sure that it will be downtown, and that it will be near FoxTown (because almost everything there the Ilitches own).

[SimFox 802]

For that glow effect you can make some Photoshop Actions and almost automatically get the desired effect.

You take the Alpha image convert it to gray scale (for filters to work),

make copy of your layer, on that select alphas (white areas) subtract selection by say 1-2 pixels,

apply Gaussian blur,

and then set some appropriate blending mode and convert back to indexed color and voilá - your glow effect.

But this method will work if only alphas are your night windows, not sure if that will work with night libraries. And if you have some say nitelites in scene - they will also generate alphas - their will be blurred too, which may or may not be desired effect...

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I hadn't thought about that before.  The only problem with that though, is that the blur would go in weird places.  I just want the nitelites to emit light or something, so that the insides of the window frames and the edges of the wall will be lit up a bit.

[st louis dude 6]

How about you do Comerica Park as your next bat?

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Since you requested, I'll make sure to never BAT Comerica Park.

[st louis dude 6]

Well,why not?

[DuskTrooper 314]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw Since you requested, I'll make sure to never BAT Comerica Park. quote>

STL dude: It's all part of the BIG CONSPIRACY we have against people who post BAT requests!  Ohnoes!!!1111oneoneeleventeendollarsandseventyfivecents

[Mulefisk 15]

Flawless! Not much more to be said.

You're a very talented BATer!

[SimFox 802]

Nightlights will do that anyway. If you want night library materials to do that it is also possible (unlike the NightWindows) but you would need some sort of GI anabled for night renderings as well, which in itself will cause some other problems. Generally overall script is hopelessly ourdated (just as lighting rigg is) and could be brought up to the date by someone with intermidiate knoledge of MaxScript. It doesn't seem to be all that difficult but it will take some time to go through 60 bages of code. I believe after proper revision 2/3 of it could be scrapped as BAT4MAX is basically same as GMAX BAT with few additions (pointless in the first place) and already outdated themselves. So as such it sets in script mauch of the stuff that you would setup in interface windows anyway. One interesting possibility would be to breake script into several parts, for instance one is a rendering of the images and another slicing them. so that fully rendered image could be edited in Photoshop, to add all the glow you wish and then slices into standart slabs.

May be we can call the competion or say commision new script. I was already thinking about it...

[dmscopio 225]

wow, there is some realistic metarial out there~!!Are you using a different renderer like the Vray?

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Simfox, I think you're the only person who knows about that kind of stuff.  If you'd like to do it, I'd be happy to use it, but I won't be able to help you work on it.

dmscopio, it's just mental ray, and bitmap materials.  I don't have anything more fancy then that.  Even the specular highlights are at the default (zero).  It's just me and photoshop.

Thanks Mulefisk.

Ok, so I worked on one of the buildings from earlier in this thread.

It's no longer a bank, but offices for the Stowell Foundation, named after my friend.  This is an example of my personal style of architecture, instead imitating other architecture for SC4 purposes.

Things to do:

- Put better stuff in the lobby (right now there's just giant potted bushes). 

- Give the lobby doors (probably revolving doors).

- Tweak the roof texture (right now it's too blue)

- Tweak the black texture (right now it's too dark)

- Make the 2nd green texture (some parts of the building use a less expensive material)

- A bunch of smaller textures.

- Nitelites

- And probably a ton of other stuff

[SimFox 802]

Jason could you publish here your sky's RGB?

Have you set any bounces?? it looks incredibly dark under that overhang on the roof.

[ILL Tonkso 1,237]

Originally posted by: st louis dude Well,why not?quote>

Because BAT requests are annoying.

[Jasoncw 11,841]

I figured I'd show the back of the building, along with some texturing progress.  The bricks line up with the windows in the corner.   I didn't even plan it.

But I'm very happy with how this one is coming along.  There's still a lot to do though.

I don't think I have any bounces set.

[JBSimio 152]

Nice Jason. Doesn't look like one I'd use very often, but that doesn't stop it from looking really good (as always) Out of curiosity, what's under the roof between the elevator shafts (or stairwells, or whatever)? Just something I've not really seen before, and I was wondering what it's for. I'd comment more often, but you and SimFox are usually talking way beyond anything I can comment on! lol

JB

[st louis dude 6]

Jason,aren't they going to renovate Chin Tiki?(that small chinese restaraunt downtown)

[jacqulina 162]

very nice work

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Thanks JB.  I'm glad you saw that they are elevator shafts.  Underneath the roof part is the paver base texture, just like on the lower roof area.  Is that what you mean?  Other than that though, I don't think there would be anything else.

