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Now, let's move to the far southeastern area of Slovakia, Zemplin. But first, let's look on the replies. 10000000000:Thank you very much! Yarahi:Again, thanks! One picture in this update is truly heavily photoshopped. Guess what one . Janslaven:Also thank you! I don't know where it will be located, but it will be there probably in 2014 - 2016. Mamaluigi945:Thanks! Fox:Thank you very much! Heitomat: Again, thank you! Kakado_to_save:Yeah, I will not stop with CJing soon! . TowerDude:That stadium is not finished yet, so I can't tell you . Huston:Really thanks! Spursrule14:Also thank you, I hope I will get even more these awards. Further to the south, there are less and less forests and agricultural lands starts there, in one of three Slovak Lowlands, the Eastern Slovak Lowland. Lots of minor villages are also located there. There are only few major cities in Zemplin, largest are Michalovce and Stropkov. In both are located minor quarters with few tenements from socialist times. Second largest lake in Slovakia, although it is artificial, is located in Zemplin, Zemplinska Sirava. In the summer, it is very popular bathing and sunbathing place. Very close to the southern border is located lowest place in Slovakia at the river Bodrog. It is special river, because it is without source and it was created by two rivers joining each other. And now, for the one of the final updates of this CJ, let's travel to the east by the few short roads and then highway back to the west, back to the Bratislava... If you enjoyed this update, don't be afraid of commenting or +1 . There will be posting awards at the end.

Wasabi with this or DIE !!!!! D:

Here's an economic discovery: voting a post up gives that person 100 simoleons at no cost to you. Do your bit for the wealth of others by liking those posts! It's like charity, except free.

View Album Okay folks - grab some coffee and donuts... this is gonna be a long ride (again)... ) Tourists flock to Rivershade from all of Mountainview - mostly entering through the south eastern corner... where rail lines and roads cut through difficult terrain... The town is served by a number of quaint stations... Around which cluster moderate commercial areas... Rivershade is situated in a bend of a large river. Generations have worked tirelessly to tame this river and shape it into a peaceful flowing and beautiful 'water boulevard'. All its shores were shaped into park-like walkways with trees that provide shade during daytime and light up at night, inviting for a leisurely stroll along its banks or a lazy ride with one of the many water taxis. Let's start the hike where the big river reaches the town and then just drift along... The lock serves as high water control during rainy season, when excess water is run off into the deep ravines below... An overview of the riverbend... The lit trees at nite spread a very special charme... Time to check in at your favorite Family Inn... :-)

Hey everyone, I'm back with another update of my workshop. I'm going to put a hold on Sotoa and work on things I want to. So today on this entry of Escilnavia's Workshop: We take a look at a small siberian forest I made. (obviously in the title) I attempt to create a European city, I make an oasis inspired by Soer_II I reply to 21 people: ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Before we begin the replies, I'd like to thank for all the support, I really appreciate it: ggamgus: Thanks buddy, it wasn't easy MamaLuigi945: Thank you very much 10000000000000: Thanks for commenting, I love seeing your comments 111222333444: Thanks pal! spursrule14: Thanks a lot for commenting Schulmanator: LOL, thanks, if only it worked that way... 400Z9: Thanks, I hope this update impresses you too Soer_II: Thank you, the oasis pic is inspired by your work Andresta: Thanks man!! KHRYSTOF: Thank you, I always love to see you comment Huston: Thanks, some of your work inspires me very much packersfan: Thanks man, good luck with your CJ Gugu3: Thanks Gugu, I really appreciate it shoko: No, its peg ploppable water FourteenRocket: Thanks, I've never heard of that game, is it good? DCMetro34: Thank you very much kakado_to_save: LOL, thanks, your very kind. Evandad: Haha, me too, thanks a lot for commenting dabadon5: Thanks, I'm glad you liked it! burnzie_16: Thanks, I love it when people say that Jorge_carrillo: Thanks I can give you a tutorial _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ A foggy Siberian lake: a small stream: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Challenges, Tutorials, and Requests Now here is some of my extra work: As some of you know, I'm not good at Euro cities, so here was my attempt of making one: Here I made an oasis, inspired by Soer_II: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Thanks for viewing everybody, I am now accepting requests for tutorials, or anything you want me to build, Please rate, comment and +1, and also look back on the last entry if you haven't Thanks, Escilnavia

GARDENER CENTER GLASS This entry explains the reflective metal coated glass material I created for Gardener Center. This tutorial touches on some aspects of 3ds Max which might not be common knowledge in the BATing community, and explaining everything from the ground up would need a really long blog entry. So instead of thinking of this as a tutorial, think of it as a springboard for your own investigations. The "Help" feature in 3ds Max explains everything you see in the program, and there's google for what Help doesn't cover. Also, I can't guarantee that everything in this tutorial is theoretically correct, but it got me the results that I wanted. When I made the material I wasn't thinking about making it perfect for a tutorial later on. Anyway, enough disclaimer! (Note from 2017: I emphasize this disclaimer even more-so today) Onto the material! Above is the material in its entirety. It's based on the following three points about glass and that's how I'll organize the tutorial. (Note from 2017: Instead of using an RGB Multiply map, use a Composite map instead. It basically duplicate the layer system (layers, opacitys, blending modes, alpha masks) of Photoshop) Glass is reflective. Glass isn't a perfectly flat surface--it has imperfections, and these imperfections create distortions in the reflections. In order to tell that the glass is reflective, there needs to be something for it to reflect. Glass is reflective The reflectivity of the glass is the simplest part, it's created by changing some of the basic settings of the Arch & Design material. Reflectivity is .75. It could have been 1, but I preferred the result with slightly weaker reflections. Glossiness is 1, because we want perfect mirror reflections and not blurry reflections. The Index of Refractions (IOR) is 35. The metallic coating on the glass is responsible for character of the reflections, not the glass itself, which would have an IOR of 1.5. In the BRDF rollout you can see a chart showing reflectivity vs. angle. If you select By IOR the graph's curve will be determined by the IOR rather than the manual settings to the left of the graph. As you can see from the graph, this material is very reflective from all angles, except when you look perpendicularly at the glass the reflection isn't as strong. I haven't visited any of this kind of glass in real life to know if that is correct or not, but I do know that this it's very reflective from most angles and that metals have high IORs, so I was satisfied with an IOR of 35. Glass isn't a perfectly flat surface Each pane of glass typically has some bulge to it, plus some general waviness. The imperfections of the glass could be modeled, but that would be tedious. Instead, a bump map is used. The bulge and the general waviness will be done separately, but will be combined using a RGB Multiply map, which will multiply two other maps together, like setting a layer to the "Multiply" blending mode would in Photoshop. (Note from 2017: The Composite map is much better than the RGB Multiply map) In each of the slots in the RGB Multiply map, there's a Multi/Sub-Map, which is an easy way of having a variety of maps in one material. To simulate the bulges, there are 4 bitmaps which were made in Photoshop. This Multi/Sub-Map has been set to assign each map based on the Material ID of what the material is applied to, so geometry with a material ID of 1 will get the first map in that list. 4 will get the fourth map in the list. To simulate the general waviness, some simple noise maps are used. But since each individual window is a separate pane of glass, we don't want the waviness from one pane to cross into the next pane. So there are two different noises, so that adjacent panes will frequently have different noises and thus a different waviness. Here, something with a material ID of 1 will get the first map in the list. There is no fourth map in the list for something with a material ID of 4. But the "Repeat" checkbox has been checked, meaning that the first two noise maps are hypothetically repeated down the entire list. So geometry with a material ID of 4 will get the second noise map. Something with a material ID of 5 will get the first noise map. This way, your material IDs and the number of maps don't need to be exactly the same. Above is a portion of the building's glass (it's all one object for convenience), with everything else hidden. One of the polygons is selected, and you can see to the right that this polygon has a material ID of 3. It will get GlassBump-02.psd, and the first noise map. Luckily we don't have to manually change the material ID of each pane of glass on this building. If you search google for "random material ID script" you can find a lot of scripts that will do it for you automatically. The bulge bitmaps need to be fitted to the individual panes of glass. To do this, apply a UVW Map to the glass object, and choose "Face" as the mapping type. This will automatically fit the bitmaps to each individual polygon in the object. Since each bitmap represents one pane of glass, and each polygon represents one pane of glass, the UVW map will fit the bitmaps perfectly. Below is a render showing the bump map. There needs to be something for the glass to reflect The ground plane is the hardest part, since it needs to be generic enough to fit into the game without drawing too much attention, while still looking specific enough that it looks like something when it's being reflected in the glass. The design of the building is an important consideration too, since the character of the glass is best conveyed when you have an actual environment to reflect. The broad sides of the Gardener Center have a plaza and a roof to showcase the reflected environment and draw the eye away from the less flattering areas of glass. Below is a render with the ground plane visible. To make objects in your scene invisible to the camera, right click on them, go to properties, and uncheck "Visible to Camera". (Note from 2017: It's very important that the ground plane is as neutral as possible. Several screenshots from the game jumbled together in Photoshop do the best job (it might look like SC4 patterned confetti). DO NOT try to modify the color of the glass by changing the color of the ground plane. If you want to modify the color of the glass, change the Reflection Color. Doing this will tint the reflections. If I had known about these two points while making Gardener Center it would have turned out much better. Also, do not blur the ground plane. The reflections on the glass should be sharp lines that are curved by the glass bulges. If the reflections are too specific looking, try jumbling the images in the ground plane more.) ORIGINALLY POSTED OCTOBER 9, 2010

