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great work! I was trying to comment earlier, but the whole thing got stack... and working extremely slowly and unsure still... (at least on FF4) Anyway to the topic. Texturing, by the most part, is superb, the only model I think that really needs some attention is this little marvel: 1. Given that these are two clearly different building I think it wouldn't be bad idea to make the distinction more apparent on the front wall - now it looks too solid plane like. 2. The gradient here is to CGI - smooth monotonous line. It really needs to be broken down, or broken down down more in line as there is "dirt" at the bottom of the wall at the side view. 3. Brick pattern really looks stretched here. Also it is way to monocrome. Actually most of the texture could stand some "color treatment". They do look somewhat crayon like atm All in all excellent and work and practical addition to the game!

Hello, been thinking since long time in doing this project, mainly because most of my uploads are shopping centers, small stores and so... I'll be showcasing here everything I can of the suburban project here. I have prepared a list to do... Essentials: -Suburban Mega Prop Pack (props in HD) -Suburban Mega Texture Pack Zoning stages: -Residential low wealth ($): Pack of 15 small homes, of different styles and colors, for a good variety, plus x3 times lots. -Residential medium wealth ($$): Pack of 20 regular homes, of diferent styles and colors, for a good variety, plus x3 times lots. -Residential high wealth ($$$): Pack of 10 big homes or mansions. -Commercial service low wealth ($): Pack of 20 different stores or more plus small outlets, gas stations, smalltown stores and abit of everything... -Commercial service medium wealth ($$): Pack of different stores like restaurants (chilli's, applebee's, bennigan's,. etc), car dealers, retails, hotels, and so.. -Commercial service high wealth ($$$): Some few high wealth luxury stores... -Small commercial office buildings ($$), like 3-5 floors, banks, insurance companies, etc. + Ploppable versions of the commercial service. Civics: -3 hospitals of different styles -5 schools of different styles and grades -3 police stations -2 fire stations -1 library Other, landmarks, parks... -Mall project (ongoing) -Outlet center -Community center -Graveyard -Modular parks -Pack of small churches Whats the purpose of this project in difference of released stuff at STEX or SC4Dev?, the main difference is to keep balance while playing the game, talking about the style of the game and function. I mean, with this pack you can recreate an north american city without downloading everything at stex, you'll get your game running smooth and faster, also the style of the constructions, textures will be static and similar, the game function will be static at the correct stage of development. As you know, I worked and made LBT possible, at the moment LBT is a dead team, so probably I plan to make a new team, maybe called TSP, SP, SB, or SBT (suburban bat team) which i give the credit to Aaron Graham for the idea, if i get help and support from the community maybe we can create a new bat team Also as you noticed i have removed some of my stuff from stex, due i plan fixing many of the lots i made as like the gas stations which will be included in this project. Everything will be available at STEX only, as packs mentioned before. Please be patient, because this will be a long project, the first thing to do is to make the prop pack. Thank you! any help, idea, support is appreciate.

The Manhattanville project is dedicated to re-creating buildings from Manhattanville, a NYC neighborhood that is now being redeveloped. Until recently, the neighborhood was a good example of an old inner city industrial district. It hosted a large concentration of a type of building that is quite common in reality, but not so much in SC4: Wall to wall industrial buildings. With this project we would like to provide more custom content for the game and remember a piece of old new york that is slowly disappearing. SimHoTToDDy - Vlasky - Francis90b West 131st Street block Buildings in this block: Studebaker Building. 3259 Broadway. 2301 Joe DiMaggio Highway. 2307 Joe DiMaggio Highway. 2311 Joe DiMaggio Highway 605 W 131st Street. 609 W 131st Street. 635 W 131st Street. 641 W 131st Street. 653 W 131st Street. 640 W 132nd Street.

Downtown Selbring City Selbring City is a town of despair and always has been from the start. A city shadowed by it's poisonous atmosphere and it's heavy industrialization, it is truly a deadly wasteland in which people risk their lives for money. And in downtown, dawn is approaching and the yellowish haze is beginning to settle over the city yet again. Linky for better view of the first picture The City's lights cover vast distances, small amount of cars travel on the streets, where danger lurks in the distant alley shadows. Linky for better view Selbring's Morning brings nothing but the yellow haze and a small crowd. People slowly start their day, getting prepared for another grueling day of hard labor, exhaustion and suffocation under the poor conditions and worn down factories and warehouses. Thanks for viewing, and keep an eye out for the next update Thanks Again!

