MGB BATs

[matias93 7,535]

Maybe with the same method that allowed pedmalls to be put directly aside streets in NAM 33? I understand that was pathing outward and inward pedestrian routes at all the borders of the transit lots.

[rsc204 21,808]

I may run that by Alex, he's the one behind that development... although PedMalls are not TE lots, they require code in the NAM to work.

[rsc204 21,808]

Moving nicely along with the Rail Depots, the main models are finished, just some LE textures and lotting to do.

Also for the release these German Catenaries will be optional. I just couldn't resist using them, since they are around me every day 

I plan to offer for Rail, GLR and G-HSR (HSR only, because there is no ground level monorail) a set of lots.

Each set will contain two basic lots, one larger 6x12 Lot (shown) and a smaller lot with a standalone depot. The rail engines/passenger cars are linked to the installed automata. They will be tested for various configurations of Vester's automata only. This is the easiest way to support the most setups. All automata will show, just the spacing between cars may not match untested automata. If you can open the lot editor and move the props, it will work with anything this way. The props will also be timed, along with the opening doors. This will allow the trains on the lot to change configurations throughout the day. Similar to how SHK's parking props work.

Currently, sans the German props, this whole lot uses 3 dependencies, I'm quite pleased with that. However, perhaps it's a little bare, any suggestions there?

[nos.17 5,120]

17 hours ago, rsc204 said:

However, perhaps it's a little bare, any suggestions there?

I have found the the Maxis garbage and/or boxes always look nice along fences or in corners.

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

any chance for a traditional railroad engine house with that Lot? Looks nice, but I rarely use GLR.

[rsc204 21,808]

Well the lots are just there for the Rail Depot models, I wanted something more modern which didn't really exist, so I made one. The model took over 6 months of work, so I don't really plan to go making any others soon. But Rail / HSR will be supported:

Thanks to Simmer2 for making the RRW rail textures used (Left).

The lots here are designed for RRW, the GLR used in my Sandstone and other texture mods (available as separate rural GLR mod on STEX) and Vershner's HSR textures. However, the pack will come with options for Maxis/PEG 205 Rail, regular GLR (NAM) and the default HSR textures too. They are very flexible, because the resources I've put together will form a prop pack. I am hoping that will enable lotters to do better justice to the depot than I can.

[rsc204 21,808]

I'm trying to get a handle on using Bump Maps today, with little success. I can get the bump map to appear using this setup in the slate material editor (3DS):

But the renders simply don't show my texture, that or it's hideously dark (right) :(.

If I set everything up with the compact material editor, the bump map is like it's not there :(. Not to mention, some of the options that seem to make it work in the Slate material editor simply are not there in the compact material editor.

I'm almost certainly doing something wrong, does anyone know what?

[bien1500 35]

What're your render settings? Did you try rendering with a skylight, or with modified Gamma/LUT, and or exposure settings?

[rsc204 21,808]

Gamma/LUT is default for BAT4Max. I pushed this up to 5 and I can see my textures, so it's just incredibly dark for some reason. I can render it fine as a night render also, it's just the day render that seems to be causing troubles.

Render settings are Mental Ray Day Lighting, everything else should be deafults too.

:Edit:

Maybe it changes things. I decided to restart 3DS Max, because BAT4MAX likes to play havoc every now and again. Now I can select my model, but it's transparent like it isn't there in the view ports?!

[bien1500 35]

Odd. Try making the displacement shader the bump shader as well, and tweak with the GI settings on the indirect illumination tab. 

[rsc204 21,808]

Thanks for your assistance bien1500 :).

First one didn't change anything. Played around with the GI settings (no idea what most of them do), but none of them affected the render that I could see.

[mattb325 28,880]

I usually use the compact mat editor (old school, I know! )

But regardless I start with Arch and Design materials, rather than Mental Ray materials - I find they play much nicer with Bat4Max. To see the option for them in the material editor parameters, just make sure you set the day rig first.

[rsc204 21,808]

2 hours ago, mattb325 said:

I usually use the compact mat editor (old school, I know! )

So do I, I can't really get my head round the tangley mess that Mr Tickle presumably designed.

The problem is, when I was checking some tutorials on these things, it told me to make a heightmap/bump map and use my texture, to combine them with Mental Ray into the finished article.

