Ian's BAT Workbench

[Vlasky 1,803]

I prefer the second version and I'd also encourage playing with reflection color. I really like that brownish thing going on

[ianpaschal 77]

I prefer the second version and I'd also encourage playing with reflection color. I really like that brownish thing going on

That's actually exactly how I got it. The numbers on top refer to the hue/saturation/value sliders for reflection colour.

Basically my goal was to use a light peach colour to neutralise the normal blue reflections. I think it's working out alright, although I don't care for the fact that it looks a bit orangey in some places, when really it should just be a dull grey colour.

[ianpaschal 77]

Alright guys and gals.

I think this water is about done. Thoughts?

Also, I modeled and textured the new bridges. Thoughts?



And a quick picture of how incredibly great my UVW unwrapping skills are...   

[Jasoncw 11,840]

So the water is opaque?

 

Here's some good info for making water. http://mentalraytips.blogspot.com/2007/06/nice-water-with-miamaterial-arch.html

 

Both the canal bottom and the bump or displace map for the water will have to be tileable from piece to piece.

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

That's a great tutorial Jason, I wish I had known about that when I was making the pools for Q1, good water tutorials are really hard to find, especially for Mental ray. the best ones seem to be for Vray. I'll use this in context of my canal pieces see if I can get better water results.

 

Ian, maybe its just my screen, but the water looks more like thick, opaque tar than water, is that what you're going for? I think in an earlier post you were going for grey, while this looks black-brown to me. The pylons still seem a bit too dark as well, they get lost in the BAT render, even though the non-BAT render they do look really good. Really great job on the bricks though, in both renders.

[ianpaschal 77]

Yeah, grey has been impossible to achieve.

But yes, the water should be completely opaque. It's not right for a fountain but no real water (non-filtered/pumped water) looks like that. In all honestly, I have no idea how deep the canals in Amsterdam are because they're 100% opaque. Deep enough, in any case, to haul all of this out from under the waterline.

 

Depending on the photo the actual water looks varying degrees of brown, green, or grey... so I'm still not quite sure what to do in that regard, but transparency is definitely not the right option.

Also, check the lower right hand corner of this video at 2:13. I am considering moving back towards green water with white reflections (which will appear blue).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A3EzfQU9_ns

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Oh wow.. I had no idea... we thought the Yarra river was bad hahaha. I wonder if those people riding their bikes thought it was a road instead of water? .

 

Agreed, its definitely opaque, maybe its needs to be a bit greener.. not sure...

 

Good luck with it!

[T Wrecks 10,209]

It looks to me like you could decrease saturation on that bridge a notch or two, not very much. Love the grime and aging effects, though!

[ianpaschal 77]

Oh wow.. I had no idea... we thought the Yarra river was bad hahaha. I wonder if those people riding their bikes thought it was a road instead of water? .

 

Agreed, its definitely opaque, maybe its needs to be a bit greener.. not sure...

 

Good luck with it!

In the time lapse video, yes, The water was certainly green, in the shadows (water colour in 3ds Max) and blue in the centre (reflection colour in 3ds Max) from the sky.

Which begs the question... does it appear greenish because of the trees lining the canals? What if I stuck in tree models and kept the water grey/white in colour? Would that cause blue reflections in the centre and green on the sides? Maybe... but then I'm dealing with trees and... bleh...

 

It looks to me like you could decrease saturation on that bridge a notch or two, not very much. Love the grime and aging effects, though!

Thanks! The saturation has a lot to do with the gamma correction making everything a bit on the dark side... but I didn't change it because of the amount of moisture here and the lack of sun, everything tends of have a slightly richer colour (as compared to dryer climates where everything, tends to have a sort of bleached appearance from dryness and sun). I really love aerial photos of Amsterdam where you can really see just how colourful the city is:

But I will give it a try and see how it looks.

Also, in that picture, the water is decidedly brown like what I had in my last render. ARRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGG! 

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Yeah, its not easy... ultimately I think you're going need to make some personal choices, doesn't seem like there's any right or wrong colour, its just what you think best represents what it is you want to create.

 

If it helps, I've just been playing around with making some water, I managed to get a mostly-opaque, brownie-green mirk, if you want I can share the settings with you, you might be able to use it to springboard some of your own colour tweaks, and of course your own bump and displacements etc. Let me know?

 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Wow, that water looks splendid!

[ianpaschal 77]

The other issue I need to tackle is a matching water mod... Transparency certainly throws a wrench in the works... the canals are very opaque but that kind of opacity looks silly on a beach...


