Za's Non-NYBT Thread

[Za 164]

LivingInThePast: Thanks a lot. And I think it's partially because I've had a lot of down time lately to work on stuff. Once classes start up again I might not be seen for a bit.

skyscraper: Planning to do with it as in what type of occupants? Probably CS of some sort and a hospital lot for the heck of it. Or what I plan on doing with it in general? Release it to the world, hopefully

darknono & libellibicus: Thanks as always

wwetom: Thanks very much!

Continued work on the new one as it's been pretty fun trying to get the structure right. There is an obvious dimensional flaw with the glass atrium area, but if no one objects, I'll probably leave it as is since it doesn't really affect the overall shape/appearance. Unless people notice some other glaring problems (textures too washed out/too saturated, etc.) nightlights are next on the docket... should be oodles of fun.

Z5 update on all 4 views (click for full size)

[gutterclub 2,729]

Now this will be very handy, great work so far...some great new BATers showing their faces round here..10 years on and the standard for first time BATers is amazing!!

[Darknono35 3,138]

Great job!!

Your textures work is beautiful. I love your roofs so far, but you'll probably add some dirt in the center roof, I think it's too washed with the weather and pollution.

I think it's can be an hospital like you've mentioned in your post, or offices of an High-tech compagny. But it's your choice

[weixc812 509]

Wow, this building is impressive

[Za 164]

gutterclub: Thanks a lot: of course, I have to acknowledge that - this far on - I'm certainly standing on the shoulders of giants, so-to-speak. I'd be nowhere if I hadn't lurked and read for the better part of the past few years... learning solutions to some problems before I ever encounter them, etc. Jason's and darn's tutorials in particular have been very helpful.

darknono: Thanks again Yes, there is a certain something missing from the main roof. It's hard because it's pretty sparse in real life, but I'll try your suggestion.

weixc812: Thank ya kindly.

Unfortunately, I couldn't do that one and not its cousin down the street I've resolved to finish up these two before I move on; then I'll probably remake 150 State St. in its entirety since, looking back, that was a really unstable model. Crossing my fingers.

1 East Avenue:

There's a laundry list of things that need tweaking, but you get the general idea. It'll be a real grid-buster.

On the topic of tweaking, anyone know how to make it so that bushes generated via a particle system don't look crappy when in the shadows?

[gutterclub 2,729]

Another great midrise, I'd just be a little careful with the white textures that they don't look too blownout...its normally advised to add just a layer of pink and set to opacity at a few percent, just to help white sit with the games pallete a little better..I like the glass a lot

[Susaji 523]

Amazing!

[on001222 689]

Nice BAT :thumb:

[Darknono35 3,138]

Another cool building

[Vlasky 1,803]

Your appearance reminds me of someone else who just opened a BAT thread out of the blue and surprised everybody with top quality BATs - my dear friend anotn What you showed us looks amazing and I am very sure that this is a thread of one of the best BATters around in the future. Good luck!

[darn42 1,268]

I agree with vlasky. These are looking stellar already. The detail you put into the buildings already is making them really great, and the quality of your textures is fantastic. You are going to be among the best BATers once you get some experience under your belt.

Good luck

[art128 4,622]

I really love these last two buildings and would use them a lot, good job.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Some top notch BATs you've got going on here! And not only that it's a city recreation!

I just have to second what the others have said about color. The medium wealth Maxis pavers are perceived to be light grey, so to make things that are, say, white, you'll want to roughly match the pavers and then make it brighter.

Since you're BATing the ground anyway, I think you should recreate the pavers/bricks from the real building.

Try to find some better trees. If you go to Autodesk Seek there are some free plants which might work. And I'm not sure but I think Evermotion.org has some free samples from some of their products, so you might be able to get a few free trees. You can also just search google for "free 3d tree" or something like that. It doesn't need to be super high quality or anything like that, since SC4 is at such a low resolution anyway.

For the bushes the problem is that in the sun, there is contrast between the sun lit parts and the parts that are in shadow, and that gives it definition. But when the entire thing is in shadow, that contrast isn't there anymore and so the definition isn't either. I'm not really sure how to solve that.

Rochester is home to a Maxis building. http://goo.gl/maps/kEPDv

Anyway, great (and fast!) work here. I'm looking forward to seeing more.

