CT14's Railroad Lots and BAT

[Silur 3,308]

Oh, how good it is! 

[CT14 2,486]

In-N-Out Lowrider Show released

The lot is released to accompany the Lowrider Props. I've added some Maxis street lamps with their light cones. The crowd props and SHK prop families are timed, so this lot has a bit of action.

The @Simmer2 Props Vol03 also came in handy with their realistic sized dumpster/waste oil barrels, and ground clutter/fallen vegetation.

I've chosen to leave this one as a CS$ growable only, for a change. However it is limited to Houston tileset, for those who want to make it easier to grow.

[CT14 2,486]

I've been working on a few things here and there. Something in my plugins is giving prop pox, but I haven't found it yet, so there's that.

Singer Building W2W relot

A request has been made for the hastily dashed-off Singer Building W2W relot - I was thinking of putting streetside props on it to release it, but doubt I'll find the time soon.

It looks like the original upload is no longer on the STEX. Anyway, here is a quick 3x3 plop of the BAT to be decorated or relotted.

Singer Building - Relot.zip

[CT14 2,486]

DeKalb lot and railroad BAT testing

I wanted to get some motivation to finish the DeKalb BAT, so I worked on a lot for it... while testing some new HD railroad models cleaned up from the Warehouse. A GG-1 in Amtrak livery, pulling the Maxis coal train. A steam locomotive with coal tender. And a railroad water tower.

The DeKalb tower's concrete has been textured with a coal dusty look... vents, doors and windows are mostly complete. Grand staircase has its full run but needs railings. Lamps over the chutes are in place.

The empty coal cars are feeding the hopper that is conveyed into the elevated part of the tower, and from there into the locomotives' tenders.

The ground textures with coal are from @Simmer2's Swan Mill texture pack.

And of course RippTide's wagons are out of sync with the GG-1, this is just for fun. But the lot could fit early or mid 20th century.

Smoke effects

They are in SimCity_1.dat, and are only accessible (as props) in the Maxis Lot Editor, not in Pim-X as far as I can tell. I added them to the lot with the regular LE, then went back to work fine tuning their position in Pim-X. About 3-4 trial and error tests to get it over the smokestacks.

Here is a photo of a prototypical GG-1 hauling coal (Conrail and Amtrak both had black GG-1s):

 

[SimCoug 5,976]

This is looking great!  Smoke effects are tough to get right because you have to get the right height, then adjust so all four views look right.  I pretty much go through the Dane process as you when adding effects (PIM, then PIM-X)

[CT14 2,486]

Old Time T21!

I went back to my dream of old fashioned telephone poles on a T21 (as hinted at in the above shots...). Spent some time researching pole construction and installation, to make a true scale model.

Fortunately, lots of old manuals are out of copyright and available online, so I now know a bunch of nearly useless details, like:

Spoiler

• Pole cross arms alternate facing direction, so that every other crossarm set faces the same direction (no, I haven't implemented this...)
• Poles are buried a certain amount based on height. Only 24.5 feet of a 30 foot pole remains above ground, for example.
• Cross arm gains are spaced 2 feet at the center, cross arms are braced on their faces, and double cross arms need only one side to be braced.
• Lightning rods are placed on the side away from the cross arm, or 90 degrees from brackets on bracket poles.
• Wires are connected at pole side of insulator.
• On railroad telegraph lines, the railroad generally operated the wires on the lowest crossarms and leased out the upper, less conveniently accessible wires.

Etc...

After much puzzlement, I got T21s working with a prop family of 30 foot poles with 32 meter wires. A test lot is also shown here. Check the full size image for HD details:

The poles in most of the view here are really twice as close together as in real life, but I wanted to have the crooked poles, while bringing the wires back to zero at the next 32m point.

I'm quite pleased with the results but gosh, it will be a long time until this mod is finished! T21s are no joke, there are hundreds of them necessary for full coverage.