Chin Tiki isn't really a Chinese place, but a Tiki bar, which were popular a long time ago.  As far as I know, the owner still owns the building, but has totally lost interest, although when the movie 8 Mile came out, he supposedly got inspired (since I think it was in the movie), but I don't think the short amount of inspiration led to anything productive.  The building itself isn't really anything spectacular if I remember right.  I don't think it was open for very long either.  The idea of having a Tiki bar downtown is cool though.  I think there's only one or two in the metro, and they're in the suburbs somewhere.  I'm not really a Tiki expert.

Thanks Jacquilina

[canuck3360 14]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw  movie 8 Mile came out, he supposedly got inspired (since I think it was in the movie)quote>

to further that alot of teh club scenes were actually shot in there hence the delapedated look in the club shots I was at one point looking at partnering up with some friends and buying the building next to it for a Pub but never got enough monetary support.

as for sites for the new Wings Arena it's almost finalized they have pretty much decided dirsectly behind the Fox that Way Illitchtown(errr I mean Foxtown) is complete.

and this summer the final plans for Tiger Stadium were released and it'll end up being Condos but the Main Entrance(about 10% of the stadium) will be kept as well as the Field and the Dugouts which will be used for Little League Baseball. the Whole area of Corktown is going to get some new life as the new MC Casino Hotel and building are getting finished

[st louis dude 6]

Well,now I know.Jason,are you still going to send me some Detroit Pictures?If so,Pm me

I will send you some back of my own.

[bixel 1,223]

OOoOooooH Very Pretty...which makes me want to work on my textures

[scotty222 549]

Whoa thats awesome

looks like a mix of about 5 buildings in my hometown

[alex23476 17]

cool

like the torquiose color

your a truly great bater

[Jasoncw 11,841]

Canuck, that's cool that you were thinking of doing something.  Are you involved in any other projects downtown (or elsewhere)?

Yeah, behind the Fox is probably where the Wings will go.  Either that or across the freeway.  I don't think anything's actually been announced though.  Hopefully it turns out good though.

ok, yeah, those are the same Tiger Stadium plans that I was thinking of.  For some of these things I just start to block them out of my mind after a while because I get tired of reading about them.

St. Louis Dude, I sent you a pm a few days ago, did you get it?

heheh, thanks Bixel.  I'll explain the textures for those who are interested.

There's 6 textures so far.

First, the green parts were all selected and given a fitted uvw box map.  Then I made the "first" texture, which was just a bunch of grey stripes with a bunch of different values set to overlay.  Each stripe had a stroke layer style which was one pixel, multiply, and at 75%.  The background of the texture was a green color which I got from picking a color from one of the maxis buildings with the eyedropper tool.  That layer has a marble pattern overlay (even though the material probably isn't marble).  I also used white and black big brushes with low opacities and the layer set to overlay to draw a bunch of large blobs to mix up the texture a bit.  You can't really pick it out on the texture, but it makes a big difference imo.

Then I deleted the horizontal stripes.  And made a new layer with a pattern overlay of a brick line pattern I made.  Then I made another new layer, and colored in the blocks with different values of grey, also set to overlay, and then the opacity of that layer was lowered a lot.  This is the second green texture.

Then there's the roof.  I took a screenshot of it, and made it accordingly.  The lower roof and higher roof (there's three roof levels) are the same texture, and they're stretched to fit by the uvw map, which was applied to all of them at the same time.  Then I made the top roof the same way.

Then there's the black, which is just a dark grey color with some pattern overlays to try to make it less consistent, although I'm not done tweaking that yet.  I went edit>select>select by>color (or whatever it is) to select all of the black and gave it a big box uvw map, although it doesn't really matter.  The grey texture behind the horizontal black bands is the same way.  And then I've said how I do glass before.

yikes scotty! I didn't realize the building was so hodgepodgy, lol.  Thanks though, I'm glad you like it.