Crownsteler tries BATing... Again...

[crownsteler 31]

So a few years ago I had a go at bating. Unfortunately due to computer issues I never got around to finishing any of them, and long since lost the files. A bit of a shame really; I was nearly done modeling these two sets of buildings, all they really needed were nightlites and some desaturating of the textures. Oh well. 

Last weekend, for some odd reason, I decided to reinstall SimCity 4 and play it. But, after downloading a ton of new content, I found I still couldn't make the cities I wanted (mostly modern urban Dutch). The first thing that bothered me was the lack of varied in utilities, specifically pumping stations. So I looked up some modern pumping stations here in the Netherlands, and, the idiot that I am, downloaded gmax to see if I could make something of it:

The first one I had a go at was a largish sewage pumping station:

Unfortunately this is the material it is made out of, and I am not quite sure how to texture this. I have half a mind of simply modelling the panels instead of texturing it.

In the mean time I decided to model another pumping station, a small drainage pump this time:

It has the same issue with texturing, so oh well.

While looking through pumping stations here in the Netherlands, I came across this little thingy and decided it also really needed modelling (for a change it is an actual ground water pumping station!):

It is actually coming along quite nicely. I just need to finish the doors, add the rain gutter and some roof junk. I possibly need to figure out how to model a few pumps to fill the large frontal roof if the windows are going to be transparant (ugh...)

At the same time I was really annoyed by the power utilities in the game. So yeah...

I came across this funky little substation, and since it takes no effort to model had a go at it:

Not sure if there is interest in this sort of thing though.

I also created this substation (could also work as an industrial lot). I want to make it a wall to wall lot, but, as the roof is overhanging to the sides, I don't know how to go about it.

And, if I ever feel confident enough to do so, I'd love to have a go at this power plant. The turbine halls are simple enough, but the chimney seems daunting.

 

Anyway; thoughts and suggestions? Compliments or hate is also welcome. Oh, and IrfanView apparently does not like transparency. I hope you can ignore the black outlines on the images, they are not supposed to be there.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Your modeling looks good.

For some reason the renders look fuzzy to me? 

[crownsteler 31]

I am no good at texturing, so I just model all the details rather than trying to texture them in  

As for the quality: I am using Gmax, and not 3DSMax. So it could be that the Gmax bating tool gives poor results. It could also be that IrfanView messes things up when I try to save the image. Using GIMP is slightly better I guess:

[CT14 2,486]

It's looking good! Hopefully these bats will be rendered in HD to show all those details you are modeling.

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

1 hour ago, Jasoncw said:

For some reason the renders look fuzzy to me? 

he's using a Transperent background

[T Wrecks 10,209]

That's some great modeling there, and for my part, there's definitely interest in infrastructure buildings such as water pumps - it's an often overlooked niche, in fact.

[crownsteler 31]

I think I am done building the model (a.k.a. throwing boxes together in pleasing shapes):

Thoughts and suggestions?

Btw; a question about the scaling: I made the main pumping hall 11 meters tall, and the rear building 8 meters for 2 floors. That is okey right? (Assuming orignal floor height of 3 meters and 133% scaling.)

 

And thanks for the compliments on the modeling. Just don't expect too much. It is just extruding and primitive shaping things together in an aesthetically pleasing way. I am quite sure a real modeller would have a heart attack seeing the state of the model. I am just glad that our Dutch architecture is so simple and boxy. ^^

[Silur 3,297]

You have a good model! I Wish You Success. I like it. 

And I love the Netherlands since childhood... 

[mattb325 28,878]

These are looking great, and are a much needed addition!

Even though the maths on the 133% is correct, 4m per floor may be a little small - especially on low-rises. Most batters tend to use 4.5m - 4.8m at this level of building.

Now, I've been shot down so many times before on the issue of scale and especially because I dare to give out an actual number rather than just saying 133% , but here goes again....when maxis supplied the bat, it came with a little one-story house.

It is usually plonked in the location "gmax\gamepacks\BAT\sample model". If you look at it you'll see that the floor to the gutter is roughly 4m high - then, looking at similar single story Maxis houses in game (low and some mid-wealth), you'll see how small and underscaled they can be even when compared to other Maxis buildings (which vary in scale depending on which Maxis team member batted which building/buildings).

Bear in mind that 0.1m = 1 pixel so we aren't talking huge differences, but it is enough to stop it from appearing too small.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Yeah I'm guessing the fuzzyness is from IrfanView. 

Luckily this is a small building and the wikipedia page has good photos. If you want to know the dimensions of things you can count the number of bricks. 

The short part of the building is about 105 bricks tall, but I might have miscounted. I don't know how big bricks are in the Netherlands but if they're the same size as American ones (which I don't think they are), then the building is 7.1 meters. 

I also have a tutorial in my thread (in my signature) named something like "deriving dimensions" where you can get pretty close dimensions using google earth and a good straight on photo. 

[crownsteler 31]

Good tutorial there @Jasoncw, I have some reading to do it seems.

