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[+Guest 760649]

Warehouse with loading crane bridge. 4x4.

Divided into 2x4 / loading crane / 1x4. So that it can be used either TE for rail or road or as a stand-alone warehouse with a loading zone.

 

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

@tariely I don't remember what dependencies I used and I also don't remember where the file is. 

2008 Toyota Tundra:

2018 Toyota Tundra TRD:

2002 Mack Granite:

2020 Subaru BRZ tS:

2021 Bentley Mulliner Bacalar:

2017 Ford GT:

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

This is what a house looks like using the real world scale and then rescaling it 33% larger on all axes.

ZOOM 6:

ZOOM 5:

The problem will come when I want to make w2w buildings, I mean, some buildings are 17 meters wide in real life and I want to make it 33% bigger on all axes and make it proportional to my cars, sims, props (Which also are 33% larger). what I would get is that the building would not fit into the game grid (16mx16m or 32x32).. I don't know how to deal with it.

I have all these buildings so I must find a solution

 

[rsc204 21,866]

1 hour ago, Barroco Hispano said:

I have all these buildings so I must find a solution

If you scale all dimensions by 33%, all your buildings will look wrong, because SC4's perspective squashes how we view objects on the z-axis (height). Therefore to look right, we have to compensate for this with how we model things.

It doesn't matter that this scale works for other, notably not very tall objects. The inherent way that the Isometric view in SC4 works means, real life +33% on the z-axis only, is about as close to perfect as you are going to get. Anything else will look wrong, but it won't take you very long to figure that out for yourself.

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

@rsc204 I can't stand how buildings look when scaling only the z-axis, it completely changes the real shape of a building (As you can see in the image). I don't know why I should force a circle to look like a circle in SimCity 4 (It's unrealistic). My problem is how to make the w2w buildings fit into the game grid without damaging the actual shape of the building but keeping the proportions.

I can't ask for miracles from the game (for example to be able to put the roads where I want like in cities skylines) so I think the solution is to model buildings from scratch taking into account the SimCity 4 grid and forgetting about the real scale of a building.

 

[Flann 1,709]

7 minutes ago, Barroco Hispano said:

@rsc204 I can't stand how buildings look when scaling only the z-axis, it completely changes the real shape of a building (As you can see in the image). I don't know why I should force a circle to look like a circle in SimCity 4 (It's unrealistic). My problem is how to make the w2w buildings fit into the game grid without damaging the actual shape of the building but keeping the proportions.

 

I found @rivit's thoughts on vertical scaling to be very interesting.  Nevertheless, 133% Z scaling is, for better or worse, the standard.  Even if it's technically unnecessary to scale Z, it might be practically necessary to make things fit within the paradigm of 133% Z scaling.

 

[+Guest 760649]

20 minutes ago, Barroco Hispano said:

@rsc204 I can't stand how buildings look when scaling only the z-axis, it completely changes the real shape of a building (As you can see in the image). I don't know why I should force a circle to look like a circle in SimCity 4 (It's unrealistic). My problem is how to make the w2w buildings fit into the game grid without damaging the actual shape of the building but keeping the proportions.

I can't ask for miracles from the game (for example to be able to put the roads where I want like in cities skylines) so I think the solution is to model buildings from scratch taking into account the SimCity 4 grid and forgetting about the real scale of a building.

 

You only scale the Z-axis because otherwise the buildings look compressed from the game perspective. If you change all three axes, your buildings are bigger, but still look compressed. The only advantage is that you can see more details.

[11241036 5,115]

2 hours ago, Barroco Hispano said:

The problem will come when I want to make w2w buildings, I mean, some buildings are 17 meters wide in real life and I want to make it 33% bigger on all axes and make it proportional to my cars, sims, props (Which also are 33% larger). what I would get is that the building would not fit into the game grid (16mx16m or 32x32).. I don't know how to deal with it.

I have all these buildings so I must find a solution

Well, I'm not a batter, but how about just putting two buildings together? I've relotted a lot of W2W content where creators just solved the issue that way, by creating a second filler building. If you get a building with a width of 20 m after rescaling, you just need to put in a building with the width of 12 m to complete a lot with a width of 2 tiles.

