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As promised in my last post a couple of weeks ago, I've been working really hard to get my new BAT ready to show you. I still have a bit of work to do, I've only made one of the statues and there's a couple of bits to fix up on the model, but its pretty close. No idea why I made this one though... maybe just jumping on the British bandwagon . Anyway, here's a sneak preview of my model of: St Paul's Cathedral, London

Any suggestions?

Hi Simtropolis! First post, gotta make it count! So here is my entry to the challenge. Welcome to the glorious small city going by the name of "Build Here" (Pop. 44.000 Sims) As requested, the first picture is 4:3 (1600x1200) and provides an overview of the whole city tile. Now that this is out of the way, go ahead and open the spoiler below and let me take you on a tour through town I hope you enjoy the tour and of course I wish good luck to all other participants

A new CBD of mine

#13 Winner of the Weekly Challenges #6| Best Nautical Themed Image "The Olives Cape" Image by kergelen City Journal - Eloaria

Replies: MushyMushy: This is Cockatoo's HK Yongfu House- NMUSpidey: Thanks a lot! I wanted them to cut through Ponteville and take up a bit of space. JP Schriefer: Cheers! Indiana Joe: Thank you! I must have thousands of different BATs and I'm certain I have not even seen half of the growable RCI ones yet. News: I'm taking a small break from Simcity at the moment. Don't worry, I will still have that dam done and dusted before the end of this year, but for now I'm rediscovering games that don't gobble up all of my CPU. I rediscovered Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri again, God it is still so addictive! At the start of next year this journal will be quiet for a few weeks as I work on new cities and landscapes. Thanks a lot for all of the comments and the Simtropolis members who follow this CJ, your support and appreciation has spurred me on to greater heights. Update 66: Lego Simcity This entry is going to be a bit different, it's about my other city building passion some years ago: Lego. Before I discovered the mods in Simcity 4 and the game itself, I was building Lego cities for years. Realism and scale didn't matter, it was simply the feel and look of it all. Lego city building was the genesis for my obsession with Simcity 4. To me this- -and this are very much the same. /// I made this city about four years where aside from Lego I also utilised diecast vehicles, plastic road signs and wooden railway tracks. /// There's my old grey baseunit in the background. It was purchased by my dad so Simcity 4 could properly run. The baseunit met its match when running Civ 5 so I replaced it with the lean mean machine I use today. A section of toy elevated railway. Every building has a different style and colour scheme. I started doing that during in the last couple of years where I was still constructing Lego cities. Throw in a bit of dust for grit and grunge. Note the K'NEX guns in the background. K'NEX guns and guitar was another passion of mine. A view down the central road. I have a very fond sense of symmetry. When it came to the elevated railway the supports for it had to be right... /// This is a one-off entry but I thought it would be interesting to show it to you all. Anyway, next Saturday it is back to Simcity 4- the ultimate in toy city building!

Thought its time for an update from me. Thanks for the comments and Feedback on Tower 1. I've made a couple of changes, including replacing the white noise texture with a proper texture and I've remade the palm trees from scratch... and tweaked a few other things. Here's what I've been working on. I've been sitting on this for weeks... months maybe..? I made the base in about 2 days, the whole 2nd tower this morning.. and weeks and weeks on the first tower. I found it so tedious I could only muster 15 minutes a day before I'd had enough. I've persevered though, and here they are: Yarra's Edge Towers 2 & 3: Let me know what you think so far. Oh, thanks heaps to Roger51 for providing me with some rooftop images that enabled me to complete them

Hello fellow citizens, it has been a while since I have taken the time to address the masses. I come before you today to announce the arrival of a child. A child born of this community. Samantha and I are the proud parents of a beautiful baby boy called Nicolas Orion. He was born on March 18th at 18:05, he weighed just 5 lbs 14 oz (2.66 Kg) and was 19.25" (48.9 cm) long. I never envisioned that I would not only meet the love of my life on the Internet so it is even crazier to think that we would also become parents of a beautiful baby boy. If this site didn't exist, we would likely have never met and this new life would never have existed. I feel that I must thank our glorious Dirktator, may he rule forever, for that little miracle. Thank you to the community that was built here and that continues to thrive here for all of the support and kindness over the years. Cheers!

