Chicago BAT Project

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Have you noticed the "hole" on the first roof should have the same ground applied like the rest of the first roof. What I mean is that the slight socket on the roof isn't supposed to start on the edge. 

 

 

Also about the reflections. I don't know how much you want this to be the original Wacker Drive because if you want it to be very, versy realistic you have to think of what it is reflecting. Basicall you can just see the street and Chicago River so I guess it would be better trying something wi an easier ground plane and just play around with its settings instead of changing the glass itself.

[weixc812 509]

Oh, my...
Can't believe you restart 333 wacker, darn. I almost finished the CBD of Coos Bay but now, it seems like I shall put it off a bit.
Great great work so far...it will have a diagonal version, right? Hope it will be your best ever BAT!
And please leave the lotting work to me if you're too busy to do that.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I can't put my finger on it but I think something might be wrong with your rendering settings. I think your renders might be too blurry.

[Shy Dude 149]

Very nice warm coloring on the textures.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

I do agree with Jason, your render looks funny.

[darn42 1,268]

Apparently my anti-aliasing settings were really jacked up, I'll put those to normal levels and that should fix the blurriness.

 

Reddon:

Thank you very much for that, you always help out so much with these things. I'm going to experiment a bit more with the ground plane and different mediums to work with. 

As for the roof, I took a second look, and you're right, there are tons of stuff that just aren't right at all. The roof junk was the only part that was left largely untouched in the remodeling, everything else is brand new.

 

Weixc:

I plan on doing a diagonal version as well. 

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

It's going to be a very nice build

Looks good so far.

[darn42 1,268]

 

So. Opinions? I am still not happy with a lot of the roof junk, but I thought I'd get opinions on the rest of the stuff, mainly the reflections.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Woooow! It's so beautiful! *-*

Wonderful!!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Looks great, I think the foliage is to dark and the leaves may needs to be scaled a bit to make the look better. The roof junk looks pretty good to me, I do believe that the HVAC need to be modeled a little better to be something like that can make or break a building, the HVAC is a bit oversized and the blades does not look right, they should have more space between them. Oh yeah, do not forget about the rails that follow the parapets of the buildings roof. Now, the glass I think it needs a green tint to it, the reason I said that because I looking at the ground view of the building at a distance. 

[tonyr 926]

Oh Snap! That's a must have...the color,the shape,the detail...beautiful bldg. Darn42.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Wow I really like that glass effect, you might need to share how you did that

 

Fix up the roof junk and I think you have a winner here

[Huston 5,798]

Wow, this building is a masterpiece. I can only imagine how many members would snatch'n'grab this beauty

 

Meanwhile, the reflections look great. Best to leave it as is

[darn42 1,268]

Yay! I'm glad the glass worked out this time. I'll share my setup for the ground plane which is kinda unique.

 

The glass itself is super simple. It's very transparent, single sided, and has an ior of 2.5 to have more prominent reflections. The change in color is determined by whether there is a concrete wall behind the glass or not. The color is almost entirely from the color at max distance effect also. There are 4 bump maps applied in a randomized checker board.

I made that selection with the checker function. Then I applied matID 1 to that. (ctrl+i) for the inverse selection. Applied MatID 3 to that selection. Selected 50% of that and made it MatID 4 and then selected MatID 1 so I could do 50% random and make that selection MatID 2. I was left with a randomized checkerboard of 4 material IDs.

 

I was inspired by reddon pasting them onto buildings nearby. I tried that but it failed miserably for this building. What I realized is that the main point is that I can't have strong rectangular shapes on the actual glass because it is such a wide glass and not very tall. And so vertical shapes are important. And there are many directions involved and those directions of reflections have to look correct. So here is my ground texture.

 

 

I brought it into photoshop for color correction and I used a masked correction layer to get rid of colors that clashed. See most of the brownish buildings are painted over with blue

 

Then I applied it to a sphere with the normals flipped and the top deleted.

 

 

This ended up, in combination with strong bump mapping, to give ambiguous but not so ambiguous reflections. 

 

And here's another angle that finished.

 

[TCD 123]

The ground-bowl is a winner. Awesome reflections.

[SimCoug 5,972]

Impressive.... Most impressive.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

The building looks great to me. Get it posted! Please...

[sencillo1 47]

great reflections the building looks great.

[slickbg56 778]

Amazing talent. Really great work.

[Huston 5,798]

Love that bowl reflection idea. Might have to try it out over plane reflections

[KonstantinII 1,106]

I don't understand the theory behind the bowl technique. Why would you want to use such a bowl anyways? What do you accomplish with it?

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

It is a darn. 

[urielgarcia 344]

Looks amazing!  Awesome work. 

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Oh my! Isn't this an off-spring from your previous works!?

 

I like it, though. A nice, clean facade is just what I like as a "simple-functional-elegance" loving swede.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Heh I remember this from ages ago. Nice work man, looks great.

 

At a guess, the bowl provides a better aproximation of real reflections; gives them a vertical component.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Mike! I remember you from ages ago, too. Ok, "ages" is definitely exaggerated. Still nice to see the familiar cockatoo avatar again.

 

Back to topic, I agree with pretty much everyone that you nailed the glass this time. I also second what Aaron said about the trees. Nice to see this one coming closer to its final stage.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Mike! I remember you from ages ago, too. Ok, "ages" is definitely exaggerated. Still nice to see the familiar cockatoo avatar again.

 

Back to topic, I agree with pretty much everyone that you nailed the glass this time. I also second what Aaron said about the trees. Nice to see this one coming closer to its final stage.

 

Just a quick 'flyover' I'm afraid. I will try to log in a little more often though... I had PM's from Janurary.

 

It's great people are still comming up with new BATing techniques like this. Looking over some of the stuff that's been made in the past year, it's seriously impressive.

 

Oh yeah, and I third that too. The roof on this thing is drop-dead gourgous, the base might look better with more contrast i.e. lighter greens.

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Heh I remember this from ages ago. Nice work man, looks great.

 

At a guess, the bowl provides a better aproximation of real reflections; gives them a vertical component.

 

A legend has come among us!

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Well, Cockatoo, it has been a while. As you can see, many people are still asking for you. Awesome to see you still around and hopefully you'll be around for some more weeks. May we ask you what was the matter?

 

Ah yeah, this is darns thready I've already commented. Windows are awesome and working fine for Wacker Drive, though I still think that little Chicago River effect is missing ...

 

EDIT: Found some nice night shot

 

 

I like how you can see the reflections of other buildings meing reflected almost perfectly. Remember that when working on night lightning ...

[darn42 1,268]

Sky: I can't have the river included or else it will look very out of place in the game, because where you see the river would be where either roads or buildings would be in game. I have to keep it ambiguous. The night-shot ground plane will look very similar to the day ground plane just with lots of lights.

 

Cockatoo: !!!! Welcome! It's exciting to see you again. I had been wondering where you had run off to just the other day, actually. And you are right about the bowl, it gives more of a vertical component, it keeps the direction of the reflections consistent, and a bowl, rather than a cone, doesn't have as much UV distortion.