Rickks BAT Projects

[Rickk 16]

This is a thread for all the smaller BAT projects I'm doing (or, rather, will do) that I don't think would justify the creation of their own thread (like the Shanghai World Finacial Center).

This means that I'd like to devote more of my time to creating some smaller buildings for the game and not just skyscrapers.

 

My first project is going to be a set of churches. I had been thinking of this idea for a couple of weeks, but SimGoober just released a pack of four different churches so I needed to revise my plan. I am now going to do a series of rewards based on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereby known as LDS for ease of fingers' sake!) - or Mormon churches.

 

Here's how I envision the reward system to work:

The standard Church Buildings will be made available like the SC4 churches, or when you reach a certain population score.

Once you have built four Church Buildings in the same city, a 'Stake Center' will be made available to you.

Once three Stake Centers have been built in the region, a Temple will be made available to you (based on the current design of smaller Temple buildings).

 

I would also like to get a 'Seminary Building' in there somewhere, as I found out they have those too (I didn't know that until I did some reseach today).

 

For those of you not familiar with the Church (and I would expect that to be most of you ), here's a run-down of the various buildings:

Church Building: This is your regular meeting hall for general Sunday activities. It includes a Sacrament Hall, a dozen or so classrooms for Sunday School, some Bishops Offices, and so on. They sometimes include a small multipurpose room (a carpeted basketball court, for example).

Seminary Building: Here high school kids go each weekday morning before school to learn a little about the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or other religious teachings.

Stake Center: These buildings are the hub for several Wards which make up a Stake - and the Stake Center is where most of the Stake's activities take place. Sometimes Wards will meet in these buildings on Sunday like regular Church Buildings - but they're also used for Confrences and for Stake General Authorities offices.

Temple: Temples are probably the highlight of the LDS structures - but there aren't too many of them. By last count, I believe, there are like 120-or-so active Temples in the world, a lot of which are currently being built in South America and Europe.

 

Any more than that and I'd have to go into a religious discussion, which I don't want to do. I'm just highlighting the.. uh.. highlights. (I need a thesaurus for Christmas.)

 

The first building I've been working on is the Stake Center, which is probably the second hardest of the lot to do (the Temple will be the hardest).

 

At this point the modeling is about 40% done and the texturing is 0% done. It shouldn't take too long to finish if I just push through it, but I'm going to have to work on it when I have a day off this week and try to concentrate on other models or work first.

 

Here are some images:

 

http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake01.jpg align=baseline>

 

http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake02.jpg align=baseline>

 

And it is based loosely on this general Stake Center design:

 

align=baseline>

[Cjah 15]

Interesting ideas!

I can't wait to see what your gonna bat next!

[Lord_Bertrum 3]

Look at all the churchs croping up, first Simgoober, now these, we're all becoming very saintly at ST.

[Rickk 16]

An update on the Stake Center building: Modeling is about 75% complete and texturing is about 15% complete.

 

 

To do: Finsih the windows and apply textures. I also need to model a satelite dish and some AC units (I can probably steal those from my other models ).

 

Let me know what you guys think.

[Hordijk 18]

It's a very nice building and looks very flashing with the 3ds max render pic's

[Rickk 16]

Thanks Hordijk! I'm hoping it will be just as flashy in the game.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Impressive as always Rickk! I like the reward concept, its a lot better than the House of Worship (HoW for my carpal tunnel-ridden fingers sake).

Sometime, when I can get around to it, I'd love to do a Pietro Belluschi church set based on this. Odds are that I won't get around to it for quite some a while. Still something to mull over for the future. Thanks for the idea!

[sharkbait16 0]

Oh nice. I like all these churches for the game we've been seeing.

[JaWood 194]

Oh my!! I love you, Rickk!

For those who don't know, I am an LDS member. My sig is the spire of the San Diego Temple. Rickk, if you want to use my temple model in this endevor of yours, you have my full support and permission. If you want to make your own temple models too (I know you were working on the Salt Lake City temple a long time ago) go right ahead. I feel the SLC one would be the most embraced since it's an American landmark, but I'd love to see the Washington DC or Portland temple as well.

