The Portland & Oregon BAT Team, Chapter 1

[Andreas Roth 626]

Well, I think only "landmark" type buildings should get a custom query - it's also a question of game resources, and every custom query (or the PNG image that is often embedded, to be precise) will add up to that. Anyway, that's a nice batch you're working on, and I'm excited about the medical center in particular - there aren't that many hospital BATs out there (esp. with higher capacities), so this will be a welcome addition to my plugins folder.

[hamsterTK 93]

I have 5 more things cooking, but first things first.... HINT: One of them is not in Portland or even the State of Oregon, but it is in the Portland Metro Area. Probably the most unique building in that town....quote>

so, it's going to be in vancouver wa I guess?

[mcarch 15]

These should definately be ploppable with jobs!!! I hate growing things... takes too darn long!

[sparkythepenguin 90]

OK, I went through and started texturing! I've managed to get 4 of the 5 done so far.

Hamster: Yup it's in Vancouver, Washington. AKA the Couve, VanWa hahahaha! And for those wishing to nail it down further, it is probably the first major building in downtown Vancouver that you see coming off the Interstate Bridge. It is almost directly north of the Columbia!

And yes, all these buildings will have plopable versions. I always give you guys plenty of options

Aside from the Union Bank of California Tower, I don't know if any other building in Portland has more roof junk, particularily  communications stuff.

That is actually the REAL mural, the texture is taken from a pic I took two summers ago. The carpet store that is in the smaller building put it up.

I really don't know how to describe what exact function this building has. Pacific Universtiy has a couple of floors for their med students and a teaching clinic, otherwise, private doctor practices occupy the building. Even the retail is medicine-related: An optomitrist and a pharmacy.

So it could be CS, CO, a college, or a really big medical clinic (but NOT a hospital)

I have no idea if that smaller building predates the tower or was built as an aside....

More more more!!!!

Kaiser Permanente acquired naming rights to this building in the 90's and it serves as the regional HQ for the health insurance end of their business. There are a number of Kaiser hospitals and clinics in the Portland area too.

700 Lloyd, like the Kaiser Permenente Tower, is surrounded by a sea of parking lots and garages, none above 2 stories high. A major investment property firm, Ashworth Pacific, owns this tower and its huge lot (I'm only making the tower, not the boring parking lots). The rumor mill here often speculates often about a "Superblock" development incorporating 700 Lloyd into a new campus of high rises. Officially this is planned but has been on hold since 2001.

Portland's Federal Building was originally planned to go where the historic Pioneer Courthouse still sits. Then-Congresswoman Edith Green was fiercely opposed to this and led grassroots-energized movements at the federal level to save the courthouse and cut off funds for the project. The feds then moved it to what became Portland's "Government Square", and recieved funding.  After completion, the building was ironicly named after Representative Green and another prominent then-Congressman, Wendell Wyatt.

Allrighty now, I'll shut up and let you all go for it. Do these textures look OK? These are now entering the most crucial phases of my BATing process. Maybe tonite or tomorrow I will have the Hilton done.

[HONG KONG 74]

All your new buildings are outstanding, and will perfectly fit into my play concept.

I look forward already to the release.

Only the roof texture is a tad bright ,IMO. Did you test the color in game?

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Wow wow wow! Something wicked this way comes...

Great stuff once again, though I have to echo HONG KONG's doubts about some of the roof textures. The one on the medical center looks a tad bright, that's all. But the textures on the following two buildings also include a gradient that looks a bit odd on a level surface.

I also noticed that 700 Lloyd has brighter and darker portions on its main walls. Is that what the building looks like, or did something go wrong here? Otherwise, I love both; they're just the kind of generic mid-size office tower that's so sorely needed to fill the gap between mid-rise buildings and skyscrapers, and all BATs of that size could even break the monotony of 2-3 endlessly repeating Maxis buildings finally. Superb!

