I'm Modeling SimCity 4!

[PixelPerfect 565]

Hello everyone,

SimCity 4 was among my favourite hobbies growing up, and I want to pay homage to the series by modeling all of it, because nobody's done it yet, so why not. I thought perhaps you would be interested to see how it's coming along! Current progress: 19/600+ buildings modeled, 11 printed (4 not shown here), and a city-building set is in the works. Estimated completion time: 5 years. I keep a blog with daily updates. Don't want to spam this forum. See you all in 2028! 😊

[Propfam 2,311]

Looks insane! Keep it up!

[Cyclone Boom 17,032]

This is a super cool idea to model SC4 buildings!

I don't recall in 20 years of the game this being posted about before. You're most welcome to reply with updates here any time.

[hugues aroux 3,872]

What a great idea! Yes yes come back and show us the progress of your work/hobby...

[PixelPerfect 565]

Thanks so much for your support everyone :' ) I'll try to keep updates to keyframes here, but there is some exciting news I want to share here first this morning: I've begun iterating on the city-building kit I promised. It's scaled 2.5x smaller than the display models, so that I can have stage 7-8 growables in the corner of my desk! My 8k printer doesn't seem to be churning out 8k parts with the resin I'm using, and it's apparent (to my wifey who runs a print studio) in these prints 😅 Regardless, handling these parts is now an incredibly delicate operation. The trees and parasols and props are about as reinforced as they can be, and yet I hold my breath when I remove the parts from the build plate and wash them.

I also can't stop gushing about The Freytag Building. It wasn't my favourite building in the game, but minus the colour, it's actually now one of my favourite designs. Of course, I may have also increased the heights of the windows a pixel or two, because the original seems a little squished. Lemme take a couple photos under the magnifier, since the prints look better in real life than on camera. Unfortunately, you can't really see the English brickwork bond that well except under a microscope pretty much haha 😊

(It's 5 AM and I need to head to the office today 😵 but this project has me fired up working on it every spare moment I have.)

[mosonče 75]

I'd suggest using resin but apparently you already do but (as it's not specified) I'd scale it down depending on resolution in order to have a micro complete set in a shorter time instead of 5 years build time

And mandatory photo of 3d printer desk I saved for future

[SIM-ple Jack 17,451]

On 3/31/2023 at 7:06 PM, PixelPerfectWP said:

Hello everyone,

SimCity 4 was among my favourite hobbies growing up, and I want to pay homage to the series by modeling all of it, because nobody's done it yet, so why not. I thought perhaps you would be interested to see how it's coming along! Current progress: 19/600+ buildings modeled, 11 printed (4 not shown here), and a city-building set is in the works. Estimated completion time: 5 years. I keep a blog with daily updates. Don't want to spam this forum. See you all in 2028! 😊

Hi, my name is Mr. G. O. Dzilla(it's Greek) and you have piqued my interest in this project. Perhaps a collaboration?

 

[PixelPerfect 565]

28 minutes ago, mosonče said:

I'd suggest using resin but apparently you already do but (as it's not specified) I'd scale it down depending on resolution in order to have a micro complete set in a shorter time instead of 5 years build time

And mandatory photo of 3d printer desk I saved for future

That's right, these are resin prints! 👍 I spent a good month prototyping at different scales before deciding on the present resolution of 1 game unit to 5 pixels in my traces, which balances quality and time, allowing me to produce both a display format and a coffee table city builder format in one go. If you're curious about my process, I explain it more in-depth here (link to Reddit). There are presently no blockers aside from my 9-5. I am a little daunted to work on the stage 7-8 growables because I had to zoom out to extract full sideshots.

That's a really cool 3d printer desk by the way! 😲

[PixelPerfect 565]

22 minutes ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

Hi, my name is Mr. G. O. Dzilla(it's Greek) and you have piqued my interest in this project. Perhaps a collaboration?