I measured the building's footprint using Google Earth, and based the window sizes on the concrete frame I could measure as well (assuming that, since all windows are the same style, they also have the same dimensions). I estimated the building at 3 meters per floor based on the fact that regulatory floor height was 2.40 (or 2.30) until the 90s. then assuming a 30cm concrete floor and perhaps some space for installations, and 3 meters seems fine. Dutch brick sizes vary wildly, so without knowing the specific type of brick used, so no useful information can be gained from counting brick here.

Anyway, I just thought I'd export it to see how it would scale in game. But then this happened:

Which is weird, as when I create a preview it looks just fine.

I tried the other technique of pasting the preview into a screenshot, but ran into this problem:

The scaling is off. I guess this is due to me running SC4 in a different resolution than I run windows. But anyway that doesn't help me either. Lastly I tried my hand at texturing it (as you can see). I don't think I am there yet...

[CT14 2,486]

For the problem in the first picture, double check LODs to make sure they cover the model and are not out of bounds below Z=0. Use the automatic rebuild if there were no custom LOD.

The textures look good so far, maybe decrease opacity of the windows a bit? I would also guess that those roof vents occupy a disproportionately large number of pixels at low zooms due to their brightness; modifying the texture, using a different texture or decreasing the output curve on that map may help.

[madhatter106 3,903]

Yeah looks like it will need a re-render.  But I would suggest tweaking the textures a little before you do - perhaps some less "noise" in the rooftop texture.  As compared to a lot of the other buildings in the screenshot test, it looks very noisy.  If you're making textures in Photoshop, it might be just a matter of reducing the contrast or applying a blur filter to it.  I would also darken the white/light texture for the rooftop "buttons" and vents - if it's gmax, the lighting rig has a tendency to really wash out anything sitting horizontally underneath it, so those white buttons are showing up extremely white.  Light to medium gray would do fine, and then you can avoid this.  As mentioned previously, the windows are looking like black holes.

[crownsteler 31]

I am at a complete loss. I inspected the model and noticed that indeed a small bit of it was sticking out below grond level. I fixed this and reexported it, but problem remains. I then tried reexporting with the lods raised a tiny bit above ground level, and that didn't work either. So I am not sure what else I should be doing. 

@madhatter106 , I took your advice on the roof texture, and I think it looks a lot better now. The windows look terrible because I hadn't made a window texture yet. ;P I am not quite sure how to proceed there, so for this render I just used the standard Maxis window texture as a place holder.

I noticed a problem with the brick texture on the side of the main hall:

While it isn't absolutely terrible, as it kinda fits with the brick texture, it might be something I need to fix. I had the same issue the last time I tried batting. I believe it is caused by mirroring objects?

And since I can't continue until I fix the render issue with this model, I decided to create the basic model for a building which was on my list anyway (it is not textured):

It is an warehouse with offices on top. The office are concrete raised on wooden slats, and could look damn awesome with nightlites. It doesn't fit very well with Maxis industry though. And I might have to scale it down vertically a little bit.

[madhatter106 3,903]

I find that the Maxis window texture is passably fine; you just need to adjust the UVW maps so that you only see part of it, so it looks less chunky/cubey.

I wonder if the render issue has anything to do with the texture ID conflict; do you have that fix applied?  Though since the render isn't erroneously showing portions of standard Maxis buildings, it might not be the case, but it's something that should be fixed or applied if it hasn't already been.

[crownsteler 31]

Thanks for pointing me to that fix. I don't think it was the problem, but it is good to have.

 

Anyway, I decided to make the move to 3ds Max 2015 (so now I am once again a student ) It hasn't been smooth sailing though; it took some time to find a way to import my models into Max and Max is really acting up. When I try to export my model, everything works fine until it needs to insert the rendered files into the .sc4model file. It seems to be unable to open it:

Spoiler

Don't know why. The file is not 'read only'.

Anyway; I then decided to try to insert them using the ilive reader, but when I try to load it into PIM it results in an error message too:

Spoiler

I am doing something wrong, but I don't know what.

 

Max itself is also really annoying. Whenever I try to render a preview I get this:

Spoiler

Everything still works, I just loose acces to the navigator (big red cross on the left, it still works, I just can't see it), and I have to restart to get it back. The materials editor also has the annoying habit of not working half of the time (and then all of a sudden it does start working again, don't know why). Texturing is also not working out well. Too many options of which I have no understanding of what they all do or mean. I try reading tutorials and what other people do, but I lack the understanding of the system to understand what they mean. Everything is just taking a lot of time and effort, and nothing really works. So it is kind of annoying right now.

 

Anyway, this is what the pumping station looks like when rendered with max (and after taking my time to get a very basic understanding of texturing in max):

(No, I haven't figured out how to do proper glass yet, I'll get to it eventually)

 

Any thoughts, suggestions or help?

[Bombardiere 591]

I think your first problem could be a Windows access violation issue. Modern Windows do not like overwrite or change files which are in my document or other priority folders. Affect Win 10 and possibly Win 7. You need to run 3DS MAX as an Admin to overcome this.