Pole models by comparison are simple, there will be 45 foot poles all the way to giant 90 foot poles with 10 cross arms for the avenues. I also want to do a set of railroad telegraph poles (like the UP poles or the IC poles) and include basic coverage for DTR.

[SimCoug 5,976]

I can see these being very useful for me in the future... 

[CT14 2,486]

Old time utility lots

SimCoug posted an old time urban power plant made with only Maxis props (link)... I took the idea a bit further and made some fancy ones out of default Chicago residential BATs. Plus an old water tower/pumping station combo lot.

I also took the opportunity to do the Jestarr boiler house power plants that I'd been thinking of.

The diagonal lot doesn't have smoke because I couldn't figure out how to make the smokestack (off-lot overhanging) line up with the smoke effect prop (limited to placement on the 1x1 lot only). Possible solutions include increasing lot size.

Bison Co-op Grain Elevator

 

Here is the Bison Co-op Grain Elevator, another Maxis Buildings as Props special. This is a grain elevator with an older part and a modern addition., a 4x6 I-Ag landmark lot with jobs. Please let me know if you find any issues with the lot. I plan to eventually post it to the STEX. The lot is transit enabled for road (appearance only) and rail (capacity 1000).

Its dependencies:

• Maxis Buildings as Props
• BSC Mega Props - JES Vol01.dat
• BSC Mega Props - JES Vol03.dat
• BSCMegaProps - JES Vol05.dat
• BSC Mega Props - JES Vol06.dat
• BSC Mega Props - JES Vol09.dat

Download it here: PLOP_4x6_Bison Co-op Grain Elevator_86c2a4ce.SC4Lot

19th Century Wooden Dock Elevators

I've been into these chimaeras for some time. Here is a source photo from Brooklyn - possibly Gowanus Canal mouth, though I haven't been able to verify the exact location or identity of these buildings:

More delicious prototypes, many from Atlantic Basin, Brooklyn, NYC:
 

Spoiler

 

 

Here is a new original BAT based on the building at center right above, intended to work with either Historic Harbor or various canal sets.

The marine leg with bucket conveyor is extended as if just about to enter the barge or canal boat. I want to model canal boats since the SG Canal Dock boats are baked into a canal bank BAT. There is probably some boat or ship appropriate to the period that will fit under the leg nicely, and I'll check the usual suspect prop packs.

Historic Harbor version (based on Quay Ortho A lot):

The bottom story of the warehouse needs to be finished, and warehouse filler models (also in stone and wood cladding) will be created. Elevator variants will include fireproofed versions. The textures are an obvious WIP but I'm happy with materials so far.

The warehouse part of the BAT is fully shadowed in the south rotation, which looks strange, especially next to other structures that are not shadowed. I'll move it to a separate BAT.

I resized the RippTide wagon down by 60% to match prototypical draft horse sizing; it's a little smaller than the HH KrashSpeed props as a result. I will keep looking into scale but may just match KS scale.

This one is tentatively "Llama A" after the old practice of calling elevators A, B, C...

Dock Elevator With SimGoober Canals

Update:

Improved textures and details on the elevator,

and made a Warehouse (and a bunch of old time signs!)

[CT14 2,486]

In addition to more work on the above BATs, I've recently done this quick Historic Harbor-compatible relot of JMeyers' Bender Building:

The plan is to trawl through the rest of JMeyers BATs and grab a few more that fit the theme, then release a lot pack.

I've also noticed another Jestarr boilerhouse variation BAT, which will be added to the boilerhouse power plant pack before release.

[CT14 2,486]

Catching up here:

The jestarr Boilerhouse power plants are ready, and released. Please post here if you find any problems with them.

I had a lot of fun figuring out the sint64 numbers for the capacity/monthly cost values...turns out the Windows calculator in Programmer mode gives you the correct hex values after you enter decimal numbers and switch to 'hex' view.

