Aarsgevogelte BAT's

[Jasoncw 11,840]

You should think more carefully about how you want your building to look. And then you should think about what specific changes you would have to make to your current building to make it look that way. What is wrong with your current buildings? You can list the problems. And then you can think of solutions to those problems. If switching to scanline is truly the solution, then switch to scanline.

The main difference between Mental Ray and Scanline is that Mental Ray will have better definition of shapes, the objects will look more physically connected (chimneys won't look like they're floating), and sharper shadows.

However, if you do choose to do Scanline then you also have to do the old techniques we used to do to improve our BATs. We used to put vertical gradients on all of our facade textures to make the bottoms closer to the ground darker than the high parts. We used to manually texture on contact shadows. When one object, like the top of a cornice, faced both sideways and upwards, we had to detach the tops of the objects and make separate darker textures for them because the upward faces would be too bright. The lighting gave everything a brown tint which made it impossible to make the building certain colors. I could write forever about the problems we had and what we had to do to overcome them. 

I've done a mockup (click on it for full size). It's hard to do this in photoshop and it's far from perfect anyway. Based on the building's real life appearance, and the game's aesthetics, imo it should look more like this. It would look better if it wasn't photoshopped and if more time was taken to make sure it looked right. But even as it is, would people say that it doesn't fit with the old buildings? 

The changes I made were: Reduce saturation of the stone, and slightly change the hue. Change the hue of the metal dome (I think it's tin (blue), and not copper(green)), and make it slightly darker. Make the windows more grey/blue instead of beige (it's visually problematic when everything on the facade is either dark brown or beige, and it's a weird color for glass to be regardless) and slightly darker. I would have made the window frames a little brighter but I couldn't do it in photoshop. I made the pitched roof a cool blue/grey instead of beige. 

 

If you do want to use Scanline, you can uninstall the BAT4Max that you currently have, and go to SC4Devotion.com and find the BAT4Max that they have there. Many years ago there needed to be an upgrade to BAT4Max, and there was disagreement about what to do, so two different versions were made, and the other one does not use Mental Ray. I'm not sure but I think that's the version the others are using. If not that, then they're still using the original BAT4Max from over 10 years ago, and if you can find it uploaded somewhere you could use that too.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

18 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

You should think more carefully about how you want your building to look. And then you should think about what specific changes you would have to make to your current building to make it look that way. What is wrong with your current buildings? You can list the problems. And then you can think of solutions to those problems. If switching to scanline is truly the solution, then switch to scanline.

The main difference between Mental Ray and Scanline is that Mental Ray will have better definition of shapes, the objects will look more physically connected (chimneys won't look like they're floating), and sharper shadows.

However, if you do choose to do Scanline then you also have to do the old techniques we used to do to improve our BATs. We used to put vertical gradients on all of our facade textures to make the bottoms closer to the ground darker than the high parts. We used to manually texture on contact shadows. When one object, like the top of a cornice, faced both sideways and upwards, we had to detach the tops of the objects and make separate darker textures for them because the upward faces would be too bright. The lighting gave everything a brown tint which made it impossible to make the building certain colors. I could write forever about the problems we had and what we had to do to overcome them. 

I've done a mockup (click on it for full size). It's hard to do this in photoshop and it's far from perfect anyway. Based on the building's real life appearance, and the game's aesthetics, imo it should look more like this. It would look better if it wasn't photoshopped and if more time was taken to make sure it looked right. But even as it is, would people say that it doesn't fit with the old buildings? 

The changes I made were: Reduce saturation of the stone, and slightly change the hue. Change the hue of the metal dome (I think it's tin (blue), and not copper(green)), and make it slightly darker. Make the windows more grey/blue instead of beige (it's visually problematic when everything on the facade is either dark brown or beige, and it's a weird color for glass to be regardless) and slightly darker. I would have made the window frames a little brighter but I couldn't do it in photoshop. I made the pitched roof a cool blue/grey instead of beige. 

 

If you do want to use Scanline, you can uninstall the BAT4Max that you currently have, and go to SC4Devotion.com and find the BAT4Max that they have there. Many years ago there needed to be an upgrade to BAT4Max, and there was disagreement about what to do, so two different versions were made, and the other one does not use Mental Ray. I'm not sure but I think that's the version the others are using. If not that, then they're still using the original BAT4Max from over 10 years ago, and if you can find it uploaded somewhere you could use that too.