While working on the textures for Melbourne Central I became more and more enamoured of the building across the street, the State Library of Victoria. I was compelled to start modelling it! It was a bit more than I could manage to finish this weekend so here is a sneak preview:

So, I decided to give it a go. What do you think...? I took inspiration from the pot plant on the side board next to where I work There are 3 towers, each floor is one whole apartment, square footage is dictated by the shape of the building rather than internal walls. On 2 levels of the towers there are common spaces which open up onto terraced gardens. Powerful pumps recycle water up from the ground pool which cascades out of a man-made waterfall positioned near the top of the building. Fall off from the waterfall acts as irrigation for the terraced gardens. The entry is from under the building via ramps up to the first level plaza with a reflecting pool and more gardens. Tracks running down the side of the building dual purpose as guides for the custom built BMU enabling the outside windows to be cleaned. Cost projection so far, 70 Gagillion dollars. This is concept at the moment, obviously some of the textures and water effects need a bit more work

#4 Winner of the Weekly Challenges #2 | Best MMP Image "Canon Beach" Image by blunder City Journal - Ring of Fire

Hi sorry I've been AWOL this week been very busy and bit too tired for BATing. I didn't realise I hadn't posted a completed render of PWC Tower with the base, so here it is. I still need to do a bit more work on some of the textures though. Thanks for all the comments I'll hopefully have another update soon and some replies

Taking a break from the river, thought I'd go for a quick win. I've had a few requests for this one. Crown Metropol: A_, short answer is yes. Depends what you mean though. All it will be is an entrance into the wall, it won't be functional or anything

Thanks Noah Here's some work I've been doing on the second section of the Yarra River. This section has the Melbourne Aquarium. Still needs a bit of work but thought I'd post something anyway. Let me know what you think

Thanks for the support everybody. I didn't even realize gold stars on posts existed Update Time! (There's your warning T Wrecks) The Details And the Preview Anyways, I haven't gotten as much done as I'd have wanted to because of my busy schedule, but I needed to get an update out before I go on vacation. Right now I think I've gotten most of the stonework detail that is going to be done on this building. It's mostly repetitive on the bottom half so I'd say that I'm about halfway with modeling since I still need to do all the ducts and wires and other miscellaneous, non-stone stuff. Look for that in a couple weeks. Also, remember, I will explain how to do anything I've done if anyone asks for a tutorial. In addition I have some specific tutorials I have in mind that I will probably also do--the leaves on the cupola, the circular holes, and most important, selection modifiers and tools.

Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated. I was going to keep this a secret until I finished it but I don't want anyone to think that I'm gone for good. I've decided to continue work on the jewelers building but without the step-by-step. I reached the detailing phase and I realized that it would be the most tedious thing I've ever done to document the entirety of detailing... So instead, I'm going to post closeup photos as I go and take requests for tutorials on individual types of detail. Like this: I've done the cupola so far today. It takes a while to get to this much detail but I'm trying to be as faithful to the original as I can. Anyways, any requests for tutorials on individual parts of this are welcomed. (ex. the floral bands on the cupola, the sunflowers, or the arrangement of anything) And in context of the rest of the building. As you can see, this is such a small but major piece of the whole building which is just as detailed throughout so you can see why I'm opting for this way. - - - - - - - - In regards to previous buildings. Rendering is by far my least favorite of this process considering how time-consuming it is and how often something goes wrong. I will try to get onto that as soon as I'm able but it's just such a detestable process to waste hours on a failed render that it's low on my list. I am truly sorry for that, but it is the nature of the problem and myself that is making it as annoying as it is. Btw, Andisart, feel free to do any buildings you want that aren't already in progress. Anything that isn't already in progress is up for grabs.

I still need to do a couple of changes to the roofs, but this is the State Library pretty much done now and nearly ready for night lights. Let me know what you think .

Thanks everyone Another short break from the library.. and if Xander's right this should complete Melbourne's top 10 (for now) Telstra Corporate Centre:

#6 Winner of the Weekly Challenges #3 | Best Disaster Image "Eastern Nakahara Earthquake and Tsunami, 26 July 2014" Image by City Journal - 仲原 | Nakahara

Hello everyone, thanks for comments An other picture of the Community Tower, with nightlight level more higher than the first picture. Inside the building, I've add plasterboard and several blinds to add more variations between floors @Weixc812: This is an new technic of lighting, I'd need some time to improved this method of work. Remember my first buildings and nightlight was awful too .

T Wrecks - Thanks, I'll try not to make you wait to long Darknono - Thanks Weixc - Hopefully soon, I think i've figured out where i messed up with the glass Andrey - Thanks Shinkansen - Thanks, Phoenix Wright is always amusing __A - Thanks Xander Dax - Thanks Roger - Hopefully i can finish it this time Nirwnada - Thanks Schriefer - Thanks Base of Central Park is coming along slowly, there's not really anything solid to show yet I'm working on something a bit simpler as well to get back in the swing of using Max. Roof is still a work in progress

Thanks as always for the continued nice comments Here's an update on Melbourne Central. Let me know what you think... they are a bit big hope you can see them ok

