The King's Workshop

[nos.17 5,120]

2 hours ago, kingofsimcity said:

Took some inspiration from @nos.17's facelift with prop fusing!

I appreciate the kind words, but if you really want to see some amazing stuff, this guy. 

 

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@nos.17: Oh man, those are some classics! Totally forgot about them haha.

Updates & Releases

Zurich House Portsmouth is up and ready on the STEX.

Maxis Mansion Overhaul is pretty much a wrap at this point: just waiting for a thumbs up on a dependency before I put it on there.

New (old?) Stuff

Reviving the update format that I said I was going to stick with! (but unceremoniously forgot after my short hiatus )

Backlog week continues with another Ill Tonkso classic,  110 Cannon Street! Here's a couple of completed ones - a growable 7x4 and 4x8 (left corner). Pretty bog standard stuff; nothing too remarkable.

There's also a third 3x4 lot that's completed but I wanted to do something a little different for it. For this particular update, I thought I'd give a little bit of what goes on in my head when putting together lots. A bit of an LE walk-through, in other words.

Build-a-lot: 110 Cannon Street (3x4)

Starting off, we have the lot in all its naked glory - nothing besides the building and a set of predetermined wealth tiles.

I begin every lot by laying out a general idea of what I want in what location. For instance, this 3x4 lot doesn't give much space to work with so I decide to do away with a parking lot entirely. What I want to emphasize the most are the front and back profiles of the building.

The first real step I take involves placing the overlay textures. This is essential towards getting a general feel of how the layout would look. For example, where do I want trees to grow? What's a good area for plaza related stuff? These questions usually gives me a good starting position to work with.

In most cases, the initial layout only serves as a placeholder - I often adjust things on the fly as I'm building the lot.

At this point, I decided to rework the entire back portion to allow for more grassy areas. Once the layout is close to final, I begin adding the first set of props.

One thing to consider when working with certain models are little nooks and crannies. In this case, there's a couple of little corners on the front side - they're large enough that having no props there would look empty. However, there aren't that many props that could fill the void without looking a little off. I ended up fencing the area off with SG hedges and placing one of his herb planters on either side.

Great! It's time to think about the backside now.

One of the first things I go after when working with expansive grassy space is trees. Lots and lots of trees. Due to the properties of this particular model however, I was unable to place trees relatively close without having severe clipping issues.

OK, so let's move the tree back. Looks much better now. Give it some friends too!

Since these particular trees are of the larger variety, I can get away with not detailing the area that I marked in a green box. For the most part, this area will be covered and you won't be seeing much anyways. Better to optimize space then placing props that no one can see!

Circling around to the front...

I guess I did end up putting some shrubbery in the back! Ultimately this was decided by one of the side rotations.

You may have also noticed the significant change of layout in front of the building now (including a better view of the little nooks). The plaza is much more open! I placed two lamps on either side of the building. Due to the nature of this building and the lot size, it lends itself rather well towards symmetry.

For those of you interested to know why certain props are brighter colored - those are stacked props. CP's seasonal trees actually use 4 separate timed props stacked on top of each other to give the illusion of seasons. I believe this is also why seasonal tree controllers are much more draining on performance.

Let's spiffy up the front some more.

The next step is added some plaza stuff: planters, benches, trash cans, and a building directory. I also like to add little hedge stubs to the ends - definitely one of my lotting quirks if I say so myself! We could do a little better though.

Now we're talking! While the previous iteration wasn't bad by any means, there's plenty of room for detail still. This time around, I added crowds of people, bollards, and a row of trees. Depending on context, this stuff varies a lot.

As a way to kill repetition when working with CP's seasonal trees, you can do what I do here are rotate like-modeled ones. To me, at least, this gives off a sense of uniformity without looking too uniform (like off an assembly line).

Finally, it's time to choose a base texture and test in-game!

Maxis' blindly white tiles are pretty ugly at times. So much that I sometimes regret basing my parking textures off those.

Choosing a good base texture is probably one of the MOST important parts of lotting in most cases. It's possible to have the most gorgeous lot layout and have it get ruined by an excessively contrasting and/or palette breaking texture. I've probably tried at least 6-8 different ones in addition to the 3 examples shown here.