Thank you for the explanation. I've gotten some complaints that my buildings look too 'cold', so that's why for example the Eagle Star building is a bit oversaturated. To me, the mental ray buildings look stunning in 3ds Max renders, but I don't think it translates that well to the game. It looks too plastic to me. I don't know. For example, when I try to create a city, I'm almost subconsciously reluctant to use mental ray buildings within a European environment, since they do look a little out of place to me. Your buildings look very good though, but you mainly create American downtown buildings. Like I said, I think mental ray is perfect for modern, abstract buildings, but less so for cozy European buildings. For example, your (in my opinion) most European looking building, the Northern Trust Bank, as beautiful of a model it is, it looks a little out of place next to a Xannepan building or whatever. But maybe that's also because there are very few European mental ray buildings. Anyway, I simply want to see if scanline rendering is better for my buildings. Maybe it's not.

Having said that, do you or anyone know how to make ALN Bat4Max or an older version of Bat4Max work with 3ds Max 2010 or 2012? Because I think the nightlights only work up until 3ds Max 2008.

[gutterclub 2,729]

9 hours ago, Aarsgevogelte said:

. For example, your (in my opinion) most European looking building, the Northern Trust Bank, as beautiful of a model it is, it looks a little out of place next to a Xannepan building or whatever. But maybe that's also because there are very few European mental ray buildings.

.

You have answered your own riddle really..looking good in game has nothing to do with the renderer, as long as your materials and textures match the games colour palette you are good to go. Its the fact your (in my opinion) buildings look way better - or at least could if you followed Jason and Odainsakers advice on desaturation etc etc than Xannepans, so it stands out. I have actually re-rendered a lot of xannepans fantastic works into Mental Ray and tweaked textures an I feel it looks way better...European buildings have such amaxing details, why would you not want them to stand out and be visible? For me its creating a masterpiece and printing the picture out on a dot matrix printer - my opinion of course. Choose ehateverer renderer you wish, but I don't think scanline will solve your perceived problems, I think you need to address the material issues Jason raises in his last post and these isseus wll still occur in Scanline.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

This is derailing the thread a little, but would you have some example pictures of your re-renders? It doesn't happen that often that we get two takes on the same model, and I don't recall ever seeing your re-renders.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

25 minutes ago, T Wrecks said:

This is derailing the thread a little, but would you have some example pictures of your re-renders? It doesn't happen that often that we get two takes on the same model, and I don't recall ever seeing your re-renders.

Do you mean a scanline re-render? This would be an example, although the textures still need some work. I maintain that scanline is better for European buildings. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. Maybe scanline is not 'the way of the future', but I'm also not one for pushing the envelope.

What do you use? Looking at your buildings it look likes scanline/gmax? Could you by any chance tell me what renderer you use in combination with which BAT4Max and 3ds Max version? I would appreciate it.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Uhm, I was referring to gutterclub. He has apparently made some re-renders, and I'm really curious about those.

Personally, I don't use anything because I don't BAT at all. I only re-lot existing buildings because I feel that there is plenty of 3D material out there, but lots and modding often leave much of their potential unused. And since there have always been plenty of BATters but not many lotters, I reckoned I could be of more use to the community by squeezing as much as possible out of existing stuff.

[matias93 7,535]

28 minutes ago, Aarsgevogelte said:

Do you mean a scanline re-render? This would be an example, although the textures still need some work. I maintain that scanline is better for European buildings. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. Maybe scanline is not 'the way of the future', but I'm also not one for pushing the envelope.

What do you use? Looking at your buildings it look likes scanline/gmax? Could you by any chance tell me what renderer you use in combination with which BAT4Max and 3ds Max version? I would appreciate it.

Wow, that looks great! If this distinction sticks, maybe we'll see some double-rendered updates, just like what happens with day&nite

28 minutes ago, Aarsgevogelte said:

 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

So it looks like you were successful? Debussyman has logged in recently so if you PM him he might be able to give you advice. 

To do a comparison between mental ray and scanline, give them each a grey material and do a preview render. Open photoshop and paste both renders on top of each other and use the color eyedropper to select the same spot on both facades and check the brightness. Increase or decrease the brightness of one of the greys in 3ds max until the facades in the renders are the same brightness. That will show you the difference between the lighting.

The textures will look different in each, but that's because each texture was tweaked for one, and not the other. If you want your limestone to look 97% like the limestone (same color, brightness, etc) in one of their buildings, you can tweak the texture until it matches. If I took one of my BATs and just changed the renderer to scanline it would look terrible, but I could retweak it to look closer to how it did before. With mental ray, when you're texturing you can make the textures look pretty much however you want. 

I was actually just working on taking one of xannepan's models and retweaking it to show what I mean, but then max crashed. And then I opened it again and it crashed again.   