Let me know if I can help out in any way.

[Lord_Bertrum 3]

Date: 10/31/2005 2:10:47 PM Author: Rickk Thanks Hordijk! I'm hoping it will be just as flashy in the game.

quote>

I have absolutely no doubt that it will be.

[lrfox 2]

There's also a nice temple in New York City that's a little more plain that would fit into any city well. but in anycase i admire your work, and i'll be downloading it as soon as its on the STEX

[cammo2003 20]

Heh. We can never have too many churches. What we really need are a few large modern ones and a few smaller ones (we don't have many of either).

That said, the one you've modeled so far certainly won't go astray... I'm not a particular fan of the LDS's addition of a book, but they certainly know how to build their churches.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Date: 10/31/2005 5:46:13 PM
Author: JaWood
but I'd love to see the Washington DC or Portland temple as well.

Let me know if I can help out in any way.

quote>

Portland, Oregon has one? I think it's the one near OR 217 and I-5's interchange near Lake Oswego. And there's also one in Milwaukie too. Both are really cool I hear, but I've unfortuneately never been too close to them ever. (quasi Catholic, non-LDS member here )

[Rickk 16]

Date: 10/31/2005 11:04:26 PM Author: sparkythepenguin

Date: 10/31/2005 5:46:13 PM Author: JaWood but I'd love to see the Washington DC or Portland temple as well. Let me know if I can help out in any way.

quote> Portland, Oregon has one? I think it's the one near OR 217 and I-5's interchange near Lake Oswego. And there's also one in Milwaukie too. Both are really cool I hear, but I've unfortuneately never been too close to them ever. (quasi Catholic, non-LDS member here )

quote>

 

The Portland, OR temple is my favorite temple of the church. I had the pleasure of being able to go to it earlier this year when one of my wife's cousins was married there. We didn't do any temple work while we were there, but I thought it was a lot fancier than the Seattle Temple.

 

Here's a picture of the Portland Temple:

 

 

I think for this project I'm going to do the new 'small' temples that are popping up in a lot of places. They're all the same basic design (no where near as large or as fancy as the Portland Temple, for example). This way players can have the generic temple that's unique to their city. Here's a couple of different ones that resemble what I'm talking about:

 

 

 

They're not too much larger than a large Stake Center (like the kind I'm modeling).

 

Hope that clears some stuff up.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Yeah that definetly is out in Kruse Oaks near Lake O. You can see just a little bit of it from I-5 or 217. If you make that Rickk, may I include it in a list of Portland BATs on my thread? Heck, I'd even give you credit as participating in Around the Roses! That's an amazing building.

[Rickk 16]

Modeling: Finished.

Texturing: Finished.

 

http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake05.jpg align=baseline>

 

http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake06.jpg align=baseline>

 

http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake07.jpg align=baseline>

 

http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake08.jpg align=baseline>

 

Now it's time to take it into GMax and get the nitelites done and render it out.

Once that's done I'll be ready to start work on the next one in the set: The Church Building(s) - I may decide to do more than one version, to add some diveristy.

[Hordijk 18]

Very nice Rickk looking forward on how the next one looks

[Lord_Bertrum 3]

I like the idea of you tweeking with them slightly to create diversity.

[Rickk 16]

 

Okay, the Stake Center is finished.

 

Now all I need to do is learn how to use DatGen or iLive or whatever to be able to make it a civic building, a reward, and how to set reward requirements. I really should contact SimGoober.

[hyped_up_boy 15]

nice!  this will look nice in my city!  good work!

[6underground 11]

Simply beautiful!! Well done!

[Thut 0]

Hey Rick,

 

I love churches even thou im no religious man myself... The rendered pix look great and cant wait till it comes out... Hope to see more stuff.... Real Neat Church only i can imagine it only works on perfectly flat land!

 

[SimGoober 2,351]

Rickk, sorry I didn't respond earlier, you sent me a PM while I was on the road, and then I forgot about it until I got another one from someone else today...

Anyhow, I like the concept you are going for here.  A few pointers on this model first; the texturing looks very good to me, but could use a little tweaking.

