Urban Vibravant's BAT Lounge

[Urban Vibravant 810]

I thought I should show you guys my progress. 340 on the Park, Chicago!

Feel free to constructively criticize and make suggestions. Obviously I'm not done and there are a bunch of things I see that needs correcting.

What I DO want to know is what you guys think about the glass color/reflections/bump. I think it's pretty good but not quite sure..

Also since this building was constructed in 2007 and it isn't any sort of icon, it's pretty hard to find good, up close pictures of areas that can't be seen from google maps street view.

 

[watercitymadero 805]

wow

[korver 27,685]

Looks like you're off to a fantastic start

[Bipin 3,403]

*claps aggressively*

[Jasoncw 11,946]

ah! Great start! 

About the glass I'll just make some bullet points. 

- The ground texture should be a sharp image, and the glass itself should have a glossiness of 1.0. Otherwise the glass can look like plastic.

- The interior plays a huge role in how the glass looks. You should find some floor plans and model the apartment's floor plans. You should also think about maybe giving the walls and floors different colors to give the best approximation of the appearance of the interior. The ideal of course is to completely model everything including furniture but that's not practical. I actually wouldn't worry about the ground plane, and I might even hide it, until after you get the interior more sorted out. And of course the glass itself is ironically the easiest part to do.  

- There's also a method that I use where I don't make the glass completely transparent, and where I give it a glass texture that you would normally give to opaque glass. A texture that has the kind of variation in it that, when overlayed onto the interior makes it feel like the interior is a bit more natural and less fake looking.

- It looks like your interior is super dark looking right now.

It's looking great!! 

 

[Urban Vibravant 810]

Thanks everyone!

@Jasoncw I'll see what I can do about the ground plane (currently using a 4,000 x 4,000 pixel image) after interior is done.

Yes I was planning on doing the interior just as you said, so I'm on the right track there!

Great idea for making the windows more busy, and realistic. Is there a recommended image/texture I can use or search to put on the glass? and what transparency level should I use?

Thanks!  

 

[art128 4,622]

Wow, you're off the a great start. Looking forward to more of this and future works.

[Girafe 1,729]

Good job,

Indeed refraction color is a little bit too dark.

I would suggest to have 3 different textures for the blinds applied randomly (light grey with different level of opacity). maybe as well increasing the gap between blinds and windows

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,198]

You are off to a great start.

Residential building from the 90's to present time are really needed. I'm glad you are making some of them.

[weixc812 509]

Great BAT! Can't wait to see more pics and of course more angle views

Btw, you're taking the flag of Chicago BAT Team I suppose. There're still lots of buildings to discover!

[Harry's Place 918]

what a start

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

On 6.5.2016 at 4:45 AM, Jasoncw said:

It's looking great!! 

Telling you, it's black carpet!

About the blinds: This is propably a condo building. So keep in mind that the main difference between residential and office buildings are the size of the rooms/suites. While in office building, usually a whole bunch, sometimes even an etire side of the windows have one room behind them, a residential building has several rooms each unit, and one room usually has no more than 2 windows. So check that you set the blinds for most of the windows individually. 

Also (even if this might be a bit too realistic), the building is quite new and I don't think it's wholly occupied yet. So there might be some floors that remain empty or dark at night (this is something many people forget in general. In both, residential and office buildings, there are usually still floors or suites left for rent so there might be some floors remaining dark or simply without any interiors).

[Urban Vibravant 810]

@Jasoncw I've done some of the interior floors and walls (Mainly on the slanted windows side) and sharpened the ground texture. It does look better.

@Girafe I gave the blinds some texture with random shades and moved them away from the windows a bit.

@Toothless Stitch The main reason I have the blinds set like this is because that's how the building looks IRL. 
I know the differences when it comes to detail between residential and commercial. But like I said I'm going with what it really looks like. Maybe I'll adjust a few floors. You're correct about the night lights. From the night pictures I've seen, very few condos are lit up.