 

Guau, I could definitely use a hand with pretty much everything non-structural (e.g. terrain, natural disasters, vehicles, sims — although my wifey has offered to help with sims because she models organics). Also, I'm sticking with vanilla SimCity at the moment, but we could expand the coffee table city builder format I'm working on into a standard for anyone to print their own models for. I'm willing to open-source the format spec and the peg/adapter/grid 3d models, as soon as I finalise them 😅 That way, people can personalise their cities! (I have an emerging grand vision for a PC (personal city) in every home, on every coffee table, 10 by 10, our visions for the world made manifest.) Here's what that vision looks like at the moment (apologies, we dropped it, and we're picking up the pieces haha):

 

[Propfam 2,311]

Glad your wife helps you. Hopefully the progress will advance further!

[PixelPerfect 565]

Transparent filament arrived today. Had an idea. Presenting the city building kit alpha! Tah-dah! 🪄

[PixelPerfect 565]

2 iterations later… 🥁

[Pakistani890 122]

Really cool idea!! Can't wait to see how this turns out!! 

[PixelPerfect 565]

Prototype. Endlessly extendable in all three axes. Now I can think about vanilla subways, elevated highways, and monorails. Add another layer for water pipes. Also, think NAM elevated light rails and high speed rails. The possibilities go beyond SimCity, allowing for cool stuff I've always wanted like underground pedestrian malls (cf. the PATH in my home city of Toronto), and even castles in the sky (to reference a film from a generation before mine).

[PixelPerfect 565]

Putting together a gift for my father, who's been supportive and has said he wants a copy of every building I sculpt 😊

[PixelPerfect 565]

A personal post about my story and what SimCity means to me. I'm looking a bit through Simtropolis, which I did use to download plugins from extensively back in high school and university in the mid-2010s, and I'm not sure now how to be more of a part of this wonderful community, so I just wanted to say hi to everyone who happens to read this. If I could afford to give my work out to all the wonderful people here I'd do so, as I've always loved building complex systems and buildings for its own sake, from my childhood LEGO cities up to SimCity (4, DS, Creator, Creator DS) and my Minecraft cities. I could survive on a few hours of sleep a day for a week designing cities. I'd just get so enthralled with building, it's difficult to describe.

My story. I wanted to be an architect or an urban designer at some point, but I ended up in mechatronics engineering, which I dropped out of because of a mental disorder that took some important years of my life, until towards the end of the 2010s I recovered and enrolled in a computer programming program, whereafter I got a job that pays the bills at a bank doing IT quality assurance. Last year, I met my fiancée who is an extremely talented entrepreneur of sorts who started her own design studio from nothing but pennies a few years ago. She's taught me all I know about 3d printing, and I launched this project at the beginning of this year because it gives me a sense of purpose and fulfilment. It really brings together so many aspects of my life. I hope I'll get to keep doing it. Honestly, I'd love to open up shop myself and just do what I love for a living.

And to end, I thought I'd share some of my SimCity schematics from almost 10 years ago. I haven't touched video games much in a long while because of a nagging sense that it won't pay my bills 😅

[Propfam 2,311]

21 hours ago, PixelPerfectWP said:

A personal post about my story and what SimCity means to me. I'm looking a bit through Simtropolis, which I did use to download plugins from extensively back in high school and university in the mid-2010s, and I'm not sure now how to be more of a part of this wonderful community, so I just wanted to say hi to everyone who happens to read this. If I could afford to give my work out to all the wonderful people here I'd do so, as I've always loved building complex systems and buildings for its own sake, from my childhood LEGO cities up to SimCity (4, DS, Creator, Creator DS) and my Minecraft cities. I could survive on a few hours of sleep a day for a week designing cities. I'd just get so enthralled with building, it's difficult to describe.

My story. I wanted to be an architect or an urban designer at some point, but I ended up in mechatronics engineering, which I dropped out of because of a mental disorder that took some important years of my life, until towards the end of the 2010s I recovered and enrolled in a computer programming program, whereafter I got a job that pays the bills at a bank doing IT quality assurance. Last year, I met my fiancée who is an extremely talented entrepreneur of sorts who started her own design studio from nothing but pennies a few years ago. She's taught me all I know about 3d printing, and I launched this project at the beginning of this year because it gives me a sense of purpose and fulfilment. It really brings together so many aspects of my life. I hope I'll get to keep doing it. Honestly, I'd love to open up shop myself and just do what I love for a living.