[Za 164]

gutterclub: Thanks as usual. There was a bit of tan/yellow in the first image; certainly not enough. I spent a good bit of time trying out pink/red - think I ended up with some combination thereof to get where it is currently. Hopefully a bit less blown out.

Hazani, on0012-, darknono, art128: Thanks a lot

Vlasky & darn: Wow, that's quite kind of you. I'll keep working hard and we shall see.

jasoncw: Thanks for the tips

I've put in some tentative reddish pavers until I get a chance to go up and check the whole area out in greater detail.

Hopefully these trees are a bit better. I experimented slightly with Tree Maker 5, but to little avail. I'll definitely have to explore it more carefully since I probably can't keep using the same few pre-made ones I've found over and over.

My problem with the particle bushes seems to have been a) the fact that my first texture was horrible and b) that I was using far too few particles. Live and learn, eh.

Yes, that's what I thought of the first time I saw that building grow in SC4. They're quite similar, but maxis lopped off the back [two tiles] and modified the sculpture on the top considerably. That'll be done once I advance beyond the modernist box rut

Here's the [hopefully] complete day render for 45

I attempted a day render but ended up getting the dreaded multicolored box in the LE. I understand that's a somewhat easily fixed LOD error? Another issue was that the building size in LE seems to include the ground/sky plane as part of the volume. Any tips on how to prevent that?

Current day render for 1

Added the flags and hopefully improved the flora. Also realized that I forgot the "One East Avenue" sign over the entrance before.

As for nightlighting, it seems that the current frontier is adding depth to them. I liked darn's results a lot, so I'm going to be giving that method a whirl. Shouldn't be too bad ... right? In any case, updates while I do those might be more spaced out.

Edit: Nowhere near as detailed or well done as darn's, but hey... (yes, I know the shadows are screwy)

[libellibicus 396]

Both of them are looking well tasty. Good work fella

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wow!!! both of the models looks fantastic.

I think the trees is a little to dark, maybe you can try to brighten them a bit, and see what that does.

[zahrul3 472]

If you want to know how good your BATs really are, why not try plopping them in a city. I'd be really happy to see them released as there is a shortage of mid-rise offices on the STEX that might actually fit into my CJ.

[darn42 1,268]

Looking really good. There are so many good people popping out of nowhere lately.

For the nightlights. I make copies of my windows I want to texture, and apply the night texture to that. For detail, it's not too hard. Either model or download some furniture. I modeled a few desks, and took some chairs and sofas and other furniture I had made from previous projects, and just placed them semirandomly into the scene. Also, remember walls (They will go straight into the mullions), it adds a lot of realism. When you are rendering out the night window textures, remember to skew everything to be the right degree. Use photometric lights and skew those as well. It changes how the light is coming out of them and should help fix the shadows.

I will write a full tutorial on how to make the nightmaps sometime soon. Good luck.

[Za 164]

libellibicus: Hehe why thank you.

Aaron Graham: Thanks; and I was thinking along the same lines... at least for 45 for sure. I'll do that.

zahrul: I'll put up some views in sc4 soon

darn: Ah wow... I've been doing it somewhat differently (mostly because my skills are still limited). Results aren't quite up to snuff, but I'm reasonably happy for a first go (see below).

1. Most obvious: making the generic, highly-variable office. I assume that one could just use the same scene and customize it to each building

2. Make the lights... honestly, all I did was make two bars running lengthwise and applied a self-illuminating material (change color temp. and luminance to suit)

3. Set to maxis or darknight

3. Simply set the the main gizmo (for lack of a better name) to the edge between "top" and "front" and zoom to a certain level

4. Select the whole scene (minus the furniture you shove to the side) and skew -10m* on the Y

*for this angle at least - the main reference point is trying to make tables look as if they are perpendicular to the wall.

To illustrate the point:

5. Render that using the default 3ds renderer (so no LODs are necessary)

6. Screenshot it and open in photoshop (or paint would work). Do whatever color changes are needed and such

7. Apply to the planes and give them some self-illumination

I'll have to figure out if it's possible to make a decent side-view with that method. Also, because these particular offices take up a whole floor, I might have to figure out a gradient to make it so dark places are slightly lit. Will it be worth it in the end? Who knows

[darn42 1,268]

With this method of lighting up floors, there is a very dangerous possibility of falling into uncanny valley. If it looks realistic, but there are some major flaws, it will look worse than something like the generic nightmaps. So you have to make sure that everything lights up where it should (like angles; if one side of a corner is lit up the other must) and windows on the opposite side. On the far right it should be transparent so that it doesn't look like the window is a wall.