Great work with the small house, BTW. I'd also really like to see some new W2W content with style.

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

@11241036 I've thought about that option but there will come a point where I will have to make a full block of buildings to make it fit into the game grid.

@WolfZe What I am saying is that this is how they look in real life, the only solution is to change the angle of the camera but that is impossible (For me it doesn't even look compressed).

@Flann He is aware that if we rescale the cars or boats only on the z-axis we would realize how unrealistic it would look.

long ago it was decided to scale buildings on the z-axis only and I don't mean to say that all modelers should re-export their models or even take my opinion into account. I open the debate again because I have a lot of buildings and I wanted to know the arguments in favor of scaling the objects on the z axis and also to imply that all my content that I will eventually export will seem very large compared to the rest of the content created by others users.

btw, sorry for my english.

 

[EffTheGrid 3,726]

1 hour ago, Barroco Hispano said:

My problem is how to make the w2w buildings fit into the game grid without damaging the actual shape of the building but keeping the proportions.

They would fit almost perfectly on a diagonal! A 16m plot is 22.6m across diagonally. 

This is only a solution if you want an entirely diagonal game lol. But I think many people (including myself) would be delighted

Edit: I'm serious. Those W2Ws would be perfect for my downtown district!

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

@Sloppyjoemess Those 107 buildings that I posted in my other comment are almost completely ruled out because I didn't make them myself and it's very difficult to make them fit the game (by my standards, obviously).

[rsc204 21,866]

1 hour ago, Barroco Hispano said:

I don't know why I should force a circle to look like a circle in SimCity 4 (It's unrealistic).

Is it? The logic of what looks right only applies when you understand how a false-3D game distorts the image we see, due to the method in which it is rendered. Altering models to compensate is necessitated by this technical detail and as you say, we can't change it.

It's no good showing preview renders from 3DS Max, to truly see how it will really look, you must test your models in-game. Of course if not one pixel of other models are going to be in your cities, it won't matter so much at least in the sense of mismatching scaling between existing and your models.

How you decide to make your models is your business, but this is not the first time such discussions have been had on the matter. There are technical arguments as to the precise nature of scaling, of which no one answer is right. However, simply ignoring the Isometric nature of the game and failing to account for it whilst modelling, will make everything you create look squashed height-wise in game, that's not an opinion but a fact. Because your creations are being distorted when rendered.

I'd love to link to some of these discussions, but I don't have all night to dig through the archived BAT threads to find them and DuckDuckGo is not helping.

On 11/10/2020 at 12:12 AM, dragonsteincole said:

Added some variants to the Intercity carriages (1st class (Replacement), 2nd class, Buffet and Sleeper) and adjusted the Class 91 model a little more. Added night-lighting to each carriage variant too, to get a set i'm quite happy with.

I'd be begging you for 125s and class 158 sprinters, if only SC4 wasn't so terrible with double-header locos. Due to this limitation, I've always felt the 225 (class 91), is probably the best candidate for a modern-ish British inter-city train. I will definitely be using these new trains in my cities at some point, they look great and there really is a huge lack of high-quality British content, Automata or otherwise.

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

@rsc204 @rsc204 I have exported a lot of ships for my friend @Dreadnought  using real world scale and a lot of vehicles for my personal use. I have not noticed at any point a major difference between 3ds max and SimCity 4 beyond the compression of the FSHs that degrades the quality of the BAT.

It looks as is and as it does in 3ds max and without the need to rescale it on the z axis.

Here I use the 133% scale on all axes

They look just like in real life, neither squashed nor taller.

Following that logic, why does SimCity 4 only compress buildings?

 

 

[rsc204 21,866]

26 minutes ago, Barroco Hispano said:

Following that logic, why does SimCity 4 only compress buildings?

It doesn't, it is an intrinsic part of rendering things isometrically, the technology of the in-game rendering engine. If your models do not fit this system, they will not look correctly proportioned, end of story. As a BATter myself, I am only all too aware of this.

