On the subject of scale

[onlyplace4 605]

Has anyone else noticed that as BATters we seem to stick to a much better sense of scale than Maxis? I am currenty working on a number of growables and have built these according to the true scale of a Sim which, in the BAT can be represented by a cube 1 wide, 1 deep and 4 high. Allowing for headroom etc., this gives us a door height of about 4.5 units, and a room height of about 5.5 units. I tend to stick to a door width of between 1.75 and 2 units depending on the building I am working on.

However, when you watch a custom growable spawn in, say, low wealth residential, the Maxis buildings seem exceptionally small by comparison. Indeed, for any Sim to get into most of them they would have to crawl and then only be able to kneel once they had got through the door!

I'm not sure that this affects the way things look within the game, though it does make custom buildings appear a little large when they are intermingled amongst the Maxis buildings. You can see what I mean from the pic below.

Any other BATters have thoughts/views on this? Should we stick to 'true' scale, or should we diminish our scale so that custom buildings are not so readily noticeable amongst the Maxis buildings?

[Kwakelaar 92]

I agree Maxis did a very bad job with scaling buildings and people. With units do you mean meters, meaning you make a door 4,5 m high?

[T Wrecks 10,210]

Yeah, forget Sims as scale - they are giants of 2.5 metres in game! I guess Maxis did that because they wouldn't be visible if they were smaller. But somehow, scale has never been something the Maxis guys were good at.

[onlyplace4 605]

Originally posted by: Kwakelaar

I agree Maxis did a very bad job with scaling buildings and people.

With units do you mean meters, meaning you make a door 4,5 m high?quote>

Not meters, but rather the generic units of gmax/BAT.

My son and I have just been watching the game develop and I now start to actually wonder if Maxis had any true scale in mind when they put this together. We have lamp-posts that would be about 3 storeys high, cars the Sims could never possibly fit into, wheelchairs the size of a family saloon, and so on.

My main problem now is, should I build scaled to 1 gu (generic unit) to 1 meter, or continue with the scaling I have been using? Changing now would mean that all of the BATs I have produced so far need to be reworked. Or should I simply alter the scaling on new buildings I produce?

Lets hope Maxis don't mix up metric and imperial measurements on the next incarnation of this great game!

[Jasoncw 11,949]

small details are modeled bigger so they show up in the render, and lamp posts are small details which is why they're so big. I'm guessing that the reasons those small houses look messed up is because the buildings footprints are scaled down alot (real buildings have much larger footprints). For office buildings it works ok because they have bigger footprints to begin with, but for things with small footprints to begin with, when they get scaled down it is noticable. A real life 2 car garage is bigger than most of the houses in the game. Anyway, I think when the houses were made with such small footprints, but normal game heights, they looked way too tall and disproportionate, so they made them shorter. But the bigger buildings seem to consistantly be 5 meters per floor. I think you should match your BAT to whatever environment it is intended for. If it's supposed to grow with those houses, then scale it according to that, and if it's supposed to grow with big buildings, scale it according to that.

[onlyplace4 605]

Originally posted by: Jasoncw

... But the bigger buildings seem to consistantly be 5 meters per floor.

I think you should match your BAT to whatever environment it is intended for. If it's supposed to grow with those houses, then scale it according to that, and if it's supposed to grow with big buildings, scale it according to that.quote>

5 meters per floor is a good example of what I am talking about with the scaling issue, as in RL that would mean that we all lived in buildings with 15+ foot high rooms!

At then end of the day I quite agree with you Jasoncw that buildings should perhaps be scaled in accordance with the zoning they are intended for, though this poses me a small problem with regard to the stuff I have done so far as most of this is thematic and ploppable, and therefore if they are all plopped/zoned together they have the same scale.

I guess I am going to have to do some further research into the scaling aspects of teh game and perhaps write a short tutorial/information sheet when I come to some acceptable conclusions.

From now on in though I am going to start modelling generally with a door height (a good marker for scale in my opinion) of 2 gu by 1 gu ... in other words, rather than scaling to a Sim, I will be scaling to true meters. This will give a floor height of around 3.5 gu. I am not, however, going to change scale on the thematic BATs as, with all these being plopped together, the scale is nearer to true scale with regard to the Sims who will live in them

Thanks for the feedback guys ... much appreciated

[Kwakelaar 92]

I generally make ground floors 5 m and the rest of the floors 4m, doors mostly 2,5x1m. What often happens with buildings in the game is that they look a bit squat. So sometimes I will exaggerate the height of the floors even more. I think the worst examples of scaling can be seen with the Maxis Landmarks. It seems they forgot everything about scale when they started making those, and I can really not see the logic behind it.

