The Bat Cave

[simplybatman 1]

Well I think I need a bat thread to show some things I am working on and allow them to soak in advice,and allow them to be scrutinsed properly before uploading anything before its really ready for it. I will probably ask any questions i have about things in here too.

First up is something I really wanted to upload. So glad I read the Stex codes of Conduct before I did though. Anywas this was originally gshmails in avenue GLR station. I ripped the prop off it and transformed it into a Melbourne style Tram Stop. I have the W Class melbourne Tram running around my cities now as default LR and wanted a fitting stop for it. Plus I kinda love our carflipping crash barrier thing on them cos they just scream potential.

I wish that had have happened on one of the Melbourne stops,would have looked so much better.

Some buildings I am slowly fixing up. Am still getting the hang of night lighting and texturing.

A mid rise building kind of inspired by Crown Tower on Southbank in Melbourne. Its not based on it from photos or anything,the shape of the building I have always liked and come up with this.

Showing a little evolution of this model. i dont mind how its looking at the moment except for the base of the building which comes up too bright and distracting.

A very quick and rough as guts on some mystery tower......just wanted to get a sense of its scale and geometries and to see whether this will actually be possible to do in gmax. One 300m high box and a few others with a few modifiers on them and texture,no lights or anything took a fair while to render....I will continue with it,but have my doubts about how this computer is going to be able take that structure.

A few randoms bits and pieces.....

Icelandic Turf houses on a test lot. Am still mucking about with these. Matching the colours to the game grass so they look like they are growing out of the ground takes a little time.

That'll do for now....thanks for looking and commenting if you are inclined to.

[Jack³ 291]

Some feedback:

I think everything looks good!

I think the textures should be a little bit more realistic and shiny. But the shape of the building is good.

I would remove the texture on the ground model itself and just leave the lot editor to do that part.

[simplybatman 1]

This thing.......oh man,I learnt some things about gmax with this. Very loosely based off the Arts Centre spire in Melbourne,I didnt have any pics at the time,just wanted to muck about with this kind building. It turned into a bit of an abortion. I didnt have any real clear idea of what I was building,just kept adding things to it.

.

Anyways so after building it and lighting it up,it looked ok in preview,then I pressed export......oh man....was thinking just export this to test it out and go on to something else. Hahaha.....like 4 hours later it finished rendering. Yikes.....so now I know.

Somehow it lost a few textures and turned out a bit different to what I had expected.

OMG what a monstrosity! This one taught me that I gotta nut out the lights and what they are doing a bit better. Cant do my usual,make something,light it up,preview,export,lot it up and test it out on big and complex structures,redo it and check it again. Makes me want to learn how to model more efficiently too.

Just a few odd pieces.

Something interesting happened when I tried to open the BAT4MAXv5 download mzp file in Gmax,(which i found out you are not supposed to do).

I went into the Gmax icon on my desktop,gmax only,not the BAT. And ran the Maxscript to open the mzp and something happened. It came up with an error so i closed it down,thinking oh well,that didnt work. Went back into the BAT and started working on a model and when I went to the nitewindow textures I noticed that I now had NeonRed available as a nite texture in there,as well as the standard Beige,Green and Blue.

There's a neon sign on the front of this. I like the neon....glad I did that.Its gonna come in handy.

Anyways,theres a few BATS...

[simplybatman 1]

Thanks Jack3oh3.....I redid the grass houses and toned down the colors,cos they came up too bright in game. I havent got a newer pic online yet. The big tower is only a very very very rough draft.....Im not gonna name it yet,cos its a highly desired item. Kind hoping someone recognises it......It deserves some serious modeling,the building itself was intimidating me a bit and i just wanted to get one in my game quickly to get a feel for it. Really not looking forward to rendering it considering how long that piece o junk took.....its only got 8 pieces in it....the real building is gonna crash my computer Im sure of it.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

My favourites so far are the tram stations and that communication/antenna tower.

Otherwise it's abit hard to comment because you're throwing so much stuff at us all at once.

[simplybatman 1]

Thanks Twrecks.....I kind of like the comms tower too.

I thought a big intro would be better considering all the "Where's the Bat's?" comments in some other new users threads. I better hold off on some stuff then hey? I have only been at this since i joined up...whats that,one month now. Been reading and going through tutorials mostly,when not engrossed in modelling. A big thanks to everyone who has posted tuts on here too,there is a wealth of knowledge on this site.

2% of Autodesk_3ds_Max_2012_English_Win_32-64bit.exe downloaded Greater than 12 hours

I use to be student lol.....maybe I should enrol again for something before they ask for confirmation or something once I have it installed.....

[T Wrecks 10,210]

It's definitely a good idea that you showed something in your first post! Much better than all these threads that start with "Hey people, I'm going to..." - there are few of these that live more than a few weeks, but I recall many that died miserably.

However, when it comes to following BAT developments, IMO it is best to show progress on one or two things at a time (no matter how many projects you have in the works) because otherwise your readers will be somewhat overwhelmed, and comments will be cluttered and sporadic: A hint for this BAT, a suggestion on that BAT, a question about a third BAT... you get the idea.

Downloading 3dsmax, eh? Well, that looks like quite a massive endeavour - I hope you are using a d/l manager or anything that can resume an interrupted download.

[simplybatman 1]

I decided to do some lighting projects to get a real handle on how they function. I am getting some nice results so far. I wanted an open type area to work with at first,so made a bit of an outdoor ampitheatre. And working on this other little building I use for lighting tests discovered what I saw Cockatoo call his projector method. I really like what can be done with the projector map function.

Max finsihsed downloading in good time and told me it had a corrupt file and please download a fresh copy and try again. I only have 2 gig Ram so might not bother with it at the moment. Would have been nice to have a play with it though.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Well, did you use a download manager? These things are really helpful for bigger files, especially if the connection is shaky and/or you may want to interrupt the download and resume at a later time.

I also checked on Autodesk's HP, and it says 2GB should be enough to run 3dsmax in the 32-bit version, although they recommend 4. It probably still renders a lot faster than gmax, though.

Comcerning your experimental building, I really like the grass in day view, many get it too radioactive in the first attempt(s). However, I think those round light cones have too defined edges to look realistic. Is there a way to make the edges fuzzier?

[goodyou 0]

Looks pretty good.Outstanding masterpiece.