The Portland & Oregon BAT Team, Chapter 1

[sparkythepenguin 90]

I just decided to redo the original texture on the tile roof. I think this looks better. I also went throught the gravel roof textures and applied a .5 gaussian blur to them.

Now time to sit back and see how thisgoes over...

[Sim shady 12]

lol i am amazed at how receptive you have been to all this constructive crititism Its looking really good, but i think that Gmoney makes a good point about the pink around the windows. However, isnt that how the building looks in RL? Anyways, looking good

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Desaturate the roof by about 40% and see what that looks like.

The awnings are really bleached out and something needs to be done to them. It's good that you showed this angle. See if giving them a slightly darker texture works.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Thanks for the imput! Sim Shady, yeah that rosy color is on the real building. It just changes its intensity depending upon the weather and lighting conditions.

Jason, I implemented your suggestions today:

The tile roof is now desaturated by 40% and I re-worked the fabric awnings. Instead of applying a texture over the whole of them, I gave each its own UVW map. Plus I took the orioginal texture and added a little gradient and darkened it up.

The new white awnings look less bright, but not too dark. It took a while for me to find the right formula for these! Any bit brighter and they'd go bleach. Any darker and they wouldn't look white at all. These hopefully don't stick out as bad.

I always appreciate constructive criticism as I produce these. It's better that problems are presented here in this forum as I make the BAT than afterwards on the STEX!

[Sim shady 12]

Well i have got to say, that looks like a finished product that is in need of a home on the STEX

[kurtvedder 4]

@ Sim shady - agreed. I can't wait!

[ricb 19]

Sparky, not to change the subject, but how about Portland Hospitals? I realize accurate renditions of pill hill would be difficult, but St Vincents would make a great large hospital.

[mcarch 15]

It looks nice =)

[Jasoncw 11,949]

hmmm, now try making the red roof a little darker...

It lost some of its richness with the desaturation.

[Andreas Roth 629]

This is slowly coming together, but it'll be another masterpiece. Now what you really need to consider is an update of your older BATs. Esp. your texturing skills have improved tremendously, just compare this one or Hatfield Courthouse with Portland Plaza or the Umpqua Bank Plaza!

[sparkythepenguin 90]

@Sim Shady, KurtVedder, & Mcarch: Hopefully today's update either seals the deal or gets me closer to getting this on the STEX. It's tough when just one little thing can get you stuck...

@Ricb: St. Vinnie's is definetly on I'd do. It's just that there's a ton of outbuildings and they keep addding onto the main building like you wouldn't believe! Just like Providence Portland out on the Banfiled. However, if you like medical buildings, if you can count it as one, I do have a tiny bit of the Portland Medical Center (aka the 511 Building) started.

@Andreas_Roth: The wheels are definetly spinning on re-do's of my previous work. I have, if not all of them, most of them backed up on CD. If you want me to just go off and blurt out a plan, I'd re-do Congress Center first. It is really in need of better scaling and a remodel of the base structure.

Since I'm in college again, my studies are my #1 priority. But y'all are lucking out as I'm putting BATing as my #2 lol. Still I don't know how much spare time that leaves me with to BAT though... I'll try to get all that stuff!

@JasonCW: I have darkened the tile by 10%. I hope that looks better. I guess you are the ultimate gatekeeper of this BAT Usually T_Wrecks does that! hahaha. But I do know if you like it, it has to be good!

Here's the slightly darker roof:

By the way, I am 100% caught up with my class work, and ahead on the required readings. Hopefully this week I'll be a bit more responsive. Who knows? You may see this go to the STEX. Cross your fingers!

[T Wrecks 10,210]

I sent Jason as my representative this time, lol.

Nah, seriously: If it's good enough for him, you can trust that it is good enough for me, too.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

lol

Make the roof darker still.  After that, I think it is done and you can probably export it.  After you export it, plop it around town and see what happens.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

OK I had to go into the front room and fire up the other PC I used to use for this. That old thing is soooo slow! But I have a developed city on it that I could place BofA in.

This is the latest export after I darkened the tile roof textures about 10% more.

On that computer, I had to set the graphics settings down a bit, so sorry if some stuff looks a little crappy. also, the red splotches are there b/c the computer has whatever graphic card it is (can't remember the name off the tiop of my head) that sometimes vomits out spots on red and grey/silver gradient tectures. The export was at high-quality. Also, Lot edito likes to put lines through BATs for some reason, so that particular choppiness can't be helped at this time.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

As far as the roof goes, you'll have to plop it against Maxis buildings with red roofs of similar slopes and sizes. If I had to guess, I'd say to reduce the gradient more.

The glass could be a bit lighter overall, but that's not big. The glass areas that you didn't seem to texture should be fixed though, they look like black holes in the city.

When you want to be done with this is up to you though.

