Reddonquixote's Q1 Project

[Darknono35 3,137]

A lot of details here !!!

Models are perfect, textures too. What more to say?  Keep up the good work !!

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Thanks guys

 

Well, I've spent literally all day trying to get the right looking results for my pools. I've tried every tutorial with caustics and refraction and noise and smoke and ocean lume... nothing looked like I wanted.

 

In the end I made the materials up and ended with something so simple but I think really effective. There are two types of pools in the complex, a reflecting pool at the base of the building, and the two swimming pools, and both have quite different effects.

 

Reflecting Pool

 

 

The reflecting pool is a very thin layer of water, the distance between the pool base and the water surface is not very deep.

1. The pool base is lined with the same dark concrete we have on the surrounds,
2. The water itself is simply a procedural Arch & Design Glass (Thin Geometry) template.
3. I bumped up the IOR slightly, to 2,
4. Added a ripple texture I found online to the Bump map, set to 0.1.

That's all it is.

 

Here is the ripple and texture I used to complete this step:

 

 

Edit: Section on swimming pools removed and will be replaced with a new section below.

[Xander Dax 310]

WOW!

[Darknono35 3,137]

Great, but I'm not sure with the swimming pool texture. Your ripples ( blue and white ) map gave an strange result at your water, too rough in my opinion. Maybe you should try without this map or with an Autodesk material library.

However, your pool, under the glass and with reflections, seems perfect and cool

 

Great job so far, I can't wait to see this building completed 

[Girafe 1,729]

The modeling is really amazing and far from what I am able to do.

 

In the other hand, and I am sorry to say that, but many improvments have to been done for the textures.

 

1. The cars. The colors are not common. Usually, most viewed colors for cars are black / grey / white / brown and darker shades of blue / red / green. 

Here you put very flashy colors it's odd.

 

For the cars, I would recommand to use metallic paint material even if it's not a common arch&design material it looks good on the cars.

 

 

Glass thin for the windshield. 

 

The grass could be better, we can see repetition. Moreover it's a little bit flat.

Max 12 and later propose different arch&design materials. 90% of them are not good for sc4 but few could work.

 

However I would put the flora before tweaking the grass texture because it's often better to have soil texture under foliage. 

 

It's what I used for Gan tower (comes from the librairy of max 12)

 

 

 

You have an entrance with yellow borders, I would say that in this situation you can easily try to fit sc4 world by adding the street texture and fit the 8m width of sc4 street.

 

For the pools, the material with caustics works fine and will give better results above all with night views... 

 

What I get with some experimentation. There are only materials, I just put a tile texture on the concrete of the pool. 

 

 

 

These are the main points

 

If you need further info, don't hesitate

[blunder 1,079]

Looking good, but I'll agree that the water doesn't look quite right.  I've had good results (well, ones i like anyway, not that that means anything) using an Arch water material with a IOR ~2.5 and a transparency of 60-70%.  I really think the transparency needs upped on the water.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Thanks guys that's all really helpful. 

• Car colours - totally agree. I actually still need to work on the cars. There's only one model (A Volvo SUV). I didn't love making the car so I stopped at one, but need to go back and make some more. I'll spend a bit more time on the cars, and get their colours looking better
• Grass, quite right, these are mainly placeholders for the foliage, once the plants go in, either the grass won't be visible, or will be replaced with something else.
• Pool water... hmmm.... you're quite right. I think after a long day looking at it I was really happy with that outcome, looking at it fresh this morning and seeing your comments I totally agree, it looks flat and cartoonish. The only good pool water I was able to see online was Vray, and I haven't been able to see anything nearly as good with Mental ray - Girafe, that pool water looks perfect. I'll keep playing with the pool water today and see what I come up with.

Thanks again!

 

Edit: After seeing Girafe's Umbrella and Sunlounges, I'm going to remake mine.. mine don't look good at all by comparison

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Let me know what you think

 

[muxcomee 35]

no need to ask

it is absolutely perfect.

in my humble, unqualified opinion.

 

the foliage really does make it perfect

and the pools are incredible

its just undescribly perfect.

 

i just noticed something, how do you get from one pool to the other. i cant see any walkway or anything. 

[jdenm8 362]

There is a missing pathway, it appears Reddon has replaced it with a widened garden bed, but it appears that the pool furthest from the building, while part of the complex, is separately managed.

 

The closest one appears to be part of the Q1 Spa, but there is a wall cordoning off the other pool which has its own entrance in the rust-coated wall.

 

It's possible that originally both pools were connected.

 

EDIT: Oops, forgot to say just how awesome it looks regardless.

[Huston 5,798]

That's stunning work.  Love how it turned out No real criticisms though, seems perfect and I'm really no more than an amateur BATer

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I knew I wouldn't regret keeping chin strap and drool bucket prepared! Of course, it looks gorgeous. The only aspect I'm not that sure about is the general colour and brightness of the pool water. Technically, the pools look spot on now. However, that bright turquoise colour really stands out, especially since the surroundings are rather subdued and the flora you made is not that bright, either. However, things may look different once again as soon as the tower is in place.

[darn42 1,268]

...

[T Wrecks 10,209]

...

Yeah, you have some good points there.

[Darknono35 3,137]

Nothing to say, it's simply perfect

[blunder 1,079]

Excellent!

 

You're going to show us how to do the flora, right?  

[dubaidude303 1,119]

That pool is epic!! 

[Cheddar 119]

I guess I forgot my chin strap, but I think even with that, it wouldn't be able to keep my mouth closed.

Anyhow, the base looks incredible! Just by the looks of it, it can even be a building of its own.

