Chicago BAT Project

[Jasoncw 11,843]

The RGB Levels sort of control the brightness range of the texture. So, like, 1 is the standard range which is from black to white, like, RGB 0,0,0 to 255,255,255, and making the RGB level higher makes the texture exist in a range brighter than white. This is important because the sky itself is so bright that otherwise it would just overpower it.

Anyway, I've never figured out how to make clouds work right using that method and I've never spent enough time on it to get it to look right but that's basically it.

Another way would be to model a sphere and apply the texture to that. Then delete the bottom half of the sphere. And then right click on it and go to object properties and turn off Cast Shadow, Visible to Camera, and any other setting that's related to lighting or shadows (you don't want the object to interact with the scene in any way other than being reflected).

[IL. 1,043]

The building looks bully

But it's great

[libellibicus 396]

Your new BAT looks as if it's gonna be another corker. I love the curvature on the front of the building.....that will be interesting when it come's to the glass textures!

[Darknono35 3,138]

@darn42: Awesome work darn. Keep the good work

@skyscraper241: Very good, I can't wait to put that building in my cities

[darn42 1,268]

I managed to snag a bit over an hour today. So I worked a bit harder than usual and made some good progress in the roof details.

I also want to show you guys this short tutorial I found on instances.

http://jamiesjewels.typepad.com/jamies_jewels/2011/10/76-3ds-max-quicktip-trackview-copy-and-replace.html

This is how you can replace objects with other objects, something I've always wanted but never looked up.

[Jasoncw 11,843]

The roof junk is looking really nice and the building as a whole is too, but the curved facade doesn't look as smooth as it should.

If I were making it I would probably count the windows, make a plane with the right number of subdivisions, and then use a bend modifier to bend it into the right shape, and then polymodel from there. That would ensure the curve is smooth. You can see the bumps now, but they'll be even easier to see later when the glass is reflective.

[darn42 1,268]

I see what you're talking about. I basically did that to begin with, but instead of using a bend, I used an extrude spline to create a curved facade. I messed up by just a little at first so I had to mess around with soft selection to make the curve better and I think I accidentally dragged the whole facade out :| You can see at the bottom how it no longer lines up with the base. Luckily I saved the spline I made it with so I can fix that really quick by just flattening out the curved facade and path deforming it along the spline so I keep the exact topology and everything lines up. Thanks for pointing that out.

[libellibicus 396]

The roof is looking good. It's coming along really nicely. Keep up the good work

[Darknono35 3,138]

This building will be great . Your roof is really nice.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Looking great, will be awesome omce finsihed...would like to see the others completed too as you've got a couple of classy building awaiting to be finished

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

On the off-chance that anyone wants to nominate the BSP for favorite team:

1. Think of a random user name that you don't plan on nominating for anything. We don't have a team account but if you use our individual names you won't be able to enter them again afterwards, so use some random name instead.

2. Make a note in the "Why do you think they should win this award" box that this is for the BSP.

3. Finish filling out the "Why do you think they should win this award" box, and continue with your nomination as usual.

Apologies for the low BSP output this year. The only consolation is that we delayed our projects because we have big (but also secret ) plans for 2013 and it's been taking a while to get everything together.

I wonder if you have read this post made by Jason to make the Barry Sanders Team the best team for the Trixies. The same is true for our team as we have no official team room. BTW, I used this quote so that I didn't need to copy Jason's post.

[darn42 1,268]

I've got an update for you guys.

Swim season is officially over for me so I am going to be able to make a lot more progress a lot faster No more daily distractions until fall.

Anyways...

I rather like how the glass is so far for the perspective renders. Still some optimization for the sc4 renders yet to go...

I mainly was working on the glass material itself, not the bump map, which is a single noise map atm. Apparently, it's not 2 different types of glass, but, since the building has 2 sets of windows per floor, one of the windows is open to the inside, the other is just against a wall. So the darker ones are the inside and the lighter are the wall that I modeled behind it.

[AndisArt 2,067]

Lookin preeeety pretty, your shiny tower :-))

[kellydale2003 2,276]

Try putting your noise size smaller! Maybe between 2.0 and 2.2!

And try changing your reflection maps to one of these...

If none of them seem to fit like a glove... look for some new ones or try making one yourself (:

The correct hue, gamma, light, etc. is important... and the number of times you tile the reflection map is also important. The more it's tiled the more busy it will look. I'm sure you know all that :b

I just usually find a nice aerial photo with good contrast and edit in photoshop to a desired hue, color, brightness, and what not... then with any abnormalities I dislike that show up in the render I use the Spot Healing Brush and just clean it up really quick. The brush will automatically make an attempt to make it blend in as much as possible, it doesn't need to be perfect either! (:

Other than that, I think you're doing a great job here! Can't wait to see a nice size glass building on the STEX! (:

, K

[maikeli.1 12]

do a reflection Of wacker drive & The Chicago river

[darn42 1,268]

Kellydale: thanks for the pics.

