Chicago BAT Project

[Sgt Pepper 864]

The color of the brick texture looks perfect for it now. The old one was a too saturated yellowish color.

Keep it up! It's going to come out great.

[Cockatoo 2,256]

The bricks might be overscaled but there's no way to keep my details I added to them when I scale it down. I was going to make it in a separate layer but I forgot If it really looks bad with the scale it's at right now I can redo it for a 4th or 5th time but I'd rather not...

Okay, I've taken a closer look at the RL building.

As I suspected the bricks are waaaay over-scaled, far too rough and far too sharp. The grout alone (on your model) is probably 10-15cm wide - more than 10x what it should realistically be.

I know things like this can be frustrating, texturing isn't as straight forward as you might be tempted think it is. Often it takes more time than the modelling itself. But really should try your best to get this right. I'm not a brick expert, so I can't really help here. You should look at the work of the BSP (Jason, Nofunk, Todd) and try to emulate how they do their brickwork. They might even give you a hand if you ask.

The flag literally took like 2 minutes to model btw >.> a noise modifier and a ffd 4x4x4 modifier and I moved some control points around randomly

Well you did a good job. I thought you'd used this technique.

[Xyloxadoria 1,099]

I think this picture should help you with getting the scale of the bricks right. The window shown in the picture is on the ground floor, its the small one directly to the right of the main entryway.

Oh and the picture also reveals a neat little fact about the building. There are bricks from all over the world added into the brickwork of the ground floor. The Tribune intended to do that to show the global reach they hoped to achieve with their paper.

Your limestone is much too rough. Limestone by nature is very smooth. When i made the Palmolive Building, it took me a while to get the brick right, but i was finally able to do it with the Acme Masonry Desginer. Its a neat little program. It creates the base brick, and even makes a bump map for you. Its very useful.

After a little work in photoshop, this was the base texture that was created by the program

Its fairly clean, so afterwards, i overlayed some dirt and grime textures over it using the composite material inside max.

[darn42 1,268]

Ooh, that's cool, thanks for showing me it cockatoo. Wow xylo. Can I use that texture? It's perfect in almost every way

The main reason I used that bump map in the first place was because people were complaining about not being able to tell the difference between bricks.

But for reals, that's a beautiful texture you have there xylo.

I'll have some new texture previews in a bit

  Edited July 13, 2012 by darn42  

[Valyekrin 1]

Very excited about the prospect of a Chicago Bat Team! I love the old look of many of our buildings here in Chicago. The Tribune looks phenomenal so far, keep up the great work!

[darn42 1,268]

Redid the texture. Finally recessed that area you were talking about just a little bit francis. It might not be that noticeable but oh well. Thanks for the texture xylo . I'm not sure if I should add a bit more of a saturated hue to it. Seems a bit white at the moment. What do you guys think?

  Edited July 13, 2012 by darn42  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I think it should match the same color as either the Maxis buildings Wren Insurance, or the Galvin Corp.

Still looking good.

[gutterclub 2,729]

I like this colour, maybe a tiny bit darker but keeping the same hue and try adding a layer of pink in photoshop with opacity at about 3-5%..will you be exporting in SD rather than HD? It's really coming together ,great work!!!!!!

[darn42 1,268]

I was planning on exporting in hd. Atm it takes about 25 minutes for a z6 render and I think it's a building that has a reason to be rendered in hd. If enough people tell me not to, I won't render it HD. But as of now that is my plan.

Here's an update with some details I added at the base. Modeled a basic interior for the cafe. Added advertisements in the boxes (and wgn footage and added flags

  Edited July 13, 2012 by darn42  

[gutterclub 2,729]

Is there any chance you could do 2 versions?? I know it's a big ask but not many people really use HD buildings as HD was designed for small props etc, the problem is that it sacrifices zoom 5 which then goes very blurry and there is more chance of people playing in zooms 1-5 than in zoom 6. I appreciate you want to show off the details, it's your call really..I do wish Simfox never made the HD option and I think he does to.

Anyway, i'm happy to even see such a great building made so carry on

[Francis90b 748]

HD:what you really do with exporting in HD is increasing fourfold or so the filesize of your BAT.

Sure, a BAT is not as heavy as a movie would be, but the game would need to load the file each time it appears in your city - therefore it's best to keep small sizes.