I'm currently working on the white siding so ignore the unfinished parts.

I lightened up the interior and changed the glass color a bit. It might be a little too blue but I'll let you guys make suggestions about that.

Rendered South and East faces.   How could I upload the picture for a larger and closer view so you can see more detail? Thanks guys!

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Interiors certainly do look better now. Not a fan of you ground plane though. On the sloped walls the effect doesn't really look good, it looks like it's standing in the middle of an industrial/low commercial park surrounded by 1-floor buildings.

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

Agree with Stitch there. I believe some patches of grass should be enough to get by, no trees or bushes needed. Also, fantastic BAT!

[T Wrecks 10,210]

@ __B: Uhm...wait. As far as I understood Toothless Stitch, he was talking about the (invisible) ground plane that's used to give the windows something to reflect. You are talking about the base of the building, right?

As far as the ground plane is concerned, I tend to agree - the reflection looks rather repetitive on that angled section, and maybe a tad too brownish in places. I imagine that such a building would be situated in a dense urban environment, so you'd probably see more neutral greyish tones. The repetitive look bothers me more, though.

It's still an amazing first BAT, and the progress compared to the first screenshot is superb.

 

[Thin White Duke 4,072]

I was, yes. Let me say though, the base of the building is looking too clean and sterile in my opinion, and some patches of grass would help. I think I confused myself more than anyone there. Sorry, guys. 

[Jasoncw 11,946]

The best luck I've had for ground planes have actually been screenshots from the game itself. 

 

For the panels... you might not be able to do this depending on how you've modeled it and how the curved parts are... but what I've been doing for panels is using materials to make them for me.

First I model in the panel lines. So that all of the faces correspond to panels.

Then I make a Composite material.

The Base Material is the material itself, whether it's metal or stone. Because all of the panels are modeled individually you can randomize their material ID, and then use a Multi/Sub-Map in your material to automatically create variation between the panels. 

Mat. 1 for the Composite material is a Standard material set to Wire mode. This basically automatically adds in the panel lines according to where you modeled them. 

The only downside to this method is that your geometry needs to correspond exactly to where you want your panel lines to be. When this is the case what I do is I actually model the panel lines in and give them a separate black material. And then for the panels themselves I give them the same material that the rest of them get, minus the Wire material, so that it's still easy to get the randomized panels. 

I've used this method for pretty much all of my BATs that needed fitted panel lines since 2013 and it works like a charm. 

[Urban Vibravant 810]

@Toothless Stitch and @T Wrecks The rendering is just to get an idea about what you guys meant. I agree it looked slumish so hopefully this looks better, which I think it does. There's still a few things I'd like to correct which I've shown on the right.

@__B If you're talking about the base of the building as far as modelling an texturing goes, I haven't got to it yet. Of course there is still a lot to be done there lol

@Jasoncw Great method for making panels! Believe me, I thought about all ways I could do it and decided to go with normal texturing with a few modeled "Wires." Once I'm done with the backside panels I'll upload a rendering. 

What I've got.

What I'll correct.

A1: Getting rid of these "holes"

A2: These 3 floors seems to be a bit darker than the rest. Will probably give those interior floors lighter textures and/or lower some of the blinds.

I don't know if it's necessary, but I might move and change the whiter reflections at the top because it looks a bit striped.

 

Thanks for all of your help guys! 

[Aaron Graham 4,417]

I love it!!!

[Urban Vibravant 810]

A little update for the corrections on my previous post and I also textured the balconies. Let me know what you guys think! 

After I'm finished with the white panels, I'll upload all 4 views.

[T Wrecks 10,210]

The building was great to begin with, but this latest stage is entirely freaking awesome, on par with the work of some of the best BAT artists ST has ever seen.

