Raymond's Newbie Thoughts

[BartonThinks 3,416]

3 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

I just got an idea, My lady, I don't know if we can change the color, whereas do you think this is possible?

BTW, I used to dream a moon in SC4's world, Maybe pretty cool if it rises up from the edge of our cities, I know the plane can fly to there, so if i could control the path by Lua, then let this big circle flies over the sky. Ha-ha, Probably a daydream.

The moon, you say? May I interest you in the JENX Aurora mod? https://www.sc4devotion.com/csxlex/lex_filedesc.php?lotGET=2873

 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

4 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

Did anyone notice that the vanilla's car has some animation during moving? or there are some relations with Effdir? ( @CorinaMarie calling Effdir master)

I haven't noticed that, but I also haven't looked at them closely. I do know that there are entries in the EffDir for automata which gets married to other things that need to go with them. As examples: Random loads on train cars or pickup trucks, Sims in convertible cars or on motorcycles, and such like that.

 

3 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

I just got an idea, My lady, I don't know if we can change the color, whereas do you think this is possible?

Changing the color of things like that is in the EffDir and are often applied to grayscale FSH.

While CB and I did work on an EffDir editor for a long while, we had other pressing matters come up and it would still take several months to get something which might work.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

@BartonThinks, Thank you Barton, JENX again, why my wild thoughts always point to him.

28 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

haven't noticed that, but I also haven't looked at them closely. I do know that there are entries in the EffDir for automata which gets married to other things that need to go with them. As examples: Random loads on train cars or pickup trucks, Sims in convertible cars or on motorcycles, and such like that

I got it, so at least I understand the Effdir has not too much relations with my research, I just exported all vehicle S3Ds (142) from simcity1.dat, I want to make some tests on this, Speaking of which, I did learn a lot from Vanilla's S3D, It makes me thinking another good approach for my Tractors, I decide to make that London Bus for a try first.

Please take your time and keep healthy, I know everything you focus on which everyone benefits. Thanks again!

Yours,

-- Raymond

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

I tried to figure out the influence on performance by changing all Maxis's Vehicle S3D's frames from 100 to 1, Maybe because I didn't test this on a big city, or my comp is powerful, Couldn't see remarkable improvement. 

At the beginning, I exported and tweaked all (144) the S3D's frames from 100 to 1 and rapid from 30 to 0. It's not that difficult by the Lua code Cori taught me. The efficiency of CPU and memory kept staying at 24~27 and 330m~360m during testing, whereas I found some freight trucks lost the trailer part but only the head left, aftet a bit digging, I found that the trailer is 34 frames and the head is 100, It returned to normal after I changed the trailerls frames back to 34 and keep the head as 1.

Along with digging, There were some interesting things, There were two S3D Vehicle's models were not called by any Exemplar's RKT, and there was a Exemplar named test_vehicle, but it actually points to the ship's model. and also There were 4 S3Ds they have been 1 frame there. and I also found that the Automata can works as family as Lots by divide to several parts, It will have variety of combinations.

I want to make a test, change the RKT of ship to a Balloon flights to see if it can fly over the bridge. and some same looking Vehicles they have different values in Exemplar file, for example some of them have Exemplar type = Vehicle, some others not, some are ground model, the others are not. I'm a bit curious what would happen if I modify them.

Well, too many possibilities to a Newbie, I will delve into it later, Anyway, here is a shot of London bus Automata:

I think I am closer to the truth of making Automata model, Probably. The secret is not modeling or renderring or baking, It's actually more about how to uvwrap the model properly and the PS skill. You can tell it just has 116 Verts and I only spent less than one hour to make the model and texturing in Photoshop. I believe I can make more better one as loog as I get enough time and references.

[rivit 3,391]

18 hours ago, Raymond7cn said:

It's so strange,  I have just realized all vanilla's Car relevant Automatas have 100 frames in S3D tab, and each mesh so, but they are static when I played the animation,

Hi Ray,

  the game actually plays those 100 frames over about 3 seconds; its internal clock frame rate seems to be 30fps. While I dont know for sure I think it makes it easier to do things like positioning, and moving of models (automata in general and animated s3ds) to split the frames that way. I've noticed that if the framerate is less than 30 then any automata receiving shadows take longer to change shadows/their lighting when changing views - that is, it is refreshed on its own framerate.

In fact many custom automata already have frames =1 and it makes very little or no difference to performance because of this internal frame clock - in fact internally frames=1 may well be duplicated to 100 just to keep things easy. The size of the model (vertices and polys) probably has a bigger effect. Well - it definitely did in 2003.

Its all a bit academic these days with the powerful GFX cards we have today. 

e.g. my modest AMD R570 (4GB, 1300Mhz, 7GP/sec) compared to my TNT2 Ultra (32MB, 200MHZ, 300MP/sec) in 2003 - SC4 played at its limit back then.

 

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Hiya @rivit , Thank you for thorough explanation!

I may have understood 30%, It's too professional to me,  I know it more involves Graphics of programing. I thought it a while, here below is what I got:

If I understand your words correctly, In Reader's S3D tab, there are Frames and Frame rate of every S3D, Most of Vehicle's Automatas has been set to Frame = 100 and Rate = 30, so I presume that this Rate is FPS (Frames per second) you mentioned, It makes sense to me that when the car moving, it also keeps drawing the next frame. so as you said, if you set the rate less than 30, to say 15, our eyes will see nothing at Position B after 0.033s. (From Google I got the film's FPS ≈ 24 for human's eyes) Meanwhile:

9 hours ago, rivit said:

I think it makes it easier to do things like positioning

I guess that maybe the game needs to know more precisely about the position of Automata so that control when and where it stops or doesn't hit each other. I'm not sure about this, whereas it seemed that more accidents after I tweaked all Frame to 1 and Rate to 0.

If so, Please allow me to ask a bit further away, 

1.  I have tried to change the rate to a small value for an Automata (Dragon) I made so that its wings doesn't wave too fast, but whatever value I set, It still waves very fast in game though I can see changes when playing animation in Reader. so May I ask how did you set it to less than 30.

2.  I still couldn't understand the meaning of Rate = 0, I may need to do more tests, but I'm not sure the test is accurate due to 1. by now, I can understand it as the game only allow to set Rate to 0 if the Frame = 1, I looked through other Automatas such as Plane and Ship, they are Frame = 1 and Rate = 0.

3.  There are some Freight cars, they are assembled with 2 parts: car and trailer,

the car's setting is: Frame = 100, Rate = 30

the trailer's setting is: Frame = 34, Rate = 10,

I couldn't figure out why the trailers gone after I set both of their Frame = 1, Rate = 0, but the trailer appeared after i only changed the car but kept the trailer as default.

Besides, From simcity_1.dat,

some plane has Frame = 1, Rate = 0, but its light is Frame = 7, Rate = 10, and its shadow is 34,10

The spot light of all cars and some special Vehicle(Mobile missilelaunch) are Frame = 1, Rate = 30? I couldn't understand why the cars didn't set to this value. and more strange thing is even the Palm tree (and other trees) has the Frame = 1, Rate = 30, why they need a rate?

4.  This question is kind of off-topic, I made an animation, it's a Simtropolis light cast into sky and rotating there, An issue occurred to me when I wanted to import two parts (each 300 frames) into S3D together with Reader, After importing, they became to 600 groups (meshes) rather than 2 groups x 300 frames, so I had to do it manually, it's such a hard and tedious work, Do you have good workaround about this?

Thank you for your time and thoughtful elaboration again, Frankly I still have more questions, But I'll keep them a while before learning more by myself. Thank you!

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

I just made a crazy test,  I elevated some cars to a height of 17m, some others were elevated to 37m, kept the left on the ground. Then I found that they won't crash with others in different spaces (height) when udriveit or auto driving. @Terring Isn't it kind of like a Futurist city? I do need to upgrade my skills of Automata modeling, it must be very interesting at then.

 @rivit I don't know whether or not it makes sense, still need more tests to demonstrate my conjecture in future.

[rivit 3,391]

Well Ill see if I can answer this - you have many interesting questions there.

In your drawing I think that at 15fps you get to see frame 1 at A and B, then 2 at C and D etc. The trouble is we can't actually stop frame the action - although taking a movie of the action might let us see that - remember frame 1 to n is usually the same so you can't see a difference. But animated S3Ds like your dragon might.

1)  The standard framerate we see is 100/30 so if you take  sub multiples you can affect how much happens in a given time. So for instance my train engines with the moving wheels operate with frame count=6 for a frame rate of 24  - so this give 4 rotations of the wheels in one second. I tried several settings before this one looked right. You may needs something similar for your dragon.

2)  I suspect frame rate 0 could mean dont animate - ie always use the same frame. It may be necessary for other processing like effects to have a fixed model.

3) Trailers are strange in a lot of ways - the weird frames/framerate may be because it needs to be refreshed after the lead vehichle has moved in the previous frame. (guessing)

4) Imports almost always do the opposite of what you want. I've seen some very damaged S3Ds as a consequence (100 meshes of 500 polys=50000 polys, instead of 100 frames of 500 polys). Its a bug in reader. I've found the best way is to import an s3d of one frame  for the mesh, then change the ANIM block according to the frames you want - it has to be done manually because Reader has bugs in this area.  The SC4Reader by Tropod does seem to make changing the anim easier but I havent tried importing an s3d into it.  