 

PIM issue may be connected to this if your insertion was unsuccessful.

 

Quote

While it isn't absolutely terrible, as it kinda fits with the brick texture, it might be something I need to fix. I had the same issue the last time I tried batting. I believe it is caused by mirroring objects?

Oh yes. GMAX mirror does not work. Itcreates this kind of distorted texture. 3DS MAX mirror does work and have no ill effects.

[rsc204 21,804]

22 hours ago, crownsteler said:

Thanks for pointing me to that fix. I don't think it was the problem, but it is good to have.

Make certain you have the fix installed, otherwise you are going to have a bad time. Honestly though, it looks like a LOD problem to me. Ditch the original SC4Model file, make the LODs from scratch and re-export. If the model is still screwy at that point, upload it (attach to a post) and we can take a look, honestly it's quicker than guessing to look at it.

22 hours ago, crownsteler said:

When I try to export my model, everything works fine until it needs to insert the rendered files into the .sc4model file. It seems to be unable to open it:

19 hours ago, Bombardiere said:

I think your first problem could be a Windows access violation issue. Modern Windows do not like overwrite or change files which are in my document or other priority folders. Affect Win 10 and possibly Win 7. You need to run 3DS MAX as an Admin to overcome this.

Windows 7 should not be an issue provided your account has Admin rights in the first place.

Windows 10 is another story altogether and it's surprising how few apps today have been updated to work with it's locked-down file system. No amount of Admin rights will make it work, you need to explicitly give access to any folders the App uses in Program Files and perhaps too Documents to your user account.

Quote

Google "Win10 Take Ownership" to see how to do this.

Warning: doing so has potential security implications, that said it may be necessary for some apps to run.

One thing I find odd is that Documents is located on your C: drive but Program Files seems to be on the D: drive. Double check the locations are indeed correct here.

If you didn't do so, you must install gMax into the root of the C: drive C:\gMax. Any other setup is just going to cause you headaches, BAT4Max relies on this default setup too I believe. But you are right that the error from DATCMD is that it does not have permission to edit the file.

Admin rights may be the solution, but it shouldn't be. Making things harder is the fact that this app is run from inside the scripting system of 3DSMax. That means it may not inherit the permissions needed to give it access to your files, even if 3DSMax itself has them. Fixing that is something you likely won't have control over, so you need to ensure the file/folder is not locked down for access instead.

22 hours ago, crownsteler said:

Anyway; I then decided to try to insert them using the ilive reader, but when I try to load it into PIM it results in an error message too:

Did this error message occur when the textures were not manually imported into the file? I've done this myself plenty of times, so it should work, but honestly it shouldn't be necessary and you really need to know what you are doing to have any chance of success. You can run DATCMD manually, all the data should be there for it to work. This way you can use "Run as Administrator", which may bypass the problem.

22 hours ago, crownsteler said:

Max itself is also really annoying. Whenever I try to render a preview I get this:

Ensure you've got the correct version of .NET installed, along with any updates for it. Then check Autodesk for Service Packs/Updates to 3DS Max, if you didn't install them, make sure you have them before going any further.

However, I have a feeling this might be more to do with problems running BAT4Max with 3DS Max 2015, since it's not been updated for ages and changes in 3DS max prevent it working on some newer versions at all. 2015 should work, but there have been many reported issues with using it, after that (2016 onwards) BAT4MAX is simply not working at all.

[crownsteler 31]

Thank you for that extensive write up. Unfortunately, no succes here either.

Regarding the problem with making a preview render in Max:

I am running the latest version of the .NET framework, and have now updated to the latest max service pack. Hasn't fixed the issue. It is not a big issue, I just have to restart max after making a preview render. A bit annoying, but that is all.

 

Regarding exporting:

I tried exporting while an administrator, and that didn't work. 

I looked into 'taking ownership'. I am not sure what I am supposed to do there. I 'took ownership' of my SC4 plugin folder (where my .sc4model file is located) and tried exporting the model again. It failed again. Both when running normally and when running as administrator. I also tried 'taking ownership' of the .sc4model file itself, but that didn't work either. So I am not sure if I should be doing something different?

I also tried exporting different models, they all run into the same problem. So it is not confined to this one model.

 

Regarding the installation directories:

I have an 128GB SSD (C: disk) and an 1TB HDD (D: disk), so I try to install as much as possible to the D: disk to save room on the SSD. I installed both gmax and 3ds max to the D: disk. I have however succesfully exported using gmax in this setup, so that doesn't seem to be the problem.

 

Regarding ilive reader:

It is probably my own fault. I was grasping at straws at that moment and tried whatever I could. I did not do much research on how it works exactly. I simply removed the old FSH files from the sc4 model and added the ones from the max output folder. I imagine I am missing something.

 

Regarding the messed up export:

I am now working on the model in 3ds max. At this point it is mostly a question of getting max to export it properly. Once we've got that sorted out, we can see if export is still so messed up (but I would doubt it).