Reddonquixote's BAT thread

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Ok, after reading those comments I tried out some transparency on the glass and have to say it looks a million times better... I haven't posted it because I haven't got it looking right yet. However, I wasn't satisified with flat floor textures so I started on something I've been wanting to do for a while but thought it might be a bit tedious, is making some office furniture. I thought it would kill my computer (and it did lol) but I also didn't think it was going to be worth the effort.. but actually I think it looks quite good, even though you can't really make anything out, the interiors have a depth to them makes quite a diiference to the overall effect. When I get it all looking better, and make a few more variations to the interiors, I'll post an update. Anyway, here's a rendering of the first set of furniture I made

 

[Susaji 523]

Great!

[libellibicus 396]

It will give a nice bit of interest to your overall model.Nice work.  Congrats on MOTM, mate....well deserved.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Let me know what you think of this glass? This is combination of transparency, blinds, office furniture and slightly illuminated floor. The overall effect is very subtle, I'm hoping not too subtle. I'll run a game export to see what it looks like in-game.

 

[Bipin 3,402]

If you're ever in need of more office furniture let me know. I have several pieces that I had used in my Camberton BAT which would be quite suitable for this.

 

 

As per usual, excellent work thus far!

[Darknono35 3,137]

Awesome building sir it's an pure beauty

 

I like your textures, but the first roof level seems a little odd in my opinion, maybe you can add some dirty due by the weather, or ambient/ reflective occlusion. But I'm sure, you know what do you need to do

 

About your furnitures models, it's lovely and detailed

 

Keep it up the good work I can't wait to see an other update

[dubaidude303 1,119]

That is epic!!

[gutterclub 2,729]

I think the glass is loads better, great work. The glass doesnt detract you from the building anymore, thats important

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Thanks guys,

 

Darknono, I had added some weathering to the lower roof but I think it was a bit too subtle. I've given it a more pronounced weathering effect and decided to go for bleaching rather than grime, let me know what you think.

 

Bipin, thanks for the offer! I ended up making 6 different sets of office furniture, which should allow for sufficient variation. Likewise, if anyone wants to use any let me know The trick to not killing my computer was simply to replicate the pieces as instances instead of copies. Now I know that, when I eventually get back to finishing Freshwater Place I'm going to try the same thing again with house furniture. The glass on Freshwater place is quite transparent so I think it could look quite good

 

 

I'm going to start on nightlighting now

[gutterclub 2,729]

I'd be interested in those furniture models they are great

[darn42 1,268]

The interior models look great. As for saving resources, you can propagate them as proxies and instance those to quicken it further, though I don't think the detail you have put in those models is quite necessary. It is very nice though and gives a good effect on your building. >.>

 

To save on rendertime, because they are such small details, you should make sure your materials are really simple. Mental ray can handle lots of polygons, but anything with refraction or reflections, especially with less than 1 glossiness, really take longer. So try and keep it to basic colors so your renders don't go way longer.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Yeah.. I did get carried away I know lol...how do you 'propogate as proxies'?.. not sure what that means... what does it achieve?

 

For anyone interested, I've uploaded them here . As I've said in my Disclaimer, if I haven't uploaded this in a useable way please let me know!

[darn42 1,268]

In the create section,  under mentalray, there's something called an mr proxy. It takes a file saved on the hard drive to create geometry at rendertime only and displays the model as a pointcloud until render. It's a great way to effectively amass polygon counts with good performance. For instance () in my gazebo scene I had 5000 grass proxies each with 10,000 polygons worth of grass throughout my scene. That's 50 million polygons! but because it only loaded the geometry once, it seemed like much less. The materials did still take a lot of time to calculate, though. 

 

Anyways, look it up, there's alot of tutorials and documentation on proxies out there.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Hmmm... while that sounds very useful, it might be a bit complicated for me. I still get in all kinds of trouble using instances. I try to copy, attach or delete things I've instanced and the next thing I've created havoc all over my model and I end up spending the next 3 hours de-instancing everything

 

I'll give it a go on a practice model, with some of the detailed models I've been making of late this could be a very efficient method

 

By the way I don't think I commented on your gazebo, the columns are beautiful. I tried making something similar when I made the church for 120 Collins Street.. but a) It killed my model b) it didn't look anything anywhere near as good as yours c) they were so small you couldn't tell anyway LOL...

 

Are you going to make a tutorial in your modeling techniques thread? It would be good to see some of the techniques you used. (sorry I should have posted this in your thread instead of mine)

[darn42 1,268]

Once you know what you're doing, proxies are easy. The only hard part is knowing where to put them, they can get pretty ambiguous. 

 

Btw, there is a "select instance" function in 3ds max that does, guess what, selects instances You can add it to your quad menu in the "customize user interface" dialogue. If you aren't familiar, there's documentation on how to use it. But basically you can uninstance everything at once if you select all of the instances. Just make sure to keep them unique to eachother.

 

As for my columns, its nothing out of the ordinary. Some box modeling for the main shape and then a bent, modified plane and some lofts for the capital. I can do a bit of a breakdown at some point, though. The hardest part isn't knowing how to do certain things, its knowing when to do them. I had to start the leaves over 5 times before I got an accurate modeling method for them. (the columns, when smoothed, were 800k polys each if you wanna know, though if I just used relax, instead, it woulda been like 100-200k ea)

[Darknono35 3,137]

Darknono, I had added some weathering to the lower roof but I think it was a bit too subtle. I've given it a more pronounced weathering effect and decided to go for bleaching rather than grime, let me know what you think.

