Ian's BAT Workbench

[ianpaschal 77]

So, I made some really, really crude bike models. The proportions are whack and as a cycling enthusiast, it hurt my soul to model so unrealistically.



There's 9 different versions, including a totally necessary bakfiets (basket bike) because they're quite typical here for schlepping around children and groceries. I will go back later and add some textures to make the boxes brown wood and the saddle bags dull green and blue (most common colors), as well as some very simple color variations.

So, why are the models so inaccurate? So they look good in SC! Here's a jumbled up view of them, in SD and HD:

[NielsC007 499]

As long as they look good in the game I'm okay with the unrealistic proportions.

[Vlasky 1,803]

HD if they gonna be separate props Looking good

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Nice job with the bike models.

[ianpaschal 77]

Alright, I exported the most basic piece and stuck it in game to see how it looks. The short answer is: not great. I'd like some feedback on the following issues:
 

1. Pieces do not tile correctly.
2. Shadows are too blue/purple.
3. Water level may or may not match sea level.

1. Tiling Issues: I don't really understand what's going on here. The separation between props increases as you zoom out, but also appears inconsistent at closer zooms. Does anyone know how other canal sets and embankment sets combat this issue? Also, is there a way in Lot Editor to assure that the prop is placed EXACTLY centred on the lot?

 

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2. The shadows are too blue. JasonCW and I discussed it a bit, and he thought shadows would look good, but I honestly think they look weirdly fake on the water surface. I will probably opt to avoid them.

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3. Water depth. I already knew that creating my ground with a greyscale value of 84 would put the actual land at 252 meters elevation, with sea level at 250. For this reason, the canal was made 2 meters deep. Below, you can see how it compared to the actual water line. It looks to me like the waterline is actually a bit lower, but I can't really tell... that may be caused by the fact that the stone cliff is slightly angled. Performing the 1,33 scale factor may compensate for that, however I am curious: does the squishing only show up in game, or do you tend to see it in BAT preview renders as well? Because I feel as though my walls look shorter in game than they did in BAT preview renders but that maybe my eyes playing tricks on me.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

1 - You need to leave more room around the edges. Think about it like you're printing a book or page or something with bleed. You'll need to be more generous. For exact fitting, you can either open up the lot in the Reader and manually change the coordinates, or you can use PIMX, and that lot editor has a snaps feature which will let you position it perfectly.

 

2 - That doesn't have anything to do with you. If they're too blue than they're too blue in the entire game and that doesn't affect whether they should be on your canals or not. I also think your shadows in general look weird but that's probably from your mac hardware. If you want you can send it to me and I'll get a screenshot of how it would normally look. I'd say though, even if it looks too blue, the alternative (no shadows at all) looks so incredibly and noticeably incorrect that I personally can't imagine it as a possibility. Based on the height of amsterdam's buildings and of buildings in the game in general the canals will mostly be in shadow, and if they don't accept shadows than the entire canal system is going to appear as if it were glowing.

 

3 - It's your eyes playing tricks on you, the preview render and the export are essentially one in the same. It's also hard for you to actually perceive the actual water depth because of the way that the lods and water is being clipped off and stuff. Your water appears to be at ground level because the edge of the lot is at ground level and the rendered image of your water is at ground level. In order to compare them you'd need to have it overhang into the in-game water.

 

The 133% scale is the proper thing to do. The squashing is the result of the isometric view, and the same squashing occurs when doing drawings of that type too. If you consider ground level and in-game water level to be fixed (the in-game water level might be adjustable though) then you don't have a choice about the heights of things and vertical scaling doesn't have an opportunity to come into play, although you should do it whenever possible.

 

 

I'm really impressed by how close to the water surface you've gotten the ground to be.

[ianpaschal 77]

Well the depth is looking better now that I changed it to 3 meters. But what I'm really stuck on is these lines occurring between the pieces. They're there with and without the M/S/R mask.

I'm pretty dejected and close to giving up. I can't think what else to try.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Try making the LODs a little wider than the lot. 16.2 or 16.4 m or something like that. That will make sure that the neighboring props are overlapping and not leaving any gap in between.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Noooo, don't give up! It's so beautiful 

[ianpaschal 77]

Try making the LODs a little wider than the lot. 16.2 or 16.4 m or something like that. That will make sure that the neighboring props are overlapping and not leaving any gap in between.

 

Thanks, but already ahead of you.

 

Those are 16,5. It's still happening for some reason.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Then my guess is that it's antialiasing. can you post either a preview render or a viewport screenshot?

[ianpaschal 77]

Masked and unmasked. I tried removing the mask since it's typically not used on canal sets (no above ground shadow issues), but the output is identical.

 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

If you have overlapping LODs and no masking I don't know how there could be a problem. :/

[ianpaschal 77]

If you have overlapping LODs and no masking I don't know how there could be a problem. :/

Damn.

I don't really know what to do other than shelf the project. There is nothing I can think of that might fix it.

[Vlasky 1,803]

Could it be that the gap showing between water and canal bed is shining trough in game as well as in the render?

 

[ianpaschal 77]

Could it be that the gap showing between water and canal bed is shining trough in game as well as in the render?