My point isn't that you can't make great BATs using scanline. Debussyman and Xannepan and others have shown that you can (just an example https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/29489-berlin-reichstag/ ). My point is that you can make buildings that go along with theirs, while also keeping the benefits of mental ray. 

 

[gutterclub 2,729]

8 hours ago, Aarsgevogelte said:

Do you mean a scanline re-render? This would be an example, although the textures still need some work. I maintain that scanline is better for European buildings. Maybe it's just a matter of taste. Maybe scanline is not 'the way of the future', but I'm also not one for pushing the envelope.

What do you use? Looking at your buildings it look likes scanline/gmax? Could you by any chance tell me what renderer you use in combination with which BAT4Max and 3ds Max version? I would appreciate it.

Yeah sorry, I just don't understand why you would prefer that over the previous version? You can make your MR version look more like this by tweaking the textures, desaturating etc, whilst still retaining the details that are now lost in the Scanline version. Like Ive said before, no idea why the likes of Jenx and Debussyman chose scanline when their buildings feature so much miniscule detail that's almost pointless doing in scanline.

Anyway, its all to do with personal preference and if that's what you are happy with it is of course your building. Its still a great model and I'm sure will sit nicely alongside the older rendered buildings.

Twrecks - I'll upload a few examples, however all I did was download his models (he pretty much every BAT he did as 3d max models on SC4D) and re-render using his textures but as MR materials and render from BAT4MAX.

Bear with me..

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

So this is a new building I'm working on:

Here it is in Google street view:

https://www.google.com/maps/@51.5590021,5.0827318,3a,75y,304.83h,92.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sC-hEgPa5IqRDBaeMerj4rQ!2e0!7i13312!8i6656

As far is I know, the building is about 16 meters wide, but it seems awfully small when compared to other buildings in-game. Am I wrong? 

This is another building from the same street I'm also working on:

I'm still considering coming to the dark side though (scanline) 

[gutterclub 2,729]

Loving that 2nd building..I do think the smaller building on the left needs a little work on the glass/windows, just to help define the difference between the frames and the glass...

great work buddy.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

For the second one, try making the red and orange bricks brighter, and less saturated. Right now they look too dark, and too saturated. 

You make me feel unproductive.  

 

What I recommend (for everyone) is to have a photoshop file with a bunch of screenshots from the game. Then you can copy and paste your preview renders on top of the screenshots and you'll be able to compare your building to the ones in the game without having to export. 

While it is in photoshop, you can make a "Hue/Saturation" adjustment layer, and completely reduce the saturation so that you have a black and white image. This will help you test the brightness and darkness of your textures compared to the ones in the game. 

The way our eyes work, saturation and value ("value" being how bright or dark something is) are connected. When we're trying to do colors, if something is too dark we'll try to compensate by increasing the saturation. And if something is too saturated we compensate by making it darker. Whether it's coloring an illustration, or texturing for SC4, it's how our perception works. 

So the way to use this setup is to bring a preview render into photoshop with the screenshots, and use the adjustment layer to desaturate everything. Check to see how bright or dark different textures on the building are, compared to the building in the screenshots. If you want an even more objective comparison you can use the eyedropper tool to directly check the brightness. Go back and adjust the brightness of the textures and do another preview render and compare it again, and repeat this process until it looks correct in black and white. And then turn off the adjustment layer so that you're seeing it in color again. Since the value is correct you can now tweak the saturation of the texture until the buildings looks right (still comparing it with other buildings in the screenshots). 

You can also do this with google street view screenshots or photos of the building. You can desaturate the image to see how bright or dark everything is. For example in real life the wooden door on the ground floor is quite a bit darker than the bricks. 

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

I changed the building I was working on because I ran into some problems. As you can see, I used the scanline renderer (I'm so sorry). I think the scanline renderer only works in 3ds Max 2008 and lower. That's my problem. So if I finished this building, I could only export the day version.

Also this one:

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

Does anyone know why this happens? I have installed the texture fix:

Also, here's another building I'm working on:

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

If you try all the options to fix it and nothing works I believe the only way is try to export again and again and again. I'm having a similar problem with Kemper Building, it looks distorted in all the attempts.

When I was looking for some images from Singer Building from NYC, I found another Singer Building, but from St. Petersburg, and I though 'wow this is definitely an Aarsgevogelte possible target'
It's just a suggestion if you like it:

Spoiler

 

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

4 hours ago, JP Schriefer said:

If you try all the options to fix it and nothing works I believe the only way is try to export again and again and again. I'm having a similar problem with Kemper Building, it looks distorted in all the attempts.