The one I like most is Federal Building, though. The textures are just great; you absolutely nailed the boring look of the actual structure and still managed to make the BAT look interesting - quite a feat! I wonder if you could dare to give the window textures a bit more brightness and variation, see Nofunk's and Jasoncw's buildings... well, of course not that much, just a tad perhaps. The same goes for Kaiser Permanente.

I also like how you sculpted the bases of all theses buildings, once again especially on the Federal Building. Does that one have a base that fully covers 3x3 tiles? I'M asking because otherwise it would be terribly hard to make a lot that doesn't clash with the building.

Finally some words about the Medical Tower: I'm wondering if the overall colour scheme especially on the tower isn't a tad too blueish-greenish for the game. That peachy hue Jasoncw keeps preaching might help, but I'm not really sure about my own impression here. It's just that, a vague impression I can't really express. What about the parking lot? If I compare that to the one you made for your Waddle's Drive-In, I gotta say Waddle's wins. *nudge*

Well, all in all it looks like you're going to make me and many other people more than happy once again. Lovely work, on all of these! I could spend hours just looking at the previews and drooling.

[Sim shady 12]

My only problem i see with these BATs is that i feel like the window textures could be improved on all them them, the Union Bank of California Tower in particular. Everything else is really spectacular, and I have to commend you for churning out so many high quality BATs in such a short time

PS: T Wrecks knows what he's talking about

[spa 970]

Looking great Sparky. I like these new buildings. Some nice general midrises. We don't have many of this type. I'm really excited to add them to my cities. The details at the base on these is really well done and the textures look great for the most part. The Federal Building looks particularly impressive. I have to second twrecks and Hongkong though on the roof textures. On Kaiser Permanente Tower and 700 Lloyd they are definitely too bright and the strong gradient looks odd. The rest of Kaiser Permanente looks fine to me but I think the white on 700 Lloyd's walls is too strong. I know it can be a pain to nail down white (I have had difficulties with my on again off again CBC HQ) but it's just not quite there yet. Other than that though these look great.

[ricb 19]

Great job on the PMC. I think it's your most authentic yet. On the 700 Lloyd Building. Isn't that where the Mac store is located?

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Thanks everyone for the input. I'll take a look at all of these issues and attempt to address them. 99% of why I keep getting better at BATing is because y'all help me out.

Ricb, what should I make the PMC into? A clinic? CO? CS??? Oh and yes, the Mac store is in 700 Lloyd, on the NE side.

I think with the Portland Medical Center (511 Building) garage, I should open the rest of the ground floor up the whole way around. In reality, it is yet another one of Portland's notorious sloping lots. The tower isn't really integrated into the slope, but the garage is....

The Federal Building will be a full 4x4 block. Yet again, that block slopes and I wracked my mind figuring out how to flatten it out for SC4.

OK now for the last one I had to do, the Hilton:

Suprisingly I haven't yet heard from Jason.... Or Andreas. I wonder what you guys have to say...

[Jasoncw 11,949]

The problem with the columns on 700 Lloyd, is that they are falling inbetween two pixels on the grid of pixels.  The other ones landed right on the pixels, so they have one sharp pixel for them.  Some of them are halfway though, and so it gets blended across the two pixels, so you get two grey pixels instead of one white pixel.  I can show a picture I made of this later today (it's on my computer).

I agree that the roofs need more work.

If those are skylights on the Hilton, you should probably model the interiors.

