BAT advice

[darn42 1,268]

Here is Cherry blossom inc. atm. redid lots of textures. added the cubicles and some other interior stuff. Darkened the grass. Added some roof junk. I can't work on it much more today as I have an essay to write before tomorrow.

As always, tell me what you all think.

[darn42 1,268]

I ended up finishing my essay with time to fiddle. I added a path around the edge so it won't just be a giant wall coming out of nowhere in the lot. Added interior textures. Made some changes to the roof junk. added more trees, which i think seems a bit more fitting. Made an eating area on the first balcony. And that's it.

After I get some feedback on what needs fixing, I'm going to work on the night lights, which, hopefully, will come out very neat since the entire interior is modeled.

Sooo, tell me what you think and what needs fixin'.

  Edited March 12, 2012 by darn42  

[IDS2 3,429]

Methinks Grand Villa might be ready for nightlights I'd wait for a consensus on that, but it looks like it's getting pretty close at least.

The new one looks snazzy too! It already seems like there's a lot going on (those trees and the pathway texture match nicely), which I like. One thing I would focus attention on, though - roof junk. This may seem like a minor detail, but it can really make or break the building due to the SC4 perspective being sort of top-heavy. I'd take a look at some RL examples on buildings of similar size and shape, and I know there's a thread in this forum somewhere with lots of pictures of roof HVAC units and stuff...lemme see if I can find it.

Just as a side note, always make sure your building could function effectively in RL. This one looks good to me, but I know when I'm making up new buildings I sometimes forget about whether or not the building could actually serve its purpose efficiently. A building may look cool, but if it doesn't serve its purpose you're stuck with a white elephant.

I'll leave you to chip away at the details. I like where this is going!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

It looks to me like Grand Villa is done except for the glass. Glass is reeeeally hard to get right, but once you get it you can repeat it over and over on all of your buildings without having to change much. I advise checking out what simfox had to say here. It's pretty much like jasoncw's method here but...you'll see. Draw from the two methods as necessary to get where you need to go.

New one looks cool! I'll wait to see where this one is going. I know you said you were still working on textures, but remember to keep the grass a bit less saturated Also, what's happening to your trees in the render?

Yeah, and emphasis on what SimFox said, I think.

I used the extra bitmaps to represent the general bulge pattern of glass, and then used noise in addition to that for more general variety. But I did that because with mirror glass, since the reflections are so strong, it's more clear what the shape of the distortion is, which in real life is vaguely a bulge shape, and I wanted to represent that.

But for normal non-mirrored glass you don't need that. And not only that, but depending on the situation you don't even need to use two out of phase noise maps, you can use just one if the glass planes aren't directly adjacent to one another.

[darn42 1,268]

I did dat new roof junk. I think the air units turned out very well. I found those roof junk pics and they were really helpful. I pretty much just modeled mine exactly like one of the pictures and it turned out so much better. What do you guys think I should do next on cherry? I don't notice anything I want to change. If no one else sees anything I'm going to start nightlights cherry as well.

As for Grand Villa, I can't really think of how to change the windows any more. Right now I have a small noise map size and I'm wondering if i should make it larger? And I used mostly what Simfox said to begin with since your glass tutorial seemed much more specialized on that type of huge curtain wall glass rather than the kind I was using.

[darn42 1,268]

Started experimenting with night lights. I'm going to have lights on the raise path type thing that light up the trees a bit. I think the night lights are going to be the best part of this BAT cause of the interior modeling

[Ceafus 88 1,899]

I don't think its quite time for nightlights yet on this one, there is alot of texture work to be done

1. The ground texture has to change, it is to "out there" for most people.

2.The red on the building needs changing, some concrete maybe?

There is a few more, but I got to go I will post them later

[darn42 1,268]

I'm going to assume you mean the ground texture that is the pathways around the building. I really like them so I'm not going to change them. As for the building itself, I was using the default but coloured concrete texture. I'm working on fixing it with a bitmap and arch and design. I'm just wondering, is there any way to make the color easy to manipulate without editing the bitmap itself on arch and design concrete?

Here's just the tweaked texture. I think it suits the building a bit more when its darker (I couldn't get it lighter anyways)

  Edited March 14, 2012 by darn42  

[IDS2 3,429]

Roof units look much better and I think the new color is a bit better, it'll blend in better this way. I personally like the path texture, but I guess it could be darkened slightly (without changing the colors) if you want it to match a bit better. Also, don't forget to add some details around the path - railings on the staircases (maybe tweak their color, by the way) and around the top of that wall, etc. The plaza in front of the building could use some life too, maybe some benches or planters? Also, regarding that space between the outer path and the edge of the wall - what exactly is that space going to be used for? Remember that if your LODs cover that area you won't be able to place props there in LE.

Also, have you thought about blinds? I'm not sure if this building really needs them, but I just thought I'd throw the idea out there just in case.

