SPAs Urbanist BAT Thread

[Shy Dude 149]

I think it's best to go with the historical version since a lot of renovations just leave a building looking uninteresting and tacky but good resolution historical pictures to study details from are hard to come across so :/ 

[IL. 1,043]

 

 

 

This building reminds me of GTA for some reason  

 

Great work btw!!

[spa 968]

Thanks everyone. I'll definitely do a historic version of the St. Paul's Building.

Il: haha. I would guess its the cars

 

Modelling of the modern version of the St. Paul's Building is done!

I'm still going to do a historic version with the original parapet, street entrance, gable and clock. That version also won't have the loading dock addition. Before I get going on that though, I'm going to texture the modern version. A lot of the textures will just carry over between the two so it'll save time to do the texturing now.

[Shy Dude 149]

Nice, but that circle window looks too big.

 

Are you going to scale up the building height 133%? I find that facades with circle designs that aren't scaled up don't look quite right.

 

And don't forget that the historic one has different window frames

[spa 968]

Well it's about time for my once a year post and bat release (dismal average lately!). I still play Sim City and I still bat too, but I just don't have the time I once did. Community involvement, one toddler, plus a second baby on the way for January suggests that that won't change anytime soon. I'm following the development of Cities Skyline with interest. Anyway, over the last several months I have slowly finished up the St. Pauls Building. Below is how it turned out.

Given how slowly I go these days, I don't have the stomach to fiddle around and make an historic version as I originally intended. I would rather start something new. Another commercial building from Barrington Street or maybe an historic mansion. Don't know yet. Anyway, I think this one is pretty much done (just need to render a left corner version). Should be ready for release in the next week or so.

[Jasoncw 11,840]

Glad to hear from you! 

[spa 968]

Thanks Jason. You too. I don't comment often, but I do check up on your bat thread now and then. You and Nofunk seem to have slowed down too, but have still continued to produce some top quality bats.

 

For anyone interested, part of my limited free-time these days goes into writing for Spacing Atlantic. Spacing is a Canadian magazine that focuses on urban issues. Part politics, part planning, part community engagement. They run a dedicated blog in several Canadian cities. Here's a link to my articles

[JP Schriefer 5,590]

Nice building you did!

[art128 4,618]

Cool to see you back a bit, Spa! Nice building.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

A little Spa tour for every STEX heart...

[SimCoug 5,972]

It's great to hear from you Spa! Congrats on baby number two... My two keep me busy nonstop, so I understand the lack of free time. St Pauls is looking fantastic!

[Gannet 34]

 

 

 

 

This building reminds me of GTA for some reason  

 

Great work btw!!

 

 

I want it!

[Jasoncw 11,840]

 

 

 

 

This building reminds me of GTA for some reason

 

Great work btw!!

 

 

Car towing missions!

[spa 968]

Thanks Toothless, Art and JP

SimCoug it is a lot to handle, especially in the early years. I have two friends in town who are about a year ahead of us. It seems they start to play with each other around a year old. It'll be different switching into referee mode for part of the parenting experience rather than being the go-to entertainment centre.

Gannet: Good news, it's on the stex already. You can find it

 

So the St. Paul's Building is finished and uploaded. Now I might even start something new. Available

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Wow, EVEN something new, I like that. 

 

How about Sir Humphrey Gilbert Building in St. John's

 

 

That was the first RL based building I've ever started in Gmax

[SimCoug 5,972]

Anything new from you would be a treat  

 

Yep, a referee fits your new job description to a T.  Good luck    

[spa 968]

Toothless: You from the Rock? I don't have any pictures of the Gilbert Building and I'm unlikely to ever bat it, but I do have a fair number of pictures from St. John's. Lots of great store fronts along Water and Duckworth Streets and all the old residential neighbourhoods above are really charming. If I were going to do a modern St. John's building, it would probably be the John Cabot Building or Cabot Place. Have good photos of them and, for Sim City, they would be a nice midrise. Maybe eventually, right now I have something new underway.