And perhaps most importantly, when viewed out far, water, even in Amsterdam, is ALWAYS blue. Really not sure how the colour shift happens with elevation. My best guess is that it's related to the angle of reflection and ambient light from buildings and trees vs. an open lake.

But if they are to match, maybe I should return to something dull blue.

[ianpaschal 77]

A WINNER IS I!

\ /

It needs some tweaking, but I found a method to make grey water.

Simply use a white self illuminated plane over the water area and not the rest of the model. Terr derrrr!

And yes, the displacement map looks weird in HD, but that's because its tweaked to a high enough level that it shows up in SD.

[Vlasky 1,803]

woo - hooo great job! I liek it

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I think what reddon posted would be a good starting point. It's brown and murky, but there's still a slight blue sheen from the sky, and it's thick but still has some visible depth. The reflection of the sphere and canal walls looks right too. Your reflections are extremely dark. The material actually reminds me of this stuff lol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E2hHbgAAnjc&list=UUvBqzzvUBLCs8Y7Axb-jZew

 

And I think you're right about the angle. A lot of the blue color comes from the sky, and how reflective water (and all materials for that matter) is depends on the viewing angle. And for some viewing angles in the city you'd be reflecting buildings rather than the sky anyway. In the most recent photo you posted you can see down the canal into the distance the angle has changed and the water is reflecting the bright blue sky. And that's part of the bigger problem I suppose of SC4 having a fixed orthographic viewpoint, when most of our impressions from water and glass and metal and other reflective objects depends on the rich mix of reflections from having different angles in our non orthogonal real life.

[ianpaschal 77]

True, although I'm pretty happy with the last render. Compare:



...to...



I think it's just about there. And I think that picture is one of the best guides since it actually IS an aerial perspective like SimCity.

Maybe slightly lighter in the shadows and reflections... but nearly there.

I'm still very hesitant to do any kind of transparency simply because you do not see it in real life. Again, if it's a 20 cm deep fountain of crystal clear water, that's one thing. But whether its a river, lake, or canal, the water is verrrrrry muddy and murky here. Don't forget that Amsterdam (and all of the Netherlands really) used to be a  swamp. The canals are are no pompous river walk... they're drainage ditches to keep the surrounding city blocks halfway dry. That's all.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

It's hard to get a good look since it seems like reflections are always getting in the way, even in clear water.

 

Here's some important reference material:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w5IOou6qN1o

[Seraf 1,238]

It looks nice and very true to photo you posted I really like your work on the masonry of the bridge

 

On the second thought: maybe a bit of blue tint to the water would be good...but it's just a minor suggestion, as I said it already looks nice

[ianpaschal 77]

I think I got it. Well, I'm 100% satisfied with the surface of the water, which is crated using a mixture of noise and smoke maps.
 

The colour looks good too. Thanks to reddon for the colour and transparency mix that he came up with. BUT... there are some complications.

Because this has to work also for connected rural ditch systems AND a water mod, the transparency needs to have a better fall off... 1 or 2 meters I think. Gotta work on that. The bigger problem is that when you zoom out, the rivers and canals and shoreline shouldn't be a different colour than the main bodies of water. So there are two solutions:

1. Make the canal set use increasingly blue water at further out zooms so that the game water can also be more blue at further zooms and everything matches. This is possible, but I discussed it with Jason last night and he says it's highly impractical. Considering I have to make 20+ canal pieces... yeaahhhhhh...

2. Actually just make the canals somewhat steely blue so that there's no colour shift depending on zoom. In that case, I'm thinking the material below would be a good colour?

 

As always, this kind of decision is hard to make when you've been looking at something for days because your eyes become numb to it. For this reason, I really like to get other people's opinions on it.

---

I guess the real question is: Does the blue look silly? If it looks good, then it's done and I can go on to making the corresponding water mod.

[Girafe 1,729]

IMHO, you need a blue tinte you will get only by the reflexion of the sky.

[flatron 83]

I'd say make it brownish with white-blue reflections. Most of the colour tends to come frome the sediments and canals/rivers tend to carry lots of them, especially in the plains.

In this picture, the river on the top(called Ilz) seams to be black because it originates out of the bavarian forest, thus carrying lots of organic material. The river in the bottom (the Inn) comes from the swiss alps and transports mostly limestone, resulting in a grey colour. On days with sun, it looks greenish.

The river in the middle, which is the danube looks brown, having already taken up alpine rivers like Lech and Isar as well as marshy ones like the Regen or Altmühl.

[ianpaschal 77]

A small update. I think I am pretty happy with this water colour, but it needs to be slightly bluer. Just slightly.

