boisemetro BAT Thread

[boisemetro 85]

Hi everyone. Based on another members recommendation, have decided to create a Thread. Am very new to the BAT. Only have two BATs on the STEX so far. Yet this is something I am very interested in doing. Will be posting pictures of projects here. Hoping that other developers will help with insight and tips. Am on my 3rd project so far, and this time am actually modeling a building. Here is a picture:

Am just getting started. Eventually want to make towers but will focus on this for now. All the more experience helps.

Thanks for stopping by!

  Edited October 28, 2012 by boisemetro  

[Susaji 523]

what are your BAT project name

[boisemetro 85]

This one is Center 151

  Edited October 23, 2012 by boisemetro  

[hotChocolate 95]

Hmm... nice building choice, I wonder how it'll turn out. Often good textures are the key, speaking from a player/CJer's point of view. Good luck!

[RepublicMaster 428]

Looks nice!

[boisemetro 85]

Thanks Hot Chocolate and wcraig. Agreed Hot Chocolate, textures are the key, and something I will be working on... Bad news though: gmax fails to open the saved file. This hasn't happened before. Guess I'll have to start over. Luckily I wasn't too far along...

[boisemetro 85]

back on track... have windows, frames, and color

the color is temporary 'til there is a texture made

Windows: not sure how to make reflective glass but will search for some photoshop tutorials....

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Ah another aspiring BATer.

While your building is looking decent so far in modeling, if you're really recreating that building you posted I'd like you to take a closer look at the picture and notice it's facade design.

Rather than me just talk up a storm I have a picture example of a "sketch" I did in Gmax for your building.

I roughly pieced together what would be the top floors without textures. The Blue is the windows. There are black window frames surrounding them but they are hard to see which Just keep your window frames how they are. The rest is the facade.

I may have exaggerated the facade a bit and gave it more depth but this is what it looks like to me that you're really trying to recreate. This is just an example that I hope you follow or helps you in anyway. Oh that white part at the top is in your picture though hard to see. When you model that part near the top and roof don't make it as thick as what I did. Like I said rough sketch.

And of course on yours there will be more windows and floors. Your windows though need to be a little deeper into the facade. And your spandrels(the parts between windows) will be taller than mine. But I hope this example helps you get a better idea.

  Edited October 21, 2012 by Sgt Pepper  

[boisemetro 85]

WOW Sgt Pepper thanks very much for your help! Very nice sketch!

Thank you for taking the time to do that. It really helps. :-)

I find myself a bit overwhelmed right now. Not sure if this time around will be an actual model, or a close to.

I didn't realize how much is involved. For one, I made the door entry to big on the front side.

Going to take a break now til I figure out how to fix it without doing the whole wall over.

Again, thank you very much for the example and the details. I will refer back to your post for guidance.

[boisemetro 85]

well here is what I have so far, and it's no where as good looking a Sgt Peppers sketch/render

[T Wrecks 10,209]

First of all, welcome to the BAT forums and congratulations - taking the step here was a good decision, and you'll get much support and advice here (or so I hope!).

What you have made so far doesn't look like a bad start at all. I think it's also encouraging that you see yourself: something doesn't look quite right yet. You are not satisfied with the first results, and you are willing to learn what to change and how to do that. All this makes me feel optimistic about your future BAT career. Keep it up!

Now for some advice:

What's important even before you think of such details is proportions and dimensions. Do you have the dimensions of the real-life building so you can recreate its footprint in the BAT? (You can use the ruler tool in Google Earth to get exact measures of length and width.)

Two examples of proportions would be (A) the door, where the door in your BAT is divided into two visibly unequal halves (I don't know if that's correct because I don't know the doors of the real-life building, and (B) the windows, where the photograph of the real-life building shows that they are almost twice as tall as they are wide (width-to-height ratio of ~1:1.75 - 1:2), whereas in your BAT they are definitely and visibly more squat (width-to-height ratio of ~1:1.1 - 1:1.25, I'd say).

Height will need to be adjusted because due to the perspective in SimCity buildings appear squashed. If a real-life building is 50 metres tall and you want to BAT it, it will look squashed, thick and clunky if you make its height in the BAT 50 metres. You will have to scale the height of your BAT to ~120-133% of the actual height (e.g. a real-life height of 50 metres would translate to a BAT height of 60-67 metres) in order for the building to look right.