[philforhockey51 4,220]

It looks great, I also appreciate that you are taking your time with it and improving it instead of rushing to release. Great work.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Thanks T Wrecks

I gotta say I knida like the "dark holes". Again, a building doesn't necessarily have to have occupied condos everywhere, some are left vacant, some sections of the building might even be unused or only for technical purposes. Don't take away the variety on windows, especially not if windows make up most of the building.

Btw, it might help to have at least most of the facade textured, including the back faces of the other side. That greyish tone tends to give you a wrong idea when first looking at it, it's a bit annoying for your eyes. A little test texture, maybe even only a plain color close to the original hue, might cover it.

Anyway, as far your first building, I'd say it'll be a success.

Hats off

[Urban Vibravant 810]

@T Wrecks Thank you! That means alot. 

@philforhockey51 Yep! Quality over quantity is what I live by. I'd rather have 3, well done BATs than 10 "ok" BATs. Patience is what alot of BATers lack imo.

@Toothless Stitch Maybe the bottom "hole" could've stayed, but I definitely thought the top one was grabbing all the attention up there on the slant. I don't know much about the rules or "hygiene" of real estate, but I read somewhere that they keep vacant condos' blinds down. Maybe so people can't look in, or so the sun doesn't bleach the wooden floors. As you can see the blinds that cover the whole condo is made to look vacant. To put it in another perspective, the condos with blinds rolled up and partly rolled up give off a vibe that something is going on inside. Blinds all the way down covering the whole condo looks like nothing is happening, and makes people only assume it's vacant.

I've got the white panels done on every side and I'm currently finishing up the back patio textures. I should have all 4 views rendered and uploaded by later today or tomorrow. 

 

[Girafe 1,729]

looks good.

I know that I advised you to increase the grey tones to give contrast for the blind, but now it s slighlty too contrasted IMHO. Just reduce it slightly

Transparency of the glass is quite high compared to the real life building. I would propose to check the refraction color option (color that you define after penetrating the glass which can be tweaked according to the distance of penetration - light navy blue color). In fact you just have to define the color and then to play with the distance to make it lighter / stronger

 

 

[Urban Vibravant 810]

@Girafe Even though it's more like the real thing, it doesn't always look good in the game. I personally don't like it this blue, but I do agree the color on the last image I posted should be a bit more saturated. Lowering the transparency makes it more accurate I guess, but it darkens the interior, which is what I was trying to avoid. My last post transparency was set at .92, this is .8.

Btw this is not permanent, I can return it to the normal color and adjust it again.  

[Girafe 1,729]

I think you are in the right way. With glass, tweaking a setting even 0.1 can change a lot of things. Therefore there is no other solution to do some tests.

I am disturbed by the lower part of the building, are you sure the glass material is the same? and that you have only 1 single shape for the glass
Because I fail to understand these black areas knowing the same orientation of the facade.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

If you want darker blue, you should change you ground map. It appears to have a rather whitish-light tone. That works as long as the blue is light as well. When you tweak it and make it darker, the light parts of your ground map don't really blend with your windows, causing the effect to go into the wrong direction. Instead, it rather looks like that stuff was painted on the windows.

[Urban Vibravant 810]

@Girafe Yes every glass window has the same material and color. The reason the bottom section has darker areas is because I've only applied interior floor textures to that area, the top part doesn't have any floor textures done yet, they're still that whitish/grey color which brightens it all up. 

@Toothless Stitch The only solution to that is to make the reflective color a light blue and/or lower the reflectivity.

Guys thank you so much for your help! With the glass, this is what I'm aiming for:

1) More saturated color to look like the real thing, but not too much that looks cartoonish.

2) High enough transparency to see in clearly, but low enough to look like the real thing.

3) Make sure the ground plane fits well with the reflection and color, but also doesn't make the interior too dark.

There's going to be a point where I will be as close to the real thing as 3ds Max will let me. CGI has come far, but no matter how hard I try, it will never look exactly like the real thing. So I will keep playing around with it (keep in mind it takes 30 minutes of rendering every time I want to do a test) but eventually you guys (I hope) will say "leave it alone, it's good."