FX BAT Workshop

[frukox 8]

This is the building I work on-only the lighting and the last render is left. What do you think?

 

 

 

 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

From what I can see, the model looks good. However, since the building is meant to be added to SimCity, we'd need a preview of the building as it would look in SimCity, i.e. from SC4 camera angle and in SC4 zoom level. Especially brightness is known to vary strongly between the viewport in gmax and the actual result in game. Perspective distortion is another factor to be considered.

 

One thing that caught my eye because it's purely related to architecture is the size and arrangement of the chimneys. They look very big, and the diagonal arrangement doesn't seem to make much sense to me. Try to imagine the floor layout of your building (I assume it's not a recreation of an actual real-life building) - where would the chimneys end up, and how would the rooms be arranged around them?

[frukox 8]

T-wrecks, it is an honor to get a reply from you. I modeled the chimneys again by the way and showing you the night render and day render:

 

 

 

Then, I' ll build the lot itself after a few constructive and valuable comments.

[mntoes 270]

Hi frukox,

 

I think a bigger picture would help us better:-

 

 

 

A promising start. I like the lighting.

[frukox 8]

Ok, some pictures from the game:

 

 

Cant see some of the overlay textures and props and dont know why.

[Girafe 1,729]

There are glitches in the roof.

 

The small roof texture is not matching the rest in term of dimension of the tiles

[nos.17 5,112]

There are glitches in the roof.

 

The small roof texture is not matching the rest in term of dimension of the tiles

 

Girafe is right - it looks like the roof texture is made up of three different sizes of tile. As for the overlay textures, if you have multiple textures layered on top of each other they may not show correctly if you use the LE. But overall I like the building a lot better and the nightlighting looks great.

 

By the way, which prop are you using to light your parkinglot? or is it light from the BAT?

[frukox 8]

This is the last version of the building. I completed the essentials of the building as far as I observe. I'm going to lot this after a few comments. Nos, I plan to light it using maxis street lights-resembling the ones in my country and I intend to work on the overlay textures once again. Please tell me if you dislike something. Thanks for your comments.

[edwardjeria 503]

great work

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Good night lights! Have you thought about adding a slight gradient to the roof texture? I think this would improve the overall appearance. Another aspect you may want to look into is the rain gutter (?), or that bright white contour around the lower edge of the roof. It's a bit too bright IMO.

 

Have you checked the building against similarly sized Maxis apartment blocks? It's difficult to judge from screenshots showing only the BAT, but I have the impression that the scale may be a tad small.

[frukox 8]

How can I add that slight gradient effect? Yeah, it is the rain gutter or the drain. So, you say I desaturate the texture. Am I right? The size is 26 m x 18 m x 12 m. At least 70 sims will occupy the building when I use % 0.85 filling in PIM X.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

There used to be a tutorial by gascooker on the Omnibus... lemme see... wait, I don't find it any more. Oh well. Basically, you take your roof texture and add a second layer, which you fill with a gradient from light to dark. You can asjust the transparency/opacity of that layer such that the resulting roof texture is a tad lighter towards the top and darker towards the bottom. This makes the roof look considerably more plastic and three-dimensional.

 

As for the rain gutters, I'm not sure if desaturating will do the trick here. The gmax renderer has a tendency to bleach out horizontal surfaces a lot, which means you may have to make colours darker than normal to compensate for the subsequent bleaching. This, of course, means that white is particularly hard to get right if you want to have it actually look like white, but without being blinding or glaring. As soon as contours and textures blend into one perfectly white area, it looks as if there was a part of your BAT that's simply untextured and solid white. In this particular case, maybe going for light grey rain gutters may be a good choice.

 

OK, in order to judge size and occupancy, a comparison shot would really help. I'm wondering if you'll have to compensate for the squashing effect due to the game's perspective, for example. The individual storeys do end up looking rather low. The footprint sounds OK.

[TCD 123]

Tutorial by gascooker https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=5230.0.