Chicago BAT Project

[darn42 1,268]

Thanks for pointing those out. I'm going on vacation the next few days so I won't get to it yet, but I will once I get back. Your first point was me forgetting something If you are talking about the fence kinda thing on the 2nd terrace, I had modeled it using loft and symmetry, I believe that it would be accurate if I had remembered to put the little divider in between the two symmetrical parts.

Your second point on the risers going up more, again, that was me forgetting something lol. When I was making them I was going to do that, but then I got distracted by some weird occurance that I had no clue how it got there.

that ^ spent a long time fixing it and I think I just forgot because of that. I'll definitely go back and fix that.

For the windows, this time it was poor observation I modeled the details on the side of it with a less than perfect picture. I only had view of some of it and modeled the bottom portion with my own creativity cause I couldn't see it well. Now you show me that, it's kinda obvious that it is a window XD.

For the spandrels, I'm not sure if it will be easier for me to texture them or to remodel them. I guess it could be good practice texturing

Btw, thank you so much for being so straightforward and honest with your advice. I'd hate for this BAT to be less than my best.

[Francis90b 748]

Actually, it's nice to hear how nicely how you took my criticism .

I would add another thing concerning the fence-like stonework - not all of it's parts are of the same thickness - most of detailing is confined in an area delimited by an arch below it, and a cornice above it - those two elements are slightly thicker than the rest.

You might also need to made them further thicker so to make the difference between them and the rest of the fence noticeable in renders - overall, you might probably need to do a few tries before getting the right balance.

(I post a lot of pics so if there's a problem with one of them, there are the others - also, it's hard to find pics that really represent those details - so, the more you have, the more you can get a close idea about what's going on)

Speaking about the textures, giving the illusion of relief on the spandrels might be easier than you think - you might look at two tutorials by Jasoncw, first is about using textures to represent details, and second is about glass - both use methods you might find useful.

  Edited July 2, 2012 by Francis90b  

[darn42 1,268]

The pic is not valid I guess. I was thinking you were talking about a different portion of the building when I was talking about the fence thing. I'll look into that also, but the first terrace's fence might be a bit hard to redo. I'll do my best though. Might actually model the bat there while I'm at it.

edit: I opened the image url and found the pic. HOLY CRAP where was this when I needed it? This is a perfect picture of it and I couldn't find it in all my searching >.> thank you so much for posting that. It will be much easier to redo the fence now.

editedit: was that taken from the intercontinental hotel?

  Edited July 2, 2012 by darn42  

[Francis90b 748]

So, which area did you define as "the fence thing"? - and, more important - how would you call the stonework i've shown in those pics?

EDIT:Yep, the pic (that continues to get broken) it was probably taken from there - it's pointing south, and there are no tall buildings between it and the tribune - therefore, it was taken from the next building north of the tribune, that's to say, the intercontinental hotel, lol.

Since the website from which i took the photo apparently makes alot of fuss about not allowing to directly access to it's pics (they want you to access them through their website apparently), then i will post the link to the website there:

http://www.starthere...ries/index.html

http://www.starthere...cago/index.html

  Edited July 2, 2012 by Francis90b  

[darn42 1,268]

At first I thought you meant the circled area, and then realized you meant the area pointed to by the arrow

am I correct?

[Francis90b 748]

Yep, you are.

[zahrul3 471]

At this level of detail, it makes me wonder how long does it take to do a SINGLE render, and if anyone downloading has a computer powerful enough to render stuff like these

[gutterclub 2,729]

Once the BAT is rendered that is it, there are no minimum specs to use a BAT and it a detailed BAT is no different to a plain box once you are in game so all this talk of lagging, speed, download times is irrelevant. The only thing with a larger BAT is the file size and that is it.

As the the brick texture, I think its a little dark and orange at the moment..looking down on a clear day it would be a lot lighter, like the picture Francis provided. I'd look at some of Jasons BATs for colour guide, maybe like his recent 1x3 office building. Great work though, keep going!

[darn42 1,268]

Zahrul, atm it takes about... 2-5 minutes for a z6 render. Right now there are 2.4 million polygons in my scene.