If you don't get the proportions right first, you will often run into situations where something looks wrong, but it will be hard to fix it because the basis is skewed.

Don't let all this discourage you, though. The progress you are showing here is very good, and the beginning is always a bit hard. However, I see with pleasure that you got some equally important basic elements right, namely aspects like number of storeys, number of windows in each row, and so on - that's a point where many people already fail. Observation is a very important skill, it will help you even before you have started gmax.

What you did get wrong, though, is the way these vertical ribs are always directly adjacent to the window panes. There's always a strip with windows and one without, and all strips are equally wide as it seems. That's why Sgt. Pepper's sketch looks more convincing to you than your first attempt.

Well, that was a lot of text... I hope you won't feel even more overwhelmed now. I know it's quite a plunge, but if you keep calm, I'm pretty sure you'll have what it takes to make good BATs. The first steps are always the hardest. You are just taking them (and you're really doing fine!), and I'm sure you will take the next ones as well.

[boisemetro 85]

Thank you T Wrecks! Your post is very helpful and encouraging. Didn't realize "Height will need to be adjusted because due to the perspective in SimCity buildings appear squashed." Didn't know about using the Google Earth ruler either. Learned some things new today. There are some changes to be made.

But first, I have run into a new problem now. The BAT is not keeping materials (textures) applied. I have tried saving the model and re-opening it, and the results are not any different, even after re-applying materials (textures). They just don't appear in the render. Has this ever happened to anyone or does anyone know how to fix it?

  Edited October 23, 2012 by boisemetro  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Oh the texture glitch where they turn grey? The only fix to that is simply re-applying the textures, or going to the material editor and re-selecting the texture itself that you retrieved from a folder or wherever you have your textures.

Hey If I wasn't clear enough on that(I know I can be vague) I can show another picture later.

Model is getting there. Is that glass final? It definitely needs to be edited for the future, but for now I'd focus on the modeling then the textures.

T Wrecks made some great points, keep those in mind too.

Looking forward for more! These buildings are just my type too so good choice. And it's a mid-rise. We all love more mid-rise buildings.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Welcome to the world of batting, good start. I also use Google earth, i try to use as much stuff to help with bating to finding floor plans some what is near impossible, I also use google maps and I'm sure you do use that, also use bing maps, and looking for pictures of the building on google images.

On your bat I think that you will need inset your windows farther in the facade and the column things that stick out of building needs to come out a little more. I think you need to work on the floor height, I think 4.5 meters is the best floor height for the second floors and up. The ground floor or the lobby floor should be a little higher because if it was next to a walking Sim you do not want the Sim taller that the door, I make my ground floor 5.0 meters and or up depending of the real life building if I need to go taller or not. The windows a short short look a little more on the rectangle size.

[boisemetro 85]

Wow I am being helped by professional batters! Thank you all for you time and help.

Oh No! I had the doors bigger and I couldn't get the model to match the real doors, so I made them smaller. I may export the building and put it in the game to see how it looks.

The windows have been inset further. Thank you for your advice. Think it looks better now. Here is an updated picture:

Still need to work on the vertical ribs. Pardon the roof junk. That is an area I am still learning...

My biggest upcoming dread are the side stairs. Not sure how to make them but will jump in and see what can be done....

  Edited October 23, 2012 by boisemetro  

[boisemetro 85]

UPDATE: Thank you again T Wrecks. The front of the building has been redone in this image, as you suggested (vertical ribs). Looks better imo and more like the original.

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UPD all four sides have been corrected,

  Edited October 23, 2012 by boisemetro  

[boisemetro 85]

Started on the stairs:

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Whoa, you're on a run, eh? First of all, it looks like you're making good progress.

Before I continue, let me briefly put on my moderator cap... *puts on moderator cap*

However, as long as there are no replies (or at least 24 hrs) between your last post and your next one, please use the "Edit" function to amend your last post. Multiple posting (making several posts in a row without any replies or substantial amounts of time between them) is generally frowned upon in Internet communities.