[Andreas Roth 626]

I think T Wrecks raised some valid points already, so I don't need to pick up those again - the roof textures are a bit too bright in some cases, but the walls look great so far (and the models are up to your usual high standards). I don't think that the PMC is too blue-ish, though, but of course this would have to be decided once we see an in-game shot. "Large clinic" sounds fine to me, and I think the main difference between a clinic and a hospital in the game is that the latter one has an emergency helicopter. The parking garage needs some work, though - as you said the ground floor should be used as well, and although it would derive from the original building a bit, it would be nice if you'd actually build a two-deck garage. Another odd thing is that there are parking lots with two cars parked in the same spot - was that really done that way? This setup would only work if the owners of the respective cars would arrive and leave at the same time. There should be enough room for three individual lines and two driveways at least, I'd say. The ground texture of the Federal Building is a bit too red at the moment, but I think that's a preliminary one anyway - except from that, this one looks awesome indeed.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Cool to see you two chime in!   Jason, please do show me what you speak of. Is there a way to fix that? I was thinking about moving the window curtain wall a little bit outward. Not too much, just a little. Also that was on a low-quality preview. Usually things like that look a lot better on high quality as it anti-aliases a lot better, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

I have now went through everything everyone said and wrote them down. My task over the next few days will be to address these concerns.

On some issues I feel it is important to comment upon:

The 511/PMC parking garage: It is REALLY weird Andreas! I'll have to figure out how to describe the way it works... There are some parking lots in town where you don't get to park your car yourself. You give the attendant your keys and they park it for you. The attenedants are in charge of keeping track of where everything is, and can move stuff around if a car is needed that is blocked in. I think that those spaces are for the daytime workers who have some sort of deal with the garage operators. I know that the lot is attended at night and people park there after hours, but I have never seen double parking at night. Kind of funny because there are people thst live around that area that probably would gladly pay to have long-term parking. But I'm guessing that's what the lower level is for....

I do need to find some better surface concrete. Looks like I'm going to have to bust out a special move for that. The garage really has been the most annoying part of the whole thing.

Blue/green colors on the PMC: The windows are actually really blue-grey-greeny and reflective. And the main metal texture (spands, main walls) of the rest of the tower is sort of a gunmetal gray. Trust me, I've spent a lot of time in this building!

Hilton "Skylights": Those are blockerd up or painted over. I couldn't tell in the aerials. There is one skylight and it is over the pool to the right of the entry thing. And you definetly know it is one looking at aeriel photos. Why they made those weird things, but didn't make them glass, who knows? My best guess is to have a vaulted ceiling. I've been from the top to the bowels of this building, but I have never ever seen what is under the hexagon thing. And the one above the main entrance? I've never really looked up when I've went in that way! I know that it isn't glass because the lobby isn't naturally lit.  I usually use the Broadway entry but I have a pretty good memory of the guts of this thing... Well, next November I'm sure there'll be some campaign parties in there. I'll have to look then. 

All the other stuff: Easy as pie. Just gotta keep trying. I think I may use one of the white textures from the Hilton to fix 700 Lloyd. The Hilton was a test for a better white texture.

[ricb 19]

Sparky, I'd make the PMC a clinic with wide coverage, as that is most reflective of its real world status. BTW, I believe the other "skylight" on the lower roof of the Hilton covers the fitness center. I've eaten a lot of rubber chicken at the Hilton. Last one in 2000 when Oregon hosted a national conference on community based care for disabled. The final night at dinner we were treated to a Clinton impersonator.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

I've eaten a lot of rubber chicken at the Hilton. Last one in 2000 when Oregon hosted a national conference on community based care for disabled. The final night at dinner we were treated to a Clinton impersonator.quote>

That must have been fun! There's a guy that can do W's voice up at Harvey's Commedy club. It'd be funny to see them have a conversation. My favorite are Nixon impersonations. I've managed to get that voice down I guess... Darn Futurama... My Clinton impersonations aren't safe for work.

OK Here are the latest changes on the first 4 BATs I textured, hopefully incorporating what everyone wants.

Portland Medical Center/511 Building:

(I ought to consistantly refer to it as one of those names or the other....)

• Darkened the roof texture
• Added another window texture, replacing a duplicate (oops!)
• Opened up the parking garage, it is now open to the elements all the way around.
• Added some seating around the food vendor cart parked in the lot.
• Adjusted the big twin HVAC things atop the south wall to look more like the real ones.
• Retextured the parking garage floors and walls. Used the Waddle's groundplane texture as a basis for the new pavement

Federal Building

• Changed the red texture by desaturating. Looks more like the real paving.
• Added an additional window texture, one lighter for variety.

