JP Schriefer's BATs

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Amazing Brazilian buildings! Looking forward to seeing more Brazilian buildings on here!

 

Great to have some Brazilian BATs here! You should do the COPAN building in Sao Paulo afterwards

 

I'm glad you both like Brazilian BATs Thank you.

Unclesahm, COPAN Building already exists in SimCity 4, it's here: http://descargas.capitalsim.net/?sitio=csc&descarga=3612

I didn't like the textures so much, but it's nice.

 

 

 

 

You've done a great job on the model, the textures look like they still need a bit of work though. Mostly they look a bit tightly scaled so are looking very busy and starting to tile, some of the colours also look a bit unnatural (cartoonish). Have you got a day model to show? Its hard to tell on the night model. If you get the textures right you have a great BAT here

 

Hey, Reddon, thank you

Sure, day version here. I'm testing some textures in the windows, some of them are strange and horrible btw.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Looking pretty good!

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Yes, the windows aren't quite there yet. You're using gmax, right? This means that you can't use the technique with a ground plane and actual reflections in the windows. You need to simulate it all with a flat texture, and that's very difficult. There should be a default windows texture that's part of the gmax/BAT installation. you could try that one. 

 

Another little tweak worth considering would be to reset the windows a tad further into the wall. This would make them look less like rectangular spots on the wall with a different colour and more like actual windows. Due to screen resolution, crispness of the render, FSH compression, and scale in game, detail below a certain level tends to be lost in the process of rendering. This is why it sometimes make sense to slightly exaggerate some elements.

 

As a whole, your textures need a good deal of desaturating. So far almost every green looks radioactive, and the red parasol on the rooftop also seems to glow.

 

The solar panels look great, though, and the entire model is very good, with all that flora and the many details going on on and around the podium! Keep up the great work!

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Looking pretty good!

 

Thank you

 

 

Yes, the windows aren't quite there yet. You're using gmax, right? This means that you can't use the technique with a ground plane and actual reflections in the windows. You need to simulate it all with a flat texture, and that's very difficult. There should be a default windows texture that's part of the gmax/BAT installation. you could try that one. 

 

Another little tweak worth considering would be to reset the windows a tad further into the wall. This would make them look less like rectangular spots on the wall with a different colour and more like actual windows. Due to screen resolution, crispness of the render, FSH compression, and scale in game, detail below a certain level tends to be lost in the process of rendering. This is why it sometimes make sense to slightly exaggerate some elements.

 

As a whole, your textures need a good deal of desaturating. So far almost every green looks radioactive, and the red parasol on the rooftop also seems to glow.

 

The solar panels look great, though, and the entire model is very good, with all that flora and the many details going on on and around the podium! Keep up the great work!

 

Thank you, T Wrecks

I'm actually using 3ds Max. I was trying yesterday to do this kind of reflection you said, but I had no succes, I'll continue to try. The windows I made like they are in real life.

I really need to change the radioactive grass Reddonquixote tell me this sometime ago in another BAT I made, and I'll change the the red parasol as well.

Thanks for the tips!

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Following the tips, changed the windows into the wall and I learned how to do reflection *-* I'm so happy, but I think it's not good yet. Changed the ground too, it's too dark, actually it has to be clearer, but when I do it I can't see the tiles, do you think a bump map can solve that?

And the last observation, I don't know what's happening, but the is not rendering a corner of the building as ou can see. Here we go:

 

Click in the image to see it bigger.

 

 

[Reddonquixote 4,339]

Usually with tiles its a good idea to use a base image that provides colour differentiation between the tiles. It may not be immediately noticeable from the ground, but tiles will usually have some variation in them. We usually exaggerate this, as with most things in BATing, due to the scale. Here's an example of what I mean:

 

 

This will make your tiles stand out more. Also, they look completely matte, there should be some shininess to them, don't go overboard though, probably set to reflectivity 0.3 and glossiness 0.3 should do it.

