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[AP 3,588]

11 hours ago, Jasoncw said:

@AP You need to make smaller LODs in order to decrease the size of the render area. In my theater marquee prop example from earlier, you can see that even though the overall building is a 2x4 BAT, the part of the BAT that was rendered was only a small rectangle, because it only renders the areas it needs to cover the LOD. That image in the example is a .FSH file. For bigger BATs each view will have several large .FSH files, which tile together to complete the image. Because of the way that the files work, there's a limit to how many of those .FSH files each .SC4Model file can have, which means there's a limit to how big the building can be.

With your LODs, you have very tall LODs in the middle that are just enclosing air. You also won't be able to put props on the deck with those LODs, because the top of the LOD (the actual 3d geometry that the prop will be placed on) is hundreds of meters in the air. Your LOD needs to conform snuggly to the deck.

Also, the LODs are the in-game geometry and that is what, when your cursor moves over it, highlights the building. If you've ever had a BAT where you've accidentally selected or demolished it, even though the cursor isn't near the actual building itself, that's why.

Making BATs that will be interacting with props requires very particular LODs. You have to make custom, non-box LODs which snuggly conform to all parts of your model that will interact with anything in the game.

This is the LOD for my Oakland Tribune BAT (https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/30779-oakland-tribune/) and you can see how in general the LOD conforms to the building's shape, because I didn't want people to accidentally click on or demolish it. But then if you look at the street level there's a canopy. The sim props have to go underneath the canopy, which means the LOD had to very snugly fit the shape of the canopy.

Understood, I was under the impression all LODs need to be cubes of the same size... I cut down the high objects of the model to make it smaller and the render starts now however it crashes showing the following:

-- Error occurred in FnExportAllZoomsAndRotations()
--  Frame:
--   zoom: undefined
--   timeStr: undefined
--   numOfSteps: 22
--   ModelName: #stModelName(compassNames:#("S", "W", "N", "E", "NS", "EW", "X"), nameParts:#("00030", "A_1P_JUV", "UserModel"), destPath:"C:\Users\Adrian\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins\", tempSubDir:"C:\Users\Adrian\Documents\SimCity 4\Modding\gmax\gamepacks\BAT\Temp\", zoom:5, rot:1, mUseNamingConvention:false, kPropertyFileName:"File Name", kPropertyModelID:"Model ID", kIntS3DTypeID:1523640343, kIntBuildingGroupID:1873952754, kIntFSHTypeID:2058686020, kIntFSHGroupID:1873952754, kDefaultInstanceID:"0x00030000")
--   thisModelType: #building
--   starttime: 60529062
--   bHasNightMats: true
--   curStep: 3
--   lodNodes: #($Box:TB2_TempLOD1_Box @ [2.674999,-13.500000,0.000000], $Box:TB2_TempLOD2_Box @ [2.674999,-13.500000,0.000000], $Box:LOD3 @ [2.675000,-13.500000,0.000000], $Box:LOD4 @ [2.674849,-13.500000,0.000000], $Box:LOD5 @ [2.674849,-13.500000,0.000000])
--   nodesToSave: #()
--   errorMsg: undefined
--   success: 6
--   destPath: "C:\Users\Adrian\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins\"
--   datName: "C:\Users\Adrian\Documents\SimCity 4\Plugins\A_1P_JUV-0x5ad0e817_0x6fb23ff2_0x30000.SC4Model"
--   called in btnExport()
--  Frame:
--   quality: undefined
--   bExport: true

It's really starting to be an enourmous waste of time... really frustrating considering that I spent hundrets of ours modeling this and now nobody gets to use it.

It seems to happen when it changes to the next angle of rendering In HD as well as in SD export even at "Draft".

How small do the LODs actually have to be? you seem to have a few very small and some larger ones. If I have to use dozens of LODs for that and then reassemble them in the LotEditor I am not very motivated to do that... are you using a script for those things? or are you manually creating and moving around those 3 LOD boxes?

[1SweeTDreamS1 37]

What is the recommended max number of vertices to avoid crashes?

