Show us What you're Working On

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

Finally, I have this whole thread to myself!

North La Veaux in Bayou Saint Jack-

[Dreadnought 8,231]

Yo, guys --

Some more shots from the Bremerhaven Naval Station -- close-ups this time.  You guys really need to see the level of detail on this stuff!

This is a small dock inside the Munitions basin of the harbor.  Ships come here to replenish their ammunition and powder -- lighters and tugs deliver ammo here -- and even take some to other locations -- possibly barge-to-ship replenishment.  These lighters are waiting their turn to unload at the Munitions Wharf.  On the left, you see lighters loaded with white canvas bags carrying two bagged charges each.  Toward the center are three older barges carrying large caliber shells, with 6 inch shells in the top barge.  Down front, there is an old steam lighter with cargo booms waiting to take one of the powder lighters under tow.  The rickety old dock comes from the old PEG Cannery lot -- with AP's small boats alongside.  The roads and paved areas are Paeng's grunge Concrete.  The dockside control office is from the old T-Wrecks Historical Harbor series.  All those ship fenders, rope coils, channel buoys, anchors, and all those sailors are by AP -- note the ones loading into trucks !  In the lower right, you can just see the bow of a German armored cruiser.  Just for the record -- there is precious little in this picture that wasn't made by @AP !  My MANY THANX for his dedication.

146_Bremerhaven Munitions Dock

 

[20huskies 4,699]

And so W2W Specialty Nightlife Pack 02 begins with Ukrainian themed night club "Club Kyiv."

Thinking some in the category of "how could this go wrong when mixing alcohol?" including axe throwing bar, a trampoline bar, and of course the Holodeck, the official pastime of Star Fleet.

[CityNut607 622]

Been sllloooowwwwllllyyy working on my new region of Ottawa! Ottawa is home to Alexandria which is my newest build. Only have 5 active tiles currently. 

 

Transport Map:

Still trying to come up with a CJ for Alexandria. WIP... 

--CityNut607

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

[Barroco Hispano 26,936]

Moar sims

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

La Veaux-

[davide1983it 5,426]

wO

On 21/8/2022 at 9:51 AM, art128 said:

@matias93 @Jasoncw & all, thanks for the input. I guess it really comes down to real size vs SC4 scale to make things look right.

Here's another pic comparing the size of the 4.5m, real size and 133%

I think the 133% might be the way to go on this one.

 

Cool, i use 136 % for my building

[TheMurderousCricket 5,109]

On 26.08.2022 at 2:47 PM, Haljackey said:

Also crazy- this thread just turned 10 years old. Time sure flies!

It has aged well. 

[ohdude 2,353]

I'm working on some maps that I wanted to have a long time ago. This map of 60x88 km is about an area of the south of Chile wich includes Calbuco Volcano and Osorno volcano.

 

[matias93 7,535]

34 minutes ago, ohdude said:

I'm working on some maps that I wanted to have a long time ago. This map of 60x88 km is about an area of the south of Chile wich includes Calbuco Volcano and Osorno volcano.

I had never noticed it before, but you might have some issues with that map, because both lakes are lowered to sea level to allow them to be filled with water, causing their coastline to be replaced with cliffs 50 and 240 metres tall for Llanquihue and Chapo, respectively. You might want to either fill them back to their original height and use ploppable water or canals, or to terraform their shores into a more soft slope.

[ohdude 2,353]

2 hours ago, matias93 said:

I had never noticed it before, but you might have some issues with that map, because both lakes are lowered to sea level to allow them to be filled with water, causing their coastline to be replaced with cliffs 50 and 240 metres tall for Llanquihue and Chapo, respectively. You might want to either fill them back to their original height and use ploppable water or canals, or to terraform their shores into a more soft slope.

Well, the program I use to get the greyscale map shows me the differences you mention. I solve the issues using photoshop or gimp, softening color borders and accepting the limits that SimCity 4 has. To me, there's no option to have a lake over the sea level in a big region (60 x 88 km map!!!!). It is simply too much work making the Llanquihue lake with ploppable water and, in my opinion, not very aesthetic.

[justforfun 7,929]

On 8/28/2022 at 4:18 PM, Dreadnought said:

Yo, guys --

Some more shots from the Bremerhaven Naval Station -- close-ups this time.  You guys really need to see the level of detail on this stuff!