5) I take it you changed the models to be at different heights. Does show something about collision boxes though. We do know that the extent box for a model is significant .eg for trains the extent box controls how close together the carriages can be. 

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

@rivit Thank you so much, This time maybe 90%.

9 minutes ago, rivit said:

because it needs to be refreshed after the lead vehichle has moved in the previous frame

Yeah, You must be right here, silly me.

You did have recommended SC4Reader by Tropod to me before, it's such a pity I still couldn't let it starts in my comp, I will try to figure it out first. Thanks again, Rivit, I may consult you when I have more questions.

[Terring 6,473]

20 minutes ago, Raymond7cn said:

I just made a crazy test,  I elevated some cars to a height of 17m, some others were elevated to 37m, kept the left on the ground. Then I found that they won't crash with others in different spaces (height) when udriveit or auto driving. @Terring Isn't it kind of like a Futurist city? I do need to upgrade my skills of Automata modeling, it must be very interesting at then.

Yes, you could even recreate some of @korver's epic futuristic cityscapes. And judging by your London bus I'm sure you'll come up with some really great cars

[City_Slider 2,716]

Thanks God, i don´t have a clue, what you are talking about 

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

1 hour ago, rivit said:

The trouble is we can't actually stop frame the action ...

I wonder if the WatchMeMove cheat would help. Supposedly it can be used like this:

Enables animation stepping. After it is enabled, control-shift-alt-F11 and control-shift-alt-P implement animation stepping and pausing, respectively.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

31 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

I wonder if the WatchMeMove cheat would help.

Turns out it's for effects from EDir and not the the automata.

 

Edit: Wait! While the WatchMeMove is in effect you can un-pause the game and then the step action does work for automata!

 

So, now I wonder about creating a mod which makes the Turtle game speed way slower and if that would help.

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

I've been tinkering!

While I can't adjust the train speeds via Lua (because those are coded in the C++ side), I can make the Flying Scotsman stay in one place by telling it it's a Fire Engine  and then set its movement speed to 0.01 KPH.

Using the Single Frame advance cheat (WatchMeMove), CB and I made the following animation:

^ Each frame is one step advance in the game. (Note: You do need a modern, up to date browser such as Firefox or Chrome to see the .webp animation.)

[rivit 3,391]

Very interesting - it actually is looks to show only 5 frames of the 6 for the wheels - note how the weight should change by 60 degrees each frame but it seems to jump from left to bottom each rotation. I wonder why that is?

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

3 minutes ago, rivit said:

it actually is looks to show only 5 frames of the 6 for the wheels

Oh! That will be my fault. I only took 5 pics.

 

5 hours ago, rivit said:

... so this give 4 rotations of the wheels in one second.

I had this in mind that there were only 4, but you do specifically say 6 frames prior to that.

[Cyclone Boom 16,875]

New animation coming right up!

(Just give us a few mins.)

[CorinaMarie 29,605]

@rivit

Animation is fixed in my above post.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Woww! Just Wow, It seems every cheat code is useful, Thank you CoriBoom™ and rivit's trained eyes! Honestly, I'm very glad and honored you're here with us.

I thought my skills of Automata modeling has been improved after countless studies, the experience is very important to make low-poly model, maybe I'm really kind of obsessive as @hugues aroux said, but Indeed I need to do more models to make the perfect work, Speaking of which, Hiya Hugues, Are you still here? I have designed some icons this year for a new UI which is similar as your Super blue theme.

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

On 5/28/2021 at 10:43 AM, Raymond7cn said:

 Simtropolis_SpotLight.zip, (In park menu)

Hay Ray did you know that this mod(Below) makes some of the car headlight beams show up as Simtropolis. It caught me by surprise when I saw it, after zooming in is when I noticed they said Simtropolis and I still have your mod installed. I just smiled and chuckled. LOL. But not all of the headlights, just some. The pic below took a few minutes to get a few of them in one shot.

EDIT: Actually it was this one ( z_spotlight-test.dat) forgot they were in the same folder.

  Edited June 13, 2021 by Kloudkicker  
Correction

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Hiya Nick, @Kloudkicker, Sorry my friend! I forgot to tell you this, some cars use this Spotlight's map as well,  And Thank you for telling me this, I like this kind of weird stuffs as you knew, For inspiration, It's really a beautiful mistake.