[rsc204 21,817]

16 hours ago, AP said:

It's really starting to be an enourmous waste of time... really frustrating considering that I spent hundrets of ours modeling this and now nobody gets to use it.

gMax is an old application, it's not even intended as a full-bore 3D modelling suite. It's limited by a number of factors, not least being a 32-bit application which can never use more than 2GB of memory. The fact that discreet who made it, didn't want it to cannibalise sales of its professional full version 3DS Max and it's general age, it wasn't designed to take advantage of modern computers. Then you run into the limitation mentioned by JasonCW, SC4 models simply can only contain a certain number of textures, using SD rendering will halve this right away.

You might find applying the 4GB patch to the main .exe of gMax (gmax.exe) helps somewhat, perhaps too SC4Bat Launcher.exe under gmax\gamepacks\BAT. Bear in mind SC4BAT is just scripts for use with gMax, but patching both should at least ensure you have as much memory as possible availible. Of course you'll need to be using a 64-bit system with 4GB RAM or more for this to make any sense.

But I'm reasonably certain this model is way too large/complex to export as a single object and it's hitting the limitations of the application.

The lesson here is, don't start by making huge complex models as your first project. Batting is ridiculously complicated and you'll have a much easier time if you start smaller and work your way up. Rather than hitting a ton of problems head-on at once, you'll have time to gain experience and learn the limitations and pitfalls of certain approaches along the way.

Right now, your model is probably salvageable, but you need to think "modular", rather than gigantic. This approach, though widely under-utilised, just has so many advantages. I know it's a little unintuitive for a large ship like this, but certainly start by handling just the hull and main ship, before you get into the high masts. Once you can render that, you can find ways to render the masts, perhaps in sections, such that you can re-combine everything later. Note, using Offset LODs that match you scene, will make this child's play.

Rather than try to see what you can and can't do size wise with the model itself, take a note of the key dimensions, ideally some sort of plan with these exists. Then open a blank file in SC4BAT, use the most basic geometry to represent the overall dimensions of the plan. For example, a large Box for the Hull, cylinders perhaps for the masts? Make sure that each individual element will render based on simply the sizes you need, before you attempt it for real with the actual model. This is going to be a lot less work and help you narrow down where your problems might be coming from. If the sizes work, but the model still doesn't render, perhaps it's simply too complex geometry. When working with a model of this size, you could have millions of verts/polys. If that is the issue, you need to find ways to better optimise your model for gMax's limitations.

4 hours ago, 1SweeTDreamS1 said:

What is the recommended max number of  vertices to avoid crashes?

If you are making really complex geometry, once more gMax is not the ideal tool to be using. It depends on a number of factors, but again patching the application with the 4GB patch will help ensure its got more memory to work with. After that, it's mostly trial and error, because unless you've hit the limit, it's really hard to know where it is. Not to mention, gMax is incredibly inefficient so might take many hours rendering something 3DS Max, which takes full advantage of Multi-Core and 64-bit systems, can render in a fraction of the time.

I realise the 3DS Max is problematic to get hold of a working copy for SC4 use. But you won't have to dig too deep around this forum to find out how to take advantage of the Student licence so you at least don't have to pay for it. Get the oldest version they'll allow, make sure you use any of the patches/fixes and life will be much easier if you can make it work. There are also tools for converting your gMax files for use in 3DS Max too, so you don't have to scrap any in-progress works either.

[1SweeTDreamS1 37]

rsc204 TY for the answer. I'm using Blender to model, etc. Plan on only using gmax to convert file. My concern isn't so much gmax crashing, rather the game crashing. I would think the count would affect both. I found this on Steam: " general rule for maximum LOD triangle counts is 100".

Found it on sc4devotion. According to a post by Tarkus : " The model must have fewer than 500-600 polygons"

He also says you don't have to use gmax.

If anyone is wondering about using Blender: "Export the model as a .3ds mesh file, which can be directly imported into the Reader, skipping the rendering process altogether.  This is more difficult to do with Gmax (since it cannot export this format), but it is possible from 3DS Max, Milkshape3D or from the free, open-source program Blender." I believe this format isn't available on the new version of Blender so you may need to use an older version. Maybe even one that still has Python separate.

https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=3917.msg122193#msg122193

[rsc204 21,817]

2 hours ago, 1SweeTDreamS1 said:

I found this on Steam: " general rule for maximum LOD triangle counts is 100".