Sim Coug: Thanks.

 

So I have started something new and it's something completely different. It's a fairly famous Toronto building from the Annex. Honest Ed's!

 

I have just barely started on one side of the building. This will end up being a fairly large Cs$ building.

[TCD 123]

That one looks like it will be a lot of fun to texture. The night scene will be cool as well.

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,195]

 

So I have started something new and it's something completely different. It's a fairly famous Toronto building from the Annex. Honest Ed's!

 

 

I have just barely started on one side of the building. This will end up being a fairly large Cs$ building.

 

Honest Ed's is great. Passed by it lots of times but never went in it. I heard that his son is selling the place in the next few year. Probably will be building some mid-rises or high-rises on the site.

I doubt they will keep the signage but it will last forever in Sim City 4 just like the Sam the Record Man building.

[Hotwheeler 409]

A very cool and interesting building you choose.Love the bright signs and all those funny puns that are scattered all over the place.

I checked out the area with Google Maps/Streets,and this thing is really large.Besides that,there are also a bunch of interesting buildings around Honest Ed`s.

Oh,and did you know?Honest Ed`s is so big you can walk trough via Google Streetview. This is no joke,it is true,here have a look: http://goo.gl/maps/xAipX

[spa 968]

Thanks TCD

9grunts: I went in once when I visited Toronto many years ago. Didn't buy anything. I had read that it will likely be demolished for condos. It occupies so much space in a prime spot that it's kind of surprising that the pressure to redevelop didn't get to it sooner. You never know though, the giant Honest Ed's signs have some cache. Maybe they'll be retained on one side or something. I understand the city has preserved the Sam the Record Man sign but has done a dismal job of finding a new home for it.

Hotwheeler: Neat find! I didn't realize that google had gone inside it. Thanks for sharing.

 

So I have been picking away at Honest Ed's off and on this week. Have the upper portion of one side done.

I have been working on this one a little bit differently than I normally do. I normally model, texture and then night light, but with Honest Ed's, night lighting is such a key part of the building that I have decided to focus on getting the key parts of the facade done before I move along to modelling the rest of the building. I'm pretty satisfied with results so far. One note about the night lighting. I work in gmax and the only way I could get the garish lighting to show up was to model the individual light bulbs and then shine a really bright light on them. It took a long time to copy and arrange all those bulbs! Luckly, all the facade elements repeat on the other three street sides of the building so the hard part should be over. I'm a little disappointed that the scale prevents the puns on the signs from showing up. Oh well, anyone who knows Honest Ed's will know what they are.

[gutterclub 2,729]

This is going to be great! just a shame you arent using max to night light this baby..

[9gruntsand1hammer 3,195]

 

9grunts: I went in once when I visited Toronto many years ago. Didn't buy anything. I had read that it will likely be demolished for condos. It occupies so much space in a prime spot that it's kind of surprising that the pressure to redevelop didn't get to it sooner. You never know though, the giant Honest Ed's signs have some cache. Maybe they'll be retained on one side or something. I understand the city has preserved the Sam the Record Man sign but has done a dismal job of finding a new home for it.

 

 

Last time I heard anything about the Sam the Record Man signs, they want to put them in Dundas Square somewhere.

[SimCoug 5,972]

So cool!!

I can't believe you modeled each light bulb... That has to be some type of BAT record.

[Toothless Stitch 2,901]

Wow, some retro batting art. Be careful about the scale, though. Whenever you start woring on something but not the main building it can happen you have to adjust the RL scale to the sign since it might be overscaled or underscaled. 

[KonstantinII 1,106]

Thanks TCD

9grunts: I went in once when I visited Toronto many years ago. Didn't buy anything. I had read that it will likely be demolished for condos. It occupies so much space in a prime spot that it's kind of surprising that the pressure to redevelop didn't get to it sooner. You never know though, the giant Honest Ed's signs have some cache. Maybe they'll be retained on one side or something. I understand the city has preserved the Sam the Record Man sign but has done a dismal job of finding a new home for it.