I have heard you loud and clear about the visual presentation of the STEX and I am in total agreement with you. What we're using is basically a "default" template that was part of the new platform. We are still working on the "final" STEX template which will bring it closer in line with how the previous STEX's have been, ie. larger images, detailed listings, etc... -- so please don't panic! I understand your alarm, but we wouldn't totally regress away from how the STEX was presented since ST4, 5 and 6. So, having said that, I want this discussion to focus more on how we can improve the actual STEX listings themselves. A suggestion was made to add some fields such as how buildings or lots affect certain stats in the game, e.g. pollution, jobs, money generation, etc... It's a good suggestion in that it make each item uploaded to the STEX have more detail, and it becomes easier to search for the kind of files you want. We would make these fields optional for the uploader, as not every file would be applicable. What kind of additional fields do you suggest? Another suggestion was to add a field to list Dependencies packs. We could do this as a BB code, too... for example "[stex id=138] Get this file [/stex]" which will generate a link to the stex file automatically. Or we could have a field where the uploader just puts the ID of the file in question. Both would and could work. Let me know your thoughts on how we can improve the way the STEX stores information. Some of the features of the new STEX you may not be aware of: 1. Enhanced versioning system. Authors can now upload a new version, list the details or changes in that version, and the STEX will store a version history for the file (right now it stores only the latest 10 versions) so you could post a new version and call it version 1.02 and people can still download 1.01 or 1.00 if they wish. Or the uploader can simply replace (edit) the current version to make sure the latest is always downloaded and used. 2. STEX "Like" system. When you "Like" a STEX item (or a city journal for that matter) you have the option to be notified when that item is updated, or if new comments are added, etc. 3. Larger images in STEX. I know the thumbnails are small right now, but improved over ST6, authors can now include larger images. When a thumbnail is clicked, the larger image is shown in an overlay. I think this is a pretty good enhancement.

Evillions - Too Kind, Thanks a lot! 10000000000000 - Thanks so much! The novels - Thank you, I'm glad you do! evanm - Thanks a lot! Spursrule14 - Thank you very much! Benedict - Thank you so much! An outbreak of a horrible disease reeks havoc in a Eastern Europe and crosses to infect the rest of the world. It arrives in Llithustania when French refugees cross the border illegally and infect those they encounter. It escalates and those who fall victim to the disease die then are resurrected as Zombies (The Walking Dead series). As seen, the only survivor is on the horse, riding around Maine, with zombies chasing him down. Currently on an old Checkpoint. Possibly a new CJ. What happens next? Thanks for viewing

View Album Okay, after Rivershade's quiet gentility, it's back into brute industrials... looking at where all the wood goes that's being cut down all over Mountainview region... We enter Almira from the east side with its main passenger- and freight stations... The large coal powerplant... An old industrial site being cleared for new developments... The town is dominated by the Saturn Pulp Industries with its large woodyard, evaporator, pulp treatment plant and the massive woodchip piles... note also the Saturn-funded land- and water-based fire station... A lone switchgrass farm is hanging on... Many small and medium loading docks are spread along the canal... Overview of industrials and loading docks... Across from Saturn we see the huge Hunter's Warehouse... The local shredder and some more bulk freight docks... Some old housing... Almira at night... Overview...