Historic Harbor lot factory

I've created a tool with AutoIt that lets me zip through creating new HH lots - it updates all the IID references, increments placeholder names, etc so I can 1-button create new lots which follow HH standards:

• Plop on water or land
• Conform to same level as other HH lots
• Custom UI including plop on query
• Menu sort appropriately

This has increased my productivity quite a bit in that area - I've nearly completed a set of dock rail puzzle pieces with custom icons, a dock road set, and dozens of dockside industry pieces.

Pending quality control and compatibility testing, the dockside industry buildings will be released in packs for each set of BATs' creators... JMeyers is first in line for release, with SimGoober and jestarr packs not far behind.

@Angry Mozart train prop testing

During the last month, along with other folks, I've been helping test parts of Angry Mozart's amazing new train set. Progress is steady, and I can say that release will be a game changer. Much of the rolling stock which is represented in the set has never been seen before in SC4.

A multitude of angles is represented for every car, textures worked and reworked to perfection, and we're at the stage of shaking out remaining bugs in the prop exemplars. Over thirty bugs have already been filed and over 90% fixed on the portion I've tested - we want this set to be a consistent, high quality experience for lotters.

New BATs

I haven't forgotten about the DeKalb coaling tower, or Goober's Stores - haven't had big chunks of time to spend on anything recently, so the lotting/modding projects have been easier to work on.

[Tyberius06 12,267]

On 2016. 11. 01. at 0:07 AM, CT14 said:

 

Hi!

I don't know why I just discovered this thread now... Very nice projects over here, the grain elevator looks cool , and you gave me nice ideas with your recent upload... Diagonal Industry is very needed in the game, so I was very happy when you released your FAB set. They will get a nice place at the upcoming SeaPorts (whenever will that be happening), and now you gave me some idea with this diagonal boiler house too... Thanks for that...

I went through most of the pages now, I've seen a lot of goodiness. FAR and Diagonal industrial and commercial stuffs, oh dear, I love them, I hope we can see them released once!

I know that the Gasholder house was released, but I don't remember the lot what you made, what is on the above picture. Has that been released or not, or not yet? Are you planing? Because I love it, and I would like to see in my cities!

Thank you for your work!

 

- Tyberius

[CT14 2,486]

@Tyberius06 Hey, thanks. That gasworks lot isn't released yet. I made it rely on another big, complicated unreleased set (FAB ortho) so I guess I'll change it a little, update it to use my NW coal hopper props, and release it.

Norfolk and Western hoppers update to 1.1

I've just now updated the hoppers to use a single .dat file, and added cohort exemplars for the prop families, so they have names in the Lot Editor now.

 

[CT14 2,486]

Town Gasworks and the somewhat reluctant abandonment of true scale for vehicles

While working on the Town Gasworks lot, I ended up playing with scale for some new, imported car models. The small ones are true 100% real life scale, and obviously look too small next to Sims (I guess so does the entire Lowrider pack...)

The larger models are just a tiny bit too big at 133% of true scale, so I will rerender to 125% to see how that looks.

An entire 20s-30s car pack will follow, but these versions will have unique colors found only on the Gasworks lot

And yes, the pack will contain plenty of French Streamliners like the Talbot Lago  Delahaye below...

Transit enabling power plant lots, and a good TE reference for lotters

If anyone knows how to get TE squares to function on a power plant, please share... for now, the Gasworks will be an I-D landmark lot with a freight railroad pass through.

This thread by Mott at SC4D is a good run-down of TE mechanics for lot builders, and has been very helpful:

TE Lots, Transit Switches, and You :)

Note that the TE hover crash, described in Mott's thread, is now a thing of the past thanks to SC4Fix (all praises due to simmaster07). All the other info seems current though.

For example, according to the above thread, only one route ought to be used per lot... additional TE squares won't function. This also means only one TE type can be used per lot.

It gets even stranger when I tried to add some "cosmetic" TE pieces for appearance, one tile only of a large lot, and the game wouldn't recognize them! I will try with PIM-X transit editing instead of SC4Tool, since I seem to have done this somehow for the earlier version of the Gasworks lot.