 

1) The spire is too white. This is the second hardest color to do on a BAT (Yellow is harder), actually, for best results you should use a lighter grey tone, as BAT bleaches out the color and it looks white.

 

2) The bricks are just a little too pink, and tiled. Try making a larger version of the texture you used, and make a few subtle splotches here and there.  Then lower the saturation 10 or 15%.

 

3) Same idea for the roof.  Obviously, the roof is mostly what we see, so I would spend the most time on it's texture.  Add a little more gradient to it, and some minor variations.  Even brand new roofs have splotches and such.

 

All this assumes you can do such things in Photoshop or something related; if not , well... lol.  GasCooker wrote some really nice tutorials on these subjects; he's a bit of a photoshop guru.

 

Also, you might want to make the future buildings smaller scale.  It's a tough call between what works in the real world, and what works in SC4.  In SC4 we mostly roofs, so buildings with big roofs look... like big roofs...   Smaller buildings also mean smaller lots, which are easier to place in game.

 

For the modding, do it in three steps.  First, make a generic landmark lot, and focus on making it look like you want.  Buld it in the lot editor, and check it in game.  Once you have t looking the way you want, then we can start modding it.  Easier to do that way, as it's easy to lose modding while editing the props and such on a lot.

 

Step 2 will be to mod the lots to function in game as you want. Ymiby , Numby and the like.

 

Step 3 will be making it a reward. That's generally the last step I do, and helps make it easier to debug.  Once you know one thing works, move to the next.  

 

As to the rewards, making them dependant on other lots in a city is relatively easy.  Making them dependant on buildings in a region is much tougher.  I know it can be done, just never did it myself.

 

For the modding and reward parts, let me know when you ge there, and I'll help withwhat I can. 

[Rickk 16]

SG, thanks for the reply.

I am actually using a grey for the spire already, and its still bleaching out. You're absolutely right, though, and I will try toning it down even more.

 

As for the texture correction, good suggestion. I didn't even notice how tiled the roof looks until you mentioned it. I will jump back into PS soon and take care of that problem.

 

I'll re-render it and see what you guys think.

 

Meanwhile, my wife and I visited a nearby church building and I took some pictures. Should be an easy model.

[yoder7652 21]

 

This church model is looking very cool. I look forward to seeing the rest of the models in this project. I'm making room for these buildings even as we speak! Keep up the good work.

 

[Lord_Bertrum 3]

A BAT this good will certainly earn you a place in Sim-Heaven.

[Rickk 16]

Small Delay:

Hey guys, I just wanted to post here real quick and let everyone know that I have to take a break from this project for at least a week (maybe two).

 

I got a couple job interviews as a 3D Artist, one of them is at Zombie Studios (and I'm really excited about that). Wish me luck and hopefully I'll be able to get this finished soon.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Well, that's a real-life issue, and as such it's more important than a BAT. Good luck with those interviews, I hope you are successful.

As for the BAT, it's good to hear that you're going to work on the things SimGoober mentioned. I don't have the slightest idea if I will ever use that BAT, because it's very America-specific. It would look very odd to me, but judging from the pictures, it's a wonderful recreation of the original, so congratulations and keep up the good work!

[Rickk 16]

Date: 11/14/2005 3:07:42 PM Author: T Wrecks Well, that's a real-life issue, and as such it's more important than a BAT. Good luck with those interviews, I hope you are successful. As for the BAT, it's good to hear that you're going to work on the things SimGoober mentioned. I don't have the slightest idea if I will ever use that BAT, because it's very America-specific. It would look very odd to me, but judging from the pictures, it's a wonderful recreation of the original, so congratulations and keep up the good work!

quote>

Thanks for the luck, Wrecks!

 

As for the architecture, the Church is actually building lots of these buildings from everywhere from Mexico to Togo to Malaysia to Germany. Same boring style, but its becoming more and more universal.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Germany, too? LOL, I must be hanging out at the wrong places. Most modern German churches I have seen have a considerably smaller footprint and generally combine the charm and beauty of a WWII bunker with a take-off ramp that has been designed by a deconstructivist on speed, if you know what I mean.