SimCoug's BAT Den

[SimCoug 5,972]

@raynev1 - Thanks!  yeah, the roofs were bothering me, but I think I was able to fix that.

@CT14 - The texture is actually not square tiles - they are more rounded like this: 

I was trying to get some similar texures to what CP has been sharing with his massive 19th century project.

@DavidDHetzel - Thank you!  That is exactly what I was aiming for, so you made my day 

@airman15 - Cool, I'll have to take a look at that town in google maps

@mattb325 - That is exactly what was needed... it's funny how such a small tweak can have such a huge difference.  

@T Wrecks - Thanks for the great input!  Yeah, I think I made a ton of mistakes on that first building, which is exactly what I needed in order to see what not to do.  I think .3m thick walls is the sweet spot (those were .5m) 

So here's the improved textures (original ones are still in front - improved are behind)


I think I'll try a custom foundation... hopefully I can get it right this time.

Oh, and one other thing... what's the deal with the maxis textures showing up?  I have already downloaded the texture fix and put it in my gmax folder according to the instructions on SC4D.  For some reason they still show up once in a while when I render.  If I re-render they tend to go away, but every once in a while they will show up.  

[Fantozzi 4,067]

9 minutes ago, SimCoug said:

Oh, and one other thing... what's the deal with the maxis textures showing up?

Mr. Schriefer told me that's a bug in B.A.T you fix with the BAT texture fix:

 

[raynev1 1,886]

Oh , now I get it . I was unfamiliar with the roofing . For that texture , personally I think you nailed it the first time . To scale anyway . 

[CT14 2,486]

Thanks for clarifying - I had a feeling I was missing something.

The new roof textures are much easier to distinguish as that type of tile, to my eye. If they are now over-scaled there is probably still room to take them back down in scale and keep the clarity.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

They all look great!

It's weird that that problem is happening so much even with the texture fix. The only option I know about is just re-export it the way you are already doing.

[airman15 4,111]

Thanks! Georgetown has a few interesting buildings and a quirky parking arrangement. The building I had in mind is near the main square. I'm sure it's an original, it stands out among the other buildings.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

When you want to see how something looks in the game, just copy and paste a screenshot of a preview render into a screenshot from the game in photoshop. 

It's a lot faster to do it this way. But it's also important because every time you export something one of the ID numbers gets incremented by 1, and eventually it can increment up to a range where it conflicts with Maxis buildings. 

To "fix" your existing buildings you might be able to merge them into a new scene and reexport them from there. I'm not sure how exactly it decides when something is a new version, but I can only imagine it would consider the new scene a new BAT. 

[SimCoug 5,972]

@Fantozzi - Yeah, but the strange thing is I already had the fix in my gmax folder... I guess I just had a string of bad luck.
@raynev1 - See below - I think it's a good compromise between the early and over scaled textures.
@CT14 - Yep, I came to the same conclusion.
@JP Schriefer - Yeah, that's kind of what I have been doing.  I've even tried merging with a new scene, but even then I will sometimes get a conflict.  I'm guessing at some point I will jump past the maxis range... at least that is my hope.
@airman15 - I always enjoy looking for new towns with neat buildings.  Google earth is quite handy for BAT inspiration. 
@Jasoncw - Yeah, I'll be trying that trick at some point, but I feel the need to test every render in game at this point in order to ensure there are no texture conflicts with Maxis stuff.  

Thanks for the great comments everybody

I still wasn't happy with the roof texture, so I had another go and I think this one is a good compromise between the two I had shown earlier.  

I've think I'm getting closer to a custom foundation as well.  


It took some time, but I think I figured out how to make a custom LOD work. The stairs had graphic glitches with plain square LOD boxes, so I tried to get something that hugged the foundation a little more closely, and it seems to have done the trick.  

[blunder 1,079]

What is THIS?!?!?!?!

I could swear once upon a time you said you would never, ever, ever, never learn to BAT. 

Looking forward to where this leads: i like the signs project, it's a simple yet effective touch.

[IDS2 3,346]

I'm so glad to see you take the BATting plunge!

Your first model, and you're already going for 5 variations and a custom foundation. I like the way you think

The textures also look really nice, and I think they'll blend with the game's palette quite well. The new roof is definitely an improvement!