The way I do it so that dark places are lit is to make my nightmaps cover the entire span of my building and give the planes a cutout or opacity map set on gradient to get rid of anything I don't want lit/make it more gradual. This also lets them be used on a more wide variety of buildings, since they are the full interior of the building.

I also put a pane of glass in front of them when I'm modeling and make that the only object in the scene visible to the camera. That way I get perfect sizing for my map and I can trim the extras on the image by simply selecting the alpha.

Make a camera set to orthographic as well once you get your view you want (ctrl+c is to create a camera from your view). This will make sure everything you do is uniform because you will need to render twice. The second time skewed the other way. You put these two as the maps for a falloff map in the diffuse slot of your material, and set the falloff angle to be 90 degrees in the middle. That way, when the camera angle changes, so does the bitmap applied to the planes. This allows for depth on every view. The bad thing about this, though, is for glass buildings with glass corners, you have to render out the side as well. For this reason, it's best to make the edges of your nightmap close to symmetrical so you can mirror the render of the side over and still have it look good. That's what I did on chase.

I suggest lighting it with photometric lights. Self illumination are good for the subtle lighting that isn't actually lighting, while photometric give realistic results every time.

Finally, the setup of your furniture is right what it should be. Basically what I had, but when you skew it, make sure to group everything together first. Right now, your objects are skewing differently, when it should be uniform.

You have most of what to do good though. It's a long process to do it really well, but you've already gotten half the work done. Good luck.

[Za 164]

Ach! Das Unheimliche!

Well, a considerable amount of time watching simfox's threads has taught me to never even think of doing something like maligning corner lights, so you hopefully won't see too much of that. You were good to point out the missing dark triangles: horrible oversight on my part. I fixed those up as best I could.

I dabbled with the falloff maps - the result is pretty acceptable for one view and, perhaps, passable in the other save for the area in the red circle.

Don't think I'm disregarding your advice, it's been very helpful, but I might leave the tower lights as they are (sans falloff) and save some more in-depth experience with that for the next one.

In addition, I'll certainly give the photometric lights a shot.

[darn42 1,268]

Looks brilliant, well done.

Although, when I'm looking at it, I get the feeling that something isn't quite right. Something like the furniture being overscaled but I know it isn't. I think the cause of this is from the distance between windows. I have never given this thought before, but I think that there should be walls below the windows on the inside, so the furniture ends up lying lower.

This is minor, so don't change anything because of that, just keep it in mind for the future.

[gutterclub 2,729]

I do like this method, what needs to be remembered is that if you were to view a building, at night, from the SC4 camera angle, at the same distance as zoom 5...would everything be so visible? I love the idea...but I still stand by old Simfoxes saying of 'reality is nothing, illusion is everytihng'

But, that said, I am loving these new techniques and new directions we are being taken in

[Za 164]

darn: I definitely contemplated what to do about the fact that the floors probably actually start halfway in those white areas. It certainly leaves a lot of unused space between in this set-up, doesn't it. I could move the planes down a bit on the Z and see what that does. Dark spots would have to be modified again of course, but nothing terribly difficult.

gutterclub: When I look at it, that's also a concern of mine. Unfortunately, a lot of the images I found to try to decide what to do were all from the side and hardly any that were very far away. Ones like these suggest that things would be rather visible. I'm sure there are plenty of counter-examples and what I think it may boil down to is the type of glass.

After thinking on it for a bit, I think my lights have three problems:

- They're so clear - it's not necessarily that things are visible - but that what we're seeing is hardly distorted. Almost as if the glass weren't there.

- It could also have to do with the lighting. Your mention of the uncanny reminds me also of something I read on the effects of certain types of lighting with relation to cognitive dissonance. But that's a rather weak assumption on my part...

- My offices are sparse and not terribly varied. Whereas darn's Chase offices (sorry I keep using you as an example) are highly varied and full, mine have a lot of empty floor space - which really doesn't make sense for a small, downtown office.