Welcome back to the Hazardous Wasteland known as Selbring City. Where the millions work, eat and choke on the air, and where the air is also known to suddenly burst into to flames and where the streets will occasionally leak gases and waste material. This is no place for you, or anyone for that matter, but since they need the money, they've been confined to a city of ignored condemnation. Click here for a slightly better view Today a fire has ravaged the ravenous hell-like city, as a gas main on 56th Street burst and leaks from the gutters of the sprawling metropolis. Some people have fainted across the paths and in the middle of roads due to this poisonous gas. Then a local tenant decides to smoke outside...then at that moment, the street set alight, causing a massive fire to rage upon the apartments and the trees and the cars... This crazy event is stop by an attempt from the Selbring City Fire Department, and stupidly enough, don't even bother to get closer to the fire. Its a terrible city alright, even its inhabitants Thanks For Viewing!

Okay, you've got me really excited for the next update! (More than my usual excitement, that is.) I love the way you have combined the Parisian style W2W buildings with the others. I can't wait!

Nice little town, looks pretty good! Here's how to create a new CJ: 1- On the upper right corner of your screen, click on the drop down menu and select "my city journals" 2- You will then see "create a city journal". Click next and that's it!

Answers? They'll come soon enough.... Hehehe... I have to finish digesting my cevapcici first. Anywho, I thought I would give everyone a brand new update while I get my story straight for answers. So, brace yourselves, everyone!

At least it is an interesting post First of all, thank you! For point 2, you are right in that it looks silly in the side view. I don't know how I messed removing it before! Personally I think it looks alright in the front, it offers just enough contrast between the two sides. Which brings us to point 1. In reality, there is no difference between either "building" as far as facade material goes. When they built the addition they must have re-faced the whole thing. If we couldn't see otherwise in aerial views we might have thought it was one building. Any difference represented in the render is an exaggeration, but I'm happy with how it is. As for point 3, yep, need to work on that. Concrete block is a minor element in two of these models (I think 3 of any of my models ever, lol). Subtle hue shift, lower contrast, and a little sharper should put it in it's place. Might also need a larger bitmap, since it is only brick texture with a larger UVW map (Yeah, I was lazy with this one). If those are the only complaints you have, I think we managed well! Thanks for stopping by

First picture is beauty! ;* This rocks on the coast are seawalls?

Oh greate industry and a three

The Member of the Month is .......... Aaron Graham! For being a supportive member of the BATting forums, to members of all experience levels The Employee of the Month is .......... CaptCity! For being a steady hand below deck Congratulations to the winners! Please be sure to nominate someone for the August award! Remember, the awards depend on your nominations.

If you are taking a picture of the entire screen, you might also want to crop a bit off the bottom, just to get rid of the minimize/maximize button. It makes things look ugly, especially when making a Mosaic. Another option would be to make a watermark that covers it up.

Very Nice

All good, except that container ship will never fit under the bridge.

Congratulations!

Studebaker Building The Studebaker Building, which was originally built as a dealership warehouse in the roaring '20s, served many interesting roles in its life. Sold to Borden's Milk Company in the '30s due to the obvious drop off in luxury car sales, it is now used by Columbia University and even the factory for internationally famous Madame Alexander Dolls. 3259 Broadway. 2301 Joe DiMaggio Highway. The building that currently stand at this address is actually composed by two different buildings, a small workshop and an old diner, that had been united and heavily modified. This is an old pic of the two buildings: I've modeled the workshop as it looked in this pic. I didn't model the diner - i was never too interested in it, and I've decided to leave it out for now. -Francis 2307 Joe DiMaggio Highway. 2307 Joe DiMaggio highway is an interesting building with a facade clad with glazing bricks.It looks to be built around the 1940's. From the first time I've seen it, many of it's details had caught my curiosity, like the octagonal window on the second floor, or the two story row of glass in the far left...i hope i did a good job in re-creating them all. -Francis 2311 Joe DiMaggio Highway. 605 W 131st Street. 605 west 131st street is a small, one story warehouse building. Despite it's drab appearance, it features an unusual cut stone facade, which had been sadly painted over. We have decided to make it a little less destitute, and to leave the facade unpainted. 609 W 131st Street. 609 west 131st is a long and narrow building, that spans from road to road, just next the old Studebaker building. Someone said that SC4 is a game of rooftops, and all this long, narrow building has to offer is a roof filled with various junk...maybe it could be a, ehm, "nice" touch for your industrial districts. 635 W 131st Street. 641 W 131st Street. 653 W 131st Street. 640 W 132nd Street.

