First BAT From Queensland

[daderic888 216]

G'day there!

I am now in the process of creating my first of many BATs using GMAX.

This is a mid-rise residential block of units of 6 floors on Queensland's Gold Coast.

Thanks heaps for all of the advice so far. I have been referring to the BAT Essentials and I will catch up on any other tutorials.

I made each floor 3 metres in height and the splines are extruded by 0.3 metres. So far, I grouped all of the completed walls in case I need to move them for some reason. I'm thinking of, when scaling the whole thing to fit in with the visuals in SimCity 4 Deluxe, it won't look like a dwarf (I hope that it will work out).

I made the doors red and windows blue so that I know what is what. I did create a standard primitive (shown as dark green).

All of the dimensions are pure and utter guesses as the Google Earth Pro way of gathering dimensions doesn't seem to work on my laptop and desktop for some bizarre reason. I used metres as the unit of measurement.

Please feel free to give some much appreciated advice, it would be pretty helpful.

 

[Silur 3,309]

Very well. Waiting more. This is very attractive !

[JP Schriefer 5,591]

It's looking good so far.

When you finish the model don't forget to centralize it at the axis before export.

[daderic888 216]

Thanks guys.

Yep will do thanks mate.

[rsc204 21,869]

I'd say 3m per floor is pretty small, I tend to go for around 4m, with 4.5m min for the ground floor. That said, I don't rescale my models afterwards, but work with the extra 33% from the get go.

Otherwise it's good to see you are finally getting the hang of using SC4BAT, keep it going .

[Socold 120]

I would say 3m per floor is fairly typical of Australia and that style of construction. 2.4m ceiling height, 100-200mm services and ducting, slab section could be anywhere from 100mm-500mm depending on placement of internal walls.  

[daderic888 216]

I'm back.

I had to redo one of the front walls, the right wall and standard primitive at the front as they looked out of proportion. The front wall with the two sets of balcony doors had to be redone as I saw a property for sale showing one of the units and the doors were not partitioned off and I made them one whole set of double doors instead.

Now I have done a couple of the left walls (including part of the stairwell).

That's most of the front half done. Now for the back half.

[madhatter106 3,933]

I would suggest approaching this BAT a bit differently than the way one would do it in the phillipbo tutorial.  At least for starters.

Instead of modeling each individual wall as its own spline at first, the way the tutorial describes, my first suggestion would be to find the general overall shape of the building and how the massings interact.  That is to say, figure out what the building would look like "in ground plan" (ie. from above) and then figuring out how tall it would be, and then figuring out how those balconies and twists and turns and angles are affected by the preview zoom.

I say this because looking at the source photos, I am going to guess that if you model those balconies as deep as they are, the overhangs from them are going to cut off or eclipse a very good portion of the doors/windows/walls that are underneath and inset from them - that is to say, all the work you are doing now will most likely not be seen, or you won't see very much, maybe the bottom 20% of them.  I find that any substantial overhang is enough to eclipse a vast majority of what is underneath it when you look in the preview (which, let's face it, will be the "reality" in SC4).  And if you can't see it in any of the preview renders, you won't see it in game.

I would figure out the wall lengths and widths, then try to create a single spline for what you are doing now in the top view of gmax.  Then extrude it to the proper height, and then create a balcony spline in the top view, then extrude that to the proper height, and then array the balcony spline, just to see how much (or little) of those interior balcony windows and doors you might see.  It might end up being a case of vastly shortening the depth of the balconies, because they might cut off too much of those walls; I have done something similar in my movie theater BATs - I had to "cheat" the marquees either higher or narrower, so that they wouldn't completely eclipse the front entrances.

The benefit of creating the basic plan of the building in a single spline to figure out the dimensions is that you can move and modify and push and pull vertices and segments to get the desired effect, without having to redo multiple splines; for example, if you realize (or decide) that a wall is too short in the beginning stages, you can just select that segment and move it accordingly.  If each wall is an individual spline, you would have to adjust multiple splines to do this - shortening one, lengthening another, etc.  as they are all interconnected and related.  It's like one big movable object that can be manipulated, rather than a set of objects.  Then, once you know that your dimensions are good and that it will look right (or "good" because "right" and "good" may be mutually exclusive) in the preview, then you could break it down into individual splines, just like the tutorial describes.

As for me, I'd do what I described, but keep it as a single big extruded spline; then convert it to an editable poly, then carve it up with the slice plane to get my window and door recesses.  I would keep the balconies as separate objects, arrayed to the proper incremental height.

[Silur 3,309]

This is a very interesting building. It somehow reminded me of the hotel from the southern sea coast of Vietnam.

But it was a long time

[daderic888 216]

Thanks madhatter106,

I remember reading up on something like that a fair while back, but I'm not 100% on it.

Would I extrude it in the top view?