[muxcomee 35]

I think that don't change the colour of the water, I think it is perfect

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Hi all. Thanks for those comments. I'm pleased this water is looking better.

 

Muxcomee/ Jdenm8 - yeah, I think there is a pathway down the middle, mostly obscured by the greenery, but its hard to tell, I can't really see where it comes out, at either end. I haven't included it but as Jdenm8 also said, in my head the pool closest to the building is for exclusive use of the occupants of the Q1 tower, and the furthest pool is managed by the spa, and access is only through the cafe (rusty) entrance. That may or may not be true in RL, but that's how it will be in our Sim World

 

Twrecks/ Muxcomme - I too really like the colour of the water atm. (I used an eyedropper to get the colour so I would hope its pretty close), but as Twrecks alluded to, all the textures need to be reassessed once all the pieces are finished to make sure they all play nicely together. My preference would be not to change it though.

 

Blunder - Yep, I will definitely post an update with making the foliage, as well as the pool water, and glass. I just want to finish it off first before I post anymore 'making-ofs'. Even though posting stuff on here and getting feedback and making changes is all part of the process, there's no point making how-to's of things that aren't right or don't work. At least with modelling, my methods aren't the best methods but they still produce a decent result, where as with texturing if you get it wrong, it's just wrong. Once I've got a consensual green light from everyone of the final product, I'll go back and post how I did it

 

Thanks everyone else, appreciate all your comments

[Xander Dax 310]

Amazing!, this is EPIC can not wait for this baby

[gutterclub 2,729]

Amazing work..

 

Apart from the tennis courts..I doubt they'd be grass on the Gold Coast..I'd look for an articial turf / carpeted mateiral...if they are infact grass they'd be immaculate and have the striping of cut lawn..

[APSMS 1,892]

^^^Well, most of the tennis courts here in Southern California are composite or clay or concrete. I doubt I've ever seen a grass Tennis court in person, though all of the tennis courts (generally speaking) have a green base texture.

 

I really doubt what he makes it out of and what it looks like in game matter, as long as it looks like a familiar tennis court. After all, a lot of these details will be too small to see in detail after zoom 5.

 

I like the pool water a lot as well. Very nicely done, especially with the surface texture.

[jdenm8 362]

in my head the pool closest to the building is for exclusive use of the occupants of the Q1 tower, and the furthest pool is managed by the spa, and access is only through the cafe (rusty) entrance.

 

I just did some research and you're right. Both pools seem to be open to occupants (And maybe the public according to how it is worded), but there's no in-complex way to move between them (or there was but isn't any more which, from the layout, seems to be the case) and the one furthest from the building appears to be part of the Spa.

 

Their gallery (here) has one or two good pictures of around that cafe though.

[RepublicMaster 428]

This is looking great! I think the pool looks perfect, reminds me of my time nearby.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

I'm just waiting for this to get finished to read all at once!

 

Oh, and you shouldn't forget an index in the first post!

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

thanks for all the feedback, I've made a few changes. Unfortunately not a lot of progress since my last update though.

 

Changes:

• Thanks Jdenm8 for those pictures of the cafe close up. Based on these I made the umbrellas orange (and I haven't yet, but I will also add a little set of pool steps)
• Twrecks, I note your comment on the subdued colours. I had already added in some coloured foliage, but to brighten it up some more, I've reused the orange from the umbrellas on the sunlounges. I think the colours looks really nice now
• Gutterclub, even though I like the grass on the tennis court, you made a good point, so I tried a synthetic green surface. I think it looks pretty good, keen to get other feedback on this.
• SkyscraperTowerBuilding, about time you showed up! I thought you abandoned me to this project (Good suggestion about the Index)
• Oh, another change I made is to model the wire netting around the tennis court, the alpha map against the ground plane doesn't work, the ground map shows through on the other side. (I believe this is a known issue I vaguely recall reading about it somewhere). The wire netting is just an N-gon with 5 sides, made renderable and replicated and inter-linked across a row, with the shapes slightly offset and inter-linked at each subsequent row (Like a brick pattern). I joined all the pieces together at the end so its only one object.

Thanks all for continued support, here's the latest update:

 

 

Oh, nearly forgot, you can't really see here, but I changed the materials on the cars to metallic paint as suggested by Giraffe. I'll have to view from another angle to see properly (and I still need to make some more variety models of cars as well)

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The fence looks fine now of course, but I think your earlier way of making it with a material with a cutout map is a better way of going about it.  With really fine things like that ideally you want to be able to tweak it easily, so make it as small as possible while still being visible, and with a texture you can tweak it by changing the uvw map.

 

And especially for cut out maps, reducing the "Blur" of the bitmap (to the minimum of .01, or .1 if your computer can't handle it) will make it render the bitmaps sharper.

[Darknono35 3,137]

Your flora is gorgeous . I can't wait to see it finished.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

The fence looks fine now of course, but I think your earlier way of making it with a material with a cutout map is a better way of going about it.  With really fine things like that ideally you want to be able to tweak it easily, so make it as small as possible while still being visible, and with a texture you can tweak it by changing the uvw map.

 

And especially for cut out maps, reducing the "Blur" of the bitmap (to the minimum of .01, or .1 if your computer can't handle it) will make it render the bitmaps sharper.

 

Thanks for this Jason, I was wondering though how you solve this issue with cut-outs with the ground map showing through:

 

 

Does the blur fix that? I seem to recall darknono had a similar problem on one of his recent buildings around the rooftop helipad. This is the same issue I have with making flora in 3ds max, once the trees show up against the ground map the cutouts go all weird.

 

Here's another render I started last night, from the other direction, but it got too late to post. You can see I've started on the tower, but its a long way ready from the big reveal yet