 

 

@Reddonquixote: I think it will can be better with some darkening dirty along the walls of the tower and the corniche And an other thing but it's maybe like this in the real life, try to shift the tiles of the roof, here they are too straight and aligned in my opinion 

 

And thanks for your furnitures on the STEX, very good job ! I'll use them in my further skyscrapers

[giorgos69 52]

My good god 101 Collins looks perfect with the updated glass. 

You are a legend! 

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Here's the first night render test. Not sure why but I've really struggled with this (hence lengthy delay since my last post).. I think because the textures are a quite shiny its reflecting a lot of light, and I can't seem to get a glow on the antenna I'm happy with. I am very happy with the front entrance though I think that came out well... anyway let me know what you think. I think the true test of whether this looks any good is to see what it looks like in game.

 

Darknono, btw I have added in some grime on the lower roof, you can see it a bit on this image but I'll upload another day image soon

 

Oh I did find one exciting thing out today, you can make the Lot Editor full screen... for the last 6 months I've been poking around on a postage size editor wondering how people do this!.. LOL

 

[giorgos69 52]

Stunning night lights as usual! Do you think you could maybe make a small tutorial on how you have created those night windows? I am currently modelling 530 Collins Street and I feel it is important to get the nightlights right in a building like that! 

 

Also, I am very curious as to how we can run LE in fullscreen, please share with us!

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Oh yes sorry I assumed I'm the only one who didn't know, its quite an old post  I found on SC4Devotion: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=5771.0

 

Re nightlights, I can't take the credit for that either! You should check out Jason's BATs & Tutorials thread if you haven't already -

[dubaidude303 1,119]

Looking totally awesome! Can't wait for it!

[Darknono35 3,137]

Awesome nightlight my friend, it's very beautiful

[Xander Dax 310]

wow! amazing!, can't wait to plop this in my cities

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Ok, I think I'm done with this one.. any last comments? Minimal changes since my last post... mainly I desaturated the night windows, in game they were vibrant yellow... and also desaturated the antenna lighting, and the lower roof has more grime on it. That's about it... I haven't posted the in game shots, the day model looks pretty good, night model as mentioned was too yellow. For some reason the night render is taking hours to export, guessing too many reflections.

 

***Oh but I need help with something too. I always gets glitches in my exports. Does anyone know why? Its only the game exports, not the previews. Anyone know how to prevent/ fix this?

 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

If you're still working on it I would reduce the reflectivity and glossiness of the columns and black area near the base (and probably reduce the glossiness on most of the other materials too).  At night it looks like they're chrome.

 

I would also personally make the night ground plane a little weaker.

 

 

The problem with the buildings in-game is something that happens to all of the buildings in the game, you just haven't noticed so far because you haven't been looking close enough.  As far as I know there's nothing to fix it.

[darn42 1,268]

The render time is due to the facade being a low glossiness material. You can try turning on the interpolate option in the material setup for that material. It'll give less accurate results, but it'll speed up rendering considerably.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I would avoid the interpolate option.  It will speed things up but it really screws up the glossiness, to the point where it defeats the purpose of having glossy reflections.

 

Instead, if it's not a particularly reflective object (pretty much anything other than glass, metal, or polished stone), then you can check the fg + highlights only checkbox.

 

If it's a reflective object with glossy reflections (which it appears almost your entire building is ), you can try reducing the glossiness samples. 

 

Also, before I was assuming that the facade wasn't as polished as it actually seems to be in real life, so I think you'll actually want to increase the reflectivity and glossiness for the main facade, not decrease it.

[Darknono35 3,137]

Your roof is better like this and I love your glass, it's perfect

Good job so far and keep it up man

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Thanks for the help guys..

 

Re glossiness/  shininess of everything... I really wanted to go for that look with this building, its one of Melbourne's most 'prestigious' office buildings (arguably lol).. I want to give everything an opulent look. With the pillars and the granite, totally agree that's overdone, how I tried to fix this (or actually thought I had) was rather than reduce the reflectivity I added a blacked out a section over the ground plane. (It looked quite nice until I added the night map then it turned into mirrored bling!) Just need to check it lined up properly because it shouldn't look like that. If that doesn't work then I will reduce reflectivity down. Re the ground plane nightmaps, I know I have them set quite strong, and I've come under criticism before for it in my previous BATs, but I really like it, to me it really brings the street night reflections to life. This also at least ties them all together..

 

On that note, now I have a few BATs completed I recently lined them all up to see how they hang together. Mostly the day models look ok together, the Rialto glass is too dark and the model itself is too skinny. Bourke Place, the glass is too busy (as recently pointed out), but definitely 120 Collins Street is the most non-cohesive one. Again the model is too skinny and the building texture too grimy looking. At night, it looks like I've used a different night window technique for every BAT I've made and they don't hang together well at all. I've actually come full circle with night windows, I think the best night windows were Eureka Tower, and as it turns out I'm using the same technique on 101 Collins. At some stage in the future I wouldn't mind going back and tweaking some of these things. Anyway, just some observations I thought I'd share

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

This looks better: