BoldlyBuilding's Assets (Update & Harold Washington Library)

[boldlybuilding 873]

Okay, so I need to make the sub-buildings so they use the sub-building template and don't appear in the menu, but I'd really like to have them serve a purpose, like as uniques at least, because that's when the cims actually use the plaza. This would have been useful for the WTC since the sub-buildings version currently has only part 1 being populated by cims in the hangout areas and such. To do this, the SBE docs say to do this:

Quote

To hide the asset in the building menu, set the propertyToolController.m_editPrefabInfo.m_placementStyle to Procedural with Mod Tools.

What I need to know is.... how do you do that? What are the exact steps to do that in mod tools? I've never used mod tools before, so assume I know nothing about how to do any of that and go from there

[boldlybuilding 873]

I'm having a little problem:

This part of the complex won't allow any roads to be built along it. It should be perfectly aligned to the base lot and on an even distance for the grid, but on all sides it causes problems. I have no idea how to fix it.

[boldlybuilding 873]

54 minutes ago, AJ3D said:

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=615114749

Go down to advanced building settings in the guide.

I'm not sure about your lot placement issue. You may need to fudge the position values a bit in your SBE settings.

Thank you!!!

Those directions worked! I really need to try that with the WTC at some point, since people not using the plazas is the one bothersome thing about the sub-building version.

And it seems like I'm no longer having the placement issue now that I'm using a unique template instead of that airplane facility template from the workshop.

In any case, it's all fixed and working now! Expect to see it up on the workshop today.

[boldlybuilding 873]

It is released!

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=725222700

Obligatory screenshots:

[Darf 1,439]

Alright! Let´s take that baby for a spin.

[Darf 1,439]

Hmm, seems something went wrong, I only get the base when building it.

[boldlybuilding 873]

2 minutes ago, Darf said:

Hmm, seems something went wrong, I only get the base when building it.

I forgot to do a thing with the SBE XML file before uploading. I just did the thing and updated it, so it should work now. You might want to re-sub to it.

[boldlybuilding 873]

I know it might come across a little jerky, like I'm tooting my own horn or something, but when there are a lot of versions of something on the workshop, like Willis/Sears Tower, I like to compare them to see what's different, what's right, what's wrong, what's best and worst, purely in terms of accuracy (if it's a real building), completeness, and look. In that way, it can be... interesting to see these things pitted against each other.

And so here are all the Willis/Sears Towers I could find on the workshop, sans scaled down ones aside from one, oldest to newest (mine) from left to right...

My own honest assessment is that no previous versions ever really captured the essence of this tower or its details. One thing I'm happy about is that it seems like I was able to capture the look of the black aluminum cladding and bronze-tinted windows. These are important to the look of the building. Look at any photo in the right light and you'll see that yellowish-brown tint to the facade glass. Other times it's less apparent. Of course that might not matter to most people. What I do find genuinely amusing, however, is that none of the previous versions had the "steps" on the tower on the right sides

[Darf 1,439]

It seems like they rotated the base but forgot the top. That's some important detail even I wouldn't miss. Is that the LoD on the last screenshot? And well yeah a lot of people simply depicted it as a couple of stacked boxes. But such big buildings have a lot of detail to capture. Fortunately we have you! I also love that you modelled the plaza and base so well. A lot of modellers forget the base of their buildings.

[gfvsims 169]

I don't want to put any of the other creators down (they've done way better than what I could do), but damn, your version looks good!

[Judazzz 1,936]

The dark-bronze window panes and realistic anodized aluminium cladding were the first things that stood out for me in your model, in my opinion the most characteristic building feature (both in your model and irl.) Obviously it's tall and has an instantly recognizable shape, but there are hundreds of skyscrapers that share those traits: the unique cladding most definitely isn't.
It looks absolutely stunning, more like a high-poly stand-alone model than an asset for a city builder.

Oh, and you gotta love that little blue sibbling  

[boldlybuilding 873]

The funniest thing happened...

Within a week of finishing Willis Tower, I went on a trip to Chicago with my now-fiance (I proposed to her atop the new Ferris Wheel at Navy Pier), and we got a chance to go up to Willis Tower. It's been years since I've been there, and even longer since I've been to the Skydeck, certainly before the boxes were installed. I lost any photos I took there before, so this was my chance to capture a few new ones. Unfortunately I didn't have time to wander around the plaza to get a closer look at things. Not that it would have mattered, the model's done now. Anyway, because I just finished this thing, here are some views I captured from the real Willis Tower. Oh and by the way, if you see any other buildings in these photos that you think would be good to be made, or re-made in my ultra-detailed style for C:S, let me know

And a couple of yours truly on the Ledge...