This is a small dock inside the Munitions basin of the harbor.  Ships come here to replenish their ammunition and powder -- lighters and tugs deliver ammo here -- and even take some to other locations -- possibly barge-to-ship replenishment.  These lighters are waiting their turn to unload at the Munitions Wharf.  On the left, you see lighters loaded with white canvas bags carrying two bagged charges each.  Toward the center are three older barges carrying large caliber shells, with 6 inch shells in the top barge.  Down front, there is an old steam lighter with cargo booms waiting to take one of the powder lighters under tow.  The rickety old dock comes from the old PEG Cannery lot -- with AP's small boats alongside.  The roads and paved areas are Paeng's grunge Concrete.  The dockside control office is from the old T-Wrecks Historical Harbor series.  All those ship fenders, rope coils, channel buoys, anchors, and all those sailors are by AP -- note the ones loading into trucks !  In the lower right, you can just see the bow of a German armored cruiser.  Just for the record -- there is precious little in this picture that wasn't made by @AP !  My MANY THANX for his dedication.

146_Bremerhaven Munitions Dock

 

Lovely! Where are the ship and barge models from? Not AP as I just checked?

Also, which water mod is it?

[justforfun 7,929]

Turning some JENX Medieval Houses into shop parades:

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

If anyone asks, just gone fishin'.

[Dreadnought 8,231]

18 hours ago, justforfun said:

Lovely! Where are the ship and barge models from? Not AP as I just checked?

Also, which water mod is it?

Yo, guy --

There must be some mistake -- or possibly an error in translation. 

Almost EVERYTHING floating in the water was modeled by @AP.  The small boats, the steam lighter, and the lighters (barges) -- even the mooring dolphins were made by AP !!

The armored cruiser -- just barely in the lower right of the picture -- is, in fact, a "TurboSquid" model licensed for use in gaming.  AP is very skilled at 3-D modeling, but it was a very steep learning curve to go from "mechanical modeling" to "nautical modeling", and he had to learn how to make the curved hull forms (very difficult).  The best "teaching tool" was to buy a model and let him take it apart to see how it was made (reverse engineering).  The "vertices" can be very difficult to work with and must be controlled very carefully.  After he figured out how the process works, he finished the model with colors and textures and corrected some of the modeling errors that were made in the original. 

He is now fully capable of making a 3-D model of any kind of ship we need.   Once we finish making all the ships -- we're thinking about making some of the industrial buildings in the dockyards -- complete with some semi-interior working scenes!

HONEST -- !!  Cross my heart and pinkie swear -- !!

BTW -- That's the "Brigantine" water MOD.

[AP 3,591]

On 30/08/2022 at 7:26 PM, justforfun said:

Lovely! Where are the ship and barge models from? Not AP as I just checked?

Also, which water mod is it?

 

7 hours ago, Dreadnought said:

HONEST -- !!  Cross my heart and pinkie swear -- !!

Maybe he/she meant that they checked my downloadable content, and it is correct, that it's not available there.

@justforfun the content is not uploaded yet. We will publish it soon, parallel to @Dreadnought's CJ coming out. You can follow some of the progress here:

 

[Barroco Hispano 26,936]

[Odainsaker 2,137]

On 8/30/2022 at 12:13 PM, ohdude said:

Well, the program I use to get the greyscale map shows me the differences you mention. I solve the issues using photoshop or gimp, softening color borders and accepting the limits that SimCity 4 has. To me, there's no option to have a lake over the sea level in a big region (60 x 88 km map!!!!). It is simply too much work making the Llanquihue lake with ploppable water and, in my opinion, not very aesthetic.

Another solution I have been experimenting with for the past few days is to compress the topography below the lake level.

I've been on-and-off working on a map for a Greater Osaka region which includes both Osaka Bay at sea level and the southern end of Lake Biwa, whose surface elevation on the DEM data used at the time was 84 meters above sea level.  In SimCity, sea level will be at 250 meters above seafloor and so the surface of Lake Biwa will be at 334 meters.  This map is not too different from your own wonderful map with Lake Llanguihue.  If I were to use in-game SimCity sea level water to represent Lake Biwa, the shoreline would have cliffs 84 meters high above sea level.

