Lycans learns to BAT

[LivingInThePast 364]

Hey, you changed the thread title. Congrats

[harishna 847]

Those strange shadows I guess have to do with inverted normals. Poly modelling is the way to go, but I guess you made a 'mistake' at one point of modelling the roof. You could try to show step by step how you go along through the process of modelling your roof to see if someone can spot where you go wrong, In the mean time you can try a quick fix, simply detach the offending polygons and then re-attach them without welding the vertices, this won't solve the nature of the problem but it may make things look ok.

About the textures you have to assign UVW map to all your objects and adjust them accordingly for textures to look right.

[darn42 1,268]

Try adding a "normal" modifier, check "unify" and uncheck "flip." If that doesn't work try flipping the normals manually. Select the polygons that are being annoying, if they are a darker red than the rest of the model, they are flipped normals. Select just the darker red and then you can use the flip button under the polygon modeling area.

[lycans 7]

@harishna & @darn42: I haven't try those but I'll try it later on the first model. Thank you so much for the suggestion.

well this is the maxis night:

[harishna 847]

I would worry about night views a bit later first lets see a fully textured day preview of the model. You still need to fix the orientation of the shingles for some sections of the roof, you can accomplish this with the UVW map, you might want to also learn to use unwrap UVW option.

[lycans 7]

I already put the uvw map from the first time coz if I didn't the size won't be the same for every roofs.. I've changed the gizmo so that the sizes of every tiles in the roof will be the same. I just don't know how the orientation should.. from top view, all of the roof are re aligned the same direction..

this is the roofs from the top:

  Edited September 13, 2012 by lycans  

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

My Bad, mark out what I said before, I was backwards.

What I meant to say was, see how they are all facing the same way?

On this roof pictured above, you can see how the shingles change directions on the slopes? That is how your roof should look similar too.

[lycans 7]

ah I see.. thanks.. I can fix it by rotating the uvw map I guess..

Btw, I need advice on the texture of the walls. What texture should I have? I want the stone walls like the picture but it turns out ugly because it doesn't have the bumpy like the stone should..

this is what I have after rotating the map, what do you think?

[lycans 7]

Just for fun What textures should I change again?

actually I want the wall to be like in frex_creatus photos, that is a wall from woods.. I don't know how to texture it.. And I think it will be hard since that kind of wall should use bump map or something..

[Ceafus 88 1,794]

That roof looks much much better!!!!!! I like the rocks on front too.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

They look great, I hope your tending to make more houses, I think it very important to do that.

[harishna 847]

A few things: the shingles look a bit stretched, just adjust the UVW map a bit. Glass material is a bit too reflective. Avoid using whites that are that so bright, as they won't look good in the game. You may also want to considering changing the base of the columns to something a bit darker to balance it out a bit (like in the real life building). The wood material applied to the shutters ooks too saturated. Finally, why does the window with the open shutters in the second with looks white?

You doing a great progress keep it up!

[lycans 7]

@Aaron Graham: yep.. I already have a house model that I want to create after this one done..

@harishna: I've darken the white paint a bit and reapply the resize the uvw map, here is what i got so far:

I also change the floor from marble to wood parquet and the base of column into some kind of stone. I also change the upper wall to that kind of stone too like the real building.. but I don't have the same texture so I use this one..

what do you think?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Something you'll want to do, maybe not right now, but before you're done with the day version of the BAT, is take zoom 5 screenshots from the game and put them in Photoshop, and save them. The screenshots will need to be mostly Maxis buildings. And then if there are other BATs you want to compare yours to, then take other screenshots from the game that includes them, in addition to the mostly Maxis screenshots.

Then when you do a preview render, save it as a .png (with the transparency option selected), and then open your preview in photoshop and put it into your SimCity screenshot. Then you can move it around your screenshots and compare and get a sense for how your building will feel in the game.

There are a few things you'll want to explicitly check while doing this:

Value. (How dark or bright something is). A quick way to help you understand this, is go to Layers>Create New Adjustment Layer>Hue/Saturation and then turn the saturation all the way down to make the image black and white. Then you can hide and unhide this layer to switch between color and black and white. Now what you can do is find buildings/materials/objects in the game that you think are comparable to the ones you're trying to recreate and you can compare them. So just for example if you were making a BAT with "dark red brick" you could find a building in SimCity with "dark red brick" to see how dark it actually is. Likewise when you're making something "black" or "white" you can also check "black" or "white" buildings in the game to see how they compare. I put that stuff in quotations because colors are relative to the environment/surroundings they're in.

Hue. (The color itself, independent of how bright or dark it is). This is harder to directly compare. The game is heavy on reds/purples/blues. If your building has a lot of cyan or lime green for example, it won't blend in with the game.

Saturation. ("How much" of the hue is in the total color). With BATing usually the problem is that things are too saturated, but sometimes the saturation needs to be increased as well.

It's hard to figure out what needs to happen with the color at first but over time you develop an intuition about it. But at first tweaking the colors will take a long time.

Then there are a few other things which you can confirm by using the screenshots, like scale.