Collins Place is nearly ready, just a couple of things to fix up... I think I mentioned in an earlier post I'm having trouble making nightlights in 3DS Max 2012. The lighting system seems to behave quite differently from 2010. The two main things are - The self illuminated night windows method doesn't really work the same way anymore. The lit windows look like they are stuck on the outside of the building. Not convincing at all. To get around this I invented a new technique, not exactly ground breaking but I think it looks pretty effective. Let me know what you think... The other thing is the glare is really powerful in 2012. I used to use a spread of 6. Now that yields a mini-sun with glare-fog. I'm now using 0.8 with less heavier streaks. I think it's pretty good? So, things to fix up are - Looks like I inadvertently forgot to put textures on the South-West corner of the base! I think I need more life inside the large glass canopy at the rear of the building (No idea how to do that ) The super bright light at the base of the stairs is a bit ominous... its calling... people.. go into the light! Anything else? and lastly.. here's the day model in situ:

Replies: Hotwheeler: Yeah I wanted some dramatic contrast there. As for the lights they come from one of Mandelsoft's Light Replacement Mods, I think it is the USA version. oci2605823612: Thank you! NMUSpidey: What an amazing coincidence! And it was only a Project Symphony T-interchange. VT_Railroad_Guy: Thanks! JP Schriefer: Thanks a lot! I prefer Maxis night because you can see more, and both Maxis night and Dark night suffer from night light flare from light replacement mods. I may try Dark night to see if this extreme streetlight glare/flare/luminosity looks better. nos. 17: tonyr: Cheers! coolwiththecool2: Thanks, and there's a lot more green in this next update to. Update 68: Xarit Lake The bonanza of greenery continues with a tour around Xarit Park and its lake. /// Yet more greenery with the new excessive MMP style I've fallen in love with (for the time being). And a bit more Eastwards is the offshoot of Xarit Park. I would imagine in the neighbouring tile this park would be extended. For some reason grassy stretches, in real life, can have patches of different shades of green/yellow which are outliers to the surface of largely green. I tried to emulate this in these grasslands/meadows. One of the suburbs to the South-east of One Castle Hill. If I've said it once I'll say it again- Project Symphony covers all of your innercity highway needs. A pet cemetery. Because Sims believe that little Fido goes up to the Great Kennel in the sky. The trick with MMP flora is to combine two or more items together to create a thick organic look. A field of poppies. On their own they look really weedy on the naked terrain. But add in some clover and the poppies pop to life. One of the first campsites I created in this game. Of course Xarit Park gets pretty noisy with the trains passing by every minute. Xannepan's lake terrain brush- the poor man's tool for quickly creating inland lakes. Adding in some of ionionion's OMCo Filling Gravel gives an illusion of depth to the lake. A fisherman gotta fish. If you wonder why these gravel paths aren't overrun with flora that's because I plopped them down first so I could map out where everything would go in Xarit Park. They're about the only planned thing, the rest was totally improvised on the fly. Of course creating Xarit Park was an opportunity to further MMP techniques for creating grassland and meadows. Not only do the number of items matter but also the order in which they are plopped in matters! A different order can create a subtle or noticeable difference. /// This Friday there will be one last entry from Townshead- Nurdek District. Afterwards there is the dam I've been talking about off and on for the last two months. I just got to build it before New Year, so no pressure!

Thanks for the nice comments Here's a bit of a random quickie to finish off the weekend. One step closer to finishing the city loop 55 Spring Street & Parliament Station There's still another building to go down the side to finish this one off. This will be a separate lot. Let me know what you think.

#1 "Kotaro's New Year, January 1, 2014" If image above is unavailable, it is available here: http://themiddleway.weebly.com/volume-2.html Image by Tonraq City Journal - Okaiken V2 (Archive) >First Official Simtropolis HoF Inductee<

Hello Guys; I want to share with all of you some pictures of my current project, It is Hong Kong and I will make a City journal about this recreation in the future !! I hope you like it

Hi guys, thanks for your post Here an small update of the Equitable Building from St Louis . Now I'm working with 3dsmax 2013 I hope you'll like this first result. The texturing isn't not yet ended Enjoyed !!

Hello everyone, I'm back on Simtropolis !! , I wish you're fine guys After several month, to continue my work with Lexington, Comcast and NYBT of course I've seen my Trixies nominations for the American International and NYBT. Thanks a lot for those who's nominated me. And I promise many BAT for this 2014 Year, Art deco and modern glass buildings must be added to the awesome Sim City 4;) I'm working, on a building especially for the community, and I hope you'll like it . But I haven't pictures of this one, maybe soon To begun, an small update of the Lexington Financial Center, I think the day version is ready for export. Now I must work on the nightlight. Say me what do you think about &nbsp; Enjoyed!!