*puts off moderator cap again*

There, now that this is out of the way, let's continue with the building. I'd say you have those ribs right now. The windows are looking better, too. That external staircase is not very advanced yet, but at a first glance everything looks OK so far.

The biggest room for improvement right now is the roof junk. As you realised yourself, it's not exactly the part you're feeling most at home with. Right now, it looks like the typical outcome of what I call the "empty-roof-o-phobia", that paralysing situation when you are confronted with that vast, flat and boring roof surface and desperately try to scatter random objects over it in fear that the fnal building may look too boring. It doesn't really work out well, though.

Have you looked at the roof of the real building in Google Maps, or - even better! - in Bing's bird's eye view? I strongly suggest recreating what you see there. Lookig at real rooftops and recreating the stuff on top of them will give you a sense of what looks right and how those roofs are actually configured.

You can do a lot with textures, too. Check out the lower roof on IDS2's for example: the roof junk is minuscule compared to the surface area of the roof, but the roof doesn't look like a monotonous grey slab because the texture has some subtle variations, stains and weathering effects on it.

[Gn_leugim 853]

hI there and welcome in to this great community and world

I have to add that our roof junk is a bit overscaled too I believe. if you see well, some of them are 2 stories high! And speaking of scaling, have you compared it to some similar maxis building? to check out the scale. Do this: take a render of your building, a screenshot of game, both at same zoom level, and then crop your building into the screenshot, pair it with some maxis (maxis! not other person's creation!) and see if the floor hight match, the size of the windows/doors too.

As for the textures, that you don't have any yet, have you checked some tutorials right? are you familiar with Photoshop/GIMP?

[boisemetro 85]

Thank you kindly T Wrecks. Didn't realize I was doing something wrong with posts.... Now I know. This one should be ok because now I am replying.

Thanks for the tips! The roof junk will be removed until later. I will take a look like at real life examples as you suggested and hopefully be able to create some (minimal) things, including the right texture.

As far as the stairs go, this is the best I could do. If i add all the side details, they will completely cover the stairs:

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Nice to meet you Gn leugim. Thank you for the tips! Yes, the roof junk is over-exaggerated for the building. Will be removing most of it. And after this post, I will put the in the game to see how it looks so far. Thanks for the idea to scale it next to Maxis buildings. Yes, I am familiar with Photoshop. I will have to look at tutorials though for use with BAT. The image size is still in question, and applying materials and maps and such is all fairly new to me.

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Here is an in game shot. Need to stop and re-read everyone's posts again. This one may just have been a practice round because it looks too small. There are not any textures on the building. What does everyone else think?

  Edited October 23, 2012 by boisemetro  

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Oh that modeling is great so far now.

Scaling wise, definitely need to scale it up a bit more, scaling on the Z axis that is. I'm sure you know if you click and hold down on the scaling tool 2 more options will appear. You'd want to use the middle one of the total 3 scaling options when scaling this up a bit.

Oh and generally, for the game floor heights that most people use I believe is about 4 meters. I tend to go over 4 meters slightly or occasionally use 5.

Now other stuff on the model, I think the top white part needs to be a little less thick than what you have now. I exaggerated that in my sketch but I believe it's thickness that stretches on to the roof needs to be made thinner.

Now, on your door, (where you have green part for the door frame so far) needs to be properly lined up. Notice how one side of the door is wider than the other? Is it like that on the real building? If not, I'd move that middle green line of the door to be more in the center where the door is divided more evenly.

Other than that I think the roof junk will need more modeling work just a bit. I think some good points were already made on everything else.

The facade looks great by the way.

[RepublicMaster 428]

Thats looking great I agree it needs to be scaled up a bit

Fills a gap in these size buildings!

[Francis90b 748]

Well, scaling is extremely relative...Maxis did use a lot of different scaling criterias throughout the game - e.g. one scaling criteria for High wealth residential, another one for low wealth, one scale for sims, another one for automatas - and even similar types of building do not always follow the same scaling criteria.

Same thing could be said about custom content creation - some people BAT things with floors being 4, 5 or whatever measure they consider fit, others pick sim height as a reference, other again prefer BATing things roughly to the scale they would have IRL.

You might try following one of those criterias, knowing, however, that following it would also mean having your building not really "to scale" with other buildings following other criterias - and sometimes they will look very odd if placed side to side.