Here's the link to the essential patch to fix TE hover crashes (not just for NAM, but all of them!)

edit: more Town Gasworks WIP shots

Side by side with a previous version:

Details:

[CT14 2,486]

Delighted to find the SC4Fix update that fixes prop pox! I have recently resumed BATting and am nearly finished with the Dock Warehouses for Historic Harbor. Ortho, cross and transition models are ready.

[CT14 2,486]

I am nearly finished with the Lyons Elevator. Feedback welcome...the foundation is a few pixels off in this shot but you can see what I'm going for.

Front view:

 

Side view:

Prototype details

The model came out a bit shorter looking than the prototype, even after scaling 133% to satisfy game geometry. The outside of the building is metal to match other similar prototypes late in their life, because I couldn't find good reference photographs of the shingle siding. In reality, this elevator didn't last long enough to be retrofitted with steel siding.

BAtting Foundations with Custom LODs in Gmax

I discovered an effective way to make custom LODs for complicated geometry, like the stone piers, wooden pilings and ropes in the Lyons Elevator foundation prop.

1. In your foundation model, under Tools > BAT > Parameters, click "All" to show your existing LODs. Select and delete LOD3, LOD4 and LOD5.
2. Select every part of your foundation, group it as one object and clone the group. Move the cloned group away 50m so you can work on it without running into stuff.
3. Ungroup the clone. Find the object which is the largest part of your foundation, and create a Boolean object from it. Choose "Union" from the Boolean options (Subtract is default operation). Use "Pick Operand" on a smaller part of your foundation to union it with the larger part. Finally, Create Mesh from the resulting object.
4. Repeat step 3 until the entire foundation is one big mesh. Rename this mesh LOD3.
5. Clone LOD3 object twice, naming the clones LOD4 and LOD5.
6. Move the LOD objects back to your foundation objects. At this point, they should be 'skintight' with every vertex aligning perfectly. You can verify this by selecting part of your foundation, going into vertex mode, noting the coordinates of a corner point and then checking the corresponding vertex on the LOD3 mesh.

With this method, you can place props near any part of the foundation without awkward clipping, and the foundation itself will merge cleanly with the slope of the ground in game.

Naturally, this will work as well for any prop LOD, should you need it.

[CT14 2,486]

Modeling a factory complex that's about 55 tiles square is probably a fool's errand. I want to see what it looks like, though...

That would be the 55-tile vista down South Saginaw Street, below...

If this project goes anywhere, I'll have to break it up into about 6 lots to make it usable... it's also tempting to make a 'toy' version with only 10 bays on the front of each wing, instead of 45...

[matias93 7,535]

NEAT! But considering how uniform the building looks, wouldn't it be more easy just to model a corner and a straight module and let the player to assemble them in game? You will model smaller and faster models, and the result will be orders of magnitude more flexible to use...

[CT14 2,486]

@matias93 Great idea! The building is uniform for the most part. There are some large roof vent stacks in some places, and a few window air conditioners, and a lot of open windows. An entrance door or two and a dock in the back. As seems to be the norm, I can't find any pictures of two angles of the building, so I'm relying on plant diagrams to tell me where the dock is, and what the function of the building was (upholstery and export).

For a modular Fisher Body Plant #1, a few modules would be sufficient for these main wings:

• 1x1 Straight
• 1x1 Corner
• 1x1 End

For the Straight model it will be important to vary windows, roofjunk etc. I guess that can be done with one or more prop families depending on how tight my LODs are. For this building, I could clone cornice and rooftar... Boolean union them to one... move lowest vertices down to cover walls.

Using prop families for variation in building details

With a skintight roof LOD I can use roofjunk props, roofjunk prop families and avoid rendering several versions of the same whole building for it. I'm considering doing open/closed windows the same way - seems possible with LOD around windowframe, yes?