 

The rendering problem I'm guessing is due to the LODs being too small. Unhide them and make sure your model is completely covered, and if not, delete LODs 4&5, resize LOD3 using the normal manipulation tools, then press the 'LODs 4&5' button to replicate the LODs perfectly.

 

With the glass, I recommend just starting with a thin geometry preset, then if you want to give them a green tinge, go down to Advanced Rendering Options in the material editor, under Refraction place a tick in the 'Max Distance' box, set distance to about 1m, then tick the 'Color at Max Distance' and make the swatch a turquoise colour. That should get you pretty close to what you need, then you can just make some tweaks as needed. Probably should increase the IOR to around 1.6 - 1.8, but if its too reflective lower it of course.

 

Hope this helps, let me know if any of that didn't make sense.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Usually with tiles its a good idea to use a base image that provides colour differentiation between the tiles. It may not be immediately noticeable from the ground, but tiles will usually have some variation in them. We usually exaggerate this, as with most things in BATing, due to the scale. Here's an example of what I mean:

 

 

This will make your tiles stand out more. Also, they look completely matte, there should be some shininess to them, don't go overboard though, probably set to reflectivity 0.3 and glossiness 0.3 should do it.

 

The rendering problem I'm guessing is due to the LODs being too small. Unhide them and make sure your model is completely covered, and if not, delete LODs 4&5, resize LOD3 using the normal manipulation tools, then press the 'LODs 4&5' button to replicate the LODs perfectly.

 

With the glass, I recommend just starting with a thin geometry preset, then if you want to give them a green tinge, go down to Advanced Rendering Options in the material editor, under Refraction place a tick in the 'Max Distance' box, set distance to about 1m, then tick the 'Color at Max Distance' and make the swatch a turquoise colour. That should get you pretty close to what you need, then you can just make some tweaks as needed. Probably should increase the IOR to around 1.6 - 1.8, but if its too reflective lower it of course.

 

Hope this helps, let me know if any of that didn't make sense.

 

 

You were right about everything! Thank you really much. 

I did a ground using the tips about tiling you gave me, and looks identical to the actual building. I'm happy with it now. I did with the white tiles in the building too.

The glass of the windows I'm sorry for being a newbie, but I didn't find "Advanced Rendering Options" in material editor '-'

Is it too bad this way? 

 

I changed the grass as well, now everybody can step there without being afraid of staying with 9 arms e 52 eyes (it's not radioactive anymore)

 

The glass of the balconies I did using an already made texture from 3ds Max and just changed the color, it's like the actual too.

 

 

Click in the image to see it in original size:

 

 

 

 

 

[jmsepe 2,039]

My god Schriefer, I'll be the first person to download this in the STEX when you release it. Great job! 

[Droric 101]

Looks simtastic.  I really like the texture you used for the grass.  The plaza looks great as well.

[Huston 5,800]

Lookin' good schriefer! Just a suggestion, in case you decide to give your plaza a bit of reflectivity, you could use bump mapping just to enhance the tiling and make it less flat looking. But great nonetheless

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

My god Schriefer, I'll be the first person to download this in the STEX when you release it. Great job! 

 

Thank you really much

 

 

Looks simtastic.  I really like the texture you used for the grass.  The plaza looks great as well.

 

Simnk you, Droric

 

 

Lookin' good schriefer! Just a suggestion, in case you decide to give your plaza a bit of reflectivity, you could use bump mapping just to enhance the tiling and make it less flat looking. But great nonetheless

 

Thanks for the tip, I'll do that!

 

 

Well, I'm having to work on the lights in Park Avignon and is not being easy to do it. Meanwhile I started to do Mineirão Stadium and I have a question if someone knows answer me I'd be grateful

 

This is the facade of the stadium:

 

 

 

I have all the measurements from there and I did just 1 column as you can see, so, there are a lot of columns in facade. I would like to know if there's a way to define the angles, or a line or I don't know what else, to duplicate the column in an ellipse (stadium format). If not I probably will have to do all manually and it's going to be boring. Don't know if you get what I said

 

[tonyr 926]

You are doing great my friend...keep it up! Thanks for sharing and happy BATing!

