Cogeo's BAT Projects - Preview

[cogeo 960]

My progress so far: I have worked on the textures. I didn't want to apply them directly on the main buildings, so I made a smaller building first, just to test them. Following are two pics (maquette and brochure):

And my work with the textures.

Textures on large surfacers must be darker and less saturated to be in accordance with the ingame ones, otherwise they rather become an eyesore. So the textures on my model are darker and less bright. Also I have added some lighting effects (dodge/burn) plus stains (supposedly caused by water) on the roof.

As I would like to settle with textures/effects etc, before applying them to the bigger buildings, please post your comments, ideas or suggestions now. Looking forward to your feedback.

[bixel 1,228]

omg awesome!

[Sim shady 12]

ooh its coming along great

[Jasoncw 11,949]

For noise, make it monochromatic noise instead (or desaturate the entire texture, and then add the brown back in).  For the wall texture, make sure it has a high resolution, or else it will look bad on large surfaces.

[cogeo 960]

@Jason: Thank you for your comments.

The roof is indeed too brown. Actually it is made of three layers with noise patterns, brown, violet and black (mixed). The brown elements just prevail so I'm getting this effect. I'm going to desaturare only the brown layer. Another problem is that it's too crisp. I'm gonna fix this too. The stains are actually all-black and their layer is above all others.

About the walls, what you see is not the effect of a low-res image applied on a large surface, instead I made it by adding some noise to the original colour and blurring. The resolution is high enough I think, I always use 12 pixels per meter (of the 3d object). This wall is 42.2 meters wide, and the image is 508 pixels wode. Using a higher resolution causes gmax/BAT to blur the image, resulting in loss of detail. And of course I'm not going to use the very same texture on the big building too (stretching it) instead I'm gonna make another one (bigger, but using the same technique and parameters), so that I have 12 pixels per meter again. The effect I was trying to get is "painted concrete", any suggestion?

[Jasoncw 11,949]

oh ok, that makes sense.  In that case, I'd make the noise on the wall a finer grain perhaps.  The noise actually looks like a mix between compression on a jpg and stretched pixelation.  The color if it looks good though btw.

[cogeo 960]

Here is another pic with some changes in the textures.

The roof texture now has the brown elements desaturated. Also contrast has been reduced, so it looks less coarse, although the resolution was not changed. For the walls, I didn't blur the noise this time. This had caused even isolated pixels looking like clusters (indeed like artifacts of low-quality jpegs). Also the noise pixels are only in the grayscale range and intensified/darkened versions of the original colour (no other colours); again no change of resolution. This indeed has resulted in a better image at the closest zoom level, but for more rest the details tend rather to disappear so the final texture must still be decided.

Btw I have proceeded with texturing of the turbine building.

I still have to add some deails (doors, gates etc) and nightligthing before the model is ready.

[ianpaschal 77]

Looks very nice! Using the photograph of the plant really paid off. The factory looks very much like it belongs in the real world. My only complaint is that its a pretty ugly color IMO

[jacqulina 162]

very nice so far

[jayo 44]

I shall deffinetly be using this !!!!

[cogeo 960]

I have completed the turbine and the water circulation buildings. Here is a pic.



And a nightview. I didn't go for something fancy, just some "ambient" lighting (supposed to come from lightsources in the facility itself, or close buildings.

Next is the most challenging building of the set, the nuclear island (too much detail). I have no problem with the curvatures or the proportions, it's just too much work. I might need some help with loft objects, any good tutorial (or better yet, a more in-depth manual or guide)?

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I think the splotches on the top should be a lot smaller. 

[jayo 44]

Nice one cogeo Nice progress

[cogeo 960]

Jason, I just wanted a concrete texture that is large enough, so that I don't get a tiled pattern. This building is 98.7 meters long, and with the 12 pixels per meter that I almost always use, the texture should be some 1184 pixels wide. Most of the textures I have found are far smaller, ie 128x128 or 200x200. This would result in a apparently tiled appearance (if the texture would need to be tiled 5-9 times). The texture I have used is 800 pixels wide, so only a small part of it is repeated two times. but the biggest part is unique. I agree the splotches look too big, but I'm not considering resizing (shrinking) it, the texture would have to be resized a lot for the splotches to become realistically small, and I would still get a tiled pattern, which is exactly what I wished to avoid.