Using Arch and Design, I've nowhere to put the heightmap (do I need it?), and despite trying with what I thought were the correct settings, no bump map appears. Conversely, with the slate editor, I get the bump map, but only the night render is light enough to show the texture . It looks to be a lighting issue, I'm fairly certain BAT4Max's setup is part of the problem. After four-five hours of trying to make a simple box into a single prop, I really just need someone to tell me the easiest way (step by step would be v.helpful) to get a simple bump map for a stone wall onto my box.

I worry also my 3DS max is suffering some sort of illness, I manged to get CTDs with a single 1x16x2m box only in the viewports. Not rendering or anything, just adding that box as an object. It's not consistent, but that's not a good sign when it happens more than once!

[Girafe 1,729]

Arch & design materials for BAT4MAX.

There is one slot in this material where you can add bump.

[rsc204 21,808]

I know where to find this, but when I add my Bump Map this way, it simply doesn't do anything. If anything it just blurs the render (without changing the shape in any way).

[Girafe 1,729]

what is the map you put in the slot and there is a figure controling the strenght of the bump

[mattb325 28,880]

It shouldn't make the render blurry - check your settings in the render setup (if you are using pre 2014 it shouldn't need to be done with Bat4Max).

One thing to remember is the minute scale of items in sc4 affects how effective bump maps can be.

Doing your wall - just a simple 2x16x1 box with a bump map doesn't give me too much excitement because the object is sooooo tiny, even when I turn it all the way up from the default 0.3 to 1.0. However, if I use the same bump map as a displacement map, then I get some more noticeable results.

Pic1 shows the rendered box with a stone texture and NO Bump map applied.

Pic 2 shows the bump map area when you scroll down - it's default is set to 0.3

Pic 3 shows the default bump map settings applied and how it changes the texture

Pic 4 shows the increased bump map settings of 1.0 applied

Pic 5 shows the render with the bump map at 100% - I can't really tell the difference. I guess it's there, but its hard to tell....

Pic 6 shows the same bump map used as a displacement map at 50% strength. Now I can see the results!

 

[rsc204 21,808]

Thank you both Girafe and Matt.

Switching the Bump Map to a Displacement Map seems to be working. No idea why the render is blurry without it but fine when it's there? But I don't care much either at this stage, I can at least move forwards for the time being.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Luckily you basically never need to have bump maps while BATing. The only thing they're really good for is for adding the wavyness on windows, but other than that they're not useful. In order for bump maps to be worthwhile you need to have a high enough resolution of an image for the effect to be visible. So if you're adding a bump map for mortar between blocks then you need a pixel above and a pixel below, and in BATing details that are two pixels big are also big enough to model instead. And then at the same time, at SC4 scale, other surface features are so small that they're like microscopic and in practical terms are flat. Like brick walls are not actually flat in real life but at that scale they are essentially flat. And then not only that but even if you successfully used a bump map, bump maps do not have literal physical dimensions, and the effect that it gives could actually be less accurate than just leaving the bump map off altogether.

One way of testing whether a bump map is really useful (although like I said it almost never is when BATing) is to disable the texture but leave the bitmap so that you just have a grey object with nothing but the bump map, so that you can judge the effect of the bump map in isolation. You'll almost always find that it's a messy wreck and not helping. And bump maps can add a lot of time to renders so it's really best to avoid them. 

But like you've found, displacement maps are much more useful. Especially for relief sculptures where it's a million times easier to paint a height map in photoshop than it is to model it in max.

And also, yes, 3ds max is a buggy train wreck. Expect crashes.  Sometimes they happen a lot and sometimes they don't happen at all. For me it usually has to do with snaps for some reason.

[rsc204 21,808]

I'm finally making some progress with the adjustment to 3DS max. For example I've figured out a lot of the texture problems with this previously gMax-based model:

Right now I may still adjust the roof and walls, the colours aren't right. But there is a more pressing problem. The night lighting is absolutely what I am after. But in setting that up, I get the shadows inside the building on the day render, which looks great too. The problem is, this also creates the effect of making a large part of the inside of the building look very dark during the day. What I'd like to do, is simply put some lights on that appear in the day render. Since most stores like this having lighting on whenever they are open. Does anyone know how to make a light render during the day?

