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

[Turjan 1,048]

First post here : https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/60964-simcity-memesjokes/

 

To be fair, it's actually a pretty  nice building in real life. The problem was that it was the only building in its category and grew on small lots (SC4 preferred small lots over large ones).

In principle, and I hate to say that, it's a similar situation to the one Feindbold created with the Sherry Netherland. Beautiful building, but it's too iconic to make it mass grow.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Yep...

Buildings should actually be in two categories :

-the fillers : generic stuff that you can see like one thousand gazillion times and not even notice you already did... but be slightly different from each others so that it's the same... but not really the same

 

-the standouts : non generic stuff that will look weird if they start being repeated

[boformer 3,169]

Building Themes supports probabilities. You just have to make sure that there is always at least one "filler" for every plot size.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Finished the geometry... 1494 tris

 

 

  Edited December 1, 2015 by Cool_Z  

[merc187 46]

How you are able to achieve such detail with all the ledges and accents as well as keeping tri-counts down always amazes me Zed.  Excellent work!  I just spent the last 10 minutes zooming in on your screen shot trying to reverse engineer everything and I'm still amazed at how efficient your models are!  Can't wait to see this in game! 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

How you are able to achieve such detail with all the ledges and accents as well as keeping tri-counts down always amazes me Zed.  Excellent work!  I just spent the last 10 minutes zooming in on your screen shot trying to reverse engineer everything and I'm still amazed at how efficient your models are!  Can't wait to see this in game! 

Well that's some nice compliment, thanks.

And here's how I work... I always try to balance tris and texture space. If I can save tris by cutting through other geometry I'll do it... unless it wastes too much texture.

 

Best example might be my river residence, all the floor spacers are actually big squares, but as I could make them small on the texture it was better than cutting them into smaller parts.

 

Here all the vertical parts cut through the floors... but they don't need that much texture space so that's ok.

[merc187 46]

How you are able to achieve such detail with all the ledges and accents as well as keeping tri-counts down always amazes me Zed.  Excellent work!  I just spent the last 10 minutes zooming in on your screen shot trying to reverse engineer everything and I'm still amazed at how efficient your models are!  Can't wait to see this in game! 

 Well that's ome nice compliment, thanks.

And here's how I work... I always try to balance tris and texture space. If I can save tris by cutting through other geometry I'll do it... unless it wastes too much texture.

 

Best example might be my river residence, all the floor spacers are actually big squares, but as I could make them small on the texture it was better than cutting them into smaller parts.

 

Here all the vertical parts cut through the floors... but they don't need that much texture space so that's ok.

I sometimes have stretching issues on those long polys.  Do you subdivide those long pillars running into the walls as window borders a couple times to stack/shrink them on texture? Or do you leave those pillars as one long poly and just scale the UV's down to a point where they don't look overly stretched?  Sometimes they end up being just too long for my texture space without having to shrink them to the point of stretching and or adding extra geometry so I can stack those pieces.

 

So a lot of those ledges are floating and not extrusions?  Do you ever get floating pieces deform pending how the asset is placed in game?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Even if I use long polys I don't stretch the textures. I might vary the scale on the map but I avoid deforming as much as I can.

 

And about floating... no, on this one there are no floating pieces at all. All is connected here (but it was not the case on many of my other buildings). I never noticed deformation ingame... although the engine is quite poor on rendering, it actually does well with geometry.

[Ryno917 102]

 

I sometimes have stretching issues on those long polys.  Do you subdivide those long pillars running into the walls as window borders a couple times to stack/shrink them on texture? Or do you leave those pillars as one long poly and just scale the UV's down to a point where they don't look overly stretched?  Sometimes they end up being just too long for my texture space without having to shrink them to the point of stretching and or adding extra geometry so I can stack those pieces.

Depending on how you lay out your texture, you could run a long beam complete from top to bottom of the texture space and let it tile the texture that way, instead of scaling it down. But, that being said, splitting the long section into 2 and overlapping the UVs wouldn't hurt the polycount too much, so it's probably best to do it that way in some cases anyways.

[Skypaul 26]

Do you think you will do the one on the left one day? (can't remember it name) It reminds me the glorious days.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

 

Do you think you will do the one on the left one day? (can't remember it name) It reminds me the glorious days.

Can't see the pic, can you rehost it somewhere else ? (hostingpics, imgur...)

[merc187 46]

Thanks for your tips!  And as I said earlier can't wait to see a textured version of this!  Thank you @‌Cool_Z & @Ryno917 for the advice! 

[Skypaul 26]

I was thinking about Quingley Insurance and Gold Tower.

 

[Koesj 659]

Mr. Z, I've been going through your tutorials to see where I have to up my game (after being fed up with asset building for a while) and I have to say I'm feeling very inspired!