The special thing though, is using something I discussed with Jason, which a fake facade that is invisible to render above/behind the canal. This will increase the amount of reflection there is on the canal, and should allow me to put in tree props and still have the feeling that they are being reflected in the water.

[Vlasky 1,803]

Great! And I was just about to start thinking you gave up

[Reddonquixote 4,338]

Aw, that was looking excellent 2 posts ago.. the bluish one especially. In the last post water seems to have gone flat and solid again, maybe that's just the zoom? I don't think I really understand the issue you're describing either?

 

Great bump and displacement maps btw.

[ianpaschal 77]

Aw, that was looking excellent 2 posts ago.. the bluish one especially. In the last post water seems to have gone flat and solid again, maybe that's just the zoom? I don't think I really understand the issue you're describing either?

 

Great bump and displacement maps btw.

The issue is long and complicated but I got it sorted.

The water is one and the same, although the colour is shifted slightly. Look at the further up post, you can't see below the waterline on the canal section there either, only on the grass.

I'm leaning towards blueish because it will match a water mod better.

[ianpaschal 77]

Oh my God... guys... guys... I think it's done.

 

There's only 2 disappointments:

 

1. My bicycles aren't really visible. They're also needlessly high poly. Actually they're not mine, they're a free downloaded model, and I COULD make one that is lower poly and has proportions that make it visible (10 cm thick tires and frame), but I'm not sure if it really will add to the lot that much.

2. The water at the BAT angle looks a bit flat in the shadow. Anyone know how to fix that? On a default material I'd darken the shadow colour from the ambient colour, but the MR Arch materials only have a base colour. The thing is, in some ways I have to make it LESS realistic because this is how the water actually appears at a normal perspective angle:



There's also 2 other very small issues: I have to move the fence posts back about 0,3 meters, and also I have too much gradient on my default wall texture compared to my bridge texture. Both easy enough to fix though.

So the big questions for my friendly viewers are:

1. What to do about the flat reflection colour?

2. Bikes: Yay or nay?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I'm sorry to always be so skeptical about things, but I still don't think that the mud could possibly be that dark. I've googled "amsterdam mud" and aside from pictures of naked people being painted in latex, I've found pictures of dark mud that is black in the casual sense of the word, but isn't literally black. Out of the limited images I could find it seems more like a charcoal color.

 

I think the flat shadows are basically how they should be. To add more visual interest to those parts, I think making the mud brighter (and with a texture with variety of its own) would help that.The other thing to do would be to make the objects the water is reflecting have higher contrast so that that contrast shows through in the reflections, but I think that would only work for the underside of the bridge.

 

The bricks seem oversaturated to me.

 

I think you're right about the bikes. I think you can either make them thicker (imo having bikes would be great), or you can remove them.

[ianpaschal 77]

I'm sorry to always be so skeptical about things, but I still don't think that the mud could possibly be that dark. I've googled "amsterdam mud" and aside from pictures of naked people being painted in latex, I've found pictures of dark mud that is black in the casual sense of the word, but isn't literally black. Out of the limited images I could find it seems more like a charcoal color.

 

Show me these pictures. Not only did I fail to find nudes, I also have never seen a photo (or a scene with the naked eye) in which anything below the waterline was visible.

 

The bricks seem oversaturated to me.

Yeah, I've been toying with that. The texture file is actually spot on and I'm not sure if I should be adjusting gamma or denaturing the texture. De-saturating the texture feels like a crude fix to another problem, but maybe I'm wrong.

 

I think you're right about the bikes. I think you can either make them thicker (imo having bikes would be great), or you can remove them.

I do really want them, but I'm afraid that unless I make 30 of them in different slightly different style and colour, it's just going to look like a big black smear. So right now I'm leaning towards leaving them out, or just having 1 or 2 chained to the railing (as compared to literal wall that forms in reality).

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

It's beautiful

My opinion is yay for the bikes!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I did different search terms and got different things for each one. The latex one was some kind of art project in amsterdam next to a canal and was being painted with "latex mud". and searching for "dutch mud" gets a lot of pictures of Arnold Schwarzenegger from the movie Predator. But searching for amsterdam canal dredge gets you images of that, where you can see muddy things pulled out of the water.

 

 

From this photo and others it seems like it's just normal dark silty mud.

 

I also noticed looking at your render more closely that your water isn't actually very "thick" at all, and is relatively clear.

 

But everything said, your water looks pretty good right now and from what I can tell, doing anything more with it isn't needed. But if you were looking to work on it some more, I'd make the mud a dark mud color, and I'd do what I talked about with the water, which would give it a thick milky appearance.

 

 

I think that's a good plan for the bikes.