How about doctoring the texture: the splotches that cause this problem are only about 20-30. They can easily be selected and removed by using a tool like the Magic Wand. The resulting "holes" can be filled with a finer texture, probably in a layer below, so that I don't have to fill them one by one. This is quite easy and not laborious at all. What's your opinion?

Another method would be to replace completely the (original) concrete texture, but as said above I could not find a suitable one (large, not tiled and of course seamless), any suggestion?

[Jasoncw 11,949]

That would probably work.

When I have that problem, sometimes I duplicate the layer, use a fuzzy eraser and erase the edges, and then I shift the layer around.  After doing that a few times, there shouldn't be a seam, and the texture would be smaller.

You could also lower the opacity of the splotches.

[cogeo 960]

I have just removed the splotches as I described above. Here is the result.



What do you mean reduce the opacity of the splotches? It's a texture I found on the i-net (a jpeg), not one I made myself (unless you mean some other tricky technique).

[jacqulina 162]

wow great progress excellent work

[cogeo 960]

Last render (with the largest splotches removed). Is it OK now? Should I freeze the textures?

Some improvements with the nightlighting too (the previous ones were too dim).

Still working on the main building (no images yet).

[Jasoncw 11,949]

I'd try to do that thing I suggested with making it finer.  It still doesn't look quite right. 

[cogeo 960]

How about this?

Resized to 50% (also found a way to avoid the tile effect). I'm going to reduce contrast by 10-20% too, hope it will work this time.

[Jasoncw 11,949]

Yeah, I think that will look a lot better. 

[metasmurf 705]

I would suggest using the gausian blure filter in photoshop just a bit on the roof texture since its a bit to noisy

[jacqulina 162]

great progress looking great so far

[cogeo 960]

metasmurf, youre talking about the grain (make it less coarse) or the stains (more blurred)?

[cogeo 960]

Rendered again. The new concrete texture is resized (shrinked) by 50%, contrast reduced and somewhat lightened up. Also the roof has been blurred a little (lloking less coarse), and the spots somewhat softened. The vents on the roof are retextured, each one now has its own texture, so they are all unique.

I think it should be OK now. Any suggestion/wish?

[Jasoncw 11,949]

It looks waaaay better.  I think that the two textures of the lower walls need more contrast between them though.  Maybe the grey could be a little darker or something.

Also, the red should be a bit more orange too.

I also think that there should be some kind of finish to the top of the walls.  Just at thing black edging or something like that.  I don't know how realistic it would be, but I think it would make it look better.

[jacqulina 162]

very nice i like the texture

[cogeo 960]

Jason, about the contrast at the bottom, I actually toned-down the burn effect at the bottom in the new texture. You can see the difference by comparing with the previous render. Do you think this is necessary? Wasn't it too strong?

About the colour, I actually tried to match the real thing. Here is a pic:

Check also this pic. The images of course are manipulated, but the two older VVER units are real (of course the colour accuracy of a photo can be questioned), so I used those as the target. They aren't more orange, I think. I also colour-adjusted them for SC4 (suppressed reds, intensified blues a little) to counter the effects of BAT/SC4. I think the hue is correct. Also it's a compromise between reality and SC4. SC4 is actually significantly more "dull" than reality. I have seen many buildings BATted with exact their real colours, with many players complaining that they were "too bright" (meaning saturated). Don't you think this red on the VVER units would look "too bright" to most players? Also, the colour of the maquette on the top of the page, isn't it a bit of an eyesore?

As for the top of the walls, I have three different brochures/previews (with many many differences between them, I have to admit, eg the stripes may extend to the top or not, or the top maybe be all red or bare concrete, or that column at the front may be red or white/gray) but none of them has a trim or something; the real buildings on the pics don't have either, and I guess it will be the same. But SC4 isn't like reality again, the roof is much more important (no ground level views) so adding something could be possible, you mean just darken the upper faces?

[Jasoncw 11,949]

idk, I think right now it looks bland.  You can find places to add detail, and increase the contrast, and things like that to make it look better.  You're working with a tough design.  The designers have clearly never played Sim City. 

[Andreas Roth 629]

@Jason: Hehe, true. But on the other hand, there seems to be quite a bit of roof junk (on those older buildings), which could be used to make it interesting again. If the wall textures look "grainy" enough (so it doesn't look like plastic), this will become an excellent BAT that fits in well in every industrial area.