People like HD because they would associate it with "details", and since not everyone goes beyond the surface to discover the details, the implications and the small print, and most honestly don't really care too, you will often see people blabbering about HD "for players who want to showcase a lot of details in their city".

I think that the texture should use some moderate darkening.

I would also say it's not a good idea to add dirt before you have gotten everything else right on texture.

Speaking about dirt, i think that a good way to possibly get good results with it is try understanding how it works.

Look at a pic of this building, and similar buildings (e.g. stone-clad buildings) and look at how dirt is distributed.Observe them closely, then wonder yourself about why dirt had stained certain areas and not others.

I have a feel that maybe it would be a good idea to remove the stonework on that part about which i insisted so much....actually i had it before, but i couldn't articulate it.

The original design had them on it, but i think that your own version would work better without it.

  Edited July 13, 2012 by Francis90b  

[darn42 1,268]

I'm not sure I want to delete the details entirely francis. I feel that that would make that part of the wall look bad and kind of out of context if I did that. I really do wish I had remembered to work in layers this time for the texture. I forget to literally every single time I make a new one and therefore have to make another new one... it's starting to make me mad. I will do as you say in terms of the grime, but I just want to ask what you think is wrong with the dirt I have on my building right now. I did darken the texture and saturated it just a bit more.

Gutter, there was already a bit of pink in it

Also, I guess I can just keep it to sd then. You guys brought up good points. I will do a z6 beauty shot as a preview though

The texture change is pretty subtle but I think it makes a big difference.

[darn42 1,268]

Just bought zbrush btw guys. I finally succumbed to the craving that is zbrush >.> I'll post my first test sculpt here once I do it

[Francis90b 748]

Well, just make a test, then you will be able to tell .

"give a man a fish, and you will feed him one day - teach him how to fish, and you will feed him for his entire life"

I was following this while posting my comment about soot.And the juice is, try understanding why things look the way they look.

For example, would you be able to tell me why a given area should be sooty or clean? Would you be able to make a guessing about it?

Unless you don't, you won't be able to figure out - and anything you would be able to do would be to copy something that already exist without necessarily understanding it's logic, or, even worse, following your personal prejudices.

The comment was therefore general in it's aim - but quite valid as far as soot is concerned.

Speaking about your particular BAT, i could tell youwhat i think should be adressed - but wouldn't it be better to have you think about it, and get something that's valid not just for this BAT, but more in general?

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Francis has made some valid points that should be taken into consideration. There are places that would have grime on a building, like near the roofs or areas where water would slide off or something a long those lines, and then there are areas that wouldn't have such markings or weathering.

To me, it's hard to see the variation in those limestone bricks. It almost looks like a single concrete texture. Maybe the contrast could be a little stronger, just not too much.

Here's a few pics, just for reference if you'd wish to try and get the facade textures to look like this-

Also, I'd like to share, just for fun, two of the entries of that competition of what the building design would have been. It's pretty incredible that they had a contest. Some of the entries were amazing too.

This one was actually recreated by a BATer and is currently on the STEX. I have it in one of my cities too. Anyone should look it up too. It was a great recreation. Just search Chicago Tribune.

This design was pretty bizarre...

[nick13 194]

This design was pretty bizarre...

It has a blimp pad

  Edited July 14, 2012 by nick13  

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

WOW!!! Love what you are doing, I know I will be downloading this bat when it hits the STEX.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Small update for my part

Sorry about the grey box.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Some more progress:

[darn42 1,268]

Looking good sky

[darn42 1,268]

Btw guys, I did a quick tutorial on zbrush to learn the ropes, I said I would post my first test sculpt here so I will. It's not that great but it's my first thing I've done in a very very confusing program lol.

Hopefully I'll get better but that's what I did and learned how to do today. I will work on tribune again tomorrow

  Edited July 16, 2012 by darn42  

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Will that lizard/gecko thing be growable or ploppable?

One thought on Tribune Tower: I know the look of it with all those flags is both spectacular and colourful, but there may be CJers and other players who prefer to have a fantasy-themed region and might not like to have whatever real-world national flag flying huge and perfectly visible over their CBD. Would it be feasible to make the flags as props?

I'm thinking of nofunk's Cadillac Tower with the huge billboard on the blank wall here - he included that billboard as a separate prop file so players could delete it to have the tower without that billboard.

