Linus van Pelt's BAT Thread

[Linus van Pelt 293]

First of all thanks to all users who reacted to my post in the Show Us What You're Working On Thread 

I will definitly release as many seperate props as possible. Maybe I do a few more props like  a version of the main building with a different conveyor belt for the output.

But I will definitly export the complete scene, except the walls. I seperated it in two different ways and both looked bad once combined.

Currently I work on another material handler.

A large metal recycling facility like this also needs some cranes.

[Krasner 1,062]

Really nice... You work fast The material handlers do look way better, congrats !

[matias93 7,535]

You did all of that in this few hours!?? People, this guy is a wizard or controls the time, or both!

[Linus van Pelt 293]

I wish I work that fast but I started BATting the cranes last summer. Actually I came up with scrap yard because I needed something I could use the cranes for.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The cranes look good.

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

It's always good to see new threads here. Very nice models

[Linus van Pelt 293]

Thank you for your replies 

I've worked a  bit on the handler

I still don't like it too much but I guess it's okay now.

And i started a set for creating workshops and office buildings in an industrial environment. Below you can see the first few parts (6 walls each of them is 8 meters width + a stair) which I already used for the scrap yard.

 

[AndisArt 2,066]

Beautiful work! Looking forward to see more

[Krasner 1,062]

9 hours ago, Linus van Pelt said:

I still don't like it too much but I guess it's okay now.

You should be happy with it, at least I think so - it looks great  The light and shadows on it are very well managed imo. Looking forward to see more work from you 

[Sciurus 323]

They sure will be useful ...  

[Linus van Pelt 293]

On 24.2.2018 at 2:05 AM, Krasner said:

You should be happy with it, at least I think so - it looks great  The light and shadows on it are very well managed imo. Looking forward to see more work from you 

I'm glad you like it.

That's how the scrap yard look right now.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

That's looking splendid!

You know, I was wondering whether the handlers maybe just need some colour. Among all the brownish brick walls and buildings and the equally brownish scrap piles, the rust brown handlers almost disappear visually. Besides, a somewhat lighter colour might make the details more visible and prevent everything from drowning in a sea of uniform colour shade.

[Sciurus 323]

That's excellent ! We don't have some of these in the game... great idea !

[Linus van Pelt 293]

On 25.2.2018 at 4:33 PM, T Wrecks said:

That's looking splendid!

You know, I was wondering whether the handlers maybe just need some colour. Among all the brownish brick walls and buildings and the equally brownish scrap piles, the rust brown handlers almost disappear visually. Besides, a somewhat lighter colour might make the details more visible and prevent everything from drowning in a sea of uniform colour shade.

That's a great idea, the handler my model is based on, is actually light green. Because I doubt green (or a light blue) and the reddish color palette would look good, I tried yellow and white.

Which color would you (all), for the scrap yard, prefer?

[Krasner 1,062]

1 hour ago, Linus van Pelt said:

Which color would you (all), for the scrap yard, prefer?

This dusty yellow looks good imo, these big machines being yellow seems right into the cliche I guess. Maybe you should saturate it a little in order to make the handlers stand a little more ? Or maybe make slight variations so not all the handlers would look on the same level of dustiness. Just a personal idea, that's what I would've done

[Sciurus 323]

The yellow ones looks better to me too. I'm really impatient to test this lot ingame !!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

If you BAT the entire scrap yard and render it together, then you can also BAT the ground. I know that scrap yards are not always very dirty, but they're still somewhat dirty. If you BAT the ground, you can texture in a lot of variation and details, which would be very hard to do with ground textures in the lot editor. I think BATing the ground would make it much easier.

iirc, in the other thread some people thought that the scrapyard would be useful as a props. Even if you initially make the entire thing a single BAT, afterwards you can still export individual elements as props.

I also think that it would be good to manually model some scrap, to add to the textured scrap piles. I'm surprised that the scrap piles look as good as they do, for being textures, but I think mixing some modeled scrap will improve it a lot.

But it's all looking good so far.