I included the middle one here because I LOVED the patterns. I think they fit incredibly well as a plaza set piece. Issue is, the tiling scheme overall doesn't fit well with the rest of the lot - the "bands" are not subtle at all and the tiles themselves look like something you'd find in a bathroom somewhere.

Ended up going with the red stone one since all the previous lots used this scheme as well. Of course, in-game is where you really find out if it was a worthy choice:

I guess it turned out OK.

Hope you enjoyed this little lotting example! I promise this won't be the last for anyone that's interested.

[Tyberius06 12,189]

Wow, thank you to share this walk-through!  Nice lot, anyway. I love these remade ITS offices.

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@Tyberius06: Thank you for the kind words.

Updates and Releases

Maxis Mansion Overhaul is ready to go!

I expect the expansion will follow sometime soon-ish as well.

New Stuff

I've been building the "centerpiece" ploppable for 110 Cannon Street.

The FA parking is a ... placeholder at the moment. No secret behind it at all, I swear!

If you're curious to know how I come up with some of these layouts, I spend a ton of time gathering ideas from real locations. On occasion the lots are roughly based off their original counterparts. Like this one in particular.

I have to say, that is a very interestingly shaped parking garage.

 

[rathefalcon 395]

Very nice lot! I really like that access road down the middle of the lot for the parking lots with the trees in the median.

[TakemeThere 5,833]

Well someones been busy! Fantastic work on those high wealth residential's, love the huge amount of variety and how colorful there are. The midrise/highrise lots are coming along well too.

[Xander Dax 310]

BRAVO! on the maxis mansion revamp, also the zurich house lot was a very nice surprise, though one question does this mean you have abandoned the old zurich

house lot that served as the centerpiece of the Trowbridge office park?.

keep up the brilliant work mate!

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@rathefalcon, @Takingyouthere: Thanks a lot for the comments!

@Xander Dax: Thanks man. Yeah, I abandoned the old one for now because I have plans to go over some of my earlier iterations of lots. I might bring it back but no guarantees there.

New Stuff

Nothing really new in the works recently as I've been busy with RL, but I had a little time and whipped up some experiments for the current and upcoming challenges.

A small tennis park:

Playing around with modular complexes. Somewhat based off Oracle's HQ in Foster City.

[APSMS 1,892]

On 9/28/2016 at 2:39 PM, kingofsimcity said:

If you're curious to know how I come up with some of these layouts, I spend a ton of time gathering ideas from real locations. On occasion the lots are roughly based off their original counterparts. Like this one in particular.

I have to say, that is a very interestingly shaped parking garage.

I thought I recognized those office buildings. My family used to drive by them every Sunday on the way to church for over 9 years. The building marked KPMG (or was it CoreLogic?) used to have the name of my sister on the side of it, which we thought was pretty neat since it's not a very common name in the US.

 

I really hate OC office parks, but you capture their essence perfectly, so, you know, I'm kinda obligated to use them, if only for realism's sake.

Nifty stuff there. I like the Tennis park.

[rathefalcon 395]

The tennis court lots look fantastic – always nice to see newly released custom content put to good use.

[rsc204 21,808]

On ‎10‎/‎10‎/‎2016 at 1:10 AM, kingofsimcity said:

Playing around with modular complexes. Somewhat based off Oracle's HQ in Foster City.

As I mentioned in the BAT request thread, I would love to make the Oracle buildings. I've always been a computer-guy so the inspired by hard disk-design of them appeals greatly. However, what you have here, whilst a compromise would also be a great lot that would find a home in my cities. Have you tried mixing up the left side of the canal pieces with some curves, it looks a bit too zig-zag/griddy to me, but by no means a deal-breaker. If you needed a special piece for that, I could have a go for you.

The tennis court looks great too... although it reminds me I need to re-render the tennis ball, it's lost it's shape in one rotation at higher zooms somehow .

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Has it been a month already again? I really need to check in here a little more often.

New Stuff

Apart from fiddling with FA fillers and completely forgetting about the office parks again, I poked around some of Simgoober's old strip malls and decided to give them a parking makeover.

This shopping center was done with a southern California flair in mind. The lot is quite large at 14x9, a noticeable increase from the original.

The rear section has additional parking as well as loading areas for trucks and equipment.

The original lot placed for comparison.