I have no idea what you're talking about Congrats to the winners!

i really like the rice fields detail!

Well done, gentlemen. A well deserved kudo for each of you.

The idea of presenting the Islands through train rides is great - especially when the result is an update like this. And the one before. And before that.. Wonderful. Again. And I believe the dragon is thrilled with the view of the city station area in scene 1, from the top of the skyscraper between the rail and the HSR.

Congratulations to yuou guys, You make ST proud!

Two very hard workers this month... definitely devoted to the cause of making this place an enjoyable site for all!! I tip my hat to you! With a picture to celebrate the mood that I uncovered courtesy of Google.

Another great update.

tottaly in love!

Of course it was a fabulous update. Your train lines are truly something. I think I've actually visited places just like that during my travels in Japan.

Ilyushin Il-46

Well iRay is already out... I know I got it.. it may be a beta, though... Anywho, as things stand it has some major limitations as far as it's use in BAT is concerned. First of all it iterative open ended renderer. Meaning that it doesn't have any specific finish line. It will go on forever refining picture if you let it. So you should either just stop it manual when you see that the picture reached desired quality, or set some arbitrary time or number of passes. All three approaches are rather silly and self defeating - you literally have to sit through it! Another issue is it limited, way way too limited Antialiasing option making straight renders virtually useless - you have to bring them to Photoshop for manual adjustment - one more time consuming step that demand you physically sit in front of computer and do manual labor! It (iRay) also have some major problem interacting with some of the max elements and object properties - for instance it ignores "invisible to camera" setting. And on top of it all, at least at the moment, it doesn't interact well with Maxscript ... All that makes it totally useless. Although it has some nice sides too - particularity quite accurate, or, at least appearing so, GI As far as suggestion to actually model stuff in shop windows - it's nuts, and not because it will take render times here or there, and not even because it is a lot of work for virtually nothing... The main reason it will NEVER look realistic at this scale. Renderer will never be able to accurately light or resolve it.It will never look as good as fake. Any render is pixel based, that's the key. So when you approach 1 pixel sized objects and go below it thing just fall apart in terms of global illumination, shadows etc, etc. especially in such a small and confined environment as shop window. Besides the point there (with shop windows) not re-create reality, but simply to set an illusion of busy scene. Well, at least this is what I think at the moment...

Thank you for you attention! Todd, thoughtful and insightful remarks! How true it is ALL just an illusion! Just like these brick which strictly speaking aren't bricks really. Farthermore, the texture on both models is exactly the same! So any difference in appearance is just an illusion, yet it is a key thing. I've been tinkering a bit with it and the model (I don't have much of time at the moment, not in relatively long stretches, so it progressing slowly. so what do you gang say? is it bright enough (for little companion of 500 5th aka Salmon building) how about prominence of the "brick"?

just to show that this project - 500th 5ave & Companion (Salmon Tower) are still alive and some progress had been made: I am a bit at a loss as to what to do with the lower floors walls in the court yards though... another question, do you think bricks are too prominent, should the be fade away somewhat? If so, how much? BTW while making these two I've written new script for creating shades/curtains, which after making proper GUI for I intend to make public. Same goes for actions set for creating brick texture in Photoshop...

Yes, you got it right to the point SimFox. It looks true to RL. I present exhibit A . But I'd like to point out two things: it is completely w2w with Transportation building, and I feel like you aged that green patio roof a bit too much. After all it is a building from 2007. Also one more concern: on street side in lower right corner there is a red-orange reflection which seems too distinctive, like as if reflects safety net from some construction site, a color so rare in SC4, so you might want to get rid of it, (just a suggestion. And with you being such a perfectionist, I know you'll appreciate this image, showing the marble on ground floor. Hope I helped in achieving as best as possible result.

I did base myself to some photos i've found on emporis...by looking at them i had the impression that the building was clad in polished concrete rather than in sandstone or travertine-like stone... Hope i'm more clear now. Although it's a good idea to deliver the feeling of the materials (that' the main raison d'etre of "textures", right?) i'm not too sure it would be a good idea to stress on that concept so much that the reality is completely missed or cancelled from our representation of it....if you look at some pictures of the building you might realize that the cladding material does appear as "solid", without very noticeable dividing lines between it's panels. Speaking about pictures that could speak thousands of words... Hmm....that's a very close pictures, and you can hardly notice the dividing lines between the stone panels...i'm wondering about how could the building look in SC4 perspective...i guess we will be able to notice each and every panel of the building!

