Chicago BAT Project

[darn42 1,268]

Well, all the glass is transparent and there is an interior in the lobby on the ground That's what the blue stripe that says chase on it is. I was thinking about making a seperate material for the base and changing the reflectivity function of the for that reason.

Also, thanks for the solution to the road, simple but I never would have thought of it

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

You doing great buddy keep it up!!!

[nick13 194]

Is that view of the front or the back? If its the front wouldn't it be better to reflect the plaza like in the gardener center rather than a road. Its looking great otherwise

[darn42 1,268]

The plaza is in the back Gonna make two versions anyways, one with plaza, one without, and then I might make just the plaza alone.

[darn42 1,268]

And my last update for today. The changed the reflections on the base to basic fresnal reflections, but I think it's a bit too clear now, It's looking a bit out of place now. I finally added antenna to the roof Now I just have to add the little bits like the lamps and other roof bits.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

This BAT is very SimFox-esque... reminds me a lot of his later stuff. The glass is absolutely perfect as far as I can tell.

Maybe some subtle edge shading on the roof and roof equipment... to make it seem a little dirtier? IDK I'm struggling to find things to critique with this, it's really brilliant.

[Vlasky 1,803]

It could be just me, but a little subtle weathering that wouldn't catch eye but would contribute to the impression that it is not brand new building would be nice to see. Other than that, perfect job

[darn42 1,268]

Decided to try something new. The lobby is lit up during the day, so I decided I'd try it Adds a bit to render time there, but I think it looks nice.

I'm going to model out more furniture in there, but it was more to see if it would work. What are all your thoughts?

[Bipin 3,402]

Decided to try something new. The lobby is lit up during the day, so I decided I'd try it Adds a bit to render time there, but I think it looks nice.

I'm going to model out more furniture in there, but it was more to see if it would work. What are all your thoughts?

It's a bit late for me, so I'll keep it short. Completely worth it! I'm not sure if this occurs on the real building, but of the blue CHASE banner on the interior lights up, maybe you could add a wee bit of glare at night? Could create some interesting lighting affects.

[darn42 1,268]

Here you guys go. I'm almost done. Gonna add just a bit more personalized grime on the roof, then, if nobody has any other suggestions, I'm going to move onto nightlights. I'm really happy with how this project looks already.

Cockatoo: Thank you so much, that means a lot to me. Also, what would edge shading be? What comes to mind is AO...

Bipin: maybe, I'll play around with it then.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I think the building is too yellow right now. The building is made out of light-medium grey granite.

I think the hue brightness and saturation of the maxis pavers would be a good place to start because those are "light-medium grey".

[gutterclub 2,729]

Def a lot less yellow and more grey, the greyer version is definately better when pasted in a screen shot, other than that its looking great...

[Andrey km 304]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oc7O1eoLTcs&feature=my_liked_videos&list=LLwOHzsyKgNSFKvYgsBjv0sw Look this video. At 3:06 you can see the chase tower at night. By the way, look all the video, it's magnificent!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

I like the grey look better too.

Andrey km the video is good.

[darn42 1,268]

Ok, I have a quick preview for you guys, just for the color and the grunge on the roof.

The grunge is entirely procedural, for the tiles and the wall grunge. I think it looks pretty good. Opinions? Also, the color overall, what do you guys think?

[Darknono35 3,137]

I love this video. Chicago is an awesome City.

I love your building too Darn42, the grey is better for this one. For me your choice on the new texture is pretty good. Eager to see the final result of your work

[darn42 1,268]

Also, andrey, thanks a ton for the video. It's a beautiful video and I am so glad I get to live in that place

[darn42 1,268]

I'm starting to experiment with the nightlights now, how does one make a good night window texture? It's getting too intensive to physically light up the interior of my building all the way. Does anyone have an example of one, and what the process is for making variation and quality of the night windows on the entire building?

[Ion_Cannon 677]

I'm also in agreement that the grey looks much much better, I'm looking forward to placing this in my main CBD when it's released

[Amthaak 1,501]

Yep! Grey is better!

