Aarsgevogelte BAT's

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

5 hours ago, IDS2 said:

Glad to see you back! I really enjoy the incredible detail you put into your models.

Regarding the bright exports, I would check your gamma settings - I seem to recall this being an issue for newer versions of max, as evidenced here (although most of the image links are broken now). The help thread goes into some discussion of correct gamma settings under the "getting started guide." Also worth mentioning is the gamma fix for max 2014 or later, though I believe it's only relevant for the export process.

Thanks, that fixed it.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

I want to make a growable (?) building, but I'm not sure how I do this. I thought the appropriate category would be R-C-I --> Residential --> ($$$) High Wealth. But I'm not sure what I do here:

I hope somebody can enlighten me.

Also, this is what I ended up with:

 

I would appreciate feedback. I'm thinking of changing the way I do nightlights, because right now I just use flat textures. I don't know, I've seen other building on here where the nightlights seem to have more depth. But I don't know how I would achieve this.

I'm also hoping to release this modest little building soon:

Although, I'm not sure what type of building this would be? It's basically a giant mansion, but I guess it could also maybe be some kind of townhall

 

[Barroco Hispano 26,695]

¡Beautiful BATs !

¿Do you sculpt those details in zbrush??

I am currently sculpting rocks in zbrush but it is a workflow in which I spend a lot of time (Sculpting> Retopologize> UVs>Baking Displacement + normal> Substance Painter). 

[Barroco Hispano 26,695]

Btw, I have several cars that will adapt to your mansion!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Welcome back.

Your renders are still looking fuzzy. Check the guide again and make sure to change the sampling mode to "classic/raytraced". You have to go back and do this again every time you switch between day and night.

For nitelites, you can go to sites like textures.com or flickr and find photos of buildings at night, and then you can photoshop bits from the photos together to make a new texture for your nitelites. They don't have to be very complicated or detailed, it just needs to be busy enough to suggest something is happening behind the glass.

For modding you should go over to SC4Devotion and download and install PIMX/SC4 Plugin Manager and read the tutorials. There's a learning curve to using it, but imo there's less of a learning curve than the maxis tools, and once you get it it's very simple drag and drop with very little thinking involved. Using the maxis tools there are a lot of different steps involved and manual work involved in order to make up for their tool's shortcomings.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

Hello,

I still see quite a bit of interest in buildings. I actually have still been creating lots of buildings, but I'm not sure if I should upload them.
There are two reasons for this: I have reverted back to scanline (I have explained this in previous posts) and I leave out the nightlights (too much of a hassle imo).
So even if the buildings themselves might be neat, I suspect a lot of people wouldn't download them because of scanline / lack of nightlights / lack of skyscrapers.
I could share some of my work here and you could see for yourself. I just really enjoy creating these buildings and I keep coming back to it. I also would like for this game to never die out.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Hi Aarsgevogelte,

good to see you're back! Even better to hear you've been active all along.

As for your question - upload or not - here's my take on it: I'm not too much into Scanline BATs (not because the renderer is "worse", but because they look different) and I love night lights. Even so, I'd love to see you upload them!

Yes, sure, some people might say "Oh, pity there's no night lights, I'll pass" and end up not downloading them. On the other hand, if you never publish them, nobody will ever download them, and that would be a pity. Even if they end up being a niche offer, you will make some people in that niche very, very happy. Besides, you can never know what happens. Had you expected nos.17 to compile a creator pack with your buildings long after you uploaded them? These things can happen anytime. Whatever exists may be used years later in ways you had never imagined. Someone may find a forum post useful that you made in 2011, another one may dig up an old BAT and do amazing things with it. If it's not there in the first place, this cannot happen.

Besides, you have found a hobby you enjoy (which is a very valuable thing!) and you want to keep the game alive - what better way is there to combine the two things than taking what you enjoy to make anyway and using it to contribute to keeping the game that you love alive and kicking?

So what if the content doesn't cater to my personal preference? This place isn't about me, it's about everyone. If you make a positive, constructive contribution and make the guy next to me happy, then that's something good as well, isn't it? I'd certainly be glad if you did.

[debussyman 1,348]

Great to see you back!

I really hope you continue to work and release some of your great stuff.

And about your issues:

Scanline (as said endless times before), I agree 100% with you. For W2W/european buildings, it is the option that should be preferred in my opinion; both because it looks less "plasticky", specially for stone facades, and because it will blend well with all the other W2W (forget about using Mental Ray renders next to xannepan, porkissimo, etc... a shame)

About nightlights, they are not that hard to make, I usually don't take more than 10 minutes if I don't feel like it. Here's what I do: If it is a large building, a couple of omnis here and there to shine on the facade and that is all. If it is a W2W which would benefit from lighted windows, what I do is make sure all the window planes that I want lighted are in a single group and I use the "include/exclude" function of the 3ds max lights to only shine on that group, and same thing, couple of omnis here and there, play a bit with the decay, and you get a nice effect without too much effort.

Keep it up

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

4 hours ago, debussyman said:

Great to see you back!

I really hope you continue to work and release some of your great stuff.

And about your issues:

Scanline (as said endless times before), I agree 100% with you. For W2W/european buildings, it is the option that should be preferred in my opinion; both because it looks less "plasticky", specially for stone facades, and because it will blend well with all the other W2W (forget about using Mental Ray renders next to xannepan, porkissimo, etc... a shame)

About nightlights, they are not that hard to make, I usually don't take more than 10 minutes if I don't feel like it. Here's what I do: If it is a large building, a couple of omnis here and there to shine on the facade and that is all. If it is a W2W which would benefit from lighted windows, what I do is make sure all the window planes that I want lighted are in a single group and I use the "include/exclude" function of the 3ds max lights to only shine on that group, and same thing, couple of omnis here and there, play a bit with the decay, and you get a nice effect without too much effort.

Keep it up

 

5 hours ago, T Wrecks said:

Hi Aarsgevogelte,

good to see you're back! Even better to hear you've been active all along.

As for your question - upload or not - here's my take on it: I'm not too much into Scanline BATs (not because the renderer is "worse", but because they look different) and I love night lights. Even so, I'd love to see you upload them!

Yes, sure, some people might say "Oh, pity there's no night lights, I'll pass" and end up not downloading them. On the other hand, if you never publish them, nobody will ever download them, and that would be a pity. Even if they end up being a niche offer, you will make some people in that niche very, very happy. Besides, you can never know what happens. Had you expected nos.17 to compile a creator pack with your buildings long after you uploaded them? These things can happen anytime. Whatever exists may be used years later in ways you had never imagined. Someone may find a forum post useful that you made in 2011, another one may dig up an old BAT and do amazing things with it. If it's not there in the first place, this cannot happen.

Besides, you have found a hobby you enjoy (which is a very valuable thing!) and you want to keep the game alive - what better way is there to combine the two things than taking what you enjoy to make anyway and using it to contribute to keeping the game that you love alive and kicking?

So what if the content doesn't cater to my personal preference? This place isn't about me, it's about everyone. If you make a positive, constructive contribution and make the guy next to me happy, then that's something good as well, isn't it? I'd certainly be glad if you did.

Thank you for your comments. How do you feel about growable / ploppable / landmark? What is the difference exactly between ploppable and landmark? Is landmark just eyecandy? Is it more difficult to create a ploppable than a landmark? I'm sorry if I still don't understand this stuff, because I barely play the game. When I play the game I try to just create a fictional city with buildings that I like. I don't really care about the managerial aspect of the game, so I'm fine with having just landmarks. And as far as I know, if you want to create both a landmark and growable lot, you need to do the lotting twice (or am I wrong?) and that seems too much of a hassle to me. So I prefer just having one lot type for each building and preferably not growable, since I'm personally not interested in growables.

Like are the values above calculated automatically? Because I tried to create a Landmark with jobs (CS$$$).

I'm also not sure about the naming conventions, because some of the buildings I have created are fictional and I wouldn't know what to name them. I guess I should give them random names maybe, like The Liquid Cow or something, I don't know if that would work.

[Bobelboy 435]

Hi,

just today I was playing the game and working on my central boulevard. As I play a European city (with a big financial district because I also like highrises) and I ran out of W2W buildings, I had to think of you and I said to myself - and this is no lie - that I needed more buildings from you. I think I have downloaded everything you created and find it all very useful. I use the bigger buildings for the central "old town" and the smaller ones for the outer boroughs and suburbs. This all works extremely well for me and so I am probably be the one next to @T Wrecks who would be happy to download more of your stunning creations (and I'm obviously not the only one). Nightlights are a nice extra and I also prefer such buildings - but if I'm honest, I rarely play in that mode. Nevertheless, maybe @debussyman's hints are a way for you to go with nightlights.