Now, if you've not made many taller objects thus far, it may not have come up as a problem. But try ignoring the z-height on a tall skyscraper and it's going to be very obvious. Like I said, if you don't re-scale things this way, you will see the problem eventually. I wish I could find the last time this was discussed, because there was a great number of skilled modellers all chiming in to the discussion and lots of useful information to support this.

But I promise you, with those medium-density style apartment blocks, you are going to need to reconsider your scaling or it won't look right. I'm not trying to convince you, simply pointing it out.

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

@rsc204 I'll export the tallest building I have and see what happens.  

I remember reading several threads about the sc4 scale but now it is almost impossible to find them.

[rsc204 21,866]

I'm finding search engines ever more useless as the only results they want to give you involve buying crap. But, and I really don't have the time to spend all day discussing it, this is a very widely held method regarding the height-scaling of BATs, not simply my opinion. Whilst the amount of scaling is a source of debate, I've yet to hear from anyone who couldn't see why it's necessary. I'm always starting with 133% height, then if I don't like the looks, tweaking dimensions a little from there. But of course, if your BATs must fit for W2W environments, you need to have the dimensions set in stone before you make the models.

[Dreadnought 8,231]

@Barroco Hispano

Yo, guy --

Keep me posted on the results your test skyscraper.

[EffTheGrid 3,726]

1 hour ago, Barroco Hispano said:

@rsc204 I'll export the tallest building I have and see what happens.  

I remember reading several threads about the sc4 scale but now it is almost impossible to find them.

You might not have to.

Here's Darknono35's General Motors Building. Vesions 2 and 1 respectively. Version 2 is on the left, and looks properly scaled. On the right, version 1 may not have been rescaled on the Z axis. This is not my work so I can't confirm, but I believe this easily illustrates the difference scaling on the Z makes at greater heights

Personally, I'm curious about your motivations to rescale all axes--are you unhappy with the scale of the game's grid in general?

This reminds me of having the wrong models for train sets as a kid and cramming O scale models into an HO scale world... not sure if anyone relates haha 

[ohdude 2,353]

I love CN Tower,

left: maxis CN Tower; right: @kellydale2003 Cn Tower.

Considering the measurement of maxis, the kelllydale2003 version of the tower should have more than 600 meters tall.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

16 hours ago, WolfZe said:

Warehouse with loading crane bridge. 4x4.

Divided into 2x4 / loading crane / 1x4. So that it can be used either TE for rail or road or as a stand-alone warehouse with a loading zone.

 

THIS, I want!!!

[Flann 1,709]

Getting closer to releasing my road roundabout T21s.  Evergreen version is complete with about 40 trees, and I've completed some of the seasonal variants.  Each tree requires its own T21, its much more work.  So far I've added 6 ash trees.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

Scheissemacher Manor

[BartonThinks 3,416]

10 hours ago, Sloppyjoemess said:

You might not have to.

Here's Darknono35's General Motors Building. Vesions 2 and 1 respectively. Version 2 is on the left, and looks properly scaled. On the right, version 1 may not have been rescaled on the Z axis. This is not my work so I can't confirm, but I believe this easily illustrates the difference scaling on the Z makes at greater heights

Personally, I'm curious about your motivations to rescale all axes--are you unhappy with the scale of the game's grid in general?

This reminds me of having the wrong models for train sets as a kid and cramming O scale models into an HO scale world... not sure if anyone relates haha 

Just for comparison's sake, here are some photos of the real-life building to demonstrate the dimensions:

 

@Barroco Hispano I'm really hoping you get the chance to bring all of those buildings into the game. They look fantastic.

[BartonThinks 3,416]

Also, I speak just enough German to understand the name of that lot...

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

@ohdude @Sloppyjoemess @BartonThinks You do not have to worry, my buildings will not be smaller, on the contrary, they will be longer and wider.

[+Guest 760649]

Car repair shop 4x2

 

[+Guest 760649]

Warehouse C 4x4 Landmark TE I-M Jobs

 

[+Guest 760649]

[+Guest 760649]

9 hours ago, BartonThinks said:

Also, I speak just enough German to understand the name of that lot...

Me too.....

[Barroco Hispano 26,933]

2011 Toyota FJ Cruiser:

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