Hello everyone, I'm back again, but today is going to be a small update, like last time. The "troll" incident was a misunderstanding and I will not mention any names. Today I made a south French style area, please enjoy... Replies: 111222333444: Thank you, for the Portuguese people who don't know English. ggamgus: Wow, that much, thank you, that more #'s then "10000000000000" MamaLuigi: Thank you so much, your one of the nicest commentators on ST! Schulmanator: Thank you hahei: Thank you, I'm sorry I forgot, I think it might be on the Stex, and its actually a Church NMUSpidey: Thank you, I try my best 10000000000000: Thank you, you are a pro when it comes to flora. emperordaniel: Thank you, I like it that I had a person from a place that I was trying to imitate:) 111222333444(again) : Thanks for the support buddy. Frex_Ceafus: Thank you so much for the help. Efkin: Thank you, I kinda had to infer how NY looked. kakado_to_save: Thanks for the comment! _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ Now on to the update: Here we have another church at a 3 way intersection: here we have a road passing by some powerlines: And last but not least, two bridges passing a small stream: _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I hope you enjoyed, Please take the short amount of time to rate, +1, and comment, Thanks, Escilnavia

Hey guys, I'm once again back with a special update. Since I'm going to be gone for a couple weeks, this may be the last entry for a while, I hope you enjoy, I tried to kinda make a HK area, and I thought it kinda looked like TD's work so, hence the title, hope you like it!!! Replies: ggamgus: Thank you for such a nice comment, I think you got quite a bit of rep points for that jotauveefe: Thank you SimcityFuturist: Thanks Ester 100000000000000: Thanks man MamaLuigi945: Your welcome, I think you deserve the title, you've commented on every entry!! Schulmanator: Thanks buddy times infinity Frex_Ceafus: Thanks so much for the support ! Mastof: Thanks Mastof! LOL spursrule14: Thanks for the comment and nomination! NMUSpidey: haha, that's alright, thanks for the comment Paulobergonci: Thanks you, I can give you the link if you'd like DCMetro34: Thank you so much, I enjoy seeing your comments! k50dude: haha, thanks pal Johan_91: Thank you very much! emperordaniel: Thanks a ton for the comment! kakado_to_save: sure thing, thank you for the suggestion! Sky Guy: Thanks man, I appreciate it:D _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ on to the update: my intro: Here we have a large construction zone, overlooking the slums with a slight rain shower starting: The rain looks like its lightning up a bit in this financial area: As the rain stops, the sun begins to appear, over this residential harbor. _________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ I hope you enjoyed, Please take the short amount of time to rate, +1, and comment, Thanks, Escilnavia

WOW! Simtropolis has changed! I disappear for about 1yr and this site has completely changed! I cant even adjust my signature until I get 25 votes I am using a completely different system from what my sig was before...not just a different OS, but different hardware all together. Good to be back though. Ready to play SimCity 4 once again!

So, after lots of natural updates, let's continue to the major cities on the East. First one, located more to the north is the city of Presov. It is third largest city in the Slovakia, and it is also located very close to the second largest city, Kosice. Full update will be soon, now I am showing you only the Teaser. Enjoy! If you enjoyed this update, don't be afraid of commenting or +1 . There will be posting awards at the end.