Disadvantages of this method:

- Slightly more complicated during READER stage of project

- Others who use the building BAT will not have the propped-in parts of it unless they, too add the prop families in the correct places - important from a packaging/release standpoint to distribute these parts together with the matching buildings, especially for windows

- Night lighting adds another layer of complication. A few BATters have released light/shadow versions of props (cycledogg comes to mind... jestarr... maybe others?). I don't really want to have to manage which prop I use based on whether or not the building BAT has a light nearby. This gets really sticky for windows in particular. Minimizing interior nightlights could be one solution. Gmax nightlights are a whirlpool of disaster anyway so I'm not too fussed about this

Advantages over my current method:

- Much less time spent on exports since main building geometry only gets exported once

- Ability to fully randomize windows, roofjunk, building bay functions

Prior art:

- All the storefront, poster and roofjunk prop families already in use on existing lots.

A prop family for windows could look like this:

• Open
• Closed
• Half-open
• Open (lit)
• Closed (lit)
• Half-open (lit)
• Air conditioner
• Bricked up
• Bricked up (new bricks)
• Vent hood
• Open with Cat on the windowsill
• Etc....

However, I don't really know how this works with lit windows, so I'm going to have to do some testing and report back.

[matias93 7,535]

19 minutes ago, CT14 said:

For a modular Fisher Body Plant #1, a few modules would be sufficient for these main wings:

• 1x1 Straight
• 1x1 Corner
• 1x1 End

add a landmark-only inner piece, or your factory will be only a crust lol. Either way, it looks you have a pretty good idea of how this should be done.

[CT14 2,486]

I definitely will consider making a "side" piece and a "roof filler" piece so deeper areas can be constructed. I still have another project that's trying to accomplish an identical goal, perhaps it's time to revisit it and tackle some old problems again.

There were another dozen or so buildings inside the lot, along with some interesting fillers like lumber stacks, conveyors, main switch hut, guard shacks, etc - this building is in fact a crust, only 4 bays deep. Here's a picture of the model's progress:

Zoom 4 is required to see the whole thing...

Links to high resolution aerials of the site - in the early '30s the lumberyard was still there:

https://digital.library.wayne.edu/item/wayne:vmc77402

https://digital.library.wayne.edu/item/wayne:vmc78516

And some more background information - a plant diagram from some time after the lumberyard was removed, and an old postcard which gives a more comprehensible overview of the site layout:

Spoiler

 

 

 

[CT14 2,486]

Three ways to Lyons:

Bonus Fourth Way (apologies to Gurdjieff)

Nite lites are being turnt up, windows opened and a few errors in the mesh found and fixed before making a final render for release. There's a certain offset grain scow prop I have in mind, too...

 

Fisher Body Plant

I've done quite a bit of work to try to get a 2x2 module working, per @matias93 suggestion. So far, I kept running into LOD problems, even with an automatically generated LOD and no foundation. I'll revisit this as I feel it's a strong concept. Gonna add some more bits and pieces of the line and maybe a worker or two in there, texture the inside of the blank end wall with an illusion of depth. I had fun stripping one of the Sketchup Warehouse Lowrider models down for this.

Inside the real thing:

[CT14 2,486]

Still no luck with the factory modules. I'm rebuilding the geometry as a last resort.

In the meantime, here is a deep web source for some glorious firetrap prototypes by late 19th century civil engineer Charles E Goad:

http://collectionscanada.gc.ca/lac-bac/results/arch.php?module=arch&action=results&Language=eng&PageNum=1&SortSpec=score%20desc&SearchIn_1=partof&SearchInText_1=3821327&Operator_1=AND&SearchIn_2=&SearchInText_2=&Operator_2=AND&SearchIn_3=&SearchInText_3=&Media=&Level=&MaterialDateOperator=after&MaterialDate=&DigitalImages=&Source=&ResultCount=10&BIGipServerWEBSITE_V41XAPPS_SERVER=1361792654.20480.0000&MaxDocs=-1&MaxDocs=-1

There is a lifetime worth of material in there which doesn't normally come up in a Google search, because it is buried in the library website.