Here is the original Greater Osaka map using the FABDEM modifications of Copernicus DEMs, Copernicus DEM water masks, and GEBCO bathymetry:

 

The unreal High Cliffs of Lake Biwa:

 

The unreal Grand Chasm of the Kamo River in Kyoto:

 

If we were to just lower or compress the terrain to match the lake level at sea level, we would wipe out 84 meters of elevation changes and alot of interesting topography.  However, after some trial-and-error with various maps, I realized that I could cheat and deviate the surface elevations of rivers and lakes in a map generally by 20 meters below their true elevation and still have workable shorelines that were still passable without turning into overly steep cliffs and chasms.  With this 20 meters of elevation flexibility, we can then compress lower elevations to some degree without completely flattening and erasing their topography.  For my map of Osaka, that now means treating Lake Biwa as though it instead had a surface elevation of 20 meters rather than 84 meters.  If we can bring Lake Biwa's surface elevation down to this level along with the corresponding surround land, then with SimCity's sea level water Lake Biwa's shoreline would only have 20 meter cliffs, which still sounds high but is actually much more manageable to deal with in game.

Bringing Lake Biwa's surface elevation down to 20 meters above sea level meant uniformly lowering everything by 64 meters.  MICRODEM has to tool to do this called "Raise/lower z values" which will take either positive or negative values to uniformly raise or lower elevation in a DEM:

MICRODEM --> Edit --> Single grid arithmetic --> Raise/lower z values

Being a uniformly acting tool, all elevations in our map in MICRODEM have been lowered, including sea level, which is now at -64 meters.  We need sea level raised back to 0 meters without altering the new level of Lake Biwa at 20 meters above sea level and while also preserving our relative terrain, and a systematic means to do this is by compressing all elevation ranging between -64 meters to 20 meters into a new range of 0 meters to 20 meters.  MICRODEM actually also has the tool to do this called "Expand given z range", which, despite its name, can uniformly both expand and compress elevations from a specified range into another specified range:

MICRODEM --> Edit --> Single grid arithmetic --> Expand given z range

We have now compressed 84 meters of the lowest elevations of our map into only 20 meters of elevation.  Effectively, this has gently but not completely flattened the lowest elevations and so they will not be perfectly scale accurate, but, depending on the map, this may not be significant and can even be advantageous.  If maintaining mountaintop peak elevations are important, you can continue to use the "Expand given z range" tool again to adjust those ranges.  In my map, the highest peak at Mount Hakkyō had also been dropped by 64 meters from a peak of 1914.6 meters to 1850.6 meters when the entire map was lowered.  To bring the peak back to its original height I additionally expanded the elevation range of 20 meters to 1860.6 meters into a new range of 20 meters to 1914.6 meters.  Later refinements include further limiting the earlier compression ranges to preserve the normal sea level shoreline elevations of areas that had always been at or near sea level, such that street levels over the canals of Dōtonbori in Osaka are not inadvertently flattened all the way down to sea level.  I won't lie--I have to chart out all the beginning ranges and ending ranges to visually keep it all straight, especially as MICRODEM is not forgiving when it comes to canceling functions or undoing changes.

Below are my modified Greater Osaka results:

Kyoto, the Nara Basin, and the land surrounding Lake Biwa have become shallower.  Mount Hakkyō along with the shoreline, lowlands, and islands of Osaka are unaffected.  As represented by SC4 Mapper's darker green colors, the range of lowlands from 5 meters to 20 meters above sea level has somewhat expanded in my map.

Using in-game SimCity water, Lake Biwa's shoreline now only has an elevation of 20 meters rather than the previous 84 meters:

This is actually easy to work with, as they can be further softened with paint tools during mapmaking, terraformed by hand in game, or even just hidden and ignored with simple trees:

 

At the eastern edge of Osaka city proper is Mount Ikoma, whose city tile in my map spans through the elevation changes I have made.  A comparison between the uncompressed and compressed versions shows that the changes, while radically significant to the shores of Lake Biwa, are not significant and almost unnoticeable at the foot of Mount Ikoma:

Before with no compression:

After with compression of the lower elevations and expansion of the upper elevations:

(Edit:  It occurs to me only now that I have been using a custom terrain mod that has been manually tweaked to exaggeratedly show more rock face texture on the slopes.  Your terrain mods may not show as much rock face texture on slopes or cliffwalls.  Ah well, leaving it here actually helps reinforce the explanation of the cliff wall issues I had with Lake Biwa.)

 

The revised Kamo River in Kyoto:

You can see that some of the shallow hills in this city tile have flattened into obscurity, but inspection with Google Earth Pro suggests those were likely remnants of buildings and trees that were not fully erased by the FABDEM process.