For those of you who want to add extra value to your textures by making them line up with parts of your model, you can make what is called (or, at least, what I call) a 1:1 texture. Meaning, you don't have a bitmap that tiles over and over or one that you need to stretch with a UVW map top get to the right size, but rather one that is designed for one specific place on a model and fits without tiling. NOTE: To do this properly, you will need an image editor that uses layers. In this tutorial I use Photoshop, but GIMP and other like it are acceptable alternatives. ~~~~~ Lets say you have a little building with some extraordinary roof junk and a nice, but simple roof texture. I call it "The No-Door Bar, Grille, and Dental Supply Emporium LLC." Lets say this is the bitmap you want to use for your roof. Its nice, but nothing special: You put this in your BAT thread and some annoying HoTsim jerk keeps pestering you about better roof textures. You want to get back at this whiny shmuck and make a really nice roof material. So what do you do? First things first. Take a nice big screenshot of the top (orthogonal) view of your model. I'd also turn off the "Show Standard map in viewport" option off or simply use the wire frame for this. Yep, that's The No-Door Bar, Grille, and Dental Supply Emporium LLC in all it's glory. You have a screenshot and thats all well and good, but what now? Post that baby into your roof texture bitmap (you may want to lower the opacity so you can see the texture under it) Then scale it up to fit the size of the bitmap. NOTE: it is very important to hold SHIFT to constrain proportions while you scale. If you don't, then nothing will line up properly. Also, make sure no areas are cut off by the edge of the canvass after you have finish scaling. After that's all said and done, crop the whole thing to the very edges of what is the roof in your model (that is, crop out the walls). You can ignore cut-outs in your model, but they can be handy for identifying the orientation of your model on the texture. At this point you may want to save a version of this texture to check the placement. Back in your model, add a UVWmap to the roof object, but do not change the dimensions. The values generated should be the exact size of the object. If you had a 5x5x5m box and added a UVWmap, the UVW map should start out as 5x5m (5x5x5m when you select "box" within the modifier). You may have to rotate or re-orient the bitmap using the gizmo on the UVWmap, but the size and X,Y,Z location should be correct. I hid the roof junk so I could see how well things lined up. If you look close you can see the faint green lines that were present on the bitmap as well. You are one step closer to showing that BAT troll whats what, congratulations! Now comes the fun. From here, you will want to add a new layer OVER both the base/source bitmap and the screenshot you added, and only paint on that layer (see HERE to look at what order you should have). Using your screenshot as a guide, start painting along edges, around junk, and anything else you want with a good brush with low opacity and flow (so you don't go overboard). Add stains, rust marks, replaced roofing sections, or whatever else you want. You should end up with something like this: Obviously you want to turn off your guide before you save this and apply it to your model. The final bitmap you will use will be like this: Unhide your roof junk and see how it looks! Oh No-Door Bar, Grille, and Dental Supply Emporium LLC., you have never looked better! That will show that 'em! ~~~~~ Obviously my result isn't perfect and, like your attempts, should be refined further. You should, however, get the right idea and be able to try this on your own. You should try several things when trying to achieve effects on the material before calling it a day. Try different layer styles like overlay or try using multiple layers. You never know how something is going to turn out until you hit the preview button. I threw this together in a rush before work, but I hope it is helpful enough to do some good. Cheers!

So, after looking on the most beautiful, interesting and popular areas and places in Slovakia, this CJ is coming to its end. It will be definitely soon, but there will be 4 final updates before it, so this is not the end. As all countries in the world, Slovakia is not perfect. In fact, it is one of these European countries what have quite big amount of poor people, social and financial problems, and also criminality. But still, it is often modern and beautiful country. But first, let's have the Replies. TowerDude: Thank you! Emperordaniel: Also thanks! Huston: Yeah, really thank you very much! Escilnavia: Again, thanks. Fox: Thanks! I also really like these parking lots. Simarco: Yeah, this is actually real city planning in real Slovakia. 1000000000000: Thank you! These tenements are processed Slovak tenement googlesketchups, of course only for personal use, what is legal and without problems. Simbourgeois: Also thank you! Hester: Really thanks! But, this CJ is coming to the end. Hope you will like the Greater Morsco updates then. Slovak nature and forests are not always perfect and beautiful. In many areas forests were destroyed for paper and wood. And, wind calamity in High Tatras what happened in 2004, destroyed enormous amounts of forests, what will be recovering many decades. In area shown below, calamity was not very strong, and there are areas what are much worse. Lots of slovak rivers and lakes are poluted by chemicals and trash, as it is in many countries. There are also some illegal waste dumps right near Slovak rivers and lakes. Illegal trashyards can be also found in Slovak forests, mostly on the southeast. Many of them are located near industrial areas, and some also near Roma settlements and villages, what can be often found in Eastern Slovakia. Slovak roma settlements and villages are full of criminality and poverty; they are one of the most negative things in entire Slovakia. Many of them are parts of larger villages and cities, and are located mostly on the central and eastern parts of Slovakia. Before many years, during the socialism, district of Kosice known as Lunik IX was built to house the people from nearby roma settlements. Now, it is very popluar target of criticism, with alarmingly high criminality, piles of garbage around tenements, what are in desolate state. Real life picture of Lunik IX can be found in the first update. If you enjoyed this update, don't be afraid of commenting . There will be posting awards at the end.