 

[madhatter106 3,933]

If you create the spline in the top view, when you go to extrude it, it will be upwards (that is to say, along the Z axis).  You are already doing the converse in the front/side views with your walls - just imagine you are creating a "roof" in the top view in the building's shape (which you ultimately will have to do anyway), but just extrude said roof spline to the height of the building, add your balconies separately, and then see how the massings interrelate.  Then push and pull and tweak and modify to get the desired effect.  You would be working from general (the shape of the building in total) to specific (whether this wall is shorter than that wall, and how much the wall next to it sticks out.)  Something I learned in college long ago - when Leonardo DaVinci sits down to paint the Mona Lisa, he doesn't start out by painting eyelashes, he figures out where she is on the canvas first, heheheheh.

Here's another bit of advice that may come in handy for this BAT in particular, but I would also recommend to BATters in general - don't be a "slave to the measured reality."  That is to say, if you create a building exactly from real life in gmax (or max, for that matter) and it doesn't look quite right (or as good) in the preview render, you have the liberty to tweak it and refine it and cheat it a little to get it to look better.  I make reference to the marquees for my theaters in my earlier post - there is no way that some of those marquees would be so shallow or narrow, or sit so high up the front façade in relation to the doors underneath them.  But without cheating or modifying them in gmax, they wouldn't look as good, regardless of their lack of reality. 

We're "stuck" with the perspective angle that SC4 boxes us into for playing the game, so you have to model to that angle's strengths and compensate for that angle's weaknesses.  If this means that a recreation is not exactly 100% accurate, then so be it; if it doesn't look right, or good, in-game, there's nothing wrong with modifying it to maintain the spirit of what you're doing so that it looks great when it's grown or plopped.

[daderic888 216]

Ah ok thanks madhatter106.

Should I create the spline in the top view as one whole line in accordance with the building's shape, extrude that to the desired height? After that, would I continue as per phillipbo's tutorial to create the doors and windows?

When it comes to creating the balconies as splines in the top view and extruding it, as the balconies are curved at the corners and there are small curved balconies at the back of the building, and changing the splines to either editable splines/polys, would it allow me to curve the corners and the balconies?

There are a stack of buildings in my project that have curved balconies which makes the buildings look very swanky/trendy/upmarket.

A few of my planned buildings have trimmings on the outside of the balconies that form some sort of pattern on the outside edges when, seen from a short distance away, are pretty eye catching.

Also, a couple of parts of this building are slightly higher than the base shape of the building itself and curved at the outside corners, would you recommend that I create separate splines and extrude those parts to the desired height which would obviously be higher?

[madhatter106 3,933]

On ‎4‎/‎28‎/‎2017 at 5:49 PM, daderic888 said:

Ah ok thanks madhatter106.

Should I create the spline in the top view as one whole line in accordance with the building's shape, extrude that to the desired height? After that, would I continue as per phillipbo's tutorial to create the doors and windows?

When it comes to creating the balconies as splines in the top view and extruding it, as the balconies are curved at the corners and there are small curved balconies at the back of the building, and changing the splines to either editable splines/polys, would it allow me to curve the corners and the balconies?

There are a stack of buildings in my project that have curved balconies which makes the buildings look very swanky/trendy/upmarket.

A few of my planned buildings have trimmings on the outside of the balconies that form some sort of pattern on the outside edges when, seen from a short distance away, are pretty eye catching.

Also, a couple of parts of this building are slightly higher than the base shape of the building itself and curved at the outside corners, would you recommend that I create separate splines and extrude those parts to the desired height which would obviously be higher?

What I'm saying is that you would create a "dummy shape" of the building; from there, you can figure out what the proportions for each wall segment are.  Then you can go ahead and make individual walls with windows (as per the phillipbo tutorial) using the measurements and dimensions from the dummy shape. 

The approach you are using right now, it's going to make modifications and refinements very tedious.  If one wall is too narrow or too wide, you are going to have to mess with multiple splines in order to fix it, because narrowing or widening one wall means you will be affecting the other walls around it.

Regarding the balconies, you can create them as splines with the curves before extruding.  It just takes creating multiple splines, joining them, a bit of welding of vertices, etc. 

I must say (and this is not to denigrate your abilities or enthusiasm), this is a very complex building to be making for a first BAT - especially since you are also learning the ins and outs of the program (gmax) on top of it.  My advice that I always give first time BATters is to start with something small, so you can learn the program and learn the workflow, and figure out the problems and pitfalls and benefits and shortcuts of doing things certain ways.  I wouldn't want to dissuade you from attempting this building, but there's a lot of work in this one; when I first saw the picture, it took me several minutes to figure out everything that's going on there, and how I would break it down in my approach to BAT it.  However, you are off to a good start; my take is that utilizing the approach that the phillipbo tutorial describes will mean that when you start looking at it in preview renders (which, let's face it, are the only thing that really matters in the long run, because those show us what it will look like in-game) and start tweaking things, it will be much more laborious.

[daderic888 216]

Ah ok.

No worries there. I'll keep going with this building.

It's been a while since last posting and batting and I'm about to get back into it.

Another question. Regarding the curved walls, I've been reading up and it appears there are several ways to achieve it. The way I will most likely go is to create a cylinder, extrude inwards, edit the poly and "slice" it somehow (?)

Which way did everyone find easier to create curved walls?