Then, it would be worth considering which scaling criteria to follow.

BATers using standards like other buildings done before by maxis or other people, or sims height:

Those BATers do not, actually, follow a precise scaling criteria, even if they claim they do.

The reason is simple - their working method is to take something real, and then adapt it to a standard by looking at some kind of reference - but the way this process is performed is linked to subjective interpretation, e.g. it looks good to me , which is likely to be biased, and not accurate.

Speaking about the Maxis buildings, for example, i might say that your BAT needs to be enlarged - but having no precise idea about it's size and proportions IRL, and having no precise idea about the scaling criteria adopted by Maxis, i couldn't tell wheter my statement is accurate - it's just a subjective interpretation, worth close to nothing...and while comparing your building you did with other stuff, you'd perform exactly the same type of thinking.

Therefore, you couldn't be able to evaluate your thinking or the thinking of people who gives you suggestion about scaling based on the same ground.

And, the quality of your work is not linked to any objective factor (e.g. is it true? is it accurate?) but only to the sharing of a subjective opinion among similarly biased minds - you can do this, and even find people supporting your interpretation, but would this mean your BAT is actually good or accurate? How, on which basis, would you say so?

BATers trying to stick to a fixed criteria:

Some BATers prefer to stick to a fixed criteria - e.g all floors are bound to be 4-5 mtrs tall, etc.

If those criterias are enforced with a good deal of subjective interpretation, e.g. "i usually do buildings with 4 mtrs floor, but this one i think should be a bit taller", then his work is affected by the limitations i've highlighted in the previous paragraph.

If those criterias are strictly enforced (e.g. a 2,25 mtrs door becomes a 3 mtrs door in by BATs, and everything else is BATed strictly in proportion) - then his scaling would look accurate only with his own BATs, and would look "good" (again, looking good does not mean looking true) only next to buildings that follow the same or a similar scaling criteria.

This could be said for any fixed criteria - if i try BATing all buildings with 5 mtrs floors, if i adopt a rule like the "2,25 to 3 mtrs door" i've used as an example, or if i try to closely follow RL dimensions and proportions.

However, if you would like following a fixed criteria, try following RL or staying close to it would be best - in fact, RL-close scaling is followed, more or less, by a certain number of people, while i'm not sure wheter any other rigid scaling criteria is shared by more than one BATer.

  Edited October 23, 2012 by Francis90b  

[Gn_leugim 853]

I would say it is under scaled. It's true that maxis used different scales, I would risk to say it uses 2 scales for mid-low densitity Residential and Commercial buildings.

for instance, in this post there is one scale, and in this one the other one, a promotion of my thread I know )

Both of them are accurate scaled to match the similar maxis buildings.

So, what you should do is, before start bating at all, find a maxis building similar to what ou have in mind to do, and use it as ruler. make a simple wall, with windows, and test it against the Game screen shot. A very simple way to test vertical scale, and the floor hight is to check the distance between the bases of windows in different floors

once you have nail it, make some ruler lines on the gmax scene to guide you, select them, and freeze them, so you can see them, but not move/edit them.

About texturing, I'll be making a topic on the subject soon, I shall share my (making)texture knowledge with everyone for once

[Francis90b 748]

for instance, in this post there is one scale, and in this one the other one, a promotion of my thread I know )

Both of them are accurate scaled to match the similar maxis buildings.

At a first glance what you state is correct - at a more precise look, it is wrong - it looks like it could fit into that environment, that's true, but between this and saying "it's accurately scaled", there's a subtle but important difference - you would not be able to answer to the question "would it look that way if both were built one next to each other?" - and this, is what determine wheter a building is accurately scaled next to it's neighbour.

One problem with "guessing" scale from other buildings is that you can be easily mislead - we, as human beings, are drawn to make assumptions and generalizations, and are not always able to consider nuances or exceptions, or even a decent amount of datas without difficulty.

For example, and i'm going to post one example about me, i once looked at two commercial buildings here on STEX - mind, they were BATs released by one of the top BATers around there, so their quality was extremely high and left no room to let you think that there has been any mistake in them.

Still, the first one was so short in floor height that one of it's floor was just about 75% as tall as the latter's....and as a whole, they felt as if they've been BATed at different scales.