I had some time to work on the textures today and here are results: As you could see I have dealt with "gray" issue and it is much warmer/brown now, It is overall a bit brighter. Generally dealing with color is a very complex and delicate mater. Made only more complicated by the fact that color as such is a very illusive matter. Everybody thinks they know it (since they see it) but in reality there is so much subjective in such perceptions and especially expressions that understanding (such where any precision is needed) may be very difficult. It made more difficult still by the fact that most people are not aware of the issue at all. Although it really shouldn't be. The need to communicated color precisely led to the quite precise definitions for most of the common colors. They all have they RGB/HEX values, which could, thanx to the internet be easily checked. Of course there is always good old "picture speaks thousand words" maxim. Francis90: I'm afraid your message again left me completely confused. I don't think I really get either your attitude or some points in it. For instance where do you see clean polished concrete on this building. I see no concrete exposed anywhere... I did take a little artists license and substituted sandstone to travertine-like stone. This was result partially of my fiddling with Photoshop actions to create base textures - all textures (apart of the one of the patios and the roof) are hand painted and not photo based. And the fact that I think it is important to sort of deliver the different feel of the materials used in real building - buff brick and sandstone. This difference which is lost on most pictures is none the less importatnt in my mind and I sort of wanted to stress it. Making "sandstone" would be a sort of designed to fail exercise as, if made faithfully, it would simply appear as a solid color in game resolutions. So I went with travertine like stone since it has pattern to it. Pattern that could realistically be made much larger than that of brick and still appear like travertine in renders.

Yeah, it could double as a slightly over-sized pencil tower. it has remarckably small crossection for a 205m tall building...

Well since you're doing one of my all time favorite building I wanna help out as much as I can. So, at the risk of cluttering your topic, I must post some more pictures in hope of helping you and making it a bit easier to bat details. I've been researching a bit and found out that 500 fifth Avenue building had antenna in the 50s. I think we can also see it on Hanson784's picture. But on LIFE magazine's picture you can see the original crown (looking East). The next two are from period of construction. On this one steal construction is almost over and you can see the shape of it (hope it helps), and on this one construction is nearing end, and the original top is finished. Here is my choice of newer pictures: Looking North-East , looking south, close up on the top here ; looking North-West . Here pictured is the "back" of the tower - aerial And I would wrap it up with these: Entrance on fifth avenue+details and one more of the base. p.s. I couldn't resist: The bonus since we're talking architecture in New York in 1930s. Final design of the Rockefeller Center And afterwards when the British Empire Building and La Maison Francaise replaced the oval building in the center

Maxis Nite version had been uploaded to STEX as well. Thank you guys, thank you! I hope you would remain critical and don't shy to speak your mind when you don't like something or disagree with something! Be yourself, speak your mind! This BAT is only better because of Sgt Pepper, TWrecks, Jasons remarks and suggestions. I thank you all for attention to details in my work. As for what is next... Well, I have changed the opening message in this thread to be some sort of catalog of my NYBT work. Well I also included into it the United Nation Project work, which isn't, strictly speaking, NYBT project. It has been started by HKABT member Cockatoo and right now in it 4 participants: Cockatoo, JasonCW, SimHotToDDy and me. I welcome all the members of NYBT and fans to take a look at the project public thread and offer you suggestions, opinions and so on. Cockatoo had made a remarkably accurate sketch and now the buildings had been alloted. Yours truly, so far got General Assembly building with it's beautiful flowing lines: It is simple and difficult at the same time. Once one gets his mind around curves and angles of the building (and here again Cockatoo had made fantastically good initial sketch that didn't require much correction - at least as far as I could see) there isn't really all that much to do. So the modeling is basically done and I'll start making textures for it. And here I would like to ask your help. If anyone has, or can make, photos of the nightlighiting on the building, particularly its north (in RL) facing facade, I would greatly appreciate if you could share them! I've searched and found nothing of the sort so far. Other things... well there is 500 5th Avenue of course. For some bizarre reason I had assumed that it is a residential building, but I had been wrong. It is an office. I manged to get some floor plans and interior shots. And I must say the quality of both design and construction had gone LONG way since 1930s. I was absolutely surprised, shocked even how shabby the thing is actually is compared to the modern towers. I sort of exacted something greater than life, I suppose, being led by the glorious exterior (well basically it overall shape), but the space inside is rather unappealing. Anywho... I'm not really making interior am I... From where ai stand I have to get my head a bit around the material of the facade. And make a strategic decision of what am I gonna make with the top of the tower. I hate beyond measure the ugly giant AC unit that nowadays crowns building. I, think, I would rather go with red neon "500" that reportedly had been on top of it in teh first place - again if anyone has any picuitreof it would be great to see them. Another thing that is firmly in the plans is Hearst Tower by Foster. For me it has "sentimental value" - it was my very first attempt at Batting couple of years back... The results weren't too pretty, I had No idea about materials, effects and some such. I was smart enough, though to realize my shortcomings of the time and not publicly embarrass myself showing off what I was capable to achieve then. However some years had passed and I'm not anymore armed with GMAX BAT alone... So i will definitely give it a go. I've also started some preliminary work on Barclay Tower: I can't quite say what did attract me to this building, It is quite banal in some respect, yet something in it calls my name and "here I come"... I guess it may be some modern allusions to Art Deco... I, sort of, think of it as a quickie project. The tower would sit snuggly on the 2x3 lot so there wouldn't be any Lot design or some such. And the tower is pretty regular in its rhythm, so once cracked (again don't expect any great difficulties there) it should be pretty quick arraying around. Anyway these what I have in mind so far. I wouldn't go into precise timetable though. Next month I would be quite busy and later I'll be off to China again... so...