I guess this showcase thread of yours is as good a place as any to show what I mean, so in the pic below you can see - wedged between two of my previous proof-of-concept monstrosities - my teensie tiny testcase building for partial specularity, and hopefully some pretty nightlights!

 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Mr. Z, I've been going through your tutorials to see where I have to up my game (after being fed up with asset building for a while) and I have to say I'm feeling very inspired!

I guess this showcase thread of yours is as good a place as any to show what I mean, so in the pic below you can see - wedged between two of my previous proof-of-concept monstrosities - my teensie tiny testcase building for partial specularity, and hopefully some pretty nightlights!

 

This looks very very promising !!!! Exactly in the good direction, don't stop !

[merc187 46]

Those look great @‌Koesj!

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

Looks great.

[Koesj 659]

Mr. Z, I've been going through your tutorials to see where I have to up my game (after being fed up with asset building for a while) and I have to say I'm feeling very inspired!

I guess this showcase thread of yours is as good a place as any to show what I mean, so in the pic below you can see - wedged between two of my previous proof-of-concept monstrosities - my teensie tiny testcase building for partial specularity, and hopefully some pretty nightlights!

 

This looks very very promising !!!! Exactly in the good direction, don't stop !

Thanks you! And merc and Aaron as well! 

 

Question: I use Max for my 3d work and IIRC you're in Blender, but how do you get your lod bakes to work with the overlaying/alpha'd geometry behind which the windows lie? The in-game lod maker works pretty well with these blocky buildings but my own efforts are a no-go because the software doesn't trace through the offset walls 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

First... the ingame lod maker sometimes makes an acceptable lod... acceptable at most... and only sometimes.

As the bad speculars won't be noticed on the lod, I make a lod without the system (obviously).

To be able to bake it, I tweak the texture maps before baking. If the main surface of one side of the building is a combination of layers using alphas, I make a single texture for one of the layers and use it as a baking source for the lod.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Hey guys... still there, still alive... but still having fun with my biggest foe: my own brain 

I don't remember how I made my last one... I have it almost ready but I will have to rebuild it to map it because I can't remember how I cut it... But it'll be finished (it looks so cool I just can't let it go)... but damn it's always hard to feel like you have to start from scratch when it's something you've done yourself.

And for something else, I added nightlights (and a much needed lod) to an existing one :

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=640512380

[Matthias King 348]

Already saw it on the workshop and subbed it immediately. Side note, I think that was the first workshop building I subscribed to when I got the game day one. If not the first, it was one of the first few on that first day. It's one of the very few buildings I didn't ditch after AD because I just liked it too much. I always thought it was a shame that the creator abandoned CS. I'm glad to see it get the AD treatment.

And it's good to see you back on the scene.

[Judazzz 1,936]

Good to have you among us again, Zed!

[Koesj 659]

He's back 

 

Zed! I stole all your techniques. Can't thank you enough!

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

And the CSL universe is back in order now. Watch your LODs.....the inspector is back!! Great new building Zed! Your stuff always just float to the top spots on the workshop.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

What a warm welcome, guys !!!! Thanks a lot !

 

Ok I'm not a full speed yet, but still I updated a second one :

Nightlights and LOD again... damn the auto LOD is terrible.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=641578359&searchtext=

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I started work on Ozo's first building, A big 4x4 lvl 5 residential.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=412426610

 

No LOD, no lights... to the rescue !!!!

 

First I looked at how the windows were mapped. Sadly all left and right parts of each side were mirrored on one same map... which will not give good results.

I then started deconstructing it, to recut the glass sides in smaller parts.

In the process I will try to find some useless geometry to regain what I'll add (and sadly... or gladly, I have to say Ozo is good at optimizing his polycount !!  )

This I have to say is a very good job !

I think I'll get rid of the slanted window parts at the top, they don't really make sense. I'll also reduce the building a bit, it's too close from its lot borders... and maybe cut one or two stories (I'll try to keep good proportions.).

[Judazzz 1,936]

I remember this being one of the first skyscrapers in my town - it looked so freaking awesome back then!

Suggestion: I agree apartments on those top few levels don't really make sense (neither does a swimming pool on the roof, for that matter ), and it doesn't look particularly good either, so perhaps you could re-texture the top part into something like a multi-level indoor 360 degrees observation deck/sky-bar/restaurant-combo, like countless landmark buildings have. Or just turn them into technical floors, if you want to keep it more simple.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I think I'll add a big grille, to show that this is technical space. AND make the middle parts some big glass observation window. half/half

[Judazzz 1,936]

Best of both worlds \o/

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Like I said, he's really really good at keeping the tri count low... I managed to find only 16 useless tris on the whole building !!