When I was looking for some images from Singer Building from NYC, I found another Singer Building, but from St. Petersburg, and I though 'wow this is definitely an Aarsgevogelte possible target'
It's just a suggestion if you like it:

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Yeah, I fixed it. I know that building, and it's indeed very interesting, but it's a bit too 'out there' for my taste.  Excellent work on the Singer Building btw.

I am converting my buildings to scanline and in the process I also made some slight adjustments:

 

The one building I have trouble with is this one:

 

The facade looks weird to me. I don't know, maybe it's the angle?

But I have a problem: I don't see the point in nightlighting. I personally barely even play the game, and if I do, I don't care about nightlights. I see nightlights as a fun gimmick, nothing more. Yeah, it looks cool, but I don't think it's worth it. I mean, (re)creating a building already takes a lot of effort. Also, not creating a nightversion makes the workflow much more flexible in my opinion: whenever I want to make some adjustments, I only have to re-render one version. But I'm afraid that nobody will be interested in my creations if I don't supply nightlights.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

About workflow, if you do the photoshop stuff I was talking about you should only have to export once (well, three times, day once, maxisnite once, and darknite once (for the normal workflow anyway, idk about what you have to do now)). It's true that sometimes we notice something wrong after we export it and have to go back and re-export, but that shouldn't happen very often. All of the tweaking and comparisons should be done by pasting preview renders into photoshop. To remove the grey (or black) matting behind the building (normally I don't even save the preview render, I just take a screenshot of the whole screen using the Print Screen key on the keyboard), you can use the Magic Wand Tool to select and delete it, or you can save your preview render as a .png with transparency which you can then open in photoshop and copy and paste from there. Using Photoshop for this saves a lot of time and it's critical for doing tweaking. 

But you're right that it would not be good to release BATs without nitelites. I don't play the game very much either, and I think the only time I ever turn night on is to take screenshots of my own BATs for the STEX. But there's some things that every upload needs in order to have a basic level of quality. I'd feel bad for people who make CJs/MDs who would want to use your BATs but would have to think about how to deal with the nitelites. And those people are the most passionate players and the ones you're most likely to see in the community. Bad lotting and modding can be fixed after the fact but no one would be able to add nitelites. It's your own time and your own hobby, so you should do what you want to do, but I think everyone would agree that BATs should have nitelites. You could also try working in 3ds max for the modeling tools and then import it into gmax for the nitelites. You'd lose a few of the rendering benefits of 3ds max but I think nitelites, even just basic ones, are more important. 

I don't know exactly what you mean about the facade looking weird. If you mean the diagonal part, sometimes things look weird because we're not used to seeing it that way, but that's the same for the old version of the BAT. It could also be that the scanline lighting setup is particularly bad at diagonal facades and enclosed courtyards, and pretty much any other massing that isn't a simple boxy shape. 

From my perspective you're making things difficult for yourself. I don't think I have any useful advice for the path you've chosen that I haven't already given (the photoshop stuff is super important imo). If you were able to get into contact with debussyman try to squeeze as much info from him as possible.  

[redlex 7]

17 hours ago, Aarsgevogelte said:

I am converting my buildings to scanline and in the process I also made some slight adjustments

I must admit that I have no clear preference when it comes to the Scanline/mental ray-discussion; at the end of the day, the most important for me is that the BATs fits well together. I really like the adjustments you've done, especially With the Victoria Hotel & the rightmost building.

When it comes to the corner BAT, I think it might look better in a European w2w environment without the open courtyard, either with some sort of annex connected to it, or simply make the building fill up the entire lot, like this previously model..

 

[madhatter106 3,903]

On the topic of nightlighting - I would really be interested to know what percentage of the game is played in night mode by the vast majority of players.  Like lots of people, the only time I am in night mode is to test or screenshot my stuff before uploading.  The vast majority of what little game-playing I do is in the day mode. 

That said, though, there are some who probably play in night, or a combo of both modes, who would appreciate the nightlighting.  I agree that it can be extremely tedious to do as far as the BATting is concerned; very often by the time I am nightlighting, I have grown tired of whatever I am working on and just want to get it done.  But, nightlighting should also be considered a selling point - or rather, a downloading point.  If one of the screenshots of your BAT on the STEX shows good nightlighting, you can be guaranteed that it will get more downloads than if it were only day shots.  There have even been a couple of occasions where I wanted to download a BAT but refrained, because I thought the nightlighting looked bad or was sorely lacking - and I think subconsciously it was a reflection on the overall quality of the BAT as a whole.  If the creator had taken such care to present the BAT at its best in the day, but had neglected or overlooked the nightlighting, it felt incomplete or lacking because they didn't exercise that same care for the night view.