  Edited March 14, 2012 by IDS2  

[darn42 1,268]

Ok, I will darken the path a little bit, and I totally agree with the extra details like railings; I was wondering what was missing there. I'll add these updates tomorrow or thursday

[darn42 1,268]

Here is the first draft of grand villa night lites. Took a long time to render so I just let it go overnight and I'm posting it before school.

Tell me what you think and what I should add/change

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Well, it looks like the interior of the building is not lit at all, not even the lobby/staircase, and that's a pity.

Unfortunately, I cannot tell you how to make those great-looking windows you see on some of the best BATs. It may be that they are made using self-illuminating materials, but I don't remember... *scratches head*

Moreover, the lights lining those footpaths at ground level look totally different on the right side - they are way darker than on the left side. Was that intentional?

[gutterclub 2,729]

Jason wrote a tutorial on how to do night windows, it's quite straight forward and fun. Take a look on his profile, should be there along with the glass tutorial he wrote.

The new building looks good but I'd prefer a version without the lot as I like to make my Cities a bit denser.

[darn42 1,268]

The different lighting was totally unintentional but the render took long enough that I didn't want to fix the problem then rerender yet. And I had forgotten about the lobby. As for the stairwell in the middle. There are lights in there already, they just aren't showing up :s Thank you, by the way.

  Edited March 15, 2012 by darn42  

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I wish I could tell you about the particular techniques to create good-looking and resource-saving lights, because if your render times are so long you are probably using some lighting techniques which really make the renderer sweat, so to speak.

As a rule, I think going for interior modeling and lighting is something that should be restricted to smaller areas. As long as your building isn't that huge, I guess you can get away with making these kinds of lights throughout the building, but as the building gets bigger it's probably a lot more efficient to use self-illuminated windows with textures that simulate an interior.

As for the exterior lights, in which way did you make them anyway? Maybe if you describe how you made them, one of our BAT gurus here can tell you a better working method or parameters that will enable you to get these lights to look just right without eating up too many resources?

In any case, you have made tremendous progress since the beginning of this thread, and I'm sure you will overcome remaining problems, too. Keep it up!

[darn42 1,268]

I used ray traced shadows for all the lights which may be why it takes so long, but I didn't like how shadow maps looked; way to bloomy and seemed unrealistic

[darn42 1,268]

Here is some minor changes to the grand villa nite lites; lobby + stairwell + evened out the stage right side path

[darn42 1,268]

Cherry blossom now that I've redone stairs, added benches and some stuff to plaza, and added railings and a bit more that I forgot I think.

[darn42 1,268]

Here's the new building I'm working on while I wait for comments on the other two. It's still very early on in the building so many of the details I plan to add aren't added. But tell me what you think of the design and the textures I have so far.

It's a luxury hotel btw.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

It looks like the light from the inside part of the one BAT (the part in between the two halves of the building) is visible on the outside of the building. The lights should have a checkbox somewhere about casting shadows, which you want to make sure is checked, or else the objects won't block light. If it is checked, you'll want to model a big wall or something inside of the BAT to block the light from reaching the other side.

There haven't been comments about the last few updates because there isn't much to say, just keep on working on them.

[darn42 1,268]

ok thank you. I was wondering why it looked weird.

[darn42 1,268]

I want to change the title of this thread/add a description. does anyone know how to do that? or give me a link to a guide for it?

  Edited March 22, 2012 by darn42  

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I tihnk if you edit your original post you have that option. Or maybe there is something somewhere separate for editing the title. Anyway if you poke around you should find it somewhere.

[darn42 1,268]

Here it is. I exported it and it's now in-game. I am not going to work on this any more due to a combination of long night renders, me being tired of working on this building, and my goal of uploading it before I left for vacation. Going to upload it to STEX now. Thank you all so much for all the help you've given me and I hope that I get as much help with the rest of my projects I will do.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

It's a big improvement over the first version.

Enjoy your vacation.

[BIWDC 2,296]

Those building are looking good.

[Terring 6,476]

The small pink building looks great. Will you release it?

[darn42 1,268]

Yea, after I get home from Florida I'm going to put finishing touched then put it on the Stex.

[darn42 1,268]

Hi everybody. Just wanted to say that I've stopped working on those buildings for now at least. Gotten into some other modelling projects and learning how to model better. The way I modeled the buildings I've posted here have consisted of cloned/instanced primitives and boolean shapes.

So far I've gotten a lot better at modeling and I plan on doing a building after I do my personal goal of a plane, a train, and a car model. If you want to see what I've done for modeling so far I've got an imgur account with some albums I'm updating often at http://darn42.imgur.com/

Next post in here I make will probably be on the topic of a building

[harishna 847]

Good to see you are taking the time to improve your modeling techniques my advice will be to avoid boolean...

  Edited June 12, 2012 by harishna