I perfectly understand if you want to leave the flags where they are, I just thought I'd mention it because experience tells me that sooner or later the topic will come up - sooner if nit-picking jerks like me can do nothing but complain and rain on some BATter's parade in the BAT thread, later if someone mentions it in the STEX comments. Seriously, it's not a biggie, just something I'd like to bring to your attention.

[darn42 1,268]

I wouldn't really know how to make them as props or anything like that. Would I just render them seperately?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Yes, that's the idea. You'd render them as separate objects, use the Plugins Manager to make them props, and piece it all together in the LE. You can render the flags at a given offset on the Z axis (height offset) so you only need to shove them to their correct X/Y position on the lot.* Theoretically, both the flags at half height and the large flag on top should be outside of the LOD shell of the building so it should be easy to place them.

_________________________

* Of course, if you rendered them without any height offset, they could be used for other purposes as well - the hanging flags could be used to decorate the walls of pretty much any building, and the big flagpole could be used for plazas, military bases and whatnot. Slightly more work to get them to the correct position, but more versatile. I could totally see a CJer use the hanging flags to dress up an entire street for an Independence Day parade, for example.

[darn42 1,268]

Ok, I think I might try to render them as individual flags, as a group propset with a height offset and the building with both flags and without flags. I'm going to have to message you later when I'm actually doing this on the exact process cause right now it's just words that I can say I understand but I really don't

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Well, if you render the building in two versions, then ppl can just decide what they want to download. No props necessary in this case.

The approach with flags as separate props would be to spare you the trouble of rendering that mammoth twice. In this case you would render it once (without flags), and then you'd render the flags separately and turn them into props. These flag props could then be attached to the building at their correct position in the Lot Editor. Now if a player didn't like to have these flags, he/she could simply delete the flag prop file from his plugins folders, and bang! Tribune Tower in all its glory, but without flags.

Getting props to the exact position where you want them and avoiding conflicts with the LOD of a building can be a bit iffy, so two properly rendered building versions (with / without flags) are the technically "cleaner" solution. However, this would mean you'd have to go through the entire export twice.

[darn42 1,268]

right now the previews are taking like 5 minutes for a z5 tops. So I'm foreseeing a 2 hour long export maybe. Don't think there's much I am going to add that is going to do anything to render times at this point. Right now all I really need to do is work on the grime/limestone I believe. So I think I'll make a flag prop pack for the cjers you said might want to decorate the streets for 4th of july or whatever, the tribune tower without flags, and the tribune tower with flags.

Btw, zbrush is awesome lol. I'm still not very good at it, but I learned a new creation technique called dynamesh. It's as freeform as you can get. It rebuilds the mesh whenever you tell it to, so you can drag out a bunch of polygons, stretch them, rebuild them to be the same density as before, then keep deforming them. It's sweet. It also has this boolean type function you can use with it, except it has no downsides

here's a quick 2 minute thing I did with the booleans and such.

Imagine making something similar to that in max

Btw, if anyone wants me to make them assets for a BAT in zbrush that would be very hard/impossible to make in 3ds max, I would be happy to help them.

  Edited July 16, 2012 by darn42  

[darn42 1,268]

Here's a redone texture. This time I'm goign to make the grime a seperate layer But I just did the base color here. What should I change to the color?

Forgot pic

  Edited July 16, 2012 by darn42  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Beautiful.

I was thinking more of a pinkish gray color, like I said earlier to match with either Wren Insurance or Galvin Corp(two Maxis Buildings).

[Francis90b 748]

IMO, worrying about which maxis building it should match now is more or less like worrying about the car's deodorant flavour even before applying to get the driving license!

.

The first thing would be to match the colour and "texture" of the existing building, then things can be fine tuned so that they could match well with maxis environment.

I think that the limestone might use some more work - darkening, as it doesn't really match the Tribune's colour even in it's brightest pic - and you would do it as it looks "on average", wouldn't you?, and getting the "feel" of the material - it's hard to tell what it is now, as the contrast between blocks or bricks is far too subtle.

Other things that might need working on is the fake (or mansard) roof texture, that's probably too dark, and the metal spandrel texture, for the same reason.

BTW, you're missing a small flat roof on the gap between the base (that is larger) and the rest of the tower.

The base and the main section of the tower are at the same level, the base does not protrude from the tower.But, the bridge and the annex are more recessed, while base is larger, and this creates a gap.Now, that gap is too large to be covered just by stone..there would be a stone parapet, and a small roof behind it.

  Edited July 16, 2012 by Francis90b