That said, nightlights in MAX seem much easier to do than in gmax (from what I have read here) - with poor little old gmax, it's either nightmapping or modeling interiors and lighting those behind windows, an extremely tedious and time-heavy investment...

[debussyman 1,348]

First of all, nice job! I'm glad you'ves sorted out the scanline rendering. The buildings fit much better now with the general w2w environment.

On the question of weirdness of your last facade.. what exactly troubles you? the way the diagonal wall looks? the lighting on the wall?. If it is the first, maybe narrowing it a bit to counteract the rendering angle might give it a better look. If the second, I sometimes used a light on the diagonal facades to tweak them into looking a bit more natural.

On the nite lites, it is definately a must! specially useful, as said before, for the city journalists. No night lighting is a major dissapointment. It doesn't have to be anything complex. I usually projected a direct light that excluded everything except the "glass" plane of the windows, using decay to mimic "rooms". If the facade is worthy of it, maybe an omni here and there to look like decorative lighting and that's it. Doesn't take more than 15 minutes and plenty of people will be grateful for it.

[matias93 7,535]

That was surely a Debussy ex machina

[T Wrecks 10,209]

^ It was indeed.

On the topic of night lighting, I confess that I am so much of a nitpicker and a control freak that I even ditch beautiful BATs that don't have night lights. OK, I'd make an exception for a generic warehouse, but for an inner-city building I wouldn't. I feel like the CBD must have that alluring "lights of the big city" vibe to it. Similarly, suburban retail for me just needs those neon advertisements to feel right. And the single-family homes? You know, when I look at a suburb at night and I see those warmly lit windows here and there, it just helps to make these little things look not just like abstract 3D structures, but like cozy homes. IMO, the night lights contribute a lot to the atmosphere of a building and make it feel alive.

Of course I don't spend much time in night mode, but occasionally it's very pleasant to switch to night view and let your city make an impression on you - both from afar, when you'll see anything from a flashy skyline of a city that never sleeps to some lonely lights twinkling in a remote area, and in the details, when you can imagine looking into offices and that burger joint with the lit, but empty interior reminds you of Edward Hopper's Nighthwaks...

I understand that a creator will find night lighting tedious and I'm nobody's boss, so whatever a BAT artist decides, it's the final word and there's nothing I can do. I just want to elaborate a little on what night lights can mean to a player.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

So I completely revamped the last building. Somehow it turned into a sort of Scandinavian / German  / Eastern European type building:

About the nightlights; first of all, nightlights don't work with 3ds Max 2008 and above I believe, so I'd have to figure that out.

Second, the reason I started batting is because I thought the game lacked European buildings, so I figured, why not just try to make some of my own?

For me, Simcity is more of a tool with which I can actually do something with the buildings I create, instead of just creating buildings without any purpose.

I still find it pointless to add nightlights, since I don't care about them.

Here's the other building I'm working on:

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Personally I prefer your old way of doing your BATs and I do not know if I'd continue to download them in this new way. As you've been told before, you've to make your BATs the way you, and only you, feel is best. Without nightlights and with this new look, some people will stop downloading the files, but a lot of people will also continue to download them. I don't think you should worry about download numbers, but with your own will to do the buildings, after all I think everyone who does BATs doesn't do it for downloads, but because they simply like to model things and see them in the game.

[matias93 7,535]

46 minutes ago, Aarsgevogelte said:

Somehow it turned into a sort of Scandinavian / German  / Eastern European type building:

I could be a very fanatic daynite user and all, but I won't pass the opportunity to have this beauty crowning a corner of my historic borough!

[redlex 7]

On ‎11‎.‎01‎.‎2017 at 2:24 PM, Aarsgevogelte said:

I still find it pointless to add nightlights, since I don't care about them.

If it's any consolation, I will download your creations either way 

I really like the new twist on the corner building. In fact I like it so much, that I would love to see it in several color variations, so that I could have had it on every corner without being repetative

[Mike the Mayor 51]

@Aarsgevogelte I love your work. Been a while since the last post so was hoping for an update on progress soon. Your BATs are brilliant! Look forward to seeing more.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Unfortunately I cannot help you with that problem, but man, it's a pleasant surprise to see you again - welcome back!

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

Here's a building I've been working on:

Any feedback?

[matias93 7,535]

Wow, really nice, and glad to see you back!!!

Maybe the only change would be to include a bit of dust on the paint textures (even if the original building indeed is very clean on the photo), because it helps with the realism and helps the building to look less 'plastic' (a constant risk on 3D modelling)