Looking forward to getting some feedback/critique/suggestions!

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

Just make sure the entrances to the lot are transit-enabled.

The lot itself looks really good.

[nos.17 5,120]

Very nice. SG was an awesome batter but some of his lots could use some love IMO. Might I suggest you use some of MushyMushy's semis instead of SG's or JES's? There are ortho, diag and FAR models included. And they're HD.

Also, I just wanted to make sure before I do so myself, all your lots are run through PIMX, right?

  Edited November 22, 2016 by nos.17  

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,195]

These strips malls looks great. Now I won't have to create my own areas consisting of my different buildings. These looks so much better.

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@Ln X: Thanks! Yep, I made sure to transit enable every entrance for that lot.

@nos.17: I made the switch. I keep forgetting about Mushy's trailers for some reason. A while back I was thinning out my lot editing folder and since I had like 20 different prop packs crammed in there, I probably moved some stuff out. And yes, all of my lots are through PIM-X. Occasionally I use reader to tweak some stats if I feel they're too out of whack but usually I'm pretty happy with my choice in filling degree.

@9gruntsand1hammer: Thank you! I'll try to bring some more your way.

New Stuff

I decided to bring the mall out for the challenge. Get it here. This is a TE growable lot which I think was a little odd on my part. At this size though you probably won't have anything that'll grow over it.

I'll be offering some additional variations of this lot in the future as well. Stuff like darker asphalt for the parking, different trees and some moderate changes to the lot layout.

I've also begun work on one of Simgoober's Super Shopping Centers. Truth be told, I've actually NEVER seen this building until I was sifting through SG's models in PIM-X. I was pleasantly surprised at this gem that was sitting in my folder for the longest time. The DAT file for the models has a descriptor to a growable lot for this but I could have sworn that there wasn't an associated lot file included with the mall lots DAT file.

Regardless, the original probably would've been due for an overhaul so I decided to give it the extreme treatment.

I thought CP's olive trees were almost perfect for the grassy parking endcaps here. I'm not used to this supremely barren parking lot though . 

My eventual desire is to have several variations on this one, including mirrored and alternative corners. Might even go for a really looooooong one too (20+x10 lot anyone?).

As with before, these lots are very much still in the testing phase so feel free to leave any critiques/suggestions. I'm all ears (eyes?)!

[BLANKBLANK 4,414]

The lotting design is suburb. My only gripe is the TE pieces- if they had roads then it would fit better with the parking/road lot textures.

[Manuel-ito 322]

Well, I do guess it's for suburbs, so Ln X may be right about that

Joking aside, I love the amount of detail you dedicated to these relots. They will go to my plugins folder for sure!

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@Ln X: You raise a good point. I'll probably tweak the side entrances a little bit to either use some proper street stubs or change them to roads.

@Manuel-ito: Thank you!

Updates

Nothing really interesting, but I started to populate the lot a little bit more. Tight car clusters are present closer to the shops while the far away spots remain relatively empty. No one likes to walk that extra distance! I also put a few random shopping carts strewn around because let's face it, our Sims are too lazy to use the cart return at all times...

A side profile mosaic. I've incorporated some FA3-aligned curb textures in the bottom right section. You can also see some of the street connector stub textures that I made a long time ago and never used, d'oh!

It's been a long time but I finally decided to go back to those FA3 textures that I've been teasing from like 10 months ago. I've actually scrapped the project several times before but I just found myself craving MORE and coming back.

So yes, SuperSHK is coming back for another volume.

Once I've completed this set of textures, I'm also going to release my ENTIRE SuperSHK texture repository out into the wild. This will include all the necessary GoFSH scripts so that anyone using my lots can achieve compatibility with custom grass and sidewalk replacement mods.

[Evanjs 602]

You so relot a Walmart and Lowes with a shopping center, with Mcdonalds, Applebees maybe you could do the from Creator BLaM Walmart, Mcdonalds and Applebees are also on her so is lowes, Anyways youre doing a great job we all the relots you do!

 

[MushyMushy 3,617]

Looks really good KOSC! The textures are exciting to say the least.

It's exciting to see you relotting strip malls - very drab thing which is probably why creators haven't really paid any attention to them in a long time. They're hideous, but they are everywhere around here so it's nice to see them getting some love. Also nice to see my trucks in someone's work - I do have a little surprise in the works as far as that goes though... those gmax models need to get updated if you get my drift...