A week ago I realized that I could fit not only the Kyoto Imperial Palace in this city tile, but also the former Daidairi great palace of ancient Heian-kyō, and so I shifted the cropping of the DEM, and now I still have to re-puzzle the config layout for the rest of the region to match.  All that flat land in this city tile seems intimidating, but then part of the point in the siting and planning of Heian-kyō here was that this offered a flat enough central basin in which to lay out a vast city grid following Chinese Tang Dynasty grand design patterns.

I was originally going to just plop canal and stream puzzle pieces to make the inland Kamo River, but now using in-game water is possible and practical with in-game terraforming:

The last major concern on this map for me is to clean up the water mask of processing quirks, which are mostly jagged corners or outdated data.  Sadly, I haven't yet found a usefully systematic method to do so other than by hand, so I still have much work to do.  (EDIT:  Believe it or not, but only the config file has been done by hand here, while everything else has been sizing up, cropping, or layering together existing free DEM data.)

 

Unfortunately, I haven't quite found a means or method of seamlessly targeting elevation compression to specific areas.  A paint program like GIMP is probably still best for that.  It may be that using paint tools to broadly soften the edges of Lake Biwa would also just have easily worked for me without any of the compromises of elevation compression, but I am actually pleased with the tangent results on the Kamo River and elsewhere in the map, so I will keep this solution.  Everyone's maps and criteria will be different, and so will be the solutions.

Hopefully this is helpful or at least interesting.

  Edited September 1, 2022 by Odainsaker  

[justforfun 7,929]

12 hours ago, AP said:

Maybe he/she meant that they checked my downloadable content, and it is correct, that it's not available there.

That's exactly what I meant, thank you for the link. I now can't wait to see your gems on the STEX! 

[20huskies 4,699]

The Republic of Karafuto's federal investment in its first Olympics coming up in a couple of years has caused a development boom in Ochiai, the suburb where the Toyohara Games will be hosted.

[SIM-ple Jack 17,450]

La Veaux by night-

[RRetail 7,912]

In the mood for some barbecue? 

[justforfun 7,929]

Combining an old pack of Zeeland houses with my own S3D shop fronts, to make Cs$ and Cs$$ shop parades:

 

 

[sejr99999 8,370]

6 hours ago, RRetail said:

In the mood for some barbecue? 

lovin the awnings and the dining deck  great textures and really feels like a BBQ place

[sejr99999 8,370]

2 hours ago, justforfun said:

Combining an old pack of Zeeland houses with my own S3D shop fronts, to make Cs$ and Cs$$ shop parades:

 

 

I would love to see those shopfronts available as props  need some more variety and these look very good

[Barroco Hispano 26,936]

[Dreadnought 8,231]

1 hour ago, Barroco Hispano said:

You'd think I could figure out a way to work that into a Navy Yard, wouldn't you?

[justforfun 7,929]

9 hours ago, sejr99999 said:

I would love to see those shopfronts available as props  need some more variety and these look very good

Thank you! These are the shopfront props featured here: 

You'll find the props in the Lot Editor under "JFF Cs$/Cs$$/Cs$$$ shop 01, 02, 03..." There are hundreds of them to choose from, however not all are suitable to combine with BAT models. You want to make sure that the shopfront prop is either flat or has parts protruding towards the street (like canopies, boxes, bay windows..) NOT towards the inside of the building. You also want to make sure that the BAT you are adding the shopfronts to has a flat facade, because if it has balconies, large cornices, etc. its LODs will likely blank out any prop you place in front of it.  Let me know if you have any questions, if not, happy... parading!

 

 

 

[sejr99999 8,370]

5 hours ago, justforfun said:

Thank you! These are the shopfront props featured here: 

You'll find the props in the Lot Editor under "JFF Cs$/Cs$$/Cs$$$ shop 01, 02, 03..." There are hundreds of them to choose from, however not all are suitable to combine with BAT models. You want to make sure that the shopfront prop is either flat or has parts protruding towards the street (like canopies, boxes, bay windows..) NOT towards the inside of the building. You also want to make sure that the BAT you are adding the shopfronts to has a flat facade, because if it has balconies, large cornices, etc. its LODs will likely blank out any prop you place in front of it.  Let me know if you have any questions, if not, happy... parading!

thanks   I forgot about that upload   will definitely revisit and start experimenting with them