Then i looked at the real life examples that were the bases for those buildings, and took measurements of the two - and from there, i realized that my assumptions about one of them being at the "wrong" scale was wrong! - from my measurements i could gather that both of them were BATed accurately, and were to scale with each other, it was just my assumption that led me thinking one of them was "wrong".

This should tell you two things - aside from telling you i might not be the brightest bulb on the tree, it might also tell you that it's easy to generate wrong assumptions and expectations, and it's best to tread lightly with them.

  Edited October 23, 2012 by Francis90b  

[boisemetro 85]

Thank you Sgt Pepper, wcraig, Francis90b, and Gn_leugim for the comments and advice.

I had never used the scaling tool before so thank you for the information about it. The Building has now been rescaled as in the photo below. The roof trim has been rescaled and the center beam of the front door frame has been made equal/even on both sides. Roof junk has not been added yet and the textures are not final.

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just completed front stairs & hand rails on front

ramps and handrails on back:

  Edited October 26, 2012 by boisemetro  

[Gn_leugim 853]

Francis90b: of course we have to take into consideration the real model, if you are modelling upon a real model. Scaling is not strait as this and that one unfortunately, but you can do find a trend in maxis buildings, where you can find 2 major scale groups. You can take them, choose the one that suites the real scale of the building you are doing, and use that scale. When I say I compare to the maxis one, I don't just put them next to each other, and look and try to figure out what is best, I really do measure things up, using parallel lines, rulers and soon, so I know that scale matches that one.

For my experience, I can tell you that most likely you will find either 4~4,5m tall floors, for shorter floors, and about 6,5m for taller ones.

boisemetro: it looks a little better. aside from scaling, I can't tell you much yet, because you don't have final textures, and those alone can turn the BAT completely. But I can say already that I am a bit worried about the vertical trims on the model. maybe they are a bit to deep? if they were less prominent, maybe you could get a nicer look.

Also other detail. are those window textures semi-final or something like that? I ask this because the majority of the windows are yellow tainted, but the door ones are blue tainted, which is not coherent in some way.

[boisemetro 85]

boisemetro: it looks a little better. aside from scaling, I can't tell you much yet, because you don't have final textures, and those alone can turn the BAT completely. But I can say already that I am a bit worried about the vertical trims on the model. maybe they are a bit to deep? if they were less prominent, maybe you could get a nicer look.

Also other detail. are those window textures semi-final or something like that? I ask this because the majority of the windows are yellow tainted, but the door ones are blue tainted, which is not coherent in some way.

Thanks for the tip Gn_leugim, maybe I will try to reduce the size of the vertical ribs so they don't stick out as far? And I didn't realize there would be a conflict using the blue doors with the gold windows... I will have to look for another set of doors..

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Beginning work on the roof:

(vertical scaling applied to building in above image due to in game squash)

here is an image of the actual roof of the building (but I am not going to put ALL of that stuff on):

Here is a pic I took also:

  Edited October 26, 2012 by boisemetro  

[Francis90b 748]

Francis90b: of course we have to take into consideration the real model, if you are modelling upon a real model. Scaling is not strait as this and that one unfortunately, but you can do find a trend in maxis buildings, where you can find 2 major scale groups. You can take them, choose the one that suites the real scale of the building you are doing, and use that scale. When I say I compare to the maxis one, I don't just put them next to each other, and look and try to figure out what is best, I really do measure things up, using parallel lines, rulers and soon, so I know that scale matches that one.

For my experience, I can tell you that most likely you will find either 4~4,5m tall floors, for shorter floors, and about 6,5m for taller ones.

I did not point specifically at you while saying that all the adapting of a building's scale to a SC4 standard is made by eyeballing and improvisation - i know some other people who seem to prefer working in this way, though.

This said, your scaling method would still not be accurate - even if you could infer a standard from a collection of Maxis buildings, you might not be sure as wheter your interpretation is correct - you'd have to rely on what Maxis did before, and what maxis did before was not inspired by accuracy, unfortunately.