So... what to do about that. In this model, regrettably not much without a bit of extra effort. Next time around who knows what new problems will crop up - that's the fun

To conclude this post, maybe a discussion about "reality is nothing - illusion is everything?" It was his mantra, so-to-speak, yet I found it to fall victim to a similar problem that he accused Vlasky of. It sounds impressive, but its meaning is remarkably ... narrow? Limiting? Ultimately unclear. What does it really mean? Reality (without getting into a debate on the nature of reality) cannot be nothing; otherwise, what would we be basing our illusions - representations - on? Of course, he could be saying that there is no such thing as reality in general, in which case, we might as well fold up the flag and go home.

Does he mean that the means by which we create our illusions are ultimately unimportant, so long as there is some illusion? Or is he saying, through overstatement, that we should not emphasize "reality" so much that it clouds our perception of things that are merely a token of their actual instantiation? Maybe someone can help me understand.

[Reddonquixote 4,339]

Hi Za, I think you might be over-intellectualising it.. all it means is sometimes you will achieve greater realism by creating the illusion of real life without the need to meticulously recreate the real-world physics and geometry.

These office interiors are amazing to look at and the detail and work that's gone into it is just mind-blowing.. but it might be worthwhile stepping back from it and looking at it objectively, is it really giving you the result you were going for?

I'll give you an example using my current project.. I spent a whole day making Corinthian columns and now they are so small you can't even tell.. all its done is make my model impossible to work with! Lesson learned for me... point is I might have achieved same/better results with the illusion of a Corinthian column without actually needing to make one.. (Having said that it was fun to do!)

Anyway, I'm really looking forward to seeing how these turn out.. I suspect a healthy balance of realism and illusion will give you the best outcome

[Gn_leugim 858]

interesting light*about stuff... I shall experiment

[Za 164]

Gn_leugim: Glad to hear it. I'd be interested to see what you come up with.

reddonquixote: Ah, I see. I might have worded it differently then... but I can't fault him for that. Maybe something like reality is impractical; illusion is convenient. But that's not as sweeping or grand

As per the windows, unfortunately I'm not an objective viewer as I've only been in one office and only seen some others. So in that sense, yes, it resembles what I pictured in my head. Of course that doesn't mean what I envisioned was necessarily accurate or aesthetically pleasing.

I hear what you're saying. It's a lot of work for something that isn't, in many regards, necessary. The kicker of the whole thing is that in ten years of playing, I've used the night setting 20 times max. But I know night lighting is important to the community and I figure that if more and more people get interested in experimenting with new techniques, they'll find ways to make it easier and hopefully better. After all, it wasn't terribly long ago that night windows were *just* a willy-nilly mass of yellow, white, or blue.

In the end, I assume that you're right

...

Have some more lighting done on 45 - going downtown tomorrow night to get a look at what's inside that atrium and also take a peek at 1 to see what its lights are like.

Worked a tad on the plaza for 1, but tomorrow will hopefully yield some good findings.

I know I said I'd return to 150 State St., but it's such a simple building that every single thing is important to get dimensionally correct. In my eyes busy, complex buildings can hide errors in scale somewhat well. I'm going to save that until I can do it some justice.

So as a break from 45 and 1, here's a peek at an older friend from down the street: 89 East Avenue, home of the Rochester Gas & Electric Company. (not vertically scaled yet)

[Reddonquixote 4,339]

Hmm.. not sure I made my point very clearly... I didn't mean to suggest we should model illusions of reality because its easier or more practical (albeit sometimes that might be true).. but simply that it sometimes yields a better result. Also, I don't think you ever need to have been inside an office because that's not what you're modelling. Your modeling the way it looks from outside the building lit up at night. You can see that anytime!

Maybe just to illustrate the point further, refer the image below, its a photo of a building on the left and Paul's amazing BAT creation on the right, this was created through the illusion of night windows and it looks almost the same as the photo... I don't want to dissuade anyone from taking BATing to new levels of realism.. my only point is ultimately the end result is all that matters, not how you got there. Also, this was meant to be a comment on Reality vs. Illusion... not on anyone's work

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Lovely!!

[Gn_leugim 858]

will tell you, though I have to change it for my case as I use gmax and not max but the concepts you bring here are good, maybe I can give it some real use latter