Mushy's Random BATs

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Thoughts? Nah, just drool right now.

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

OMG!!!! I love the buses, I more in to the roof of the buses being yellow. Oh, I think it would be a great idea make some modern school buses like the SAF-T-Liner C2, here's the Thomas website for school buses.

SAF-T-Liner C2

http://www.thomasbus.com/bus-models/school/saf-t-liner-c2.asp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Saf-T-Liner_C2

SAF-T-LINER FS-65

http://www.thomasbus.com/bus-models/school/saf-t-liner-fs65.asp

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freightliner_FS-65

[MushyMushy 3,617]

Replies

@T Wrecks - Thanks a bunch!

@Aaron Graham - I'm working on a SAF-T-Liner C2 now. Honestly, I don't why I didn't make one originally... they make up like 70% of my school district's buses. I'll post an update on it once it's done, though it'll take a bit of work since I don't have a model of that particular truck cab yet (I just recycled the front end from something else for the other buses). I could probably also release a version of the set with yellow roofs; I made the tops white originally since that's how all of the ones I've seen in my city are.

---

For those who didn't see my earlier comment on this, my plan is to make a bunch of content prior to my summer vacation and then work on releasing it subsequently. Current stuff that's either already done or pretty close to it includes: the JPN Car Pack, the School Bus Pack, the US Car Pack, Firehouse No.21, the EU Truck Base Pack, and those old Yokohama Apartments (remember that one? I need to dig that file out - it was honestly pretty close to being done when I stopped working on it due to replacing my PC).

Short update.

Before I started working on the interior of FH No.21, I decided to work some more on another project I've been working on. I'd really like to get some more Japanese industrial buildings into the game (there really aren't a whole lot). I'd like to get a nice variety of sizes and styles. To start with this I've started on a 5x2 lumber warehouse in Osaka. I'm not very far but it shouldn't take a very long time - Japanese buildings aren't very complicated and warehouses are extremely straightforward and simple to model. Don't mind the textures - there's several untextured things in this render. There's also some stand-in textures or ones that aren't mapped properly, etc. I made the awning-things darker so they weren't so garish and won't stick out like a sore thumb. This building could probably fit in nicely in a European setting too seeing as there's no visible Japanese lettering on it.

I know it's not how the vast majority of people do it, but I personally find it easier to work on buildings if I texture them as I go. Not sure why.

[APSMS 1,892]

Your district must have a bunch of new money. My district operates almost exclusively ones looking like your models (some of the buses are 1950s vintage), and I've seen the C2 model bus probably once in the district, and maybe three or four times in the neighboring district (smaller, with more money). But then again, San Diego schools have been hurting for money for a while now, so maybe that's not all that surprising.

I like the start of your warehouse BAT. Can't actually see any texturing issues at the moment, but I don't have the "eye".

One suggestion for the firehouse is to model the engines/trucks as separate props, or model the building with the doors open and closed and make it a times prop. This way the engines can be seen to change position throughout the day, and appear in and out of the firehouse.
I think that SHK did this for his tropical firehouse, but I can't be sure.

 

  Edited May 13, 2016 by APSMS  

[Bipin 3,402]

Why hadn't I known of this work before? Amazing - keep it up!

[philforhockey51 4,211]

Great artist choice to darken those garish things, I'm looking forward to your summer lol

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

The texture work on that industrial building... yum!

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Woah, dat texturing tho...

[Belfastsocrates 1,753]

Liking the idea of new Japanese industrial lots. A lot of them work very well in some European and UK-style settings as well

[TakemeThere 5,833]

That ground texture is ridiculously realistic, your just killing it with your latest work

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

I'm waiting for that fire station *_*

All your vehicles are looking amazing! I hope to see them soon

[MushyMushy 3,617]

Sorry for not posting any updates. My screen died about a week ago and I've been unable to work on anything. We more recently managed to dig out an ancient 15 inch 4:3 monitor I used 9 or 10 years ago, but it is too small to have a comfortable working space in PS and 3DSmax (I was working on a 32 inch television before). I haven't been able to reply to any PMs or make any real comments (other than short things such as forum game posts) since I've been using my phone and typing out much of anything on that is a major hassle. I turned on the little screen today so I could type this. The new 27 inch screen I ordered should get here sometime next week so that's when I'll resume work and try and push some of these things to the STEX.