[IL. 1,043]

Very nice

Everything is looking great, and it fits so well with the Maxis BATs

[lycans 7]

hmm.. screenshot from the game:

What I notice is that I think it is too small, maybe I should enlarge it a little.

The sides view is not rendered correctly, I think it is because I forgot to recreate the LOD after I move the house to center... maybe.. I'll try again later.

I'm currently learning how to models another things so I didn't do this house a lot. The name of the house is hathaway house btw, according to the website which sell this plan. I also create another house but It is a good looking house from the front but it is a bit ugly from the preview camera.. well I guess people want to see their houses great from the front instead from above..

and um,today I learned how to use bevel and I tried to play with it a bit so I create this mosque model, based on great mosque of central java, indonesia. It is a very big mosque I believe, 3 or 4 stories. I don't know whether I'll complete it or not but I think I'll post it here. I used the bevel tools a lot in this model since I just know that tool today..

[lycans 7]

photo of the mosque:

as you can see the man looks small compared to the mosque and this is only the upper part of the mosque. I'm not sure wheter below this part is 2 levels or 1 level, but I think it is 2 levels below this one.

[harishna 847]

Your house may look squashed in game but that is natural, the solution is to scale your model on the Z-axis by 133% before exporting it. If you look at your texture they are quite saturated while the game tones tend to be softer, it also looks to me as your tones look a bit too green while the game tend more to the pinks. Also it is more evident now that the roof texture is tiling. But overall I have to say that your model is looking quite good!

Your new model looks interesting, just make sure to do enough research by this I mean to get all the dimensions right and plenty reference images before getting too far into modeling something as big and complex as this...

[lycans 7]

Your house may look squashed in game but that is natural, the solution is to scale your model on the Z-axis by 133% before exporting it. If you look at your texture they are quite saturated while the game tones tend to be softer, it also looks to me as your tones look a bit too green while the game tend more to the pinks. Also it is more evident now that the roof texture is tiling. But overall I have to say that your model is looking quite good!

Your new model looks interesting, just make sure to do enough research by this I mean to get all the dimensions right and plenty reference images before getting too far into modeling something as big and complex as this...

mm.. i don't really understand about the color thing.. I'll try what jasoncw suggest.. maybe i can find the answer in photoshop..

about the roof, that's the result of resizing the uvw map, the tiling become a lot. I've edit it a bit now, but it still looks tiling..

I think I've fix the size issue.

I know there are still a lot of things to do with the night light.. I just want to try it..

so, tell me what you think.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

One of the main things about using photoshop is that you don't have to do exports. So you've done two entire exports when you could have just done two preview renders instead and pasted them into a screenshot. It saves a lot of time, and that way you can make tweaks and have it instantly in the game environment without having to do full exports.

[lycans 7]

One of the main things about using photoshop is that you don't have to do exports. So you've done two entire exports when you could have just done two preview renders instead and pasted them into a screenshot. It saves a lot of time, and that way you can make tweaks and have it instantly in the game environment without having to do full exports.

I coudn't resist to see the house in the game... lol.. I'll remember the photoshop for the next house.

Any suggestion how can i fix the color? I have a very bad taste in color so when people say the color doesn't match I just have no idea what it means.

as you can see I modelled the siding, but too bad it can't be seen in the game..*sigh*

  Edited September 20, 2012 by lycans  

[lycans 7]

New house I'm working on..

I wish I could models the furnitures inside the house too.. just for fun you know..

[Susaji 523]

Very Cool,House!

[LivingInThePast 364]

The porch is strangely lit for some reason.

[IL. 1,043]

I like it very much, but is it only me who thinks that that roof is too rectangular?

Maybe you should add a window to that empty rectangle on the upper left part

[harishna 847]

I think modelling wise you getting there and doing quite a good job, you should also now focus on getting the textures right, try to make these as close to real life as possible, I think the bricks you are using for your chimney are too saturated, the wood looks too red and also saturated.Finally try to add gradients, stains, marks of wear, dirt and all those other small details that would make your textures more realistic.

[zahrul3 471]

Also lotting wise, you need to match the garage entrace to the lot, a texture set(eg. BSC MEGA Textures) might help in the long term

[adityagusetyawan 85]

I'm so impress to see your modeling of Masjid Agung Semarang. It is a beautiful mosque and its umbrella looks like a Al Nabawi Mosque. Nice work and nice idea !

[adityagusetyawan 85]

I see that some parts of your building was dissapeared (cut). You must not to "preview" your BAT before your model is really done. You must re-create it if you wanna repair it. I really hate this problem, so that i never preview my model before it is really done

[harishna 847]

That is an old preview adytiagusetyawan, is not the latest version of the model.

But more importantly I don't see why he shouldn't preview his model before it is done, and I think you actually mean export and test his model in game, I actually think it is a very good exercise. to do so. That way he can check how it looks in terms of textures and scale compared to other things in game, this is how well it will actually look, For big models, that take a long time to export, people sometimes prefer to simple paste on photoshop or gimp a preview render of the model on top of a scene from the game, that way you can avoid going through the whole process of exporting the model.