And to end, I thought I'd share some of my SimCity schematics from almost 10 years ago. I haven't touched video games much in a long while because of a nagging sense that it won't pay my bills 😅

Nice schematics! Looks like Magnasanti plan than anything lol

[PixelPerfect 565]

17 minutes ago, elfrjz said:

Nice schematics! Looks like Magnasanti plan than anything lol

Haha, I just looked it up, and it's probably a good thing I didn't go into urban design 😅

Which reminds me: I do hope to model older SimCity games and spin-offs too! There's so much work ahead of me. I'm excited 😊

[Propfam 2,311]

1 hour ago, PixelPerfectWP said:

Haha, I just looked it up, and it's probably a good thing I didn't go into urban design 😅

Which reminds me: I do hope to model older SimCity games and spin-offs too! There's so much work ahead of me. I'm excited 😊

I did want to urban design. But reality hits and I switched to accounting. Now I want to go to the uni I wanted. That's why I'm decided to take hiatus end of this month.

[PixelPerfect 565]

12 hours ago, elfrjz said:

I did want to urban design. But reality hits and I switched to accounting. Now I want to go to the uni I wanted. That's why I'm decided to take hiatus end of this month.

It's good that you're still pursuing something that you want! The world is changing quickly, and we have to upgrade ourselves to keep up. I hope this turns out well for you!

[PixelPerfect 565]

Update: Pulled an all-nighter the other day to get all my buildings printed for my father, and he was really happy to receive it. He also gave me some much-needed feedback: the small size of my prints is incredibly delicate to the point that a few rooftop decorations broke off as he was handling them. So I ran a couple large-format prints on the FDM printers overnight, and I'm quite pleased with the results!

Off to my day job. Take it easy 😊

[Propfam 2,311]

2 hours ago, PixelPerfectWP said:

Update: Pulled an all-nighter the other day to get all my buildings printed for my father, and he was really happy to receive it. He also gave me some much-needed feedback: the small size of my prints is incredibly delicate to the point that a few rooftop decorations broke off as he was handling them. So I ran a couple large-format prints on the FDM printers overnight, and I'm quite pleased with the results!

Off to my day job. Take it easy 😊

May I ask, what's below that? A phone case? Btw, glad your dad love your creations!

[PixelPerfect 565]

9 hours ago, elfrjz said:

May I ask, what's below that? A phone case? Btw, glad your dad love your creations!

Yep! Beneath the buildings is my phone. I used its flashlight to shine through each building. I've used my phone for rudimentary lighting in the pictures I've shared, and I'm undecided whether I should also design a lighting solution for my displays, having already tried to wire an LED array with an Arduino with little luck

[hugues aroux 3,872]

This backlighting is of the most beautiful effect. I imagine a whole "district" of building with in dark the streets ... huum it is promising! eager to see that!

[PixelPerfect 565]

3 hours ago, hugues aroux said:

This backlighting is of the most beautiful effect. I imagine a whole "district" of building with in dark the streets ... huum it is promising! eager to see that!

Thank you so much! I'm thinking of ways to direct light under each building using the transparent grid and adapter system. By controlling the material density and properties of prints, I can control the lighting of different parts of a city. For example, I can imagine that roads would be printed with a denser, more opaque material. The possibilities are promising indeed. I'm eager to share the results of my experiments!

[SIM-ple Jack 17,451]

On 4/5/2023 at 10:14 AM, elfrjz said:

Glad your wife helps you. Hopefully the progress will advance further!

I never met a wife, yet, that helped me advance progress further!

7 hours ago, PixelPerfectWP said:

Thank you so much! I'm thinking of ways to direct light under each building using the transparent grid and adapter system. By controlling the material density and properties of prints, I can control the lighting of different parts of a city. For example, I can imagine that roads would be printed with a denser, more opaque material. The possibilities are promising indeed. I'm eager to share the results of my experiments!

I was always interested in 3D printing, but couldn't come up with any ideas to make a buck from one, to justify the expense. Or the time. I'm way faster with my table saw.

But I did think of a few ideas for lighting. I would imagine any light that generates heat is out of the question. And there's the yellowing factor from direct light(even daylight). You could use a mirror set-up in the pedestal, with a silk diffuser. You'd probably need an opaque base. Does the material you use come in phosphorescent(glow-in-the-dark)? There's also paint that would work too. Just spit-ballin'.