 

Good idea, but no, because the LOD crops that image to only the middle 50% of the canal, the edges don't show up.

But I was just about to drag the scene to the recycling bin, when I decided to another export and... it worked.

There are some issues though.

On close up zooms, some of the pieces tile better than others. Can't figure out how that's possible:

 

 

The bigger issue though is that as you zoom out, it gets darker and darker when in reality it should get lighter. No idea what to do about this other than separate renders for each zoom level which is very very very very very messy.

 

 

Oh and they vanish at Z1. WHUT?

So I think brighter, bluer water is in order. Also per you guys' suggestion, I had reduced the brick saturation to 90% but I might try reducing it all the way to 75%.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

For the water, what I think you'll have to do is get the bump map and render it and get it in photoshop, and then make it tileable and then put it back in. You could also make a variation of the bump map as long as the edges tiled correctly.

 

The prop disappears at the far zooms because props by default do that. There's a setting for what zooms props show up.

 

The color change could be happening because the zooms are actually at slightly different angles from one another, and a different angle will get different reflectivity which will get a different amount of sky reflected.

[ianpaschal 77]

For the water, what I think you'll have to do is get the bump map and render it and get it in photoshop, and then make it tileable and then put it back in. You could also make a variation of the bump map as long as the edges tiled correctly.

True, although that doesn't explain why it tiled for most of the pieces but not the last one, but I found out it's because it was facing the other direction.

The problem is that the maps are very difficult to tile. One is a smoke map and one is noise map, both of which don't tile very well. I had tried making a version but what you ended up seeing was a mirrored seam between the tiles. I decided since the seam wasn't very noticeable (see left 3 seams) to just let it be, but didn't anticipate the issue if the tile was flipped (see right seam). Grrrrrr.

 

The prop disappears at the far zooms because props by default do that. There's a setting for what zooms props show up.

I'll look into it.

 

The color change could be happening because the zooms are actually at slightly different angles from one another, and a different angle will get different reflectivity which will get a different amount of sky reflected.

I'm pretty certain that's the cause, although it is behaving backwards. In theory the lower angle closer to the street should give you more darkness in the reflection as it catches things like shadows and buildings which don't emit light. As you raise up and zoom out though, the reflection should catch more sky and turn brighter and bluer, not darker and blacker... No idea how to get it to behave less realistically to compensate. GRRRRRRR.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Yeah, visibility should be set to "1F", IIRC. This will force the prop to be displayed at all zoom levels.

 

Maxis originally incoprorated this function because many tiny props such as the smallest flowers and shrubs, litter boxes etc. would only gobble up resources at zoom1, even though they wuldn't actually be visible from that far away.

[ianpaschal 77]

Whooo! I think it's just about done (apart from some small tweaks)!









To Do:

1. Create transit puzzle pieces for the bridges.
2. Adjust the railing size on bridge pieces. The vertical scale makes it look too tall. Honestly, it looked pretty good at 1m––1,33 is too high.
3. Some tweaks with respect to positioning. I HAVE to learn a way to place the pieces on to the file precisely.
4. Reflections by bridge are too big. Should be reduced.
5. Reflections at vertical angle are weird when tiling. No idea how to fix this though... Especially since it looks great (IMO) at the more horizontal angle.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Wow! Can't wait for that! Looking great.

[Vitoraju 675]

 Wow, it's so beautiful! 

Good work! 

[JulioC 2,580]

Is very beautiful

[T Wrecks 10,209]

It really looks great! If I may make a suggestion/request, I think it's best to include overhanging pieces because otherwise it looks stupid when you drag an elevated highway or something over a canal.

 

As for the bridge railing, I agree that it looks unusally tall when viewed like this, but on the other hand those SimPedestrians are also ridiculously tall. Maybe it won't look so stupid in context of a "live" city? Just a thought...

[ianpaschal 77]

It really looks great! If I may make a suggestion/request, I think it's best to include overhanging pieces because otherwise it looks stupid when you drag an elevated highway or something over a canal.

Yeah, right now I am struggling with trying to figure out the exact scope of the tile set. As you see from the picture, almost everything is done simply with 2 pieces. To expand the 1 tile wide canal set to every possible piece would be about 22 pieces, and that's JUST for 1 tile wide canals, not even the single wall/open water set. I'm thinking though that I will maybe just make a nice bundle of every possible piece and users can install as much as they want. If you only need the, say, 5 basic pieces for most straight canals and bridges, then thats all you have to install. If you want to go nuts and make all kinds of crazy waterway intersections, install the 50 piece kit.

In other news, what are these shenanigans?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Looks like a bunch of ortho / diag / FAR transitions to me...

[ianpaschal 77]

Looks like a bunch of ortho / diag / FAR transitions to me...

 

Yup. The purple one though is one giant prop-as-building for a weirdly shaped block. It also will have 2 fake pedestrian streets.

[ianpaschal 77]

Just a small update to everyone's new favorite water/drainage management infrastructure.

[NielsC007 499]

Looks good! Can't wait to see what it'll look like!

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

This is great! The roads will be functional?