It's great that you still enjoy making BATs. And what do they say ...? Shared joy is a double joy!

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Regarding your buildings, I think you should definitely upload them. You can be sure lots of people will be grateful to you because doing these European buildings in such quality as you do is not easy. Some things people like and some don't There are probably lots of people not downloading my stuff simply because their cities won't have skyscrapers, or they don't like the textures, reflections, nightlights or anything else, and there's no problem about that because each one have their own preferences. Your buildings are undoubtedly wonderful for cities without so much skyscrapers, especially European cities, of course, and there are lots of people doing these kind of cities just waiting for your new uploads
If you still feel uncomfortable with it, I suggest you to just let it clear in your file's description that they won't have nightlights and the way they're rendered etc just to avoid people commenting about things you already know.

T-Wrecks is way better in this than me, but I'll give it a try while he doesn't appear. Ploppable is literally everything you can plop in game (of course not considering the buildingplop extra cheat, which allows you to plop growable buildings as well), so schools, hospitals, police and fire departments etc ,technically, are ploppable, just like buildings from the landmark menu. Landmarks can be eye-candy or functional. When they're functional that means they have jobs. When they are eye-candy they won't have jobs, but usually they still have landmarks effects around them.
Those values are calculated according to the filling degree (which is the one you should edit - you must estimate how much of the yellow box your building fills. I'd say 0.3 to this one), so yeah most of them are calculated automatically after you do that. About names, feel free to do the way you want, it's not a big deal.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

I do think you need to take the time to make nitelites, but like debussyman said, it only take a few minutes to make a few directional lights and include/exclude some windows. Exporting it probably takes longer than making it. Making basic nitelites is definitely worth the small amount of time it takes.

If you use either an older version of BAT4Max, or the alternative version at SC4Devotion, then you can still export standard nitelites (without having to deal with separate MaxisNite or DarkNite versions). @debussyman might be able to share what version he uses and where get downloaded it from.

 

For modding, after you drag and drop the building into the category, you have to enter the filling degree. Stats are based on the size of the building, but it doesn't know how big the building is, only the size of the bounding box of the LODs. The bounding box of the LODs is the yellow box in your image. So to get a filling degree you would estimate what percent of the yellow box your building takes up. For your building I would use maybe 0.3 as the filling degree.

Luckily you don't need to relot the building twice in order to make a growable. If you make a ploppable first, if you right click while in the lot exemplar, there's an option for "Create a similar growable lot from this ploppable" which will automatically make a growable version. I also think that this is something you should take the time to do, like nitelites it only takes a few minutes to do but it makes it a million times better for the people who will be using it.

If you don't plan on providing the typical lots, it would be better to upload your buildings together in a big pack, so that if someone else wants to make lots, it's easier to link to your models as a dependency. Someone has already done this with your other BATs, and you can see how it would be easier if they were in a pack.

 

[debussyman 1,348]

@Jasoncw I use BAT4Max V3.0 with 3ds Max 10 (Still have the files since I don't remembre when). Not sure if it is still aviable somewhere for download, but If anyone needs it, I'd be happy do share it.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Excellent, that's this one:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1992

 

[gutterclub 2,729]

From a personal perspective I really don't understand why people believe European buildings should be scanline..if anything with the intricate details on older buildings then Mental Ray and the latest BAT4MAX make perfect sense. Using MR, your building will look how you want it to, its all down to the materials. Look at the likes of Jason/Nofunk older buildings, many with European style facades, the last thing they look like is 'plastic'. All you need to do is ensure your materials work for Arch and Design and blend with the games pallete. If the argument is that all the other European buildings in the game are Scanline then thats a different story and I understand, however at one point all BATs were once Gmax or Scanline and if we stuck by that mantra we wouldn't have some of the amazing and highly detailed BATs were have these days that blend so well with the games pallete..Look at the Guardian Building for instance, as detailed as any European building or statue and WOW.

After all, European buildings are still made with materials that the rest of the worlds buildings are made from, they aren't from materials found on a different planet.  My selfish request for people uploading Scanline would be to upload the Max file and textures like Xannepan has, purely because I love bringing them into MR for my cities and would love the chance to do so with yours and Debussymans awesome buildings...but like I say, thats me being selfish haha!

