Zed (Cool_Z) at it again... (my BATs)

[Cool_Z 1,547]

No idea if we can talk about BATs now, but C:SL ravived my desire to invest some time in city builders. My SC4 batting attempts were short lived, let's see if I can do better in C:SL.

 

Here's what I'm working on, a modern house for one family. Only one floor but quite spacious with great big windows to let the sun in.

 

 

Fully modeled in Blender, painfully (first time ever) uvmapped and about to get finished now.

 

 

Early renders :

 

 

 

Change of color scheme :

 

 

Now ingame, (but not yet a growable, the ingame editor is quite mysterious, it will take some patience to have it 100% correct in terms of capacity and stats.).

 

 

 

 

And... I wonder if I shouldn't go back to my first color choice for the windows.. creme was nice, blue is a bit toyish.

[MINIggy03 227]

I look forward to downloading!  I would recommend including at least 3-5 recolors for variety sake. 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I want to make the roof vary color and keep the windows frames color from my first renders. What do you think ? (you can change colors ingame but only to the same color each time. I I made the roof AND the frames tintable they would have to be in the same tone each time.)

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Ingame test for the roof color variations

 

 

There is an issue with the color variation system at the moment. I'm waiting for the devs to fix it or give us a way to go around it.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Nice house! But it looks out of scale compared to the multistory buildings in the scene.

[TG707 1]

Sorry to be an ahole but for a house that model looks bad. I think it's a solid model for some type of office or industrial building but for a house it looks way out of place.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Nice house! But it looks out of scale compared to the multistory buildings in the scene.

 

Well I know what I did, it's correctly scaled . It's based on real architect floorplans. The main door height is about 2.05 meters which is the standard for real buildings.

 

The "multistory building" in view is just two stories high and my roof is about at half its height on this pic.

 

It's more a villa than a city house that's why it's long but not high.

 

The screenshots I posted on the 13th of march are a bit out of scale (I scaled it down by about 5% till then) on the last ones it is ok. 

 

Sorry to be an ahole but for a house that model looks bad. I think it's a solid model for some type of office or industrial building but for a house it looks way out of place.

 

It looks a bit bland because it's on an empty lot with no stuff around. Well as I said it's based on real architect plans... and I would LOVE to live in a house like that with huge windows to let the sun in. 

[iviaarten 534]

I think the game tends to over-saturate colours a lot. Maybe keep that in mind with your base textures, just de-saturate them a bit.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I think the game tends to over-saturate colours a lot. Maybe keep that in mind with your base textures, just de-saturate them a bit.

 

Hehe yeah The blue and yellow roofs are a bit too much but were just tests (I'm fighting with the color overlay system... at certain levels of buildings it won't let all the colors grow. I asked a fix on the paradox forums but still no answer, they're quite busy fixing the first bugs right now).

[Cool_Z 1,547]

[TheeLord 42]

Nice looking apartment, and I rather like the house.

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

Very beautiful building.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

 Wish I can model as fast as you are. Keep em coming. The more variety the better.

[Micah 16]

Awesome! You used Blender to create these? Any helpful tutorials you wouldn't mind sharing?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Thanks guys... 

 

 

Awesome! You used Blender to create these? Any helpful tutorials you wouldn't mind sharing?

 

I'm kind of a beginner myself, and I still learn more and more each time I open blender. I just watched a bunch of tutorials (mostly in french) and tried to stuff.

 

The thing is to go progressively.

 

Learn the blender interface, learn the basics of modelling, learn the basics of texturing... etc... and if at some point you're not really certain you understood, watch the tutorial again. 

[TG707 1]

That last building looks great. Are these going to be available on STEX anytime soon?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

 

I'm waiting for CO to fix something with the asset editor because the color variations system is unusable for now... (and buildings posted until now with several variations will certainly not grow all of them...)

[watercitymadero 805]

WOW so good

[Cool_Z 1,547]

 

Resized the building... it's more to scale now (I had followed some advice that when you build tall buildings you should "squash" the floors a bit to make things even... Well that was bad advice )

 

Ready to be released. (almost...)

[Deed_Poll 32]

Those apartments look great! They really fit in with the existing buildings well. I've found the standard resi high rises are too brown / beige.

[Bastet69008 1,102]

Pas mal! Good job on this one

[blackdragonbird 13]

My goodness, these apartments are great.

 

Cant wait to download it.

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Those apartments are totally awesome! They're level 5 right?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Those apartments are totally awesome! They're level 5 right?

 

Yep, level 5. they go well with the existing l5 buildings.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I've just uploaded it to the stex... 

 

[Jasoncw 11,940]

I have a question about reflections. From what I can tell so far, glass is done with textures and not reflections. If you have the specular map at pure white, what does it look like?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I have a question about reflections. From what I can tell so far, glass is done with textures and not reflections. If you have the specular map at pure white, what does it look like?

 

Excuse me while I faint... Jasoncw is asking me for some advice... 

 

 

The specular in game gives some fake reflection (of a pic made of buildings and buildings... and some sky if you look upwards).

 

Pure white gives you only that pic, moving as the camera moves. Going down from 100% white gives you a mix of that specular and the diffuse, but lower than 80 will create artifacts on the borders if the polygons affected are not using an uniform specular level. (Yeah it sounds silly...).

 

Here's a picture I made to test specular combined to color. You can notice the artifacts.

 

 

 

On large surfaces this might not be so noticeable.

[Jasoncw 11,940]

Thanks... I was hoping for something better but I guess that's not as bad as it could be. In SC4 we can have really good reflections, but only of things that are included on the BAT, and then for other things we have static but good looking reflections of generic things. Here we have no real reflections, and bad looking generic reflections, but they move with the camera. I think that is good for small windows where you can't see that nothing in particular is being reflected, but the movement with the camera position will give the impression of reflections. But I'm not sure if it will be possible to make really glassy facades look good (although I bet they'd look really nice from the ground "reflecting" the sky). Maybe someday we'll be able to do actual refections...

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Wow !! Actual reflections would need so much power from machines, it's not gonna happen until a long time in a game that needs so much of them.

 

Well it's not so bad, Maybe it would be better if they chose a better reflection map... but seeing the reflections move when you move the camera is sweet.

 

Yes, some of the SC4 buildings could have awesome reflections... but as always with SC4 there were no limits in the models because of the limitations of the game engine.

[Cool_Z 1,547]