Hotwheeler: Neat find! I didn't realize that google had gone inside it. Thanks for sharing.

 

So I have been picking away at Honest Ed's off and on this week. Have the upper portion of one side done.

I have been working on this one a little bit differently than I normally do. I normally model, texture and then night light, but with Honest Ed's, night lighting is such a key part of the building that I have decided to focus on getting the key parts of the facade done before I move along to modelling the rest of the building. I'm pretty satisfied with results so far. One note about the night lighting. I work in gmax and the only way I could get the garish lighting to show up was to model the individual light bulbs and then shine a really bright light on them. It took a long time to copy and arrange all those bulbs! Luckly, all the facade elements repeat on the other three street sides of the building so the hard part should be over. I'm a little disappointed that the scale prevents the puns on the signs from showing up. Oh well, anyone who knows Honest Ed's will know what they are.

 

How did you rip the textures from the building? What program did you use?

[Sabretooth78 808]

It's always great to see these iconic structures make their way into the game, even if in the grand scheme of things it's just a dumpy 1-story.

 

Being fairly oblivious to the whole night lighting options in Max, is there even anything in Max that would preclude one from having to model individual bulbs for a marquee something like what spa has modeled?  Either I'm being totally ignorant or it seems you would probably have to do a lot of that work anyway; then pray a reasonable representation of it actually shows up in the game.  Great work, nonetheless.

 

Funny, just looking at it in Street View and it seems to bear some resemblance to all the puns that the US chain "Ollie's Bargain Outlet" seems to use.  Seems to be the same kind of store, and now I see where some inspiration for it probably came from.

[Shy Dude 149]

Very nice texturing, but the drop shadow on the big sign looks darker than it should be. I'm also curious of doing glitzy signage in GMAX, are you gonna use any omni lights?

[TCD 123]

Can you not apply a self illuminating material on the lightbulbs or does that just look bad in Gmax?

[spa 968]

gutter: Thanks. I work with the tools I have

9grunts: Really? Dundas Square would actually be a pretty good home for them.

Simcoug: A painful record I'm up to 10,000 some odd objects in the scene. It's going to be a big one.

Toothless: Already ran into my first scale problem. More on that below.

Konstantin: I actually walk all around the buildings I bat and photograph the exterior. I pull most of my textures from those photos and, of course, modify them to fit in photoshop. I was able to cheat a little with the main Honest Ed sign as someone on the web already made it for me. The bargain centre words and the big Honest Ed's are actually very narrow square boxes with alpha maps applied to zero out the stuff I don't want to show.

Sabre: I honestly don't know. Not up on what the options are in max. I googled Ollies and there does seem to be a lot of similarity. Apparently it's an established business model!

Shydude: The drop shadow is actually part of the signage and not a real shadow. Checkout the photo further up the thread. So far, I have just been using target directs. I'll probably have to put a few omnis in too.

TCD: I thought of going that route, but it looks better this way.

 

 

So I have been making progress on Honest Ed's.

 

The Bathurst Street side is now pretty much done. Just need to add flooring and light the storefronts (will do that once all the walls are in place). So with Bathurst in good shape, I have moved around to the Bloor Street side. The early going on Bloor has been fairly easy as all the various decorative elements repeat. Only the windows and doors along the street change. This has given me an idea as to the size of this monster. Looks like an 8x7 (Bloor Street, the long side, is actually the front). Unfortunately, I have run into a small scale issue. I have been so focussed on just getting everything modelled and textured that I neglected to work out the scale so that it fits into an urban setting in game. The model on Bloor right now is 130 m long. That is about 5-6m longer than it should be to fit wall-to-wall on an 8 tile wide lot. I'm going to shave a few meters off by repositioning the elements on that side (it won't be noticed if I do it well), but I'll probably still have to rescale the whole thing just before i render. Given how many objects there are in the scene, that'll make my computer cry, but it shouldn't impact much of anything. Anyway, I'll keep picking away at this one. Apart from slowing my computer down, it's a fun bat to work on.