[darn42 1,268]

In hierarchy select affect pivot only, move it to the very center of where the stadium would be. Unselect affect pivot only.

 

Go to tools, array, click the right arrow in the rotation row, select z-axis and type 360 degrees.

 

Type in next to 1D however many columns are in the whole stadium, hit preview, if it looks correct, hit ok.

[Reddonquixote 4,339]

Unless I've misunderstood, not sure this is correct - if you just produce an array 360 degrees around the central axis, all you will get is a circle, but the stadium needs to be an ellipse. Sorry to tell you Shriefer, I think you need to do it manually, but there are some things you can do to make it easier.

 

1) Only make one quarter, that's only 22 columns to place (instead of 88!). Once you have made one quarter, use the mirror tool to create the same shape on the other side, this will give you half. Use the mirror tool again to complete the ellipse.

2) To help with placement, take an aerial shot of the stadium, and import as the viewport background in the top view. ( Alt+B > Files (import file) > Aspect Ratio = Match Bitmap > Lock Zoom/Pan = on )

Here's one I made:

 

3) Then create a cylinder with 88 sides and 2 cap segments. Use the scale and movement tools until the outside of the cylinder is the same shape and size as the photo image, select the central vertex and delete. This will give you a ring.

4) Select all the vertices that make up the inner ring, scale and move so these match the inner ring of the stadium on the image. That will give you something that looks like this:

 

Now zooming in closely, you can use those radial lines on the model as guidelines to help you place your stadium columns with pretty good precision.

 

I can't think of a better way to do this sorry. To be honest, if you're going to make something as ambitious as a stadium, you should expect it to be hard work 

 

Hope this helps. (and sorry Darn if I misunderstood, hopefully you have an easier way after all...)

[darn42 1,268]

My bad, looked like a circle from the picture he showed us. I do, in fact have an easier way, though.

 

Edit: read the bottom edit real quick before reading this. That's after I tried it myself.

 

So, keeping that shape that you made for red, you don't need to do anything with the top, you just need a path around. Add an edit poly modifier, select an edge on the bottom of that ellipse you made (make sure there is no cap on the bottom) and hit the "loop" button which has a hotkey of alt+L. This will select all the edges around the base. Alternatively you can go to border selection mode, select the bottom, then go back to edge selection mode.

 

After that, hit "create shape from selection" or "create shape" and pick linear. Smooth would work in this case but I still like to stick with linear. Then, I forget the physical location of this tool, I think it's in the tools dropdown, but the shortcut is shift+I. This opens up a menu with a dropdown and something that says instance/copy/reference etc. With select path, select the spline you just created with the create shape tool. With select object select the column. For the dropdown, do "divide evenly, no objects at ends" and make sure instance is checked. Once you do that, up the number of columns until it is the correct amount. With this, I forget if it automatically reorients them along the curve or not, I'm doing this from memory, but I think I did this for something similar before. Don't worry if they are facing the correct direction or if they are oriented on the spline perfectly correctly, you can easily change that. 

 

If they are off the spline or rotated 90 degrees the wrong way or something. You can go into the edit poly of one of the columns or the original one, select element, and transform it how you please. This will move all of them closer or farther towards the spline, and because of the nature of this tool, it should be uniform the transformations that are needed to correct it.

 

Hopefully that helps, if not I have one last trick I can show you that should definitely work.

 

Edit: I just got home so I'm doing it myself. You have to select the object you want to copy along the path then hit pick shape.

 

You don't want to do divide evenly, no objects at end, you want to do "divide evenly, objects at ends"

 

When you are rotating the element, it might not rotate on the right axis. Set the pivot to be at the bottom of the column, then when you are rotating set rotation space to be world center, and the axis type to be gimbal. 

 

It does still do something a bit wonky after doing the spacing tool, mine got flip-turned upside down halfway through. To fix, I will show.

 

After spacing:

 

Select all the upside down ones, click make unique and no:

 

Repeat the process you did to get the others upright in the first place:

 

You don't need to make it unique to do this, you can, again, do the gimbal rotation by pivot point just in object selection mode if they were just upside down, but some other problems could arise that may make making them unique necessary. 