And yea, I agree gutterclub. The texture I'm using is not orange at all and somehow it's becoming orange on the BAT :S I'll see how to fix it later.

[Francis90b 748]

Generally speaking, the BAT often makes textures appear lighter and more saturated than they really are.

If you want to get a given colour in render, then you should consider about doing it's texture more grey and more dark.

[zahrul3 471]

What about trying some limestone/greystone texture to match the RL building? Most greystone textures are... grey so they should look right in the render. I also noticed your BAT is missing sash windows

[T Wrecks 10,209]

You could take a simple cube and try strips of different texture variations on it, then render and photoshop the result into an in-game pic. This should be rather fast, you could check out various textures at once, and you might get a feeling for brightness/hue/saturation values that translate well into SimCity. Then you can try the best textures on the actual BAT. Just a spontaneous idea, maybe a stupid one. I still thought I'd mention it - guess it can't hurt.

[darn42 1,268]

I'm back

Ok, so I got home late tonight so I only got a little bit done, namely I fixed the fence I believe.

Took a little bit, but I think it's pretty close to real life now. I haven't completely finished it yet... still have to do the weird bat thing hanging, and I just realized I made the lower arch too thin, but the hard part is done.

  Edited July 5, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

z6 preview of Tribune. I edited textures and fixed those spots francis mentioned (i hope). I hate texturing quite a bit and I spent a while on it today so I'm gonna take a break from texturing for a few hours. Tell me anything else you notice that I should fix. Also, tell me anything about the textures I currently have. (I know the green part is ridiculous, I will fix that)

I think I'm going to go back and edit the brick texture so that some individual bricks are different colors. Does anybody know an efficient method for that in GIMP? If not I can just experiment/paint it anyways.

[Francis90b 748]

VERY nice!

You might check also what you called "the 2nd terrace crown", that is not the crown where you worked so far but this one.

I have a feel that maybe some measures might be incorrect there, and there's a window on the lower part of it (hard to notice and this is real nit-picking, i know )

I will look for pics about the strange thing atop of the area that connects the annex with the main body of the building

I will also try to look for pictures of the roof.

Don't get discouraged with texturing - what you have as far as limestone is concerned is far better than your previous attempt - so just keep up .

BTW...someone tried to model it with LEGO, would you believe it?

EDIT:Check the back of the tower above the rectangular annex. You will see some parts of the facade are actually blind walls, and not all the windows have the shape-size that is common everywhere else on building.

(link)

  Edited July 5, 2012 by Francis90b  

[darn42 1,268]

Sweet, thanks again francis.

I will definitely fix that annex thing. The blind walls and windows are blaringly obvious to anyone that knows the building so I will definitely fix that.

What I don't know is what you mean by the window on the second terrace crown thing... I have windows there already if I know what you're talking about, and if I don't I'm stumped what you're talking about.

If you can in fact find good pictures of the roof I would love that. I basically made up the very top roof that I have atm. I saw one picture of a small model and some other blurry aerial someone gave me and that's about it. I have given up on finding pictures of it, and if you can't find any good ones either, I'm satisfied to leave it like that.

and last thing: that lego version is CRAAAZZYYYY!

Seriously though, I'm glad that you are taking the time to critique this so seriously. I am really thankful for that francis. After a while I'm sure I won't be as happy you are so thorough but the harsher one criticizes something, the better it can get.

[Francis90b 748]

I called "diamond" this shape:

The stone lines in the area i've highlighted create one of those "diamonds" - i think maybe it looks slightly too large on your BAT, and it should be smaller.

I should have no other objections to make - so far.No, seriously, i don't think there's anything else that needs to be changed modelling-wise.

Speaking of the roof, that's all what i have.

Unfortunately it's amost nothing, but at least you can see there are some small brown circles, and you can guess what they are.

EDIT:Here's what they are:

  Edited July 5, 2012 by Francis90b  

[darn42 1,268]

Sweet. I'll change that next time I work on tribune. I'm glad I got it pretty much good now

In my future BATs after tribune I really look forward to your criticisms and I hope you'll be there to help me then, too.

