Alex_1210's BAT thread

[Alex_1210 189]

I decided to open up my own BAT thread to ask my questions related to BATing here, instead of on various threads, as well as showing my future work and receiving feedback.

Could anyone tell me how building families work? I had requested and just recently received my own prop family (it works for Buildings too, right?) from the BSC Prop Family Index at SC4D. I have a few completed models, and would like to make them all part of a building family to add variety to my Lots. I have no idea how to do so in the Reader, or preferably in the PIMx. 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

OK, here's how you do it in iLive's Reader - step by step (in baby steps ):

1. Take every .sc4desc file of the buildings you want to place in a given family and put them somewhere together where you won't get confused or mix them up with non-related files
2. Pick an ID and write down that you used it so you keep track - remember, being owner of an ID range makes you the custodian for everything that occurs inside that range. So make sure you organise yourself and don't create a chaos in your own files.
3. Open the first .sc4desc file in the Reader.
4. In the left half of the screen, click on the Exemplar file. If necessary, click on "Fill the List" in the right half. Now you should see the properties of the building in question in the right half of the screen.
5. In the right half of the screen, right-click anywhere and select "Add new property" from the context menu. The list of available properties will pop up.
6. Select the property "Building/prop family" from the "Name" dropdown menu. (Hint: You can type the first few letters to make the menu jump nearer to the desired position so you won't have to scroll so much).
7. Now that "Building/prop family" displays in the Name field, proceed to enter the ID of your prop family in the "Values as text" field near the bottom.
8. When you are done entering the ID, click on the "Apply" field to the right of the "Values as text" field (NOT the one at the bottom of the window - not yet.) This will make your building family ID appear in the "Values" list.
9. Right above the "Values" list, there's a field "Rep.". It will probably display a "0" (zero). Edit this field so that it displays a "1".
10. Now that you have specified the property "Building/prop family", entered its ID, and set the "Rep." field to "1", you can finally click "Apply" at the bottom of the window.

That's it - you will now see a new line in your building exemplar. It should read "Building/prop family" in the "Name" column, a "1" in the "Rep" column, and your building family ID in the "value" column". At this point, you can save and exit.

 

Now all you need to do is repeat the aforementioned steps for all .sc4desc files that you want to associate with the family in question. Congratulations, you did it!

 

_____________

 

Don't let my long and detailed description fool you - all in all, it's just a few mouse clicks, and after the third or fourth repetition, you'll see it's a piece of cake, really.

[Alex_1210 189]

Thanks! This helped alot!!

[Alex_1210 189]

I just completed my 27 house models, all of them are now .sc4models and the next step is to made a .desc file for each model. only that in the PIMx i have no idea where to drag the models, into the simple Residential group ($), ($$), ($$$), or if i scroll down into stages, like for example in Stage 1 R$, or stage 2 R$$$ or whatever. which one do i pick? (Note, i want my houses to be among the first houses to be built as they are historical, later i will make some modern houses which i want to be built in a later stage, one i have lets say 200 population or something)

[Alex_1210 189]

These are the finished models with "final" (based on feedback, hopefully it's good lol im too lazy to change the textures now ) texturing

 

The next step is to plug them in, and put them in families, and then lot and kaboom. I will also make some more props including haystacks, wells, and more fences to suit the buildings, i will also have a surprise prop  

Some sexi pictures of romania, the region is from the Apuseni mountains, this tiny isolated mountain range is surrounded by the Carpathian mountains.


 

[Bipin 3,402]

I like where this is going! I am more than sufficiently pleased, much more.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

I hate to be the party pooper here, but even from this distance it is obvious that your roof textures tile/repeat. That's one thing that should probably be fixed. Otherwise, what little I can see looks good. For a more in-depth review, I guess a zoom 5 shot would be better.

 

It's good to see the stuff you are making; Romania hasn't been very prominent on the SimCity map so far, and it's interesting to see some content from there.

[Alex_1210 189]

Alright, go on this link:

http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/196/d87h.jpg/
 

and keep pressing the 'next' button in the top right corner under "image shack user's images"

[Alex_1210 189]

Just to test out my models, i put all the R$ models in the same family, and created a lot, it turns out all the buildings use the same lot, which is what i want, so far so good.

Then i empty my plugins folder except what i created and start a new map (i haven't experienced such a fast loading time for  a while )

I play the game, wait until i get to stage 3, and when i go in zoom 4, stuff starts to get wierd, some models at view 4 look perfectly normal from one direction, but as soon as you rotate the camera, they get all distorted, and its only for opposite views, for example, at zoom 4, the building is distorted only when facing south or north, when east or west it looks perfectly normal.

 

 

[Jasoncw 11,839]

I had the same problem with one of my BATs, and in one of the later pages in my BAT thread there's a link to a tutorial about how to fix it.

 

But it might be faster to remake the LODs (make them slightly different than before), and reexport then it would be to fix so many models.

[Alex_1210 189]

I tried it, and it not working, i tried re rendering the model, that failed, i edited the lods and rerendered again, that also failed, i also tried editing the u and v values for the verts in the reader, but that does not seem to work either....

[Alex_1210 189]

Well i deleted the 2 models that were faulty, i'l try editing them and playing around with lods until i get it right

Seems that the models i remade don't have the glitch anymore, now only to texture them (a breeze as the textures are already saved) and to re-export

[SimCoug 5,972]

Nice work here - I hope you are able to fix the glitch.  I'm always a fan of house sets, so I'm looking forward to your progress.

[zahrul3 471]

You might want to add some gradient and grime/noise to those textures, so it looks more realistic

[Alex_1210 189]

well, My computer broke, so it will be a while until I remake these BATS, hopefully this time with my improved 3ds and PS skills I will do a much better job. And learn to back up my files D':

[Alex_1210 189]

I'm back to simtropolis. I'll be (hopefully, no promises) releasing a few buildings soon, this time though it'll be one at a time.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Now this is the kind of thread bumping I like to see. Can't wait to see what you'*re up to!