Show us What you're Working On

[pclark06 12,073]

Second attempt at Wendy's

[Barroco Hispano 26,938]

I don't remember the exact reason but I think most of us scale the models by 133% (It also helps me keep a lot of details that would otherwise be lost)

SimCity 4 does not use real-world measurements.

[Simmer2 23,831]

The LCBO store is now available here...

 

[Barroco Hispano 26,938]

Coming soon:

Length: 179.5 meters (IRL)

Length: 188.3 meters (IRL)

[Barroco Hispano 26,938]

Some of you may wonder why I never publish something and this is the reason.

I need a way to force the alpha blend 

[Lucario Boricua 7,052]

While some folks are enjoying the festival, the Ministry of Infrastructure desperately needs to expand the Kingdom's power grid to meet frantic growth trends! More information below:

 

 

[mattb325 28,891]

Looks like a NY Wall to Wall prop pack is in the works, after all.....

This is the one next door to the previous BAT

 

 

[Odainsaker 2,137]

14 hours ago, Goldman Sachs said:

That cruiser is 182.2 meters long (Real World Scale) and then I scale them 133% on all axes = 242.326 meters (SimCity 4 Scale) 

This is not quite what is intended to be done when BATters use the 133% scale.  The scale should only be applied to the vertical axis.

 

SimCity uses an axonometric projection to create a parallel perspective, which is a convenient but false perspective.  There are no receding perspective lines, curved retinal surfaces, or vanishing points, so objects seemingly behind, below, or further away are not visually smaller than same sized objects closer, above, or in front.  Additionally, there is foreshortening as lines and objects are angled to the viewer, but because this uniform foreshortening from uniform camera view is not combined with receding or curvilinear perspective, objects become visually distorted, losing their proportions.  The measurements of the model are not actually changed and may even be modeled to real-world exactitude, and we may even abstractly know what the model is doing and how it should look like, but the projection is by definition not real, and so the actual visual perception will always be distorted.  The general appearance of the distortion is dependent on the camera angles, and in SimCity 4 that distortion is most readily apparent with buildings commonly looking vertically squashed in relation to their broadest horizontal view.  In actuality, they are also distorted in depth and width to different, lesser degrees.

It is possible to visually compensate for this distortion by scaling up or down on the different axes be different amounts, but SimCity rotates views and camera angles, changing the required compensation factor on the different axes with each rotation.  It is not possible nor practical to have changing horizontal and depth scales between rendered rotations.  However, the angle of the vertical axis to the viewer is consistent across all four rotations, and so is the only axis we can equally compensated in scale across all four rotations simultaneously.  The vertical axis also has the most noticeable visual distortion from foreshortening, and can produce the best improvement with a single compensatory scale.  Trial-and-error and some mathematics has shown that rescaling the vertical axis alone by 133% alleviates much of the squashed distortion effect of the parallel perspective when compared against the broadest horizontal view.  The rule-of-thumb 133% scale on the vertical axis has largely become a SimCity 4 BAT convention.

 

__________

 

Of course, using a 133% scale on the vertical axis helps to get main façade walls back into proportion on the broadest horizontal views and helps buildings not look squashed, but it offers no compensation for foreshortening distortions of depth.  Usually, this distortion is minor enough to be easily dismissed, and, as we cannot adjust for it given the way BAT rotations work, we might as well not worry with it anyway.

However, I have noticed that with some ships, it can become glaringly noticeable, such as in these views of this beautiful example SketchUp model from 3D Warehouse by Lucas Gustaffson of the RMS Olympic when seen in parallel perspective:

Notice that on the rotation on the left, the bow and forecastle of the ship seem comparatively larger than the stern and aftcastle.  In the rotation view on the right, the stern and aftcastle seem larger than the bow and forecastle.  The funnels even seem shifted forward on the ship on the right, while the ship on the left looks like its hull is getting wider under the bridge or its stern is settling.  It is actually interesting to load the ship in SketchUp and actively rotate it with the orbit tool so that you can see the two ends alternatively shrink or grow in comparative size.  I know that technically all the sizes and proportions in the model are very close to correct, but it drives me nuts seeing that either the bow or the stern "look" too stretched when they are on the ends furthest away because they are being uniformly foreshortened in a parallel projection rather than logarithmically foreshortened in the way one would expect with curvilinear perspective.  I've built enough plastic models and done too many drawings of this class ship that I cannot unsee that stretch.  There is no point changing the scale along the ship's length, because with SimCity 4's uniform parallel perspective camera the effect will remain regardless of the ship's length.