[darn42 1,268]

Update: I was modeling out some spotlights on the roof so I got distracted and started working on nightlights Ignore everything but the reflections pretty much, I was experimenting with a new way to distribute lights that I figured out and I like, and I found out omnis don't add too much to rendertime so I'm just going to use those to light up the inside.

p.s. the lobby is what a 2,000,000 lx light looks like

[raynev1 1,886]

I like the gray better , even though the other looks more like real from the RL pictures . The gray looks way better for SC4 .

Comming along very nice .

[Cockatoo 2,256]

Yeah... I wouldn't use real lights to do the interiors... at least for the sections that aren't the lobby anyway.

They're too hard to control and you'll soon find your problems compounding - I mean can see you're already having problems with leaking light. Whether or not that's an easy fix I can't say... but problems like that are just don't happen when using the alternative. Self-illuminating textures are what most BATers use, IMO they give equal to better results with far less effort and are much easier to manipulate and control. You'll need to shoop together some bright looking stuff and play around with it until you get a nice result for your texture.

Here's one I use sometimes, just a starting point though, you'll need to customise to suit your building.

Also see if you haven’t already.

[Girafe 1,729]

lighting by ground illuminated map will be more appropriated IMHO

[Charlie_Zane 963]

Wow, such amazing detail!

The lights in the lobby are fantastic!

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Yes, I'm still not satisfied with my texutres. Apart from the not-finished textures some parts of the buildings don't even have some yet.

Maybe it isn't that visible, but I still worked on the roof texture. I used another manner this time and I'm like this a bit better than the old evrsion. The colours are more suitable to the RL one. But it's simply to empty and to clean for a realy roof. Although I added some noise to both the diffuse colour and the bump map. I will definitely work on this. And then I'm going to work on the glass texture as well. It looks like water at the moment.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

I see that the texturing is giving you a hard time. Just keep practicing, things that has been bothering me is the window frames, it give the building a great look and in your renders it's not so visable, on building like this it's all about walls and the windows, so those need to be modeled perfectly of near perfect. Another thing is you need curtains in your windows, not all windows but some to give the building a nice look, I notice in the past on a building I have made, when windows a large curtains will help bring out the building a bit more and look more lively and realistic, but this not always true. If you are going to make curtains for the windows the glass will need to be transparent and you will need floors in side the building.

[darn42 1,268]

Small update on the night windows. I haven't had much time to do much lately. I'll get to it more this weekend.

Sky: it's looking good. I have nothing further than what Aaron has already said. Just keep working on it. It will come eventually.

Fyi, something that has helped me tremendously with texturing was learning how to texture smaller scenes realistically. It's only logical that if something looks realistic from up close that it would look so from far away.

edit: I'm thinking about making a texture sheet of lights from 3ds max (modeling and lighting a room then rendering it at the same angle as simcity but 90 degrees, so stuff like tables look more realistic, cause right now there's no space in between the walls and the tables. (something like this)

[art128 4,618]

I'm thinking about making a texture sheet of lights from 3ds max (modeling and lighting a room then rendering it at the same angle as simcity but 90 degrees, so stuff like tables look more realistic, cause right now there's no space in between the walls and the tables.

But will it be able to follow the game's camera angles? If yes, then that would be awesome and could open up more possibilities.

[Vlasky 1,803]

@skyscraper241: So after looking at the RL pictures of your building, I've come to three things I see on the RL building that you'd need to adjust on your own:

1. The color of the windows is definitively somewhat more black tint than blue. I advise to listen to Aaron's advice and add blinds behind some windows of the building. That means your glass will have to be somewhat transparent.

2. Windows on the base have those two opaque (metallic?) sashes on top and bottom whereas your model has them only on bottom portions.

3. Your penthouse seems a little squashed. It would have to be a bit taller.

All of the things that I've talked about above can be seen on the following pictures: pictuire01 picture02 picture03

@darn42: I would advise against scattered lighted windows, and instead making a bigger blocks of lighter windows. Like on many business buildings many consecutive stories and offices are completely lighted and than there are consecutive ones that aren't. Only here and there will you see and isolated case of lighted/dark office. Also there are some reflectors atop of the building's facade that light up the concrete columns of it, I guess. Here are pics of what I'm talking about: picture01 picture02 picture03