The glass material is done, though I need to mess with the ground plane. I used the second picture you gave me, though it's much to big. It and I've started texturing the rest of the building. Just a bit more to go. I discovered a new way of adding grime to my materials really easily so I'm going to be redoing all my roof junk materials with that.

[darn42 1,268]

 

So this is just a quick update. I'm thinking about making the glass a bit more reflective, which would be more realistic, but I like the strength, artistically, at the moment. Any thoughts?

 

Also, I don't think I'm going to continue with the plaza on this one. Because the plaza walls slope, I can't hold to reality anyways. So that's probably going to be gone next render.

 

Overall, not too much to do on this. Some small details here and there, but I'm gonna try and finish the day view this weekend and get started on night.

 

P.S. some bad news about the night view. I was experimenting some more with the nightmap creation that I tried earlier. It doesn't work, unfortunately. The corners are much too difficult to maintain realism, if applied to anything but the windows it was made from, it loses the entire effect of realism due to stretching, and it's just a lot of work for the drawbacks it has. Good thing, though, is that jason figured out a much easier way to get similar realism. So I'll be trying out that method.
 

[weixc812 509]

Great BAT again!

And I'm wondering how is the chase building going.

[darn42 1,268]

Chase I had to put on hold because I was running out of RAM so that it was crashing on open of the file. I'm going to attempt to fix the problem after Wacker is done. Hopefully, chase will be out somewhat soon after Wacker is.

[PBGV103 729]

Got 32GB here if you ever need help exporting.

[Za 164]

The model itself is looking fantastic. I was particularly curious to see how you were going to make a curved base fit in; the start of the plaza looks good

 

Two things on my mind:

 

The texture on the pillars. It looks a bit as though they're supposed to be granite or something (of course, simfox would tell me at this point not to ask what you intended them to be), but they end up looking [to me] like a continuation of the glass above it.

 

I'm not quite sure that I buy the transition in the reflection between the actual building and the simulated buildings - essentially where the road would be.

[spa 970]

Nice work! I actually really like the glass, but then again, I tend to like a vaguer appearance because you never know what a building's surroundings are going to be once it's in game. One idea, if it were me I would add some stuff around the base. It's awfully bare. Standard furnishings like benches and maybe some planters. Just a thought. If you wanted to ditch the plaza entirely, it would work well without it.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

I was thinking the same thing as Za both with respect to the pillars and the reflections. To me the reflections look like tops of buildings, as though its towering above other buildings and reflecting their rooftops, but that brings me to my second point, which is (and no idea how, or if, you should solve this) but isn't the building sitting right on the water? If you were to put this real life creation in a real life setting, it would be sitting on the water but reflecting buildings. Perhaps as Spa suggested, it shouldn't be so obvious what its reflecting, then it would have more versatility?

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Yes, reddon and spa are right. I thought about the river issue, too. However, the Chicago River isn't that wide so reflection of the building on the other side of the river would still be possible. I personally don't like these obvious reflections. Slightlier reflections with a bit more of blue diffuse colour would look better in my opinion. In this pictures the glass is way more blueish. Although it was taken from a different angle, it's still a very good picture!

 

[PBGV103 729]

I think that picture shows that the two types of glass panels have a greater contrast than what you model has.  I also noticed that about 2/3 up the building the pattern of alternating bands changes.

[Superbacon 380]

Some of those reflections make it look as though it's taller than it actually is.

[Fargo 555]

So will the lots for the Daley Center and Chase Plaza be 8x7?

[Darknono35 3,138]

It's an awesome building, I think you need to re-worked your reflects but it's really realistic keep it up Darn

What about your chase Building ?

[darn42 1,268]

 

Update on the glass. I reworked a lot of it. I am having the same problem that reddon is having atm that is dull reflections. I have tried increasing the self illumination which makes it look worse overall.

 

Anyways, I'm going to render out the other view and then I'm going to pretty much be done on the day view for this unless anyone else has any suggestions. 

 

Fyi, to increase the contrast in the windows, I made 2 different glass materials and on one of them I increased the refracted light multiplier.

 

Under advanced rendering options, indirect illumination, and the fg/gi multiplier. It is usually 1.0 Increasing it increases the power of the light entering the window.

 

[gutterclub 2,729]

I personally think the glass needs to be 'shinier', right now it looks to fuzzy and not quite sharp enough...kinda gmaxy..if you know what I mean? I think the render from 6th Feb was closer?