I could've turned it on to write this sooner, but I've been avoiding it since the whole thing has made me pretty mad. The TV I was using was only 2 and a half years old and it's completely broken. After some research I learned that this is really common with LG TVs so lesson learned there I guess. Back to the old reliable Samsungs.

Anyway, hope to get back to BATing soon!

-Mushy

[Finnbhennach 161]

I totally understand your pain and frustration with equipment going bad. I also have an LG branded screen that's sorta dead but luckily kept in "suspended animation" so to speak I just can't turn it off or it's surely dead forever  I really just need a new monitor and this current one is not even an IPS panel so I guess more reasons to replace the darn thing but I've been prioritizing computer parts for better/faster renders. Nonetheless, I'm sure you'll be back to your projects in no time, they are delicious 

[art128 4,618]

Well what do you know I recently have a LG TV that died too, same size too at 80cm.

Hope your screen arrives safely !

[metarvo 710]

Oh, my, that's too bad!  I hope you're able to get things going again, because you're doing amazing work here.  Warehouses are among my favorite buildings both IRL and in game.  I tend to texture as I build as well, so you're not the only one.  That's sure to be sweet when it's done!

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Well, I don't want to do TV brand advertising in your topic , but we have here at home 3 Samsung televisions and never had any problems. The oldest TV is 7 years old, the newest I'm using in the computer and it has 2 years and all 3 always worked perfectly. It is a suggestion here  

[airman15 4,111]

Oh, that sucks your monitor died. My last desktop suffered a motherboard failure and have been working from a laptop ever since so that's understandable. My laptop on the other hand has been going strong for about as long as the desktop and the only issue was a corrupted driver that was caused by a lack of updates.

[APSMS 1,892]

I understand your pain, but I gotta ask, where were you working that you had the space for a 32-inch TV?

I have an LG TV, too, at home, but it's the last of the Plasmas, and it's amazing.

Hope things go better with your new screen; your work is incredible and hopefully your don't have any other costly hiccups.

[F-150STX 6]

On ‎5‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 10:12 PM, MushyMushy said:

Replies

@T Wrecks -  Thanks! It's actually not an illusion - the cars/trucks/buses all have an interior that include seats, a dash, and a steering wheel (visible on the renders in which the windshield is visible).  My guess as to why the side windows appear almost black is a combination of shadows inside the cars and the fact that the interior texture is a mid-grey color. The windshield (and back window on sedans) is angled quite a bit on almost all of the cars which I would imagine allows light to flood into the car from that side, making the interior visible. The side windows on all of the vehicles are either vertical or reasonably close to it, which probably makes more shadows. The other possibility I can think of is the side windows are reflecting more due to their angle. I suppose significantly boosting the brightness of the interior texture would make it more visible, but at the same time, most of the cars' interiors I've seen aren't exceedingly bright. Either way, that would require replacing the texture on so many scenes (I'd probably guess between 200 and 230) that I don't think it's feasible.

I looked up aerial parking lot photos just now, and it seems like in most cases the only windows that the interiors can be seen through are windshields and and the back windows of some sedans. I'm not really sure what causes this.

  Hide contents

 

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So I've spent the past few days put some finishing exterior touches on Firehouse No.21. I still need to do some basic interior modeling and then I'll address the night lights. The thing at the top of the tower is a tornado siren (Memphis is right on the border of tornado alley). I tried to get the roof junk to be pretty close to the real thing, though it was difficult since all I had to go on was Google's satellite images and what little I could see from the street. Right now it's looking like it'll sit on a 3 wide by 4 deep corner lot. The lot will have custom textures.