With two-point vanishing perspective, the more dynamic foreshortening along the perspective lines means the stern in the background properly does not take up as much visual area on my monitor screen as the bow in the foreground, and the proportions look more normal:

(Sorry, I don't think any of us could ever "release" this officially on the exchanges, as ships like this Olympic are Lucas Gustaffson's work I think branching out from "Virtual Sailor" game mods, but we can still download, tinker, mod, and them import them into our own personal games ourselves.)

Perhaps, when vertically scaled by 133%, the combination of distortions and compensations hopefully won't be as jarring, as, again, there is not much in BAT we can directly do about it and so we must just live with it.  Also, less head-on or tail-on views have less of the effect, so just make lots of angled models with ships heading in directions other than head-on or always orthogonal.

Hopefully, you won't have quite as startling end disparities in the extracted Wargaming's "World of Warships" game models.  They are already awesome to play with in WoWS and would look beautiful in SimCity, patrolling or bombarding your harbors!  As I'm a sucker for WWII-era Japanese pagoda masts, the vertical scaling is definitely a must for me.

 

[sc4baidu 746]

1 hour ago, mattb325 said:

Looks like a NY Wall to Wall prop pack is in the works, after all.....

This is the one next door to the previous BAT

 

 

[tariely 4,499]

It is a very small achievement compared to all those extraordinary batting prowesses, but I did finally manage to make ortho and diag props out of automata, so let me brag, as an old bitch learning new tricks. 

[Barroco Hispano 26,938]

@Odainsaker Thanks for the explanation but I get weird results when I scale it on a single axis.

 

[art128 4,622]

wasn't the 133% scale intended to be used on buildings and not props?

[T Wrecks 10,210]

It was mainly intended to keep proportions realistic. For example, if you were to model a clock tower and kept the scale at 100% for all three spatial axes, the clock face would end up as a horizontal oval shape rather than the circle that it actually is because the perspective in SC4 causes a visual squishing effect. Likewise, a perfect cube rendered at 100% all around would end up like a cuboid that's as deep as it is wide, but not quite as tall.

When compensating for this effect by scaling the model at 100% on the X axis, 100% on the Y axis and 133% on the Z axis, you can ensure that a cube in 3dsmax will actually end up as a cube in game, and a circle on any vertical surface (such as a clock face, a porthole on a ship, a circular window on a building, or a wheel of a car) will actually look like a circle and not like an oval.

Prop or building doesn't really matter because it's interchangeable anyway - you could take any building and turn it into a prop, or vice versa. It's all a bunch of FSH textures showing a pre-rendered model painted over an invisible S3D LOD shell, ultimately.

Thing is, stuff like this becomes more noticeable with bigger structures. When your slender skyscraper with tall windows ends up looking somewhat stocky and squashed and having square windows, you immediately see that something is off somehow. A car, for example, isn't that tall anyway at game scale, so the squishing effect isn't nearly as noticeable. This may be how the impression "useful for buildings, but not for props" was created - typically, smaller ancillary objects are modeled as props, and the big central structure as building. As outlined in the previous paragraph, however, this is merely the most frequent case but by no means a hard techical rule.

[Barroco Hispano 26,938]

To be honest, I have never faced that problem. I only scale the models by 133% at all angles to preserve details that would otherwise be lost or look weird and also to make them look more in line with the height of the sims, cars, trees, Roads, etc

If you want you can download the building here (.FBX Format):

https://1drv.ms/u/s!AizKPlOWj9nmgR5PlmV5r8S8mR8r?e=w8rOXa

 

[RRetail 7,912]

Almost done! Big thanks to @kingofsimcity for another set of new textures.