Anyway, thats my personal preference. As mentioned by Twrecks, its a hobby and a fine one at that, if you enjoy making them and sharing them please do so, its people like yourself that keep this game going decades after its release. I tip my hat to anyone that goes out their way to contribute anything to the SC4 community. Your buildings so far have been great and I see them in a lot of screenshots and MD's so don't worry about uploading

 

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

13 hours ago, debussyman said:

@Jasoncw I use BAT4Max V3.0 with 3ds Max 10 (Still have the files since I don't remembre when). Not sure if it is still aviable somewhere for download, but If anyone needs it, I'd be happy do share it.

 

11 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

Excellent, that's this one:

https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=1992

 

I use ALN Bat4Max yes.

I think I might add nightlights after all.

The thing is, I don't understand how I render the night version using ALN? I hope one of you might know.
I don't see an option where it says 'Render night version'. Maybe I'm overlooking something.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

6 hours ago, gutterclub said:

From a personal perspective I really don't understand why people believe European buildings should be scanline..if anything with the intricate details on older buildings then Mental Ray and the latest BAT4MAX make perfect sense. Using MR, your building will look how you want it to, its all down to the materials. Look at the likes of Jason/Nofunk older buildings, many with European style facades, the last thing they look like is 'plastic'. All you need to do is ensure your materials work for Arch and Design and blend with the games pallete. If the argument is that all the other European buildings in the game are Scanline then thats a different story and I understand, however at one point all BATs were once Gmax or Scanline and if we stuck by that mantra we wouldn't have some of the amazing and highly detailed BATs were have these days that blend so well with the games pallete..Look at the Guardian Building for instance, as detailed as any European building or statue and WOW.

After all, European buildings are still made with materials that the rest of the worlds buildings are made from, they aren't from materials found on a different planet.  My selfish request for people uploading Scanline would be to upload the Max file and textures like Xannepan has, purely because I love bringing them into MR for my cities and would love the chance to do so with yours and Debussymans awesome buildings...but like I say, thats me being selfish haha!

Anyway, thats my personal preference. As mentioned by Twrecks, its a hobby and a fine one at that, if you enjoy making them and sharing them please do so, its people like yourself that keep this game going decades after its release. I tip my hat to anyone that goes out their way to contribute anything to the SC4 community. Your buildings so far have been great and I see them in a lot of screenshots and MD's so don't worry about uploading

 

Yeah I understand what you mean. But for me it's a bit of a nostalgia thing, kind of like SimCity itself. There might be a new shiny 3D SimCity game out there, but I like the charm of the old SimCity games. It's indeed a preference. I've just always found the Mental Ray buildings (or at least the older buildings) to be cold / plastic looking. I'm sure you could try and counter this through texturing and modelling, but this seems pretty challenging for me. I'm not a Jason or Nofunk after all.

Also, to me it often feels like scanline makes everything look good or at least adequate. With mental ray I feel you really need to keep adjusting textures a lot until it looks good. So scanline suits my laziness, if you will.

[debussyman 1,348]

@Aarsgevogelte It will render the night version automatically if you have nightlights in the scene.

As for Mental Ray, I think exactly the same. It does not fit the style of the game itself, detail is nice, but there is that cartoonish look that gives scanline its "charm". And in MR you have to tweak the textures in order to make it look good of fitting much harder than the tweaking you do in scanline, and even so, the shadow's crispness and tint still give it away.

I just don't find the effort worth it to make something that won't fit with the old W2W BATs at all (As a side note: to me, the ideal style is Porkissimo's late works, perfect balance between "cartoonishness", detail and realism), and in a style I do not find appealing. But again, it is a matter of taste of course, I do see the pros of MR, I just don't like it.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

27 minutes ago, debussyman said:

@Aarsgevogelte It will render the night version automatically if you have nightlights in the scene.

As for Mental Ray, I think exactly the same. It does not fit the style of the game itself, detail is nice, but there is that cartoonish look that gives scanline its "charm". And in MR you have to tweak the textures in order to make it look good of fitting much harder than the tweaking you do in scanline, and even so, the shadow's crispness and tint still give it away.

I just don't find the effort worth it to make something that won't fit with the old W2W BATs at all (As a side note: to me, the ideal style is Porkissimo's late works, perfect balance between "cartoonishness", detail and realism), and in a style I do not find appealing. But again, it is a matter of taste of course, I do see the pros of MR, I just don't like it.

Right, I agree. But what do you mean having nightlights in the scene? I have one light that shines on the facade and I copied some of the windows and illuminated the texture. Does this mean these lights/windows will be automatically rendered into the night version? Does it render once or twice in that case?