Here's a Zoom 5 HD render of all 4 angles (click for full size (large file))

Thoughts?

I just found this BAT and I have to say it is a beautiful piece of work. I can not wait for it to be uploaded!

[MushyMushy 3,617]

Replies - Phew, I've got a lot to catch up on! I'm replying to posts made before and after my post about my broken television.

@APSMS - Nah, my district is very poor (hey, destitute city with a very high poverty rate) - they just aren't responsible with their funding so they throw it all away on stuff like paying a company a lot of money to run these expensive buses at like 1/6th capacity. Regarding the fire station, I personally don't have any idea how to go about setting them up as timed props, so the closest thing I could come up with is to have the engines and the ambulance "move" into the garage at night and have the doors close up for the night as well. Frankly, this isn't far off from how they do it at the station, the only time I see the engines out of the garage during the day (aside from firefighting) is when they are washing them. I'll probably try to mess with timed props in the future, but right now I'm still a beginner really. I only have 3 ancient GMAX releases to my name!

@Bipin - Thanks!

@philforhockey51 - Thanks! My summer got off to a slow start (boo LG), but now my summertime that everyone is looking forward to has arrived!

@kingofsimcity - Thanks! I try to make my buildings a little bit on well-worn side; the unrealistic cleanliness that plagues so many custom models bugs me!

@Toothless Stitch - Thanks!

@Belfastsocrates - Thanks! There'll be more coming. Warehouses seem to be really underrepresented in SC4's custom content scene (maybe because they're so boring?), and even more so if you're strictly looking at 3DSmax models. Thankfully, they're really easy to make. I'd categorize this one as a more complex one since it has other buildings attached to it, so some of the smaller/simpler ones I'll be doing will be really fast an easy to churn out.

@takemethere - Thanks! I weighed the pros and cons of either using a baked-in ground texture or one that would get split up for LE use. I ended up making it baked-in because it would make it more realistic (I guess the source of all the compliments it's getting), and the fact that the odd shape of the building really doesn't lend itself to custom lotting.

@JP Schriefer - Thanks! Your wait on that fire station may be coming to a close in the near future.

@MushyMushy - Yep, LG messed up the first week and a half of my summer.

@Finnbhennach - I understand the pain of having to deal with buying new computer parts. I pretty much emptied myself out of several years of savings to build my new machine at the beginning of the year.

@art128 - Yea, from the results of my research it seems like all of the different sizes of LG TVs have problems with dying. Thankfully my new screen did arrive safe and sound.

@metarvo - Thanks! Things are indeed back up and running again.

@JP Schriefer - Oh, some support for Samsung won't go amiss around here. Other than my TV, all of the screens my family has used as monitors have been Samsungs. The 20" that I used before I bought my TV died after being used quite a bit for probably 7 or 8 years. The tiny 15" one (which now sits happily next to my new screen as auxiliary one) that I used while I was waiting for my new screen to ship is at least 10 years old and only has minimal screen defects!

@airman15 - Yeah, that's the nice thing about laptops - they come with a screen attached!  The last time my monitor died I was still using a laptop so it wasn't a terribly big deal.

@APSMS - Thanks! I had the space because the desk I'm using is a fairly large curve one. It's technically my dad's and we've had it for a long time, but several years ago my dad's office and my room were flip-flopped. In my previous room we had dismantled a smaller and older (but arguably nicer) desk and reconfigured it to maximize desk space, but the new setup required it to be drilled into the wall. As a result, it wasn't feasible to switch the desks so I ended up with a really large desk to make a mess on and never keep tidy .

@F-150STX - Thanks! I'm working on pushing the station to a STEX release relatively soon!