Maxis thought necessary, for example, to use 3 different scaling sets for residential buildings, one for low wealth, one for mid wealth, a third for high wealth - then, what you say, there exists another scaling pattern that's followed for one or two story buildings, as opposed to taller buildings - and taller buildings, themselves, often follow the shorter buildings scaling pattern as long as the first two floors are concerned - then, Sims had been scaled up of a significant amount to make them clearly noticeable, and same thing could be said for street props, and maybe Sir Brunel would have been proud to witness his own vision about railway gauge being realized in game (they are approx 2,2 mtrs wide, while IRL few countries even come close to that standard - russian railways, at approx 2,0 mtrs gauge, use one of the broadest gauges in this world) - then there's another scaling criteria for road lanes and road automatas, and i have the impression that even the scaling criterias used for industrial buildings greatly differ, with some buildings, especially I-D, being probably a lot smaller than they should if compared to other similar buildings.

Now, you can pick a specific set of Maxis buildings, and accurately measure them, and try inferring scaling from them, as you stated you do - however, the accuracy of your models will be limited by the lack of accuracy of Maxis buildings - not just because of their different scaling standards, that lead to an incorrect perception of them in-game (again, i know this had been an intentional choice, this would not stop me, though, from calling it "incorrect" - what a player perceives from a SC4 "vanilla" game is not the slightest close to reality, is a far more simplified and reassuring environment where conflicting and disconcerting complexities had been eradicated as far as possible), but because of many liberties maxis designers took, especially as far as smaller, more generic and non-descript buildings are concerned.

While it's true that Maxis sometimes took inspiration from real building, they took quite a bit of liberties as far as their rendition of them was concerned - and to say "quite a bit" is probably, for most of them, an understated statement.

By gathering those informations, it might also be easy to infer what they choice might have been as far as the scaling of each of those building, this time considered individually, might have been?

Now, let's imagine ah hypothetic situation - i'm a pro modeller for a gaming company - i take a reference, and i know, more or less, that it should be modelled at more or less 1,25 times it's real dimensions in order to fit into the "building class" it should belong to.But, after having created my model, i realize something's "wrong" - the building i modelled, even if it followed exactly the same rules i or my team used for the other models that belong to the "class", does not really "fit" with them - be it for example that the floors of the reference building are significantly taller or shorter than the floors of other reference buildings i or my team did model using the same criterias.

Well, this would be a problem - the standard customer, the guy who is going to purchase my game, might not be necessarily aware of the complexities of reality - not everyone in this world is expected to look at buildings, or analyze them, right? - and so, if he sees two building having different standards, he might think that i did a shabby work, and might grow unsatisfied with the game - better to alter things a bit to suit his own taste.

This example should show how, even in classes of similar buildings, scaling interpretation might have been used - after all, what maxis went for was not, again, accuracy, but a simple, reassuring environment for the player.

Therefore, while it might be possible to infer a pattern into classes of similar buildings, would this pattern reflect anything even close to accurate? Let me doubt so.

Therefore, a building BATed by looking after Maxis buildings, even if done with all the taste, thoughtfullness and accuracy you undoubtedly put in your work (heck, i should pay tribute to good things, i do not want to be unfair!) would still be a semi - accurate adaptation to an inaccurate "universe".

Now, the problem with this is that, in order to fit into this simplified environment, a lot of complexity that exists IRL would be lost, and you wouldn't even have the tools to simply intuit it, lest trying recreate it.

EDIT:

By saying this, i do not want to simply downrate your work, or offending you - just to analyze things.

  Edited October 24, 2012 by Francis90b  

[Gn_leugim 853]

Now, you can pick a specific set of Maxis buildings, and accurately measure them, and try inferring scaling from them, as you stated you do - however, the accuracy of your models will be limited by the lack of accuracy of Maxis buildings - not just because of their different scaling standards, that lead to an incorrect perception of them in-game (again, i know this had been an intentional choice, this would not stop me, though, from calling it "incorrect

Now there you hit the gold nugget.

But, as you well know and even that

still be a semi - accurate adaptation to an inaccurate "universe

you have to follow the games criteria to maximize the chances of fitting ingame. Hence somehow follow the maxis scales. And yes, industrial bats are not be be mentioned here, as they have a complete off chart scale difference

EDIT:

By saying this, i do not want to simply downrate your work, or offending you - just to analyze things.

Now you grr of... :evil: .. kiding ^^ I know dont want to