[Kloudkicker 4,561]

54 minutes ago, Raymond7cn said:

beautiful mistake

Yup, that's was what I thought. 

[Kiwiwriter47 472]

On 6/10/2021 at 8:35 PM, mattb325 said:

Visually, I think of SimCity as a giant trompe l'œil (trick of the eye). So, to make that reflection pool - I made sure that what it reflected isn't too crisp so that it can be used in a number of situations

This is the 3dsmax scene

 ....

which then becomes this once rendered....

....and the mask function means that even those black edges seen in the render don't translate to being visible once in game.

As you can see, it's mostly just angled cut-outs to do the work.

Setting the 'object properties' for those elements you don't want to be rendered out as:

------------------------------------------------

✓ Renderable

✓ Inherit Visibility

     Visible to camera

✓ Visible to reflection/refraction

     Receive shadows

     Cast Shadows

✓  Apply atmospherics

     Render Occluded objects

-----------------------------------------------

Produces the results seen in game.

That's clever...it reminds me of some modern artist, but I can't think of who. Maybe the guy who did the clock that bends over the shelf. 

 

On 6/11/2021 at 9:46 AM, Raymond7cn said:

I tried to figure out the influence on performance by changing all Maxis's Vehicle S3D's frames from 100 to 1, Maybe because I didn't test this on a big city, or my comp is powerful, Couldn't see remarkable improvement. 

At the beginning, I exported and tweaked all (144) the S3D's frames from 100 to 1 and rapid from 30 to 0. It's not that difficult by the Lua code Cori taught me. The efficiency of CPU and memory kept staying at 24~27 and 330m~360m during testing, whereas I found some freight trucks lost the trailer part but only the head left, aftet a bit digging, I found that the trailer is 34 frames and the head is 100, It returned to normal after I changed the trailerls frames back to 34 and keep the head as 1.

Along with digging, There were some interesting things, There were two S3D Vehicle's models were not called by any Exemplar's RKT, and there was a Exemplar named test_vehicle, but it actually points to the ship's model. and also There were 4 S3Ds they have been 1 frame there. and I also found that the Automata can works as family as Lots by divide to several parts, It will have variety of combinations.

I want to make a test, change the RKT of ship to a Balloon flights to see if it can fly over the bridge. and some same looking Vehicles they have different values in Exemplar file, for example some of them have Exemplar type = Vehicle, some others not, some are ground model, the others are not. I'm a bit curious what would happen if I modify them.

Well, too many possibilities to a Newbie, I will delve into it later, Anyway, here is a shot of London bus Automata:

I think I am closer to the truth of making Automata model, Probably. The secret is not modeling or renderring or baking, It's actually more about how to uvwrap the model properly and the PS skill. You can tell it just has 116 Verts and I only spent less than one hour to make the model and texturing in Photoshop. I believe I can make more better one as loog as I get enough time and references.

London Routemasters....a great way to travel!

 

5 hours ago, Kloudkicker said:

Hay Ray did you know that this mod(Below) makes some of the car headlight beams show up as Simtropolis. It caught me by surprise when I saw it, after zooming in is when I noticed they said Simtropolis and I still have your mod installed. I just smiled and chuckled. LOL. But not all of the headlights, just some. The pic below took a few minutes to get a few of them in one shot.

EDIT: Actually it was this one ( z_spotlight-test.dat) forgot they were in the same folder.

That just looks...weird! 

 

20 hours ago, Terring said:

Yes, you could even recreate some of @korver's epic futuristic cityscapes. And judging by your London bus I'm sure you'll come up with some really great cars

That is one impressively huge city. What's the population? What's that in the lower right hand corner? A transit system?

[Terring 6,473]

7 hours ago, Kiwiwriter47 said:

That is one impressively huge city. What's the population? What's that in the lower right hand corner? A transit system?

This is San Fransisco of the far future, predicted by @korverin Future Cities. I don't know the population, but I know what's in the lower right corner. It's the ATEX, a futuristic transportation system which is only for decoration.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

I finally made a slope friendly wind power tree, WindTree.zip

Actually, It didn't suppose to take so long, But I had to take those pieces of the puzzle together, since they are Barton taught me long ago.

The process is making a tiny Building so that will be invisible in SC4, then make it to Wind power with SC4PIM, make my wind trees to props with lights etc, Afterwards, make a Lot (invisible Building and Prop)in Loteditor and set Threshold and LotMax to 90 and LotMin to 0, set Lot Foundation to 0x194b1000, replace a Base Texture at last, at the last, use Reader to delete the last LotConfigPropertyLotObjectData (Base Texture). 