If I preview the day version the lights are still illuminated. I'm sorry if I don't quite get it.

[debussyman 1,348]

Ah, you have to name each of your lights with the prefix "nitelite"

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

1 hour ago, debussyman said:

Ah, you have to name each of your lights with the prefix "nitelite"

Do you mean the names of the (illuminated) materials, the lights in the scene or the window objects?

When I add nitelite to the window object names I get this error:

I'm sorry if I keep asking you things btw, but people want nightlights so I'm trying to make it work.

I use 3ds Max 2013 though, but I get the same error in 2010.

[debussyman 1,348]

Add the prefix to the the lights themselves in the scene. Example: niteliteomni01

In gmax (and maybe earlier versions of BAT4Max), adding the prefix nitelite to geometry would give them the maxis night window texture, but it does not work anymore.

Edit: I don't know if newer versions of max use nightlight materials, I have the impression that they do, but I am not sure if it is possible in V3.0. I have never used them myself. I use actual lights for everything at night.

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

28 minutes ago, debussyman said:

Add the prefix to the the lights themselves in the scene. Example: niteliteomni01

In gmax (and maybe earlier versions of BAT4Max), adding the prefix nitelite to geometry would give them the maxis night window texture, but it does not work anymore.

Ah yes, now it works. The include/exlude is a great technique. Thanks for the suggestion. This is what I ended up with.

[Barroco Hispano 26,695]

Personally, I don't think BATs rendered with mental ray look plastic. The only problem I see with mental ray is that the metals look horrible and it doesn't support metalness/roughness workflow.

Here is a battleship that I exported yesterday using mental ray (OPEN THE IMAGE IN A NEW TAB TO SEE IT IN FULL RESOLUTION).

[Aarsgevogelte 1,235]

These are the buildings that I've created recently  (that I haven't uploaded).

But the problem that keeps occuring is the nightlights. I have already mentioned this countless of times, but I don't care much for nightlights and I find it a waste of time. Like, for example, today I added nightlights to the eagle star building and it took quite a lot of time, also because the 3ds max project is really slow. I rendered it, wasn't satisfied with how the nightlights looked in-game, so had to go back again, re-render it (which takes like 40 min). Nightlights isn't just adding a few lights here and there, you have to make sure it looks right and it has to look right from different angles. And maybe I'm also not as dedicated as some people on here.

I'm afraid that if I keep adding nightlights to my buildings, at a certain point I will get burnt out and just say: F this. The thing is that creating these buildings is already quite a lot of work. I tried adding nightlights (the ones that I've uploaded recently), but I don't think I will continue to do so.

So this means that I'm not sure if I should upload these buildings, given that most people do want nightlighs (I think?). But otherwise these models will just be sitting on my hard drive. I'm just not sure how to proceed from here.

[Bobelboy 435]

I would say that these buildings must not just sit on your hard drive - they should be released. I really appreciate your work, especially when doing nightlights seems to annoy you. I'd download your buildings with or without, although I'd prefer to see nightlights. Maybe a compromise would be to add nightlights only to bigger buildings that would be located in a more urban and lively area. Nightlights probably also make sense for a hotel building, as there would be guests in the evening ...  Very nice models btw!

[debussyman 1,348]

So far, I think all your recent upload's nightlights look spot on. Sure, making them perfect is laborious, but in general worth it, even if you don't use them offten.

Maybe in the future you'll catch a glimpse of one of your models looking great at night in a CJ and feel at least a bit proud of the effort.

[11241036 5,097]

I just happened to stumble upon this thread. Truly these buildings are really great, a highly appreciated addition to my old town collection. And I personally don't care about nightlighting; please don't let that prevent you from uploading them.

[gutterclub 2,729]

I think we have had too many amazing projects that were left sitting on peoples hard drives never to be released (see Ones that never made it to the STEX thread) because the owner didn't like a certain material, or one of the night lights were wrong. I understand the strive for perfection, especially back in the BAT hey day of 2010-2015 when everyone was trying to out do each other..but as time goes by and we see less and less being released my opinion is that if you have anything for the community then release it. 

You can always go back and add things to a release, such as night lights to v2 etc down the track.

[justforfun 7,802]

@Aarsgevogelte My friend, by all means please do upload these gems. If you don't have time to add nightlights now, you can always add them at a later date. I for one never play at night and would positively love your buildings as they are. My city needs *exactly* that kind of beautiful grand corners. So please, let my sims enjoy them one way or another!