I've rehosted a few so you can see what is going on - no hotlinking to the library site allowed.

[CT14 2,486]

Fisher Body

At last, I've got the ortho module working. There was a chopped up mesh that I was able to replace with several box objects to fix the problem with rendering. The night lights are a work in progress...

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Wow, congratulations on your success!

The modules look good so far, I like the windows in particular. However, I must confess I'm not entirely sold on the roof texture. It tiles too obviously, and it's extremely dark and saturated.

Once I'm writing anyway, let me say that this elevator you built last looks absolutely spectacular! It's an almost surreal structure with all those strange angles and protrusions, but that's exactly what gives it so much character. I think you really nailed it, too!

[matias93 7,535]

The modules look fantastic! And even in yes, the roof texture could look a bit repetitive, maybe the roof junk family props will help with that.

About the night lighting: are you modelling the insides, true? Maybe the fact of having a wall on each side of the module is making the inside view awkward? I guess you could use textured windows instead of transparent ones, using the same images that are being exported now on the model, excepting the ones on which the internal walls are visible. Otherwise you would need a wall that is transparent on only one side, and I don't know if GMax can do that.

[CT14 2,486]

The Lyons Elevator is released.

40' wooden reefers

I've begun work on a brand new 40' wooden refrigerated car model, based on 1910s-1930s Grand Trunk prototypes. Details of geometry include catwalk, brake handle and platform, ice covers, end ladders, side ladder bottom rung shapes - could probably use doors too. The brake handle top is unfinished.

Texture is Grank Trunk's fantastic orange, needs toned down a little bit. Trucks and chassis are reused from my N&W coal cars. The final model will be overscaled slightly to match other vehicle props.

The catwalk is probably too tall, its shadow appears too large:

Fisher Body

Thanks all for the feedback so far, it's very helpful.

The windows got a total rebuild while I was working on finding the problem with rendering. The rebuild reduced poly count for each window by about 25%. I'll open a lot of the windows for the final renders - the geometry is separate for the opening parts.

The roof texture is a placeholder as I am still trying to identify the material used in the real factory roofs - tar and gravel, tar paper perhaps the most likely. Several other Fisher plants including Cleveland's plant have similar construction, so I'm sure I'll find a reference sooner or later. Albert Kahn seems to have been the architect. I did learn that the floors were often made with creosoted wood blocks.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

It's certainly great to see this thread going at full steam again!

[CT14 2,486]

New 19th century warehouse model

This is a brand new 19th century warehouse model, inspired by those classic Cycledogg lots. I tried to leave the building as generic as possible so it could represent a wide range of industrial uses, even commercial services. There's also a concrete textured version.

The BAT is 16x27m,  so it will sit on a 1x2 lot with 3m front standoff and 2m back standoff, to match many other W2W lots.

The Ortho model can be plopped side by side to create a larger structure.

I'm happy with how the night lights turned out.

Billboard Reefers

I added a few more details to the wooden reefer model above and textured a bunch of them with old advertisements. These used to be everywhere on reefer cars until the 1930s when the rules were changed. A few of the textures still need toned down (Roberts Meat yellow/black roof, the green and white car, Oppenheimer's, blue roofs for sure). I'm pretty happy with the pack otherwise. They are almost ready for angle renders and release.

[Tyberius06 12,267]

wow, now this is amazing! I was just about to ask you to make more diagonal and FAR stuffs, like what you already released, since now @Simmer2 made the diagonal NSB's I can make new set-ups to my seaport sets. And with these angled buildings the possibilities even better!

Thanks for making them!

- Tyberius

[T Wrecks 10,210]

That 19th century warehouse sure is a welcome addition! I like that it's sand-coloured brick for a change, too. Is it just me, though, or does the roof texture tile rather visibly?

Concerning the train cars, I agree with everything you wrote: some final tweaks on the cars you mentioned, and this set looks ready to go. Choo-choo!