Since these appear to be ~8m x 12m, what sort of lot configuration are you looking at?

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Of course I'm not the one to decide anything around here, but I think they'd lend themselves to 1x2 / 1x3 lots with either 2 buildings each, or with one building each and an alley on the other half of the lot.

[Tyberius06 12,189]

Hi!

Aham... So we have here some kind of slop comfort stuff... Well, keep up the good work, I very much like what I see here!

- Tyberius

[mattb325 28,880]

Looking good!

 

I'm very surprised that you need to make custom lods for the foundations...and given that it places some lag on the simulator (as it is making a 3D object rather than a simple 2d image) I would caution against it for low-stage growables which will repeat often. Of course for water, special bats etc, knowing how to make custom lods is a good skill.

To illustrate what I mean, for James park house (

It had quite complex foundations, front and back. Here are the gmax shots:

The first shows the foundation: the beige box represents a bounding box of the model so that shadows are cast correctly:

The second shows the actual LODs: you can see there's nothing tricky, just a purple box

The Foundation model is exported as a Foundation in the parameters roll-out:

 

Then, using the old-school Maxis PIM I simply make it a foundation (you can see the parameters set here in the PIM-X plus the effect that the bounding box gives for shadows on a complex foundation shape...it isn't needed for simple shapes unless you really want to)

 

As you can see, I was able to place props within the LODs with zero issue. It's also worked when I have used the foundations as a prop exemplar (which looks like what you are doing by trying to fit more than one per lot).

Hope that helps 

[SimCoug 5,972]

@blunder - Thanks 

On 7/10/2017 at 9:20 PM, blunder said:

I could swear once upon a time you said you would never, ever, ever, never learn to BAT. 

SimPeg is gone, so you have no proof  

@IDS2 - Thanks!  Yeah, the hard part is making myself stop with the variations.  

On 7/13/2017 at 0:20 AM, IDS2 said:

Since these appear to be ~8m x 12m, what sort of lot configuration are you looking at?

@T Wrecks pretty much nailed it on the head... great minds think alike 
@Tyberius06 - Thanks for stopping by 
@mattb325 - 

17 hours ago, mattb325 said:

As you can see, I was able to place props within the LODs with zero issue. It's also worked when I have used the foundations as a prop exemplar (which looks like what you are doing by trying to fit more than one per lot).

Aaaaah - well then, I will do exactly as you laid out there.  For some reason I thought using the foundation export would only allow it to be used with a building exemplar.  You are correct, I want to be able to use these as props, so I will give this a shot ASAP.  Thanks for the heads up! 

Spent a little time working on a companion model today, in order to get the layout @T Wrecks explained above.


I'll work on a few variation, and then knock out a foundation like @mattb325 hinted at above.  The modeling is getting faster, but yeah, adjusting the textures can eat up gobs of time 
I think the finishing touch will be some type of sign prop that I can add to the facade... should kick up the variety even more.

[Silur 3,304]

And I love it! 

[SimCoug 5,972]

This texture issue is really eating me up - some BAT exports work fine, others have the maxis glitch.  It seems to happen at random - I did a test by starting a brand new scene for something like 16 basic boxes... you can see the results below.  The issue only seems to affect the two closest zooms... far out zooms seem unaffected.   I even completely reinstalled the BAT and the texture fix (model names script).  Same results.  Any other ideas?

[SimCoug 5,972]

On 7/13/2017 at 10:02 PM, mattb325 said:

The first shows the foundation: the beige box represents a bounding box of the model so that shadows are cast correctly:

Still playing around with getting the foundation right, and I'm curious how you add a bounding box to your render to get the correct shadows, but don't have it show up in the actual render.  I'm guessing there is a box I need to check in the 'properties' for said box.  Thanks!

[mattb325 28,880]

For simply-shaped bats, it honestly isn't necessary...only once the building starts to have multiple ends and projections (such as L shaped buildings) and verandas does it pay to do this.

But as a general rule, you import the main building model as a single group, make a box in the shape of it, delete the main building model (this is to save on render time) and then fit the Lods around your foundation only. That way the above ground bounding box isn't 'seen' during the render.