This doesn't really apply to SC4, since SC4 models are not technically full 3D, they are pre-rendered assets, the LOD can be a box with very few triangles (as little as 12). In fact, SC4 LODs don't even have to be 3D either, a 2D plane with sufficient surface area to display the textures upon it would be enough. Which is exactly how SC4BAT outputs things for efficiency.

18 minutes ago, 1SweeTDreamS1 said:

Found it on sc4devotion. According to a post by Tarkus : " The model must have fewer than 500-600 polygons"

Again, this only applies if you are making a True3D model, the only instances in SC4 where this is desirable being Automata, like the cars and vehicles you see in-game. Otherwise, transit models, which are very specific. Even then, it's not a true limit, Moonlight proved that with his highly-detailed ElRail and Monorail (BTM) mods. The true limit being per-group, not per model or S3D.

Assuming you are making a standard model for use in game, the only limits on these things are what SC4BAT is able to render, I know a couple million tri's are possible, my Convience Store, originally made in SC4BAT but then switched to 3DS Max eventually for a higher quality render, had around 1.7 and rendered just fine, albeit very slowly. Not to mention, with that many objects in the scene, it takes a huge toll on the responsiveness of the viewports.

22 minutes ago, 1SweeTDreamS1 said:

If anyone is wondering about using Blender: "Export the model as a .3ds mesh file, which can be directly imported into the Reader, skipping the rendering process altogether.  This is more difficult to do with Gmax (since it cannot export this format), but it is possible from 3DS Max, Milkshape3D or from the free, open-source program Blender." I believe this format isn't available on the new version of Blender so you may need to use an older version.

Right, but again only if you really need an actual 3D model. You'll get much better results by doing it the traditional way. SC4 doesn't have to render it's 2.5D (Isometric) models in-game, it simply renders a 2D texture which is ridiculously efficient. That's why we can make models of astounding quality compared to fully 3D games, where the game needs to render them during runtime. This is hugely taxing of your GPU and you don't need many models with 10k+ tri's before you'll take down a high-end PC. SC4 models are pre-rendered, that's basically the export process of SC4BAT/3DS Max.

[mattb325 28,880]

@AP, while some of the advice pertaining to your situation is relevant, the notion of breaking up a ship via multiple lods that are rebuilt in the lot editor is unworkable.

Props will always sink to the ocean floor. It doesn't matter whether they are set to is ground true/false, whether they're raised, etc.

While the advice for breaking up a large building into multiple sections that are reassembled in the lot editor holds true, this doesn't work with water constrained objects. I've responded to your PM with what I believe will work.

[AP 3,588]

2 hours ago, mattb325 said:

@AP, while some of the advice pertaining to your situation is relevant, the notion of breaking up a ship via multiple lods that are rebuilt in the lot editor is unworkable.

Props will always sink to the ocean floor. It doesn't matter whether they are set to is ground true/false, whether they're raised, etc.

While the advice for breaking up a large building into multiple sections that are reassembled in the lot editor holds true, this doesn't work with water constrained objects. I've responded to your PM with what I believe will work.

Thank you very much mattb325,

this advice is absolutely crucial and I think it would be worth putting into a tutorial!

... it will look like this:

[WannGLondon 2,243]

Hello Community,

I have exported about nine models and when I go to open the PIM, only four of them show up. They have the same naming conventions and are located in the same folder area.

Has anyone ever had this issue?

Thanks in advance!

[rsc204 21,817]

If you are using the Maxis PIM, first note it will not see any models that are not in the root Plugins folder. You've exported around nine models, do you actually have nine SC4Model files though? You need to start a new file with SC4 BAT, in order to generate a new filename and ID, it's possible if more than one item shared an ID, some are overriding others. Assuming all the files exist, could we get a screenshot of the folder contents, ideally in the "Details view", showing the entire filenames of each item (so we can see the full IDs, which are part of the filenames).

[WannGLondon 2,243]

@rsc204 thanks for the reply. Yeah it appears that they were sharing a File ID and over-riding one another. Thank you!

[20huskies 4,693]

So I messed around with the BAT scripts (long story). Anyway things got messed up so I took the original ones and plugged them back in. The BAT will now load again, but I get an error code 2, which is I’m guessing related to why there is no BAT section in the utilities box.  And a Windows night light error.  I reinstalled the BAT to no avail. Please help.