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Currently, I'm working on getting the orthogonal versions of the Euro Truck Pack completed! The complete overhaul of the European trucking scene in SC4 is happening! The dry van trailers (the ones that I've posted renders of before) are currently being exported and modded. I'm going to break it down be angle, so logically the first release will be orthogonal (90 degree) ones. I'll also need to make a small pack that features standalone variants of the basic (4x2 & 6x4) two tractor units in a few colors. I can't guess how big the basic tractor unit pack will be (it will include all of the angles since it will be smaller), but I can assume it will be relatively small. The dry van packs will have 62 models for each angle. There will be 4 packs - 6 if I decide to do FA-3. My rough estimate on the size of the dry van packs is about 4.5-6.5 MB each. The dry van packs will include the normal and long variants of the trailers. For those who have forgotten: the longer variants only represent freight companies; the retail logos will only appear on the normal length trailers.

@nos.17 - I'm assuming you're still up for making prop families for the trucks once they're done? I would assume the best way to get the maximum variation in a situation like modular truck stops would be to have both lengths for each angle in a combined family so that there's a mix.

Since I'm just working on exporting stuff right now, there's nothing new to really show picture-wise on that front. Instead, I'll just repost some previous images since I started working on these trucks quite a while ago and it might be nice to recap what you guys have to look forward to. I'd be expecting the orthogonal pack on the STEX in the coming days!

Recap images - (click for full size) - warning, flood of images incoming

Spoiler

I'm currently working on night lights for the fire station. I'll likely have a post with pictures of that ready soon. Then I'll need to make the custom LE textures and associated props. Once I'm done with that, is there somebody here who'd like to mod & lot (doesn't have to be the same person) the fire station once it's done? I'm bad at containing myself dependency-wise and I don't have the slightest clue when it comes to modding a building. The lot would be pretty simple since I'm going to make custom textures and a custom set of parked cars for the lot - all the lotter would need to do is "beautify" it.

If I can get reliable help with things like lotting and modding, I can focus more on modeling and thus, through a combined effort of people, put out custom content faster.

-Mushy

 

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Yay!

[nos.17 5,120]

@MushyMushy ... Of course! Once I get going, it is a relatively quick process; each family should take no more than 5 min. I can make as many as you want: each lengths separate, together, angles separate and/or together...basically whatever you would like.

If no one else volunteers, I'm also down to do some lotting and/or modding for the fire station.

[MushyMushy 3,617]

Quick minor update (replies in next full update):

Still working on exporting the orthogonal trucks. Have had some other things to do. In other news I've fiddled around with the concept of a replacement set of oil pipelines to phase out nbvc's well-used but very bleached out set (curse you gmax and your horrid render quality). Here's some early results, plus some oil trucks for good measure:

My stuff is going to at least have all of the same pieces as his, though I may add some stuff here and there as I see fit.

-Mushy

[metarvo 710]

These pipes and things look rather grungy and oily.   In other words, they're perfect!  I like me some industry any day.  Great job, Mushy!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Wonderful work on the details as always!!!

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Hell yeah that is good!

[Simmer2 23,786]

Like I said on my thread, can't wait!!

[MushyMushy 3,617]

Another quick update. Looking over the replies, it would appear all I need to say is: "Thanks for all of the nice compliments!," and to @nos.17, thanks for all of the help with upcoming stuff.

More pipes, this time with several new pieces not present in nbvc's set (pieces that I personally think are sorely needed). Also, truck colors!

(Image is split due to SC4D's image restraints)

 

Here is what I was hoping to remedy with curved-entrance overpass pieces (original image credit to Simmer2):

[T Wrecks 10,209]

You know, you get lots of praise, and that's deserved and all... however, I see a serious problem with those pipelines that hasn't been adressed yet. The problem is this: If you use these pipelines next to any other props, the other props are going to look bad in comparison, and you'll end up having to remake it all!

Just kidding of course, this is truly mouth-watering progress once again! Seeing you pump out all this top-quality stuff almost makes me worry you might burn out... please don't do that, ok?

[airman15 4,111]

Those pipes..