[JayStimson 212]

I'm sure there were many many conversations at Maxis about scale while SC4 was in development and numerous trade-offs had to be made. As already mentioned, the little sims (scale-wise) are not so little. If they were we wouldn't hardly be able to see them. They really would look like little ants. lol
DT posted some scaling guidelines but since ST5 I haven't been able to find it. I'm pretty sure that the taller the building the more the scaling needs to be adjusted. The shorter the building the closer to accurate scale you are, the better. I've been using 3 meters / floor for some short buildings I'm working on (2 story residentials) but I think that 4 meters / floor is better for buildings over 5 or 6 stories. I'd have to check DT's guidelines though to be sure. And if anyone knows about making great BAT's and getting the scaling right, he does. I also wonder what SG has to say on the subject.

[cogeo 960]

Check also this thread.

[loch 0]

i mean come on guys get a Grip my wife has been telling me for Years! "Size dont matter" so u see

[spa 970]

Originally posted by: loch

i mean come on guys get a Grip

my wife has been telling me for Years! "Size dont matter"

so u see quote>

Get a grip on what and who is doing the gripping?

[TheCrybKeeper 301]

Well, since I found out that Gmax actually models in the 1000.00 units.

I can imagine why this may be so:

Our models in Gmax and the entire SC4 game are micro scaled to fit.

I assume this was done, in order to get all things SC, into the 5 zoom parameters and still keep anough content,and eyecandy, as well.

we have 1000.00 or easier said; we have 100,000 points of detail and SC4 starts us out modeling in the thousands place, at 0016.00.

This is why Gmax opens at such a way out zoom level,. It's not Gmax that is flawed, it's the scale of our tiny models that must fit into our farthest away and closest, game zooms.

[Superstar 69]

Moved to the BAT Workshop forum

[exodus 10]

Hi I'm new to modelling and right now im doing some stairs. Should I make them larger then life, like say 1 meter each, so that they render better?

[SimFox 804]

If you make steps 1 m in hight they would look ridiculous...

There isn't one standard how scaled up this should be, but one of the more widely spread is 1.3 so NO WAY one step could be 1 m. It may render better, but to what end? It wouldn't fit into the game.

[onlyplace4 605]

I tend to make steps 0.3m high by 0.3m deep as this looks ok in game, and renders well too. Anything above that looks way too large in game.

[exodus 10]

Thanks for both answers

[bixel 1,228]

I make step .25 high and .25 deep. That way when I array it is just .25x and .25y from front view. It renders just fine and they do not look gargantuan. For shops/retail 1st and 2nd floor is usually 5 units high. 4 units thereafter. For low income residentials I usually make height at 3.75...though any shorter and it will start to look funny. For garages i usually allow quite a lot of height..typically 7 or 8 generic units, but that is because i usually make big building complexes with industrial sized car entrances.

[exodus 10]

Interesting. From what I'm hearing im building way out of scale. I have to say that simcity's scale seems quite out of...scale.

[DuskTrooper 316]

Here are a few of my scale numbers. As you can tell, I like to keep everything within a certain mathematical standard of denomination, etc to simplify calculations.

Standard issue building floorplate level: 5 Meters. Variances of +/-1M used for first/top floors sometimes.

Parapet/low wall height: 2M

Average space from building to sidewalk: 4-8 M (if lot is to be "full")

W2W limits: flush fit on edge, 4M seperation from front and back

Column thicknesses:

Stone: .75-1.25 M

Steel: .125-.375M

Horizontal mullion extrusions: .125-.375M

Entry/doors: 3-3.5 M H 1-1.5 M W

Window Spacings: Varies from 2-4 meters, depending on window size. Skyscrapers on average 3.

Column spacings: 2-6 M, on center; depending on layout

Grid Snaps: .125, .25

Grid Spacing: 16, 20

Steps: .25 M extruded: front faces of polygons detached, and textured seperately for emphasis.

Trims: .125-1M, depending on relative scale of building, architectural style, etc.

Wall Thickness: .375M

Glass Thickness: 1>0M

[dev 47]

Scale can really screw up an otherwise awesome building...I wish there was a universal system...make things better...I've got fast food restaurants in my cities that take up more room than baseball fields or skyscrapers...IT's all kinda screwy...particulary Maxis stuff...