[Reddonquixote 4,339]

This is excellent, thanks for this. That's the method I originally tried, but I got stuck on the orientations and couldn't work out how to re-correct them. I'll try this, it will come in very handy - there's so many times where creating a shape from a spline would have been so easy and useful but I couldn't work out how to fix the orientations and had to come up with other ways to make something. Thanks :thumb:

[jmsepe 2,039]

Wow great improvement, also former posts looks all jargon to me. Hahaha.

[Huston 5,800]

Wow great improvement, also former posts looks all jargon to me. Hahaha.

 

Don't even get me started. It's why I use google sketchup to simplify things

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Talk about qualified help, eh? Good to see the 3dsmax cracks lend other BATters a hand.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

@reddonquixote and @darn42, you both are fantastic in your BATs, and just helped me a lot with this! I do it in darn42's method now, but was good to know about the mirror tool, it's going to be usefull to other things. Well, that's it, really thanks to you both for your attention to even make a tutorial showing me

 

So it's looking like this now, it's an improvement, just to show what you said worked fine

I did it with the column, the wall you see between them I did just lo look better

I had some progress in Park Avignon night lights as well.

 

 

 

 

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Looking sharp!

[jmsepe 2,039]

Yay, great improvement!

[Seraf 1,239]

Looks good!

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Thank you, guys

 

So, I can say the residential (Park Avignon) is something like 90% done. The day version was exported and tomorrow I'll export the night versions (DN and MN).

But, I need some help to define some things, for example, the original building has 26 apartments and around 100 people, but in SimCity are different even with how many people live in the buildings, right? So, do you have a tip of the capacity I should put on it? And another tips to Plugin Manager if you think it's usefull. I would be very grateful if someone help me with that

Thanks.

[MushyMushy 3,618]

Fabulous job on the Park Avignon!

Capacity? Well, I personally would put it somewhere between 700-850 R$$. If it's supposed to be a R$$$ lot, then I'd say maybe something around 350-450 R$$$. This is just my opinion though. How big is the lot in-game? 3x4 tiles?

 

I can't say I have any tips for the Plugin Manager; I've yet to try to BAT anything.

 

Anyway, I look forward to the completion of this building, and all of your other ones - you're a pretty good with the BAT in my opinion!

[tankmank 853]

In terms of realism and getting it to grow, i wouldn't give it a high capacity, perhaps stick around the 100 mark 

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

This weekend I had a little free time , so I made a small update to the Central Bank modeling the bottom. There are two ramps for wheelchair access in the sides, one of them I'll make an entrance to underground parking. Of course, these textures are not final.

 

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Beautiful model! But I think the facades look a bit off. I know it would be a massive piece of work, but I can't help feeling it would greatly improve the quality if you simply modeled the windows instead of simply using a texture. 

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Haven't really noticed your batting thread for a long time. But as you are a fan of HTTYD, how dare I!? No, seriously, nice one. Gotta keep an eye on this one.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Beautiful model! But I think the facades look a bit off. I know it would be a massive piece of work, but I can't help feeling it would greatly improve the quality if you simply modeled the windows instead of simply using a texture. 

 

What Borg asks for, Borg gets! Here we go

Was indeed a little boring to do, but I think looks better now with these windows.

 

 

Haven't really noticed your batting thread for a long time. But as you are a fan of HTTYD, how dare I!? No, seriously, nice one. Gotta keep an eye on this one.

 

Thank you

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

First, I wonder if you find it boring I stay posting some pictures with little difference from one to another. I do this because I like to follow the tips you talk, thanks to them I can improve . Next step I'm going to work in the rooftop. So here we go with the facades modeled and reflected now, I'll just put a picture and the other angles in the link below to not pollute the topic:

 

 

 

Other angles of the building: 1, 2, 3

 

 

 

 

 

Ps.: editing

The flag will be available in one of the versions, so you can download the building without it.