Hey guys, I know I haven't really been active that much, sorry for that, I've been really busy with school. But I've been able to keep a steady 3.8 GPA . So, here's my first entry, I just kinda made a nice dutch rural area. Sorry about Sotoa too, I'll try to update it ASAP. A corn field by the river. Just a nice scenic area: A church by a small stream: Thanks for viewing! ____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ If you enjoyed please take the short time to rate, comment, and +1

Ni Hao Ni Hao!Welcome! now... Go to School ! When we left we just boarded the plane in Hong Kong to go to Okatabawashi

Man, I put out the extracheats DLL file and I only have a 10 reputation... Sad.. Anyway, I like your ideas moose. The main reason I designed the resource system as moddable is because there is no way I could think of all the ideas (palentology!! love it) the community could come up with. The water system is very tentative at this point, but right now I have it include multiple water levels. There would be a system to define areas of ocean, lake, and river. No underground water resource layer would be visible, but you could have it, easily for like a desert region or something. Resources are depleatable and reloadable. So something like coal would be used up eventually while something like a aquifer would slowly refresh itself. This leads to the player needing to diversify their cities if they want them to survive. My SimCity design very much runs on jobs. Job's would be driven by major industry lots, which I dub "Keystone Lots" which can take the form of "Coal Mine" to "Water Park" (tourism) to "Region Capitol Building". Remember, I reserve the name of Keystone Lot. It's Mine I say!

Welcome back, everyone. Thanks for being really patient and supportive the last few days, it really helped! While it wasn't an overly difficult transition things did go pretty smoothly though I did underestimate how long the actual final data conversion would take, our early tests were a bit quicker, however, I didn't consider the added time that would be necessary to do the whole set of data including polls and attachments as well as the 300k of archived posts and threads that were overlooked. At any rate, we're mostly back. Check out the new features. There's plenty of things that are different than ST6, but hopefully that will be a good thing. The smell of new paint will be in the air for a while as we add finishings and polish and tie up loose ends. I would like to apologize in advance to those who may not be pleased with the new changes; I'm sorry, I hope you get used to it, we're always refining as we go, so I hope you give it a chance. You will also notice some glaring omissions right away. For one, we have no homepage yet! That will likely be up this weekend. Your medals, custom labels and other goodies that you've earned will also return in the next days including your points - which will be a little bit different this time around. There's lots more yet to come! Here are some fun facts that we stumbled upon. Around two million posts, topics, messages, replies, comments, entries. 19,399,190 million STEX downloads since 2008 (that's how far the logs went back anyway). Who got the last word? Blue Lightning, managed to get in the very last post of ST6. His post, consisted simply of "Good bye." was the last thing saved to the ST6 database with a timestamp of 11:59:39 PM EST. See you around the community! -Dirk

Thanks everyone!!! Vlasky & T Wrecks: I hope you were both able to get some medical attention and have recovered from your shock. Seraf: Were you referring to THIS building?! I have another preview of Carew Tower for you all! And for the first time, the tower AND the "badonkadonk" are united! Now, please keep in mind that this has a LONG way to go. I still have some modeling to do on the badonkadonk, and I haven't even started the base yet. There is also a lot of texture work to go... but it's on its way! Hope everyone is doing well. Maybe, just maybe, Santa will bring a big treat this Christmas?!