[SC4L0ver 394]

Wow! All your stuff looks incredible! Keep up the good work. 

I miss those large magnets used to lift scrapped cars and other stuff though.  Are those planned?

—SC4L0ver.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

 

[Linus van Pelt 293]

 

@Krasner, @Sciurus Thanks for your Input. Doing some texture variations is definitly a good idea.

@Jasoncw I didn't thought of doing the ground texture as part of of model. That will be really helpful due to my low experience in doing textures for the lot editor. Anyways, the ground of the scrap yard my model is based on, is, at least for me, surprisingly dirty. 

About the scrap piles, yesterday I saw some pictures of trash piles by Simmer where he did exactly what you mentioned. I instantly thought i should do something similar.

@SC4L0ver For this scrapyard I don't plan magnets.

I believe i mentioned I above, I will release the scrap yard as a monolith and as soon as possible. It just looks better and thanks to Jasoncw I can this way even bat the ground. But I will later release a pack with separate parts of this bat and some additions like the magnets SC4L0ver mentioned, one or two different colored handlers, various roller containers etc.

If you have wishes, something you miss for your own scrap yard let me know.

 

 

[Sciurus 323]

What about an old cars scrap.. ? SimCity is a game where the car is the king but no one thinks about its recycling 

Anway, very good creation. It will find a good place in my industrial zones. And for the seperate parts of the lot, it's a very good idea and I think that @Simmer2 will be happy about that... tell me if I'm wrong

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

I was going to ask about possible rail services to the place but I see the prototype isn't.

 

[Linus van Pelt 293]

Sciurus, DavidDHetzel thanks for your input

I made some progress. I changed the textures of the main building and the walls, added modeled scrap to a few piles and I obviously made a groundplane

I quite like the groundplane so far, though it seems like it could be a bit oversaturated. I didn't test it ingame yet.

What do you think about it?

[Krasner 1,062]

I don't know what to say - it looks very, very good so far

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The paths on the ground look good. The modeled scrap looks great. And I think the added dirt on the walls isn't immediately obvious, but it does make a difference.

Overall though the ground looks like it's made out of martian sand. In the scrap yard that you're basing this off, I think it's rust from the piles of metal, and the concrete ground shows through more in the cleaner areas.

Next, I think you'll want to make the piles of stuff blend in more with the ground around them. This is easiest to do around the gravel piles, where you can just take the color of the gravel and put a dusting of it near the piles so that they blend together a little bit. The scrap will be harder. For that, you could take the scrap texture and put near the piles, and then fade it, so that the ground near the scrap piles have different colors. Individual objects will be tidily kept in the pile, but things like paint flakes, dirty water, nails/screws, and things like that, are too small to perfectly control. You can't see these objects at the scale of a BAT, but it will mean that there shouldn't be a perfectly hard transition between the scrap piles and the ground. (I hope all of this makes sense, it's hard to describe).

I'm guessing what you have is a screenshot from the top viewport, which you've brought into photoshop and started drawing over. Basically what I'm suggesting is bringing the pile's textures into this file as separate layers and blending them in with the ground near the piles, so that the transitions aren't so stark.

[DavidDHetzel 1,816]

@Jasoncw I was thinking it was either dirt + Rust or Red Clay base.

[AndisArt 2,066]

That's a great base for the ground texture! The markings so far look very good and convicing. The red coloring looks like this is somewhere in an area with red stone, like Arizone. It might be more flexible for different settings if you make the color a bit more generic. To add variety I would continue to paint in detailed areas on the ground texture, along the tracks and especially on the sides and borders. Different textures blended into it, different coloring etc.

 

[matias93 7,535]

Did someone else thought on SimMars? Because that full model would look awesome on Mars!

[Linus van Pelt 293]

Thanks for your replies. 

Especially the advices @Jasoncw gave, were really helpful.

 

[Jasoncw 11,840]

The piles blending in with the ground looks perfect.

At the bottom of the render, the ground extends past the wall. Is something going to go there? If not, imo it would be better to remove that part of the modeled ground.