[wolverine 12]

I'm very impressed. I've lived downtown for 3 years I've always wanted to try and model a building. Trib Tower is rather ambitious. Nice work!

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Wow, fantastic progress here! With someone as thorough and observant (and good at digging up pictures) as Francis providing input and a BATter like you on the model, I guess there's no need to worry.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Looking good so far, I would possibly up the contrast of the limestone to bring out the brick work a little more as it still has a clay model feel to it. I'd take a look at a few of Jasons BATs that Simfox redid and released, Briscoes etc. The windows are the next challenge, looking forward to more progress, you are making great strides!

[zahrul3 471]

It seems that you're missing sash windows and the detail in between floors.

Also, for the textures, just try looking for limestone textures and make them into same-sized bricks, vary them and make them tiled. You might as well add some grout in between the bricks to make it realistic. The glass in real-life is not blue, its tinted greyish-black and is quite transparent, and this means the model needs to be hollow, if you have the time to do that.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

About the roof, maybe this will help. Play around with the options you have.

[gutterclub 2,729]

You do not need to make the windows transparent or make the building hollow..if you don't want to that is? The Windows can be faked, or use the reflecting a city scape on a flat pane method. I'm pretty sure Aaron, Nofunk, Jason all fake the glass to a certain extennt..just try a few methods to see what gives you yhe best effect and ask around if you are unsure

[darn42 1,268]

The building was hollow to begin with so that takes care of that, also, there are already floors every floors so I can just bump up transparency on the window material if I wanted and it would be fine. Also, I know I haven't put in the detail in between floors. Another thing, I guess I should have been playing around with layers, but is there any way to just bump up the contrast on the grout of an image rather than everything else if it's all one layer?

What are sash windows?

[Francis90b 748]

The windows on this rowhouse are sash windows:

According to Wikipedia:

"A sash window or hung sash window is made of one or more movable panels or "sashes" that form a frame to hold panes of glass"

If you look at the lower part of this pic, you can see that most of the windows on the tower are sash windows.

The narrow windows that you can see on the lower area of this pic are also probably sash windows.

You modelled the frame for some of your windows, but not for all of them - in fact, you "forgot to model the sash windows", as Zahrul said.

Please let me edit this to show you the difference with a little thing i'm doing.

EDIT:

So, here's a simple model, representing two commercial buildings, rotting somewhere on my HD.

Zoom 6 and zoom 5 pic - building "A" has the frame of the sash window modelled, while building "B" has just a plane that should represent it's glass.

You see the difference - on building "A" there's something i would define as "windows", on building "B" there's just a blue hole...

It looks like the thin, narrow sash windows that make up the building's fenestration from the base up to the crown are modelled like i model the windows on "building B", while they should look like what i did on "model A"

Glass - i think you would go better by just using opaque (not trasparent) glass and a reflection plane all around the building, that should represent the environment that should be reflected by the glass of your building.

The plane itself should not be visible in render(check it's "object properties" panel and make sure it's not "rendereable").

  Edited July 6, 2012 by Francis90b  

[darn42 1,268]

Yea, I know how to make the render plane. Thanks for explaining the difference, it appears to be a huge one I think that'll definitely improve the look of the whole building if I do that.

[IL. 1,043]

Very nice modeling

I like it very much.

You're not done with the textures right?

Have you thought to make another version of the building, but without that black roofed area?

btw, did you cut the black background of the preview with photoshop or it just appear like that for you?

I can't wait to see your BAT done and uploaded

[Francis90b 748]

Il. , the background had been cut, it allows you to just copy and paste the image in an in-game screenshot to check how the building would look like in game.

Darn42, BTW, would you mind to offer a Z5 and a Z4 preview of your tower - showing it's south side?

  Edited July 6, 2012 by Francis90b  

[darn42 1,268]

IL: Actually, when you just hit the save button from the preview the background becomes white/it becomes cut. Idk if it actually becomes transparent because I've never saved it as anything besides jpeg or png. Also, the background in 3ds max is normally gray if you just take a screen capture.

Francis: By south side do you mean the front?