[Sim shady 12]

looks great! one suggestion i have for the lot is to add a concrete base texture to the area by your parking garage entrance

[patriots_1228 51]

nice! the black glass is a bit too dark, from far away it looked like a black hole.

but i really like this and will definetely download.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Hmmm... the "black holes", known to me as the skylights, seem to be suffering from one or two problems. Either the windows are too transparrent or the stupid "GMax forgetting to load the texture" bug is occuring. I think I'm going to go and again re-work ALL of the window textures, making them lighter. Then we'll see what's what. Quite frustrating, isn't that?

As for the tile roof, I think it looks OK. I've had enough with tweaking it. Any further objections? I'll still look and see if there's any Maxis buildings with red roofs to compare. I was using "Schmidt's Souvineers" as a basis of comparison, and it looked good next to that (you can see it in one of the pics). I don't know if Schmidt's is Maxis or a custom BAT- I have a huge plugins folder on that PC!

I can easily add a little concrete path to the garage openings. I don't think I have to mess with my custom LODs to do it either...

I also managed to snap a pic of the tile roof from the US Bancorp Tower on Friday. I've got to go out the door right now, but I'll upload it when I get back. You can somewhat see what the roof is supposed to look like.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Hmmm... the "black holes", known to me as the skylights, seem to be suffering from one or two problems. Either the windows are too transparrent or the stupid "GMax forgetting to load the texture" bug is occuring. I think I'm going to go and again re-work ALL of the window textures, making them lighter. Then we'll see what's what. Quite frustrating, isn't that?

As for the tile roof, I think it looks OK. I've had enough with tweaking it. Any further objections? I'll still look and see if there's any Maxis buildings with red roofs to compare. I was using "Schmidt's Souvineers" as a basis of comparison, and it looked good next to that (you can see it in one of the pics). I don't know if Schmidt's is Maxis or a custom BAT- I have a huge plugins folder on that PC!

I can easily add a little concrete path to the garage openings. I don't think I have to mess with my custom LODs to do it either...

I also managed to snap a pic of the tile roof from the US Bancorp Tower on Friday. I've got to go out the door right now, but I'll upload it when I get back. You can somewhat see what the roof is supposed to look like.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Here are the real life pics I promised, sorry for the lateness and bumping of this thread...

I didn't realizee that I got like 3 bridges in those shots!

[Tnek 0]

Dude! You have made the Rose City Proud! I go right past that building everyday on the MAX and you've got it spot on.

[bixel 1,228]

Awesome!!! Looks great man!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

http://www.malu-city.de/scb/scb_gewerbe.php?jobs=10&id=400#400

This is a site that lists all of the Maxis buildings. This is what I used to identify buildings, and see what colors they have. I hunt this list instead of my cities, since it's faster. But I still take screenshots for comparison from within the city, because the screenshots from that site aren't to scale.

And I'd like to say, that even though things are taking a long time now, you've learned so much more from this BAT than you would have otherwise, and future BATs will be faster and better than this one.

[Andreas Roth 629]

@Jason: This site was created by Spocky, one of the SFBT members, and the screenshots are the same that are included in the SC4 Building Database that is part of SC4Tool. The screenshots of the larger buildings were resized, but I still have them all in their original size /(small buildings in zoom 5, skyscrapers in zoom 4), including the original query window. The whole archive is 45 MB large, and obviously, the files are named with the German names of the buildings, but if you like, I can upload them somewhere.

@sparkythepenguin: Well, what Jason said. I think the red roof looks fine now, and it's probably not really necessary to match it perfectly with the Maxis red roofs, since you won't find another building with red roof in your CBD anyway. The black windows look odd indeed, but I guess that should be fixed with reworking the texture a bit. But it shows how important it is to put a test rendering in a "live" environment, which is very different from the uniform black background in gmax.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

It's a super mega useful site.  It's great because it loads fast (SC4Tool takes a long time to load if you just want to take a quick look at some pictures), and because it's online, so I can link to the pictures (I probably shouldn't be doing that, lol).  I can also have it open in FireFox with other reference photos, when I'm BATing, since SC4Tool is a big program to have running (along with FireFox anyway, 3ds max, and photoshop).  If you could upload the full sized ones somewhere, that would be even more useful.

[Andreas Roth 629]

@Jason: I'll upload them and send you a PM. If anyone else wants the package, drop me a line as well.

[____----____ 37]

spark all your stuff is great and this looks awesome.

[bixel 1,228]

Small update on the Equitable/CommonWealth Building

[Jasoncw 11,949]

It's looking good Bixel. I have to be picky though, those windows aren't like the real building's windows, and don't really fit in with the style.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

I bow before thee Bixel! Looks just like the reakl thing. Those windows would look better on the 400 SW 6th Building across the street.