[Prosper Merime 128]

Stunning views as the city itself. 

Personally, I'd like to see from you some architecture of the early 20th century, especially apartments or old offices.

[Darf 1,439]

Nice pictures and congratulations on your engagement!

What we really miss are some 60-80 highrise growables. Something which always fascinated me, but I felt was a too daunting task for my modelling skills and focus was Tudor City: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tudor_City. If you want to stick to Chicago, there's no good version of The Boards of Trade building, or the Temple building, or the Jewelers building. I'm currently modelling the Tribune tower, Judazz also did a few good suggestions in my thread.

[Judazzz 1,936]

Congrats BB, and great pics!

I'm really tempted so say "Well, why not do them all? ", but if I had to pick one taller building I would love to see appear in the Workshop, it would be the Mather Tower, which, according to my calculations, would even be suitable as a growable (100x80ft footprint roughly equals 4x3 if I'm not mistaken).
But I'm happy with whatever you come up with - as long as it scales with the rest of my city (max. height around 200m), it's most likely going to be an insta-sub anyway.

[Avanya 2,605]

Congratulations!

Stunning pics, but I'm glad I wasn't there. A bit too high up for me  Impressive to see highrises like that though, as that's not really something we've got here.  I have no suggestions, but I look forward to seeing what you come up with! Your attention to detail is amazing  

[boldlybuilding 873]

I started a new building, one that has been itching me a while. It's another one with versions already on the Workshop, and quite popular in people's cities, but the current versions leave a lot to be desired. So I'm making a new one...

It'll have a good amount of detail, proper granite cladding detailing, detailed windows, night lights, accurate shapes for the facade and other elements, and more rooftop detail, as usual. Part of the plaza will also be included, hopefully...

...as long as I can get the below-ground shader thing to work.

[Feindbold 1,190]

Oh nice, I was reading some wiki about this building and now its here

Something I´m wondering about for quite a while: Is there a particular reason, why there are so many "multilevel" streets in that area?

It seems like streetlevel is acutally an elevated street, for example the nearby Lake shore east Park is about 5 stories below the streetgrid. Is this just related to high traffic or maybe some kind of flood protection (allthough I cant imagen that).

Unfortunately Streetview keeps sending me to the toplevel, even though I wanna explore this "futurama old newyork´esk" underworld

[boldlybuilding 873]

2 hours ago, Feindbold said:

Oh nice, I was reading some wiki about this building and now its here

Something I´m wondering about for quite a while: Is there a particular reason, why there are so many "multilevel" streets in that area?

It seems like streetlevel is acutally an elevated street, for example the nearby Lake shore east Park is about 5 stories below the streetgrid. Is this just related to high traffic or maybe some kind of flood protection (allthough I cant imagen that).

Unfortunately Streetview keeps sending me to the toplevel, even though I wanna explore this "futurama old newyork´esk" underworld

I went looking and found this Wikipedia article specifically on the issue:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multilevel_streets_in_Chicago

It seems it's several things, the main ones being a need to raise the clearance of street level bridge crossings along the Chicago River and a way to help traffic, as well as other necessities and the way things developed over time.

[boldlybuilding 873]

A quick comparison between the my new thingy and the old thingy:

[boldlybuilding 873]

So you've probably been wondering where I've been...

For the last month and a half or so I've been busy on the Titanic: Honor and Glory project. We recently put out a new demo, followed by a "Titanic Week" event, the work on all of that taking up a great deal of time. If you want to try that demo, go here: http://www.titanichg.com/demo/ - Click the banner for Demo 2 to download it. It's just a small demo showing off our ship environment. It has the same attention to detail and accuracy that you see with my C:S buildings, except far more insane  But if you're interested in the Titanic, definitely try it out. Also if you have a beefy PC.

The other day I also posted a tribute to the World Trade Center, which has apparently been posted on the C:S Facebook page as well, which is pretty cool. I've been hoping to appear on that page for ages

In the future I'm sure I'll need to dive right back in to Titanic game work, and I also have a personal life to tend to, which includes an upcoming trip with my fiancee that will last a week. But for the last week and the next day or so, I have plenty of free time to work on other things, like C:S stuff. And so I've been working on the Aon Center again. Now, I won't be able to finish this until the days after my trip, maybe by the end of September/beginning of October, provided no big Titanic stuff comes up, but here's some new progress...

As you can see, this building will have a sunken plaza. I'm using that trick to switch to the Japanese Garden shader for this. Hopefully it works well. It seems to so far.

Anyway, that's it for the moment, I'll post more updates as I have them!

[Darf 1,439]

Looks great so far Boldly. Hope this doesn't have the triscount of your other projects though. Can only place so many of those in my city.