Seagram (Dark Nite version) had been uploaded to STEX Come and get it! Alternative download link (in case STEX is again on a blink) Maxis Nite version should be availabel later tonight.... stay tuned.

The lighting Simfox has applied here is definitely one that is a valid representation of office lighting, and as you would expect is well executed. As far as office lighting in general is concerned there are a few things to consider: Most purpose built office buildings will have large open plan spaces. A whole floor may end up in use or just the areas used by particular departments. There will also be areas where just one or two lights can be lit without overspill due to the presence of an enclosed personal office or meeting room. The building will often be used by more than one company, some of which will work after dark and some not. Most offices are not 24/7. Lighting is generally in strips controlled by each switch. If only a few people are working late you may just have a single strip active with overspill into the rest of the open plan space. Energy efficient systems will use motion sensors to enforce the switching off of lights in areas where there is no activity so the idea of a whole floor being lit will become less common. Where energy saving systems are not in place a whole floor's lighting can be left on simply because everyone's too lazy to turn the lights out at home time

1. If I hadn't looked at the building, and someone told me that's how the back actually was, I would believe them. As a whole I think it's a big improvement. 2. You could make a rail that is smaller than the original one, and you could just have both people rails and window washer rails. When I first saw the roof texture what struck me is how brown it is. I'd personally probably like it better if the top roof texture was more like the lower roofs, even though it's tan in real life. 3. The new trees look great. I don't know how big the hedges should be. Right now they're like walls, which could be how they're supposed to be. Also, usually plants on roofs are associated with roof patios, so it's a little strange to see the hedges on an otherwise utilitarian looking roof. It's hard to tell, but there might be pavers there in real life. Flags are a pain. The flag poles of Maxis's flag props don't stay in one place when you rotate. iirc, it uses the same animation for all rotations, and the flag pole pivots around the center of the prop as a whole. If that wasn't the case, a pole could be BATed and invisible to the camera, so there would be a shadow on the plaza, and a prop flag could be used to accommodate more uses/preferences. So I don't know what to do about the flag.

yep I'll make a hand draw bump map for that bit, but I don't think it would make to much of a difference though. Bump would work on water reflectivity, which a this angle is very small indeed. Once immediate "foam" right where the falling water of sprays hit the surface supside there wouldn't be much visible marks... But that is a theory.. I'll see how it will work out in practice... I was sort of thinking to slack here... but you wouldn't let me, now would you? :-)

Honestly, I think everything is fine and you got it great. It almost looks beyond perfect! I guess you are one to make everything right. Not saying that's a bad thing... Points 1 and 3 are fine to me, where I don't have anything to really say. 2. I say put the washer's tracks back on there, and that the current rails are fine. Ya know, NYBT does recreate buildings, but we don't have to make it an exact replica. It looked interesting with it, and not all buildings on the STEX have that detail.

Originally posted by: markham Hello everyone.I'm curious as to where I can find a download for BAT4MAX? Are there also instructions on how to use it? Thanks...quote> You can find BAT4Max in the modds & downloads section of this site (there's a link at the top of the page). Instructions on how to get it set up come with the download. And remember that BAT4Max is for 3ds Max, which is not the same program as Gmax. For more information, check out the BAT - Mega FAQ at the top of this forum.