Ankh Neter Project

[Ankh Neter 5]

Hello all,

I just thought I would share what I have been working on.  I know there was another one on the workshop, but it is broken.  I decided to re-create it from scratch.

Spheroid water towers are really quite common in the US, so I felt this was a must-have.  Below are some screen previews.  

[Judazzz 1,936]

Hey man, welcome to Simtropolis! 
Your water tower is looking good so far (as a non-American, are they really that huge?), can't wait to see some texture work on it!

[Ankh Neter 5]

Thank you sir.  I was hoping for some feedback with this being my first asset, it's been quite a struggle to get this exact.  (should have started with a simple house, less curves to deal with )  

I looked at several reference photos to try and get the height correct and decided on 100 meters.  In game that is about the same height at the wind turbines.  I might have to look around online to see if I can find what the true measurements are on these things.  Including some reference photos.

[Judazzz 1,936]

Like I said, I'm not American, so perhaps I was way off the mark with my comments about the size. I checked some photo's on Google, but it's pretty hard to tell the size because most photo's lack a objects to use as a reference point to go by. But based on what I've found I'd say somewhere within a 30-60 meter range (which still is massive, easily topping surrounding trees, and visible from many miles away - especially when located on flat plains) may be more realistic, but please only take that as a suggestion  

[Ankh Neter 5]

Thanks for the input, I'm open to any criticism or ideas. I too have had a hard time finding photos to judge the size so the scale was more of a guess.  After doing some more digging, I found some hard numbers, and you are correct.  I think I'll scale the body to get it around the 50 meter height range.  I would rather have something in a realistic scale range than something that ends up looking out of place because it looms over the landscape.

[Darf 1,439]

If you want to be really accurate, you flatten the upper part of the sphere a bit and the base is a bit bigger. Also some grime and dirt texture wise and a bit of specular will do wonders. It also looks quite tris heavy, you could reduce tris a bit I think. Off too a good start though. 

[Ankh Neter 5]

Thanks Darf, I plan on getting it grimed up.  Specular has been giving me an issue, creating artifacts making it look pixelated in the shadows.  Not sure if that's because of the curves and the engine doesn't know what to do.  Still trying to work that out.  I'm probably doing something wrong.  As tris goes, it is currently sitting at 5052.    I haven't gone through cleaning up some of the unnecessary extra faces.

[Matthias King 348]

There's one of these where I live, very similar to the one you're making, and I can confirm that they're enormous.

They often have the town/city name on the top, as shown in your picture, and also might have something on the lower part, near the ground. The one here has the logo of the high school sports team painted on it, with a ground-mounted light shining on it at night.

[Ankh Neter 5]

I've re-scaled the body in half and seems to look much more in scale.  (thanks Judazzz)  Went into 1st person and the 100 meter is definitely a monster.  Big duh on my part for not looking at it this way sooner.  #newbie

@Matthias, I had thought about doing just that, adding decals, but decided to make it a generic as possible.  

Sorry for all the WIP pics.  I would rather have community input before releasing something to try and prevent having to do a bunch of fixes after the fact. Thanks everyone, it's much appreciated.

[Matthias King 348]

It would be awesome if there was some way to customize it ourselves, in the same way GCVos has enabled people to create their own billboards. If we could somehow add our own graphics to the water tower. Whatever your town name, you could put it on, or whatever.

I don't know how big you made the new version, but the one in my town is around 120 feet tall, if that's any help.

[Ankh Neter 5]

Exactly what I was thinking.  As for height, it is at 150ft or 50m.  Its a bit on the taller side of these types after looking at some of the companies that actually build them.  Although there are some running around 190ft.  I think that is a good middle ground when looking at it in game.  Actually, I found some blueprints from one of the companies.  I may use that as a projection template.

[Matthias King 348]

Sounds like a plan. Good luck and I look forward to seeing it hit the workshop.

[boldlybuilding 873]

The main water tower in my town is 55 meters:

This other tower in my town I pegged at about 45 meters:

And for fun, here's the Gaffney Peachoid from House of Cards at 41 meters:

[Judazzz 1,936]

The height looks much better now, more in line with the scale of the game (which is a bit dodgy, admittedly).
The only thing I perhaps would change, something Darf also suggested, is to make the top section a bit more pear-/alien head-shaped by compressing the top side of the 'bulb' and stretching the lower section.
A little bit something like this:


Other than that: lookin' mighty fine to me!

[Ankh Neter 5]

That's a great profile pic of a tower.  I'm going to tweak the head as suggested and use the design prints that I found online from one of the companies that build these to use it as a projection to get the proportions right.  Should be pretty easy with this.  I'm learning more about water towers than I ever wanted to.  

 

 

[Judazzz 1,936]

1 hour ago, Ankh Neter said:

I'm learning more about water towers than I ever wanted to.  

Lol, that really cracked me up