Kaiser Permentante Tower:

• New roof texture
• Changed window textures

700 Lloyd

• New wall texture, less brighter and allows windows to stand out a little better
• Added a light window texture
• Replaced roof textures

So is this better? What can be improved upon. Please also take a look at the Hilton above and speak up!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Ok, so the top one is the image.  The grid is the grid of pixels.  The lower one is how that image is rendered as pixels.  The one on the bottom is an example, which is similar to what happened with yours.

The solution could be to make them thicker, to try and shift the offending columns over a bit until they line up with the pixels, or you can leave it, and hope that with the high quality render, that it is better.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Jason, thanks for the explaination! That surely helps.

The last screen I took of it was at high-quality at zoom 4. Zoom 4 seems to me to be the level that it happens the most, don't know about your experiences. I think it looks a lot better with the highest level of rendering plus the new texture. The old texture had an area with a bit of a contrast to the overall texture, sort of gray, so that may have added to my woes....

I don't know. It just doesn't look as bad as the first attempt.

[bixel 1,228]

Oh My GAWD!!! Sparky!!! I had a BAT rampage last couple weeks ago, and here I stumble across your Portland Building Crusade!!! Well done! My oh my the textures are incredible on the Portland Medical Building, and thankyou for modelling the parking lot, that really gives the building more character and realistically separates the building correctly in most cities, Maxis stuff tends to be almost too side-by-side or not wall to wall enough, if that makes sense.

Most of all I really love the Portland Medical Building and the Hilton. Strange thing about the Hilton is - the original (60's ??) design did not have that block sized base, instead the building has stilts (or piles) and access to the hotel was under the building but exposed to open air. The strange funky roof stuff I think is pretty common among real buildings but rare in a Maxis setting. Either way All of the buildings are simply gorgeous. My plugin folder (2gig+) is simply going to love this!

I am actually thinking of streamlining it down about a gig. I am still crazy about HK stuff, but these mid-rises belong in any city. I am soooo curious about your Portland CJ, do you still have it? I bet the new NAM stuff could help with the current Light Rail lines. I am going to re-render the Commonwealth building, I realized I accidentally did not make it Wall2Wall on the North side, which will make it look weird in the Portland setting.

I was planning on doing some Pearl buildings, but I haven't dedicated myself yet. I was actually thinking of doing Portland State University -- seeing as nobody has really made an adequate replacement for Maxis' Boston style University. I think PSU would make the perfect Urban University. I also want it modular and Transit Enabled. But I need to start getting some pictures.

[spa 970]

Sparky,

Looking good. These small changes you've made are generally all steps in the right direction. The Federal Building really looks ready to go, as does Kaiser Permentante Tower. I really like the new roof textures. Very snazzy tiles. About 700 Lloyd, I know I suggested turning down the white walls a bit but I think you took it too far. It now looks like concrete, which is fine if that's the intent but my sense from the first texture attempt is that it's a little more white then what it is right now. As for the Hilton, it looks great. I like the street presence on the extended ground floor and the windows in the tower. I don't think though that the textures on the roof "pods" above the ground floor extension are quite right. They don't look real. I don't have a clue though as to what to suggest there. Anyway, I really like these new bats.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Bixel: Please, Please finish The Henry! That looked so cool! Also, are you still up for doing the Bank of California Tower?

Please do re-render the Commonwealth, and send it on over. I'll just delete the version I currently have. Please make sure it fits on a 2x4 lot! The less work I have to do, the better....

PSU BATed? I thought about that before. It'd have to be modular, as PSU really isn't a campus anymore, more like a college plopped into the city.

I do still have the CJ-ish SC4 Portland. Needs a ton of work. More on that later.