[nos.17 5,264]

9 hours ago, PixelPerfectWP said:

Thank you so much! I'm thinking of ways to direct light under each building using the transparent grid and adapter system. By controlling the material density and properties of prints, I can control the lighting of different parts of a city. For example, I can imagine that roads would be printed with a denser, more opaque material. The possibilities are promising indeed. I'm eager to share the results of my experiments!

This is a super cool idea. The first thing that popped in my head is an arduino powered grid of addressable LEDs. Could do colors by RCI type, a color gradient by building height, or really anything else.

I'm definitely following along!

[Propfam 2,311]

4 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

never met a wife, yet, that helped me advance progress further!

Lol. I would too. But a. I'm a bit young and b. My prospective (not the current one) school doesn't allow me to be married, both before and during the study. I know their reasoning. So yeah, I can't.

[PixelPerfect 565]

4 hours ago, SIM-ple Jack said:

But I did think of a few ideas for lighting. I would imagine any light that generates heat is out of the question. And there's the yellowing factor from direct light(even daylight). You could use a mirror set-up in the pedestal, with a silk diffuser. You'd probably need an opaque base. Does the material you use come in phosphorescent(glow-in-the-dark)? There's also paint that would work too. Just spit-ballin'.

One constraint I'm working with is that the work has to be shareable. I was thinking of open-sourcing the grid system while possibly offering a printed kit at a price, and I don't want people burning their homes down with a solution I hacked together, so I've been exploring readily available commercial solutions like a colour LED lamp that's got something like a silk diffuser (I'll post an update with pictures later). Your mirror idea reminds me of a relatively new 3d printing technology called digital light processing (DLP) that uses micromirrors to project light in a precisely controlled way. A larger mirror might be bulky, especially if we're now scaling 2-3x larger than the original grid (the CO$$$ skyscrapers are almost half a metre tall at such a scale), and making it infinitely expandable to complement people's model train sets. I'm also working on multiple levels of elevation on single grids as well as stackable grids, so that offers more opportunities and more constraints.

Which brings us to photoluminescence. The plastic that my fiancée and I usually work with (polylactic acid, PLA) does have glow-in-the-dark options. It's a relatively brittle plastic, which is why I'm experimenting with PETG, which also has better heat resistance. Glowing buildings would take care of another problem — uneven lighting — which has me a little stumped. I have been bouncing ideas off ChatGPT. Lemme ask it something:

"I have created a 3d printed multi-level expandable grid-based miniature city modeling kit that consists of stackable base grids, buildings, and variable-height building footprint grid adapters. Some components allow light to pass through from underneath, using a combination of sparse infills and selectively translucent materials. The buildings range from a couple centimetres tall to half a metre. Can you suggest solutions for lighting cities assembled from my kit?"

Abridged response:

1. LED Strips: … You can install them on the bottom of the base grids or the buildings.
2. Miniature light bulbs: … These are small bulbs that can be installed in the buildings.
3. Fibre Optics: … You can drill small holes in the buildings and run the fibres through them.
4. Battery Operated Lights: These lights can be placed inside the buildings…
5. Solar Powered Lights: … These lights are eco-friendly and will not add to your electricity bill. You can place them in the outdoor areas of your city and let them charge during the day.

Miniature solar-powered fibre optics, huh 🤔 Let's see what I can find on Amazon.

2 hours ago, nos.17 said:

Could do colors by RCI type, a color gradient by building height, or really anything else.

Those are excellent suggestions, and I'm grateful that you're following along! I gave up on my Arduino experiment after the chip became searing hot to the touch controlling an 8x8 ws2812b addressable LED array. I should probably have bought a power supply instead of powering the array through an Arduino Nano 😓 And even though I'm excited to offer a fully customizable solution, I'm worried that I'll be sued for burning down someone's home…

[PixelPerfect 565]

Solar-powered proof of concept! Developing on feedback both online and offline, I've also halved the time and material used for the grid, doubled the size of the small format resin prints, and made buildings crystal clear. I'm also creating customisable lots and props for both this small resin format and the large plastic format. Feedback and comments are always welcome. Enjoy the weekend!