I haven't seen any issue during testing, Appreciate any help on testing, My friends, I thought the night light is not so bad there, I will release them as soon as possible, Thank you!

[Kiwiwriter47 472]

10 hours ago, Terring said:

This is San Fransisco of the far future, predicted by @korverin Future Cities. I don't know the population, but I know what's in the lower right corner. It's the ATEX, a futuristic transportation system which is only for decoration.

Please tell me the cable cars are still running. They have National Historic Landmark status, you know.

They appear in Star Trek, with their tracks slightly shifted to accommodate the realities of the 23rd century. 

Personally, in the 21st century, I think the California Street line should be extended past Van Ness Avenue, and the city leaders should take a look at their maps and hills and figure out where they can restore the lines they demolished. It takes two hours of standing in the "line ride" at Powell and Market to get on a cable car. It's ridickle-orst. 

Simply because the San Francisco Cable Cars only accommodate tourists and not commuters, they do NOT make my list of top five commuter railroads. Those are, in no alphabetical order:

Chicago City Subway and El (The longest subway station in the world, an elevated line still in the downtown, and a beautifully restored historic station at Quincy Street)

Glasgow Underground (small orange earthworms in an inner and outer loop) 

London Underground (A gigantic system that spreads everywhere. Soon enough it will have a line that connects directly with New York's Long Island Railroad at Montauk or Jamaica. Change at Jamaica for the train to Penn Station or King's Cross. It's just a long trip )

New York Subway (Another gigantic system that spreads everywhere, bringing vast development in its wake. Its advantage over the larger London system is that it has 24-hour-a-day expresses and a flat fare. You can lose your mind trying to figure out the London fare system. It's also converted a subway station into its Transit Museum. I've been a member for 20 years) 

Other favorites, but not in that class:

Montreal Metro  (Only one I ever saw that had a public library branch in a station)

Washington DC Metro (Clearly designed by the same guy who created the Death Star. Every time I ride it, I expect to see Lord Vader himself checking tickets)

Philadelphia City Subway (complete with underground trolleys, but I haven't ridden it enough)

Boston City Subway (America's oldest and also has trolleys, and goes direct to Fenway Park)

Bay Area Rapid Transit (zooms around, real fast, connects Oakland with San Fran, but does not connect A's Stadium with Oracle Park)

MUNI (great trolley and trolleybus routes, and Trolley Festival on Market Streets, which includes 12 former Newark PCC cars, 11 of them painted up for various cities around the country. The 12th retains its Newark livery)

Hong Kong (clearly a modern knock-off of the London Underground, but an enjoyable one)

Toronto, Los Angeles, and Kyoto were visually dull. I didn't get enough of a ride on San Diego to make a judgment. Port Authority Trans-Hudson lost some of its luster for me when they removed the distinctive red-and-white signs and replaced them with blue-and-white. Exchange Place now has the charm of Fort Bragg with all the tiles. Pavonia, Hoboken, Christopher Street, 9th Street, and 33rd have retained some of their charm. A careful PATH train rider can see the abandoned 19th Street station and the raised platform for the sealed-off 28th Street station, and see that the 33rd Street station was moved back to 32nd Street.

I ride the Newark Light Rail every day to work and while the underground stations are great (machine-age mosaics and terra-cotta art), the local riffraff use the staircases as men's rooms and they stink.

 

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

Hiya Mayor of Gotham City, Are you ready for a return of Batman?

Have finished it as below.

Still working on the Spotlight.

-----

Collection: Terring's splendid lists

@Terring My Caption, What's an appropriate height of a Batman in your opinion?

Update: Have finished it as below.

I don't know why the brightness changed so quickly at this time, The game's graphic system really burns my poor head.

[Terring 6,473]

OK, that's really cool, and I think the size is perfect

I personally prefer the first picture. It's not very bright and doesn't have the spotlight, giving it a more creepy and ominous sight for the bad guys.

[Raymond7cn 6,772]

23 hours ago, Terring said:

OK, that's really cool, and I think the size is perfect

I personally prefer the first picture. It's not very bright and doesn't have the spotlight, giving it a more creepy and ominous sight for the bad guys.

Yes, Terring, I had the same feeling about the first one, however I just couldn't forget that scene in the movie Batman 2 when Jim Gordon lights up the Batman light.(so exciting) however I'll definitely keep the first one. Anyway, I probably failed temporarily at the 5th attempt: 

Have finished it as below.

I have tried my best to learn the Maxis's approach on S3D lights, but still have some problem on gathering all light's pieces together, I presume that there maybe some geometry in it, Anyways, The Batman has almost done. (except a leg kneeled on the ground), I will go back to that power plant now.