Side note: I think you may want to look at your car cluster family placement in the back of the store though - if you look at your second image you'll see a Trooper partially embedded in the wall.

[_Michael 2,681]

Looking forward to running these through GoFSH. More custom matching texture we come!

[matias93 7,535]

Great work there! Loving your dedication to detail with the cars and carts. Also, I'll surely checking on those textures to add compatibility with the Veredas. I would like to do the same for the SCILT, but my efforts have failed in getting GoFSH to use the alphas in the right way. Well, with the southern summer will come with more opportunities to experiment...

And by the way, what do you think about 3 or 4 tiles deep lots for more tight urban situations? I know that's a bit outside of the original idea, but remixes allow for it.

[rsc204 21,808]

1 hour ago, matias93 said:

I would like to do the same for the SCILT, but my efforts have failed in getting GoFSH to use the alphas in the right way.

I actually compiled those myself, since I will use them with SWN at some point. You can download a copy of the repository/scripts from my Google Drive. Maybe that will also help you to see where you were going wrong? If not feel free to get in touch/start a thread asking for help.

12 hours ago, kingofsimcity said:

Once I've completed this set of textures, I'm also going to release my ENTIRE SuperSHK texture repository out into the wild. This will include all the necessary GoFSH scripts so that anyone using my lots can achieve compatibility with custom grass and sidewalk replacement mods.

[matias93 7,535]

48 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

I actually compiled those myself, since I will use them with SWN at some point. You can download a copy of the repository/scripts from my Google Drive. Maybe that will also help you to see where you were going wrong? If not feel free to get in touch/start a thread asking for help.

The magic of technology and your unfatigable work: the sidewalk mod is already updated online 

[kingofsimcity 5,739]

Replies

@Evanjs: Thank you! I'll take a look into those but no guarantees at the moment, I have plenty of stuff on my backlog that I need to go over still.

@MushyMushy: Thanks! That gritty and mundane realism has really appealed to me in recent years. Good catch on that car cluster placement, I'll be fixing that asap.

@_Michael: Indeed. Hopefully I can get these out before the holidays.

@matias93: An urban version sounds interesting! I'll play around with the idea for sure. Thanks for the suggestion!

@rsc204:

Updates

As usual, I can't stop myself from working randomly on things here and there. I should really commit to something and spend more time outputting actual completed work rather than all these teases.

Fukitol Pharms:

Kind of IRM compatible? I'm pretty sure I made this just to play around with some new textures.

Super Strip Mall #2:

Some minor tweaks to the front of the strip mall. Still not quite sure of the traffic island in the middle though.

Removed some flora and added some fencing to the back. Almost felt like I left a little too much space in the back.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

The industry lot will certainly look good with other IRM content! I have made a re-lot of that building as well, although it's still in the upload queue and not on the STEX yet. My relot uses the exact same stuff the other IRM stuff uses, and this means that it comes without your superb parking lots and looks somewhat more basic, just like the other IRM lots. However, I don't think it would hurt to have more than one version at all.

As for that mall, it looks really great IMO. That traffic island is a nice and original feature - I'd definitely leave it there. What you could put in there is a sign - maybe the Maxis props contain some freestanding sign that looks ok? I could imagine either a sign with the name/logo of the mall, or an orientation sign. Not sure if the vanilla stuff  includes anything that would look the part, though.

[markussaage 762]

I love the Super Strip Mall!!! Very realistic and much needed! In general I do love how you play around with the parking lots... We really do need more realistic lots like yours in the game!

Kind regards!

[nos.17 5,120]

I'm with T Wrecks here. Keep the traffic island: it truly is unique and adds some nice angles to the lot, but it could use some embellishment in the center. As for the rear of the lot, it looks fine to me. If you did decide to reduce it by one tile I think there would be far too little room behind, so I think you hit the sweet spot.

As for the IRM lots, we always need more of those! 

[T Wrecks 10,209]

2 hours ago, nos.17 said:

As for the IRM lots, we always need more of those! 

We'll get more, too. I have "a few" up my sleeve... not the IRM W2W stuff that I'm uploading these days, but non-W2W, standard IRM.