[boldlybuilding 873]

7 hours ago, Darf said:

Looks great so far Boldly. Hope this doesn't have the triscount of your other projects though. Can only place so many of those in my city.

It'll be between 20k and 25k, which probably isn't great and pretty standard for my big skyscrapers  It'd be 15k to 20k if I didn't have the plaza. 10k of that is actually just the windows. Every window is its own face, because otherwise the nightlights would repeat too much in vertical rows. I have another option set aside that uses repeating rows of windows without all the divisions, with transparent frames, then night lighting faces behind those. It would reduce the tri count, but be annoying to implement with the LOD baking.

[Darf 1,439]

Hmm IMO should be able to do the tower with 4k if you go very far into detail. There's not much shape to it. If you vertical row the windows and add some random splits into them you shouldnt notice any patterning.

[boldlybuilding 873]

1 hour ago, Darf said:

Hmm IMO should be able to do the tower with 4k if you go very far into detail. There's not much shape to it. If you vertical row the windows and add some random splits into them you shouldnt notice any patterning.

Hmmm, I dunno, 4k would be like ultra super low detail, limited accuracy, with no room for a plaza. That's not really my style

If you're curious, here's what it looks like...

Even with the simpler windows there will be divisions for changes in floor height and machine floor vents. Same goes for the columns, where there are changes in the sized of the cladding. That has to match the window patterns. Most modelmakers don't factor these things in, but I'm probably actually OCD and won't let it go, so... Still, it's not a lot. The plaza may be simplified a tiny bit depending on how I UV map it.

I may go with the simpler windows, if only because it would make the process of making the night lights a lot easier, and they may even look better. The 20-25k is also a liberal estimate. If I do the simple windows, the count may be no more than 15k. Sans plaza, it would be maybe no more than 10k or less. If I can get it down to 15k with plaza, I will consider that satisfactory given the level of detail and accuracy and overall size involved.

[gfvsims 169]

@boldybuilding I just tried the Titanic demo and I am absolutely gobsmacked. That is probably the most beautiful video game environment I've ever seen. You should be so proud! I can't wait to see more. And I will definitely be contributing when I can.

[Darf 1,439]

10 hours ago, boldlybuilding said:

Hmmm, I dunno, 4k would be like ultra super low detail, limited accuracy, with no room for a plaza. That's not really my style

If you're curious, here's what it looks like...

Even with the simpler windows there will be divisions for changes in floor height and machine floor vents. Same goes for the columns, where there are changes in the sized of the cladding. That has to match the window patterns. Most modelmakers don't factor these things in, but I'm probably actually OCD and won't let it go, so... Still, it's not a lot. The plaza may be simplified a tiny bit depending on how I UV map it.

I may go with the simpler windows, if only because it would make the process of making the night lights a lot easier, and they may even look better. The 20-25k is also a liberal estimate. If I do the simple windows, the count may be no more than 15k. Sans plaza, it would be maybe no more than 10k or less. If I can get it down to 15k with plaza, I will consider that satisfactory given the level of detail and accuracy and overall size involved.

I meant for the tower, not the plaza. Still, if you would make the windows per floor 1 face. That's 4 x 84 x 2 = 672 faces, if you spread your windows equally over your diffuse you could get maybe 6 on a 1024x1024 map. That's 6 different starting points for every floor, resulting in not very much patterning.

[boldlybuilding 873]

Problem is I'm not sure how I could do that, making them one face per floor. How would it be mapped on the texture? I have a lot of detail to put in there, I need to use as little space as possible on them. Plus the detailing for each window frame is there in the texture, it's not just a general set of colors. Here's my diffuse so far...

In fact I need to look into further reducing the size of the windows on the texture. But I also want to get the mac resolution into details while tiling things as much as I can in other respects, which is why the plaza has or will have quite a few divisions in its surfaces, so things can be tiled, because I can't just use entire vertical strips of the texture, not enough space for that.

As it is, my plan to use the vertical window strips will make the windows, counting the lower levels and details and other divisions, amount to 1200 tris. It's not 672, but it's low enough.

[Darf 1,439]

Well I guess you can also do 1 large face vertical face, with some cuts where the pattern diversifies. Doesn't matter that much. I would go for a 2048x512 diffuse map than though. It gives a lot more space for vertical tiling, even if you make a double row of windows for the patterning. 1200 tris doesn't sound like a huge lot.

[boldlybuilding 873]

After a bit of a break, here's a little update...

The plaza is nearly done, as well as basic texture for those parts. I still have to do the roof of course. I had to add some extra space around the sides, otherwise bits of the roads cut into the sunken plaza.