So, my old BAT thread was riddled with sub-par models and unfinished things that will probably never see the light of day (except maybe the Office of Naval Intelligence building, that one has potential). I'll admit it, I just got bored of working with them. Mainly because I couldn't figure out where I was headed. Anywho, I've decided to start anew with a clean slate. For my first big project, I'm picking up where SimFox left off, and doing my own rendition of the Russia Tower. I'm aware this isn't exactly accurate, and it isn't meant to be. This is INSPIRED by Russia Tower, but completely my own model! I've run into a few problems with the glass, since it's not exactly the way I want it, but It works out alright and I can live with it. I still need to do the roof and central tower, but she's coming along nicely! I give you, ladies and gentlemen, the Greystone Industries World Headquarters

Here's a new one from me. A residential this time. Let me know what you think Tower 1

I will let the pictures speak for themselves.

Here's a bit of a strange building, its very prominent on the skyline, especially from the south side of the river, so I always wanted to make it, but its not a very well known building - I had to look it up. I only started it this morning so I have a bit more work to do on the textures. 459 Collins Street:

Great looking towns everyone. Here is a small island town I've been working on for some time.

Here's some nightlights - I think I'll do something different with the cone it looks a bit bland at the moment. Otherwise nearly ready for export. Let me know what you think I'm a bit behind with my replies.. I'll post some replies tomorrow

I may just halt everything I'm doing right now to build a few Vancouver-reminescent residentials. Constructing a small scale 2186 CE version of Vancouver (from ME3), with towers that look like this: ZOOM 4. If you like what you see, unfortunately, don't count on me uploading them cause they're still quite sketchy in detail, so I'm not even sure if it's worth uploading. I honestly think they're looking good, but chances are there's gonna be a need for critique, which I'm not looking for right as of now for these sets since they're one-off's I'm using on a Mass Effect: The Milky Way episode; so I'm not even posting this on the right project page This took a few hours soo, yeah, just thought you guys should know what's up Also, Hope you guys have had a great Christmas. I certainly did

So. Opinions? I am still not happy with a lot of the roof junk, but I thought I'd get opinions on the rest of the stuff, mainly the reflections.

Okay, I finally finished this sucker. I've been working on it sporadically for, I don't know, the past few weeks. Anyway here it is: Zoom in: So yeah, this is on a medium-sized city tile, so it takes up the SW quadrant of the tile. I basically sketched it out on paper beforehand and tried to replicate it as well as I could in-game. I had to sacrifice a connection from eastbound to southbound because it was just too much of a pain to try and fit in (I wanted to have a cloverleaf loop ramp), and it would probably work better once I have a certain feature that will be available in NAM 33. The highways going south and the one going east meet up again in the city tile to the south, so it's not a big deal to be missing this one connection. Although there was much rage-quitting after an hour of work on this interchange, no computer equipment was harmed in its construction.

Aaron Graham - I use symmetry sometimes but generally speaking it's not a modifier often useful for me Thank you for comment! SimCoug - Thank you And yes, this is the second tall building I'm making. I'm afraid I don't share others' love for skyscrapers. While I like early ones (1890-1910), the most build after 1920 began to be too tall for me and practically everything after 1930 is to tall. Municipal Building is special for me, I think it most beautiful classical skyscraper in the world Vlasky - Thank you edwardjeria - Thank you tonyr - Thank you Borgmästarjojje - Thank you, it's one of my favorites as well sten1700 - Glad to hear that Thank you for comment And another update on Municipal Building:

A fantasy three-way T junction built on an island, two ramps end on the other side of the river. Its rounded shape fits just in the outline of the island. (updated with new terrain texture)

Thanks everyone . I'm agree to create an separated FAR lot for the Marriott. Actually I think, all buildings will be exported separately with their respective part of the plaza. And the different lot should be plop around the fountain for re-create the complex. But for today some pictures of the South Tower at Z5 and the texturing of the Marriott at WTC

After having been on hiatus for quite a bit of time (severe RL issues ...), I recently started again with interchanges in SC4. Here are a few of my newer creations; some might be practical, some not so much ... : Fully elevated interchange: Completely diagonal T interchange 4-way spaghetti : Simple cloverstack: And a slightly 'FAR-fetched' fully directional interchange. Enjoy!

shinkansen1- I believe they were built for the low income, I think you can have medium income people living in this building as well. Darknono35- Thank you, I will try to make more of the buidlings. edwardjeria- Thank you!!! T Wrecks- Thank you, because there should be more to come. Amthaak- Thank you!!! Tower 67 Apartments Here's an update on Tower 67 Apartments, I have finally added the texture to the building, still need some modelingg work to be finished. I think next i'm going to get the roof textures and then work on the curtains some more, thework on the curtains is not finished on about 40 percent of the building. Once I have finished that I think I can work on the details on the shops and then work on the plaza behind the building. One the plaza I need to make benches, trees, ect. I will need to add a drive way for the entance of the apartment and work on the drive wya that leads below the ground.

Nirwanda, I might sit on the BAT for a little while and see how I feel about the glass after a bit of a break from it. It was