[CorinaMarie 29,621]

@20huskies

While I don't know the answer to your question, I did move your post from the Can't find it... Ask here! thread to this one. You may need to follow this topic in order to receive beeps (notifications) of replies.

[rsc204 21,817]

1 hour ago, 20huskies said:

So I messed around with the BAT scripts (long story). Anyway things got messed up so I took the original ones and plugged them back in. The BAT will now load again, but I get an error code 2, which is I’m guessing related to why there is no BAT section in the utilities box.  And a Windows night light error.  I reinstalled the BAT to no avail. Please help.

Uninstall both SC4BAT and gMax. Manually delete the gMax install folder if it remains (to clear any setup that may remain). Then reinstall gMax and SC4 BAT.  This should restore a working setup. 

[20huskies 4,693]

Thank you. I was hoping to avoid having to download gmax again and go through the turbo squid registration. But if there’s no other way then I guess I’ll have to do that.

[rsc204 21,817]

If you still have your original registration info, you don't need to get a new one, it's still valid for subsequent installs.

I'm sure with enough patience you could recover whatever went wrong, but this is just the quickest guaranteed solution really. Clearly something the application needs has gone missing and without it, you won't be able to return to a working setup.

From what I can make out of the screenshot (it's really low res and looks like it was taken from a cameraphone), I think the missing files would be from here:

gmax\gamepacks\BAT\Maps\NightWindows

If you used PrintScreen and then pasted that into Paint, we'd have a much clearer picture to work from. It does show a path on the second error message, but it's truncated, again if we knew exactly what this was, it might help.

[20huskies 4,693]

@rsc204 Thanks, but you’re right it didn’t need a new registration so it was a solution that could be measured in seconds.

in the end it only cost me a half finished skyscraper and nothing else.  Alien attacks and meteor showers have caused more harm.

thanks again for a quick response!

[rsc204 21,817]

1 hour ago, 20huskies said:

Alien attacks and meteor showers have caused more harm.

After the weirdness that was 2020, I'm not sure if you mean in-game or not here .

1 hour ago, 20huskies said:

so it was a solution that could be measured in seconds

Sometimes the quickest solution is best, even if it's a little brute-force. I've wasted way too many hours trying to fix things that should just be done anew in much less time. Glad it's all working for you again.

[20huskies 4,693]

14 minutes ago, rsc204 said:

After the weirdness that was 2020, I'm not sure if you mean in-game or not here .

Sometimes the quickest solution is best, even if it's a little brute-force. I've wasted way too many hours trying to fix things that should just be done anew in much less time. Glad it's all working for you again.

I meant in game.  Let’s not give 2021 any ideas 

[20huskies 4,693]

Another question, sorry to bother everyone with my newbie skills, but how do you adjust LOD to allow a prop to fit without disappearing? I’m trying to put fans in the bleachers but they disappear far away from it. I know next to nothing about LOD so I don’t even know where to begin with this. Your help is as always appreciated!

[Jasoncw 11,841]

You can't change the LODs of things that are already exported, unfortunately.

[20huskies 4,693]

@Jasoncw that was probably the one thing I already did know, so I’m not sweating that.  I found some old LOD tutorials on the site, and now I’m just trying to turn everything on the roof into props just big enough to be efficient but just small enough for a good poly count.  It’s not perfect, but far better and might be good enough.  But - in LE when I test putting people in the stands in one angle the people disappear Even when they fit nicely in another angle. Do you know what might be causing this?

 

Much appreciated! 

[Jasoncw 11,841]

@20huskiesSo I misunderstood your post and thought that you were trying to put people onto the Maxis bleachers, and not on the bleachers you added to the rooftop of the other building. I'll still post this though for other people looking to understand LODs.

The LOD of the minor league stadium bleacher prop is a box.

The image of the bleachers are on the outside surface of the box, and they create an optical illusion of 3d space within the box. But if you put props in the 3d space on the bleachers, it will be inside of the box, and so it will be blocked out by the image that is applied to the surface of the box.

Here is a truck with an image applied to it in order to create an optical illusion. If you put something inside of the truck, in the space among the crates, you wouldn't be able to see it because it's inside the truck and the walls of the truck would block your vision.

[20huskies 4,693]

@Jasoncw awesome explanation.  You made it easy for even me to understand   Thank you!

now that I look back, I see why you thought I was talking about the Maxis bleachers. I probably should’ve called out my BAT in the picture but I didn’t. Thanks for getting back to me when you realized.

[rsc204 21,817]

On 16/02/2021 at 9:52 PM, 20huskies said:

I found some old LOD tutorials on the site, and now I’m just trying to turn everything on the roof into props just big enough to be efficient but just small enough for a good poly count.

Unless you are making actual 3D models, only used by Automata and Transit Networks in-game, normal BATs are 2D pre-rendered textures. What this means is, that good poly counts are completely unimportant, they only affect the one-time render speed in SC4BAT/3DS Max. We can make hugely detailed models that in practise take no more resources than a simple box would in-game. Of course, it's still good practise to make things well, so I don't discourage that, just saying we're not limited by such things as Poly Counts, so we can go nuts when modelling with all the details 3D games can't hope to show without melting a computer.

[EffTheGrid 3,675]

Hi all,

I'd like to add nightlighting to my builds. However, as I never learned how to use Gmax, this is proving difficult for me. How do I select the windows in the model in order to make them lighted? I've been following  a tutorial but the methodology looks different.

(Really theissue here is I don't know how to select a layer/do anything with it)

Thanks! Apologies if this is in the wrong place

[matias93 7,535]

1 hour ago, Sloppyjoemess said:

Apologies if this is in the wrong place

I moved it to the right place

[AP 3,588]

Not sure if I broke my BAT...

From one second to the next I could not rotate objects anymore using the the arrows and dragging the mouse in any direction. 

• rotataion still works typing in values
• the arrow lights up when clicking and dragging, but no rotation happens in all dimensions
• other drag options with the arrows still work like moving an object
• the usually red right-click option menu is now green-gray and holds less options

 

OH

EDIT: Oh boy, I am one lucky guy... I figured out that it was caused from changing the language of my operating system! I reversed it and BAT works flawless again! Crazy.

[AP 3,588]

7 hours ago, Sloppyjoemess said:

Hi all,

I'd like to add nightlighting to my builds. However, as I never learned how to use Gmax, this is proving difficult for me. How do I select the windows in the model in order to make them lighted? I've been following  a tutorial but the methodology looks different.

(Really theissue here is I don't know how to select a layer/do anything with it)

Thanks! Apologies if this is in the wrong place

hm... that is actually pretty easy. You can use the "select object" Tool (5th from the left of your screenshot, the mouse arrow) and click on any object. Now you see the name of this object on the right (in your screenshot "mesh1902") under "name and Color" what you would do is simply klick there and name it "nite_mesh1902" and then it is light at night.

[EffTheGrid 3,675]

As they say.... there's a first time for everything! I'll have to work on this one...........

But really, thank you for that little instruction AP, it was enough for me to grasp the process.

I will fool around some more and get things lit up!

I think perhaps the way I create and import these, the groups get a little messy coming out of Sketchup. Is there any quick way to batch all the windows into one object (or mesh or what have you) within Gmax?? I can't imagine going one by one and adding "_nite" to every pane  lol

[AP 3,588]

5 hours ago, Sloppyjoemess said:

As they say.... there's a first time for everything! I'll have to work on this one...........

But really, thank you for that little instruction AP, it was enough for me to grasp the process.

I will fool around some more and get things lit up!

I think perhaps the way I create and import these, the groups get a little messy coming out of Sketchup. Is there any quick way to batch all the windows into one object (or mesh or what have you) within Gmax?? I can't imagine going one by one and adding "_nite" to every pane  lol

I think unfortunately there is not...I hope to stand corrected by someone. What I usually do is add "nite_" before multiplying the window so then every copy of the box already has this naming convention. You can use the "select by name" option to select your shapes more easily.

You can also group them, but to my experiance adding the "nite_" tag to a group does not lite all members of the group up. You could combine all objects you want to lite to one object, which in my experiance is very unhandy in case you want to move one window later or such.

@Simmer2 @mattb325 these pros might know better...