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Luckily you don't have to worry about it. The insides of buildings are very dark compared to the outside. It's why in the summer when you come inside, even if all the lights are on, it takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust. And this even happens in BATs too, if you leave your nitelites on during the day you won't even be able to see them because they're so weak in comparison to the "sun".

Making windows too bright was actually a very common problem in the early days of BATing, and even I made the mistake a lot. 

If you don't like how your windows look right now though, it's probably not because the bright spots are too bright, it's probably because everything is too "clean" and CGI looking. To improve this, you can add a glass texture (the kind that you would use if you were making opaque textured windows) and then lower the opacity of the glass to something like 85-95% and it will make it so that a little bit of the texture shows up on the glass, even though the glass still appears to mostly be transparent. You can also make sure the glass is appropriately reflective, because the reflections in the glass will add variety and liveliness (although in this case it doesn't look like there's much to reflect). You can also add things like posters or signs in the windows to add variety. 

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

5 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

Luckily you don't have to worry about it. The insides of buildings are very dark compared to the outside. It's why in the summer when you come inside, even if all the lights are on, it takes a few minutes for your eyes to adjust. And this even happens in BATs too, if you leave your nitelites on during the day you won't even be able to see them because they're so weak in comparison to the "sun".

Making windows too bright was actually a very common problem in the early days of BATing, and even I made the mistake a lot. 

If you don't like how your windows look right now though, it's probably not because the bright spots are too bright, it's probably because everything is too "clean" and CGI looking. To improve this, you can add a glass texture (the kind that you would use if you were making opaque textured windows) and then lower the opacity of the glass to something like 85-95% and it will make it so that a little bit of the texture shows up on the glass, even though the glass still appears to mostly be transparent. You can also make sure the glass is appropriately reflective, because the reflections in the glass will add variety and liveliness (although in this case it doesn't look like there's much to reflect). You can also add things like posters or signs in the windows to add variety. 

Or you just delete all winodws and make it an outstand Brutalism-building 

[rsc204 21,808]

Ever since stumbling upon a cache of Elevated Rail Stations created by DocRorlach, I've thought about trying to finish them off. Having resolved some memory-related issues when opening these models, I've made some progress today. In total there are 7 stations, to my knowledge, sadly none of these have ever been released.

Here is the basic 6x1 Elevated Station. It's modelled really well. So it's a snap to create variants for Elevated Rail, Monorail, HSR and Viaduct Rail.

The original models are in gMax (SC4BAT), but I've already switched this model into 3DS Max, the render quality seems to be greatly improved. Note a few issues remain to iron out here.

The most exciting model is probably this Y-Station. Likely it will be the most work to mod.

Anyhow, I've barely started, but I would love to get these models into the hands of players eventually.

[_Michael 2,681]

Looks very interesting @rsc204!

[rsc204 21,808]

How on earth did you reply so fast @_Michael, that was like 30 seconds!!!

[_Michael 2,681]

@rsc204I can do anything when notifications are turned on, and I'm attempting to do Physics revision!  

[T Wrecks 10,209]

So you mean to say that we can tell by your quick reply that you're a procrastinator?

But seriously, I like those stations! While thy Y-shaped one may be difficult to integrate, the other one should be very easy to use and generic enough to appear multiple times within a city tile without standing out in a negative way. It will require some texture tweaks obviously, but the improvement in render quality is already impressive!

[matias93 7,535]

What could be done to mimic real elevated stations (built on a same line extension) is to make several versions with different colours. If they can be made to plop randomly, better.

Look, for example, this six sequential stations, all built around 1996:

 

[rsc204 21,808]

A few texture tweaks later:

I'm not sure how much more I want to do here. Aside from anything else, my PC took 3hours + to render the model in HD.

[MushyMushy 3,617]

It looks good! Though the night lighting on the platforms/glass above them does come off as kind of odd-looking.

Honestly, I'm not sure if a building that size needs to be rendered in HD. Obviously there is some debate over what the imaginary cutoff point for HD is, but I'd say that it's beyond that. I probably wouldn't make anything bigger than 1x3 or 2x2 max an HD thing. It looks gorgeous in HD, but considering the fact that it's 1x6 I'm not sure it's worth it as the SC4model file will likely be several MB.