Small Office Buildings

[Norwegian Neko 12]

I'm disappointed by the game's lack of smaller commercial buildings, the ones only a few stories tall.

I started some work on a new small office building, 6 stories tall. It's not complete yet, only about 1/3 or halfway done. It's going to be a 1x2 tile building when finished. What do you guys think?

[The_New_Thing 34]

Is this going to be wall to wall?

[marijntjo 0]

looks good, I guess it could use some more windows in the stone part of the building... And I agree with you, SC4 really needs more small office buildings... A city with only skyscrapers isn't that realistic..

Good luck.

[Superstar 69]

Looks promissing so far, add some glass to the windows and some more detail and it will totally ROCK!

[RadioheadFan 1]

Wow, it looks great! There's so many buildings like that in the small town where I live...great idea and keep it up.

RadioheadFan

[crazyarchitect 7]

that looks awesome so faw, a little more work and it'll be great

[Norwegian Neko 12]

No, this isn't going to be a wall-to-wall building. There will be some gaps on either side of the building, and hopefully I can squeeze some parking in there. The building is 60' tall by about 70' long, and about 30' wide.

I am close to finishing up the rear portion of the building, but I'm going to put in a loading back with a truck in the back, so I need those <<<>>> kinds of markings and stuff, with some crates and things like that. If you guys know where I can get a 3dstudio model of a forklift...(the prop won't do, it needs to be inside the building)

As for the rest of the building, I'm going to enclose the bottom level underneath the brick tower in a glass-encased lobby. I don't know how much detail I'll be able to put inside of it, but I was hoping for some plants, etc.

Each floor of the office building needs some desks/cubicles and night lights...as well as glass windows. Those are 10' x 8' floor-ceiling windows! Really neat, with precast concrete frames.

I also need to add 'roof junk.' I'm thinking of a simple, small HVAC unit on the shorter, larger roof, with some ducting leading to a few spots. It also needs a really ugly texture...

Speaking of which, believe it or not, I'm only using one texture right now. And the building isn't even rendered in gmax or 3dstudio, but in FormZ, which is the ultimate for architectural renderings.

Once I get all the geometry in it, I'll export it to GMAX.


zil

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

Hate to self advertise but i have a small office building available on the stex, the building got good reviews because of the 'small comercial office building' idea. Great work, look forward to seeing it on the stex, small buildings are in demand at the moment

[Norwegian Neko 12]

Well, here's an update to my small office building I am creating:





And, here's a detailed zoomed-in view in case you're wondering how much detail is in the building. I really wish we had a zoom level 6... =(



I believe one of the most important things to work on in a building's design is not the top (which, in real life, nobody sees anyway), but how the building creates a connection to the ground level and the street.

If you spend time working on that, your building will look much better - especially in those close-in money shots.

[DuskTrooper 314]

Looks great! However, whenever buildings are rendered, most of the smaller details are slaughtered, so do not go TOO far into the details (ex: keyholes, etc). Same with textures- you may want to increase the size of the textures, so the building will not seem like a solid block of color. Oh, and about tying it into the street- you may want to add some awnings and stuff. Keep up the good work!

[Motina 77]

Oh, the brick facade is the front? Not that architecurally pleasing as the back half.  You should put more verticality on it, since it such a slim figure.

[SpartanBadger 4]

Great idea, the game definitely lacks these buildings. I like this a lot, and would like to see some more work from you in the future, keep up the great work you have going here.

[wolverine 12]

Very cool, we definitely need more of these.

[Cjah 15]

Make like ten more high quality small buildings like that and your title will be

Low Rise King!

 

I can't wait to Download this great building its truly awsome!!!

[Norwegian Neko 12]

After some more modeling and the export to Gmax, I have the preliminary in-game shots of the building. Note that I still have a lot of work to do; especially texturing - this building, which will be a CO$$, will house around 80-90 jobs.

It looks too new and pretty; I want to add some 'dirtyness' or 'wear & tear' to it. I'm also going to add the typical HVAC roof junk, some parking signs on the wall in the parking lot, and some textures and extra detail for the loading bay, like stairs and some texturing.

Not to mention all the cubicles and lighting the building needs...sheesh! I'm only half done so far.

[rear loading bay and the 'other' side people normally ignore]

[ILL Tonkso 1,236]

Gret work, maybe add a bit more colour though

[Norwegian Neko 12]

Yea, that's what I'm thinking - it really needs some texturing. At the same time, not too much - med wealth commercial office isn't exactly known for being bright and beautiful.

[Maranello575 5]

I totally hate the original small office buildings.You are definitely showing how real small offices should look like and not some crappy 1 storey things.Great job!!

[johnnie2 0]

Excellent work thus far, zilfondel.  I was hungrily searching for more when I reached the end of the thread.

+track

[crazyarchitect 7]

very nice, we need more small offices

[kefka 3]

it's lookin nice!

Like someone else said, the bricks need to be made larger.  Right now they are actualy smaller than in real life, and bricks look better larger than in real life ingame.

 

also, https://www.simtropolis.com/content.cfm?mode=omnibus&view=130 could be helpful too.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

Yea, I just read the fake ray-tracing tutorial. Learned a lot about photoshop, too...

Pretty amazing stuff. I take it it's not too difficult to apply a texture to just a face? Do you have to apply a UVW coordinate system to the geometry first?

Lighting is going to be fun also. The renders at the top of the post were done in another app, FormZ. It has one of the best ray-tracing lighting systems for architectural use...too bad! I get to do it by hand...

[n74704 21]

awesome work going on here - lots of potential.

in regards to your question - yeah - this is a perfect candidate for interior lighting.  and if you want, id love to spend some time on it with you, giving you the ropes on lighting and faking textures in gmax.

 

if you want to catch me in a short period of time - MSN and AIM work great.

 

MSN - nitro747@sbcglobal.net

AIM - mike74786

 

youve got the makings of an awesome modeller.

[Norwegian Neko 12]

Update!

I spent about three hours last night, finally getting around to mapping textures to the model. Special thanks to Gascooker for his photoshop tutorial for tweaking textures, I think it's helped a lot so far... although the textures still need some work on them.

The next step will be the interior: I think I'm going to whip something up in FormZ and import it - 5 floors of cubicles, plus a front desk, benches and plants near the windows in the lobby. Let's see if I can get some people in there...perhaps?

Then lighting!

So, without further ado, here's the recently texturized update:

[crazyarchitect 7]

looking great, there could be a little bit more tweeking like you said, but otherwise awesome

[ramvid01 0]

i thitnk the brick walls needs some windows, but tahts just what i think

[your_adress_here 11]

Very nice! I love low-rises! I hope you will make more of these!

[sparkythepenguin 90]

Wow, looks like the PSU Urban Studies Center! Glad to see you finally got some time to BAT.

[wolverine 12]

I think the building looks great as it is! Nice work!

[Alfa_G 2]

Great, i will love it in my city's.

I wait for it at the stex.

 

Good job, keep on going some more small offices

 

Alfa_G