OK, Spa: Thanks for letting me know about that white texture. White's the hardest color to get!

Here are the improvements so far:

That better? The real building is pretty bright....

And this? Alsio I went and scaled the base right.

So everything is scaled. Everything is modelled. Everything is textured, pending these changes. All I need to do is all of the lighting.

[nofunk 1,933]

[Sim shady 12]

OMG the window textures seem vastly improved! Those are ready for release! I might still worry about the buildings seeming too bright in the game, but that is only a minor issue that might not even be an issue

[bbfan02 23]

Looks great! I like the colors!

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Sim Shady, I saw your post earlier when I woke up, and managed to run through some in-game test exports.

These are low-quality exports, so don't mind the geometry. The only things I am concerned with at the moment is scale and texture. I'm quite certain a high-quality export will look awesome. I just didn't want to tie my computer up all day. Yesterday was bad enuf... (More on that below)

Before I go on and post in-game shots, I would also like to add two more things:

I have included Bixel's latest export of the Commonwealth (Equitable) Building in the in-game shots. I think everyone ought to see his great work.

Also, I have good and bad news about some old BATs of mine. I am planning to revisit some of the old stuff and give them a badly needed update. In order to do that, I (sucessfully) brought my old BATing PC back to life, using transplanted parts from this PC. Unfortuneately, the original 1000 Broadway, Congress Center, and Portland Plaza models are lost to corrupted CD-Roms and a cranky old computer that just woke up. The good news is that the US Bancorp Tower (Big Pink), and everything else have been found and are awaiting rebuilding. The missing BATs will have to be restarted from scratch.

I am currently debating wether to get ahead in BATing before school starts and rework a few old BATs before moving on to the next new projects.

OK onto the screens:

The Federal building is giving me headaches at close zoom levels:

this effect repeats on the opposite angle too. I think it is the LODs. I had the same problem before, but can't remember what it was or which building it was... or how I fixed it! Anyone else remember?

Enjoy!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I was looking around on local live and you have quite a few adjacent buildings, yeah, you should make a little "CJ" thing to show us the progress of SC4 Portland.

About the scale, the best thing to do, is to take the real height, and multiply it by 133%.  That way your buildings should be proportional to themselves in the game.  And that way they are all uniformly scaled up compared to each other.

About the funny shadow (floating) thing, I think it's from there being BATed stuff below the LOD.  I think the game uses the .FSH files' transparency mask, and distorts it into a shadow shape, and then fills it with the blue shadow color to make shadows for the game.  If it's modeled, then it's still in the .FSH file, just for normal viewing, that part of the .FSH file is not visible because it is outside of the profile of the LOD.

[spa 970]

Looks good Sparky. I think the whiteon 700 Lloyd is great now, especially in game. It looks like the scale for 511 Building (PMC) is a little off compared to the rest.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Hmmmm Perhaps I ought to have the LOD include the underground objects too?

511/PMC Building: Yeah it needs a little bumping up. I noticed that it doesn't fill the entire lot in in Lot Editor. Also I should scale it up a little on the z scale after I do that. I thought I had scaled it perfectly a few months ago. I guess that I didn't. Time to grab the SimRuler and fix it!

SC4 Portland: For most purposes, I call it PDX SC4. I have the region and everything that goes with it backed up. Just need to dust it off. It's pretty basic, as it was for a booth at a community planning day. I didn't make anything fancy other than BATs because the game is addictive enough as it is without all the stuff the community has added on. So it's not as pretty as the CJ's I've seen on here. If I were to really work on it, it's going to take a lot of time. Also I must go through my plugins and do a bunch of pruning and updating. Other than testing out BATs, I really don't run SC4. Hopefully that will change.

[patriots_1228 51]

dayum sparky. Thats 6 awesome buildings. You work fast

[HONG KONG 74]

Release one already

[SimFox 804]

Sparky! Those are very, VERY good!