[Evanjs 602]

1 hour ago, RRetail said:

Almost done! Big thanks to @kingofsimcity for another set of new textures.

Can’t wair

[bladeberkman 720]

A work in progress. RHWx magic!

[pclark06 12,073]

I don't like how the red of the Wendy's doesn't match with the sign so I am going to re-export but everything else is good to go.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

22 hours ago, Goldman Sachs said:

To be honest, I have never faced that problem.

Theoretically, exporting a perfect cube with a perfect circle on each face should be enough to illustrate the phenomenon. With everything left to 100% (or scaled uniformly along all three axes), you should see the squashing effect in game, i.e. the circle on top should still look circular, but the circles on the walls should look squashed.

The approach to counter this phenomenon and the exact amount of compensation have been subject to lengthy debates, some of which you can find here, here, and here, for example

While some of the articles are really excellent and well-founded in the analysis part, my personal stance is that going too deeply into these matters and debating about fractional digits is a slippery slope that can end in religious wars if you are not careful. It's good to know that the effect exists, but ultimately it's your model and your decision in what way it looks best.

[tariely 4,499]

Tariely Productions ^TM proudly present the Modular Regional Airport, soon to come to a STEX near you (will have to be tested by independent contractors first...). I added some stuff to the original, (SimCityFuturist's ; he did all the really heavy lifting of putting the airport per se together) but I tried not to add too much to the already large dependency list -- but remember, this puppy occupies a whole medium tile in width, if not in depth -- don't worry, there is a lot of place left to countrify and MMP to one's heart's content. It cannot be functional, I am told, the SFBT/ANdreas Airport Shuttle will have to do to satisfy the demand, but I hope the freight and passenger rail will be functional.

Here are some pictures (lightly dressed-up), from east to west : Freight station

Fire station & Underground rail (a subway line can be added by just driving it into the terminal):

End of terminal :

Terminal 2 :

Terminal 1 part 1 :

Terminal 1 part 2 (west) :

Control tower and runway 1

aaaaand... of course, with night lites  : (everything blinks happily in-game)

Overviews :

[Simmer2 23,831]

SM2 Markham Train Station Coming soon to a railway near you. Just have a few odds and ends to complete.
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Simmer2

[mattb325 28,891]

2nd building down for the NY prop pack.....

 

[airman15 4,113]

47 minutes ago, mattb325 said:

2nd building down for the NY prop pack.....

 

This will call for another downloading binge. RIP my downloads folder!

[gutterclub 2,729]

2 hours ago, mattb325 said:

2nd building down for the NY prop pack.....

 

Love this, and the other NYC building...really awesome!

[sc4baidu 746]

6 hours ago, Simmer2 said:

SM2 Markham Train Station Coming soon to a railway near you. Just have a few odds and ends to complete.
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Simmer2

very nice!

[sc4baidu 746]

6 hours ago, mattb325 said:

2nd building down for the NY prop pack.....

 

wow, i like this

[Barroco Hispano 26,938]

If the alpha blend will work correctly in SimCity 4 I could do things like this...

[kschmidt 6,223]

Quaryaba City State !

Looking for some city gameplay away from SimCity 4, CSKL didn´t inspire me with loading times meeting that of SimCity 4. City State something like exploration economic model, Sandbox for now as SimCity 4, build cities with different credentials !

This looks like a reasonable map. Some larger area at the edges and middle and lots of water around, interesting set out !

Sincerely yours,

kschmidt

[Lucario Boricua 7,052]

Land use planning efforts in the Kingdom of Rota continue!

 

Presenting...

 

֍ KINGDOM OF ROTA ֎
MINISTRY OF NATURAL RESOURCES   &   MINISTRY OF CULTURAL HERITAGE
Office of Land Conservation           &              Office of Site Preservation

 

First draft for the designation of natural and cultural heritage preserves!! The ones designated as proposed (yellow tint) are open to amendment.

 

And don't forget to vote on the power grid poll, the Kingdom aspires to a bright future!!

 

[Simmer2 23,831]

This time I re-created Stonehenge as it was in 3600 BC (according to some archeologists). Also shown is the map I used to make the model.

If there is interest in the lot I will release it.
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Simmer2