The Portland & Oregon BAT Team, Chapter 1

[The Mighty Cheese Grater 0]

I love so many of Portland's buildings, and I'm so glad that you're making BAT's of them, these are so cool!

[1ajs 49]

hey sparky hows the hotel fort gary coming?

[Explodingsims 3]

Your BAT's Here are looking amazing, Your latest is looking Good.

[Spike345 20]

Wow, thanks for noticing my posting. aha and remebering I am a HUGE W2W fan. I am almost always lurking at projects and speak out when I feel the need too, and these certainly do!

[screamingman12 30]

I'm back from my long respit of updating trams and writing a CJ, and on a note related to this project I have good news for all...

...I am set up to do the soon-arriving MAX type 4 cars!  

These will arive in conjunction with the Green Line opening and will arrive through 2008-9, TriMet's website has pictures of the front of these cars, and anything I'm not sure about I can create from pictures of Houston's Metrorail, Charlotte's LYNX, and San Diego's MTS. The car types are the same, all variants of the Siemens S70/Avanto class LRV. 

I'll start working on them next week some time. Right now, I'm updating my TARS 600 class and working on a Boston Elevated Railway Type 5 car.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Thanks for all the commentary!

@1ajs: The Fort Garry Hotel's been on the shelf for a while now. Got stuck and there were other pressing BATs to get to. When CDI folded the Winnipeg Project, I put it on hiatus. Now that CDI's back, I may bring it out again. It may end up as one of those that I work on from time to time and eventually finish after a long time. That's what Waddle's became...

@S12: Cool to see that you're anticipating the new MAX cars. The overall paint scheme changea a little bit. They took out that black stripe along the windows, so it's just all white with the half-circles now. At least that's what's been in the visual simulations. Go to www.portlandmall.org, and you'll see what I mean. they've been advertising the project on buses and on the MAX with photos of trains painted without that black stripe that was in the press release on TriMet's site. I see that picture EVERY day on the bus in the overhead ads!

I have some progress on Waddle's: Texturing has begun!

Or....

With the parking lot, I am looking into whether a faded or dark asphalt texture would look better. I used the default Maxis textures (by taking a screen shot in Lot Editor & importing it to Photoshop). I think the darker pavement looks better. I may just not render the ground plane when it comes time to prop out peices of the model (the parking stripes are 3d objects), maybe I will... dunno, but my bases are covered either way. The rest of the textures are preliminary at this time. Advice is appreciated!

I have decided that I will release this BAT in the three different lot sizes that I proposed a page or two back. The largest is pictured here and will be LM and plop-only. The others will be only growable. Sound good? Lemme know, you're the ones that are going to be using it.

[screamingman12 30]

Sparky: If you're talking about what I'm thinking, than the black stripes around the windows are the rubber gaskets that keep rain out. With the Avantos, the windows are flush with the sides.

[homeandaway 1]

Now that looks really realistic my friend, it really does, i see you like to recreate Portland BATs - kool!

[topcliff 1]

Personally, I prefer the light texture as it flows well with the theme of the lot: light-spirited, happy, a great place to get a burger! That's just my opinion, though.

[Jasoncw 12,030]

Be careful about the maxis textures! You'll need to do a lot of adjustments to make it actually blend with the textures in the game. The light rig in gmax changes the color and value of the textures a bit, so you need to adjust for it.

I can't tell if you did it or not (it looks like you did), but for the cement, give it a plane uvw map of 16x16 meters.

[screamingman12 30]

Nice Building! I personally think that you should leave it like that. Also, here's another mishap that I can't figure out how to fix: (You'll notice that it doesn't have any cars) Edit: also, if there are no objections, I would like to change the skin to a darker blue, because I don't think that the slightly faded blue that I used (it's the same as on the type 2/3 cars, but it looked better on them) looks "shiney" enough.

[mightygoose 92]

definately light asphalt

[josefmayor 8]

Nice cars on the lot! Would you be interested in helping me with my parking garage (modeling the cars on it) like you did for 1000 broadway?

[CDI_spy 6]

Aw man Sparky that is just to cool for words!  We need a LOT more buildings shaped and oriented in a quasi grid-free pattern.  We've got diagonals and we've got orthogonals, but we might as well take advantage of the island-within-a-parking-lot (like gas stations, suburban restaurants, and such) buildings and make them fun, like you did.

About the Fort Garry... let me know!  If you need more pictures or data or such, I'm at your disposal.  I won't have it within 24 hours, but if I go by the rate at which you post progress, I needn't worry, I think.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Ok, the light asphalt it is then! Anyone objecting should chime in now or forever hold your peace...

@Josefmayor and CDI: See your threads, and I'll respond to to ya there, k? This post's getting a lil bloated... Hmmm 1kBwy.. I think I oughta sometime go back and really do it the justice it deserves.... Same with Congress Center. Those really aren't up to snuff.

@S12: Woah, that's strange! Unfortuneately I know nothing of transit and automata modding. Sorry I can't be of more help.   Could we see a day shot of the blue decals as-is vs what you want to do? that'll help a ton. BTW, the yellow circle and blue circles come up/come down a little farther on the real trains. Somewhere I have the actual names of the colors TriMet uses- They're quiter specific about which colors are part of the "official" livery.

It wasn't the rubber gaskets I was speaking of, it was this black painted stripe or decal that ran the whole lenght of the windows. It made it look like there was one continuous window. I think Houston uses it, TriMet used to use something like that on the buses when they used the "Brown Beaver" scheme in the 80's/90's. OK if you have stripes going across the sides, but not if there's half-circles that dip into it!

@Topcliff: Exactly! This was an awesome place. The bar (where I liked to hang out) was really swanky. Looked like a place where Sinatra would go.  The drinks were awesome and the burgers were great. I miss the plate of 4 little "Ducky Burgers". One regret: I never got to experience a breakfast there. Those were like a ritual for some people. Now its a Hooters... At least they kept the building and some of the signs.

If anyone's interested, I can talk a little bit about this place. I've known of it all my life. Just more in the later years though.

Just so you know, that ground plane is just for testing purposes only. It may or may not end up rendered out depending on the circumstances. Optimaly, I plan on using the defult lot editor texture, and insert everything (even the stripes on the pavement) in as props ontop of just a regular lot.   We're not quite there yet, so no worries. Just wanted to see which one would look better ahead of time. Either way, I got the ground texture now. Thanks

Die nächtes Fragge für Ihnen:

The next question for y'all:

Should I stay with a lighter roof or go with something like the darker roof below?

Before Waddles closed in 2003, the roof was dark, probably tar like the pic above. Since it became a Hooters, they have a grey (probably gravel) roof like the roofs in the parking lot comparison shots. Realism vs. What looks good? Better or worse? Let me know!

[1ajs 49]

aww kool sometimes a the slow ones are amazing like the tapie 101 bat

as for the roof of wallys somewhere inbetween would look good...

[mightygoose 92]

darker roof for me, the lighter roof stands out too much, probably due to the high blue bias for a building that is red...

[autoVino 26]

Looks great!  I think you should stick with the darker roof, though.

As for your question, what looks good if it's for simcity,..

[Jasoncw 12,030]

I think the lighter roof is better. Otherwise I think the building as a whole gets too dark. A slightly darker lighter roof would also work imo though.

[Andreas Roth 632]

Well, since you used a light texture for the parking lot, the roof texture could be a tad darker. But not too dark, so it doesn't stick out too much. Other than that, awesome work so far!

[LivingInThePast 364]

Hello. I have a PC running SimCity 4 (seriously!)

I want some pictures of Mall 205, so I can BAT it. It will be my first (and possibly last) BAT for Simtropolis!

[sparkythepenguin 90]

@Living in the Past: I don't have any Mall 205 pix. I don't get out to that part of town like I used to when I was a kid. Are you planning to do the mall as it is now, or some earlier version of it?

I made a high-quality export while I'm still working on figuring out textures. However, something came up with Waddle's. For some reason, the BAT program screwed up my units and grid settings. It's fixed now, but I have to re-scale the entire lot. That's a pain because the cars are correctly scaled, but the building and most everything else needs scrutiny. The good news is that the neon signs will be much more visible and the building will look a little more substantial next to the Maxis-created Hang-Ten, Shorty Burger, and Soehbuck (sp?) Lanes:

This is the biggest sized lot I had in mind, and now it's only going to be 3 tiles wide by 5 tiles long. That's plenty enough to sorta caputre the real lot and still be growable. Looks like I'm not going to have to make the other smaller lots after all. Wish I would have caught that sooner!

Guess I was too concentrated on school or something.

Grrrrrrr! OK back to work.

[bixel 1,228]

I dunno...I think it looks amazing the way it is. If you make it any bigger it will make the cars look to large, as it is it seems the cars are perfect proportion. Just do some clever LOT editing instead. The model looks great.

[LivingInThePast 364]

I am planning to do the mall as is currently. You see, since I happened to leave Simtropolis just as I got BAT, it would be fair to do one last thing before I leave. The mall is the Simtropolis exclusive thing I'd like to work on. There's a few pictures that are pretty good but I'd like some pictures of the back and some of the Target (old Montgomery Ward) there.

[plasticboy 36]

Originally posted by: LivingInThePast I am planning to do the mall as is currently. You see, since I happened to leave Simtropolis just as I got BAT, it would be fair to do one last thing before I leave. The mall is the Simtropolis exclusive thing I'd like to work on. There's a few pictures that are pretty good but I'd like some pictures of the back and some of the Target (old Montgomery Ward) there.quote>

What are you leaving and what's so "exclusive" about that mall?

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Here are the newest shots of Waddles. I have fixed the scaling issues to my satisfaction. Everything in the scene is now textured, and I am about to move into the lot config (figuring out how everything will be rendered and propped out) and the lighting phases.

I'm interested on feedback on the textures. While I'm waiting on your input, I'll work on lighting this thing up.

A big goal was to ensure that the neon signs were readable at zoom 3. Mission accomplished! The reverse side of the tower (with the clock) looks great too.

Cars seem about the right size. Ignore the parking lot texture. It's the medium grey Maxis lot texture. It is the actual base texture, as I eliminated the ground plane. It can be easily changed to the lighter texture-my bad...

I know the roof needs re-doing, anything else?

[kurtvedder 4]

Looks great!

[LivingInThePast 364]

It's "exclusive" because that's the one BAT I am going to make for Simtropolis. Any future BATs will be for SC4 Devotion.

[Jasoncw 12,030]

It's looking really good!

It looks like you're having some shadow issues.  You might need to put the ground plane back in after all.

I'm not 100% sure about the red color of the walls.  Look for some other red buildings in the game to see how they did it.  I have a feeling that your current red might be too dark and too saturated.

[sparkythepenguin 90]

@Jason: Yeah, I was thinking that... Very helpful suggestions which I will experiment with tonite (on a late nite schedule again!)

@Living in the past: Why are you leaving ST? If that opens up a can of worms, then don't answer that.

I have lit Waddle's up and exported the first split-up propped version of the lot. The lot job needs work. May actually add the ground plane in like Jason says and sit the building atop it. Otherwise I, as always am seeking imput on the work so far. Roof still needs retexturing along the lines suggested above. Just trying to get all the heavy lifting done on this first.

Here are the first ever nite lite Shots:

I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel! 3 years and it will finally be DONE! About time, eh? I tenatively expect this to be finished and on the STEX within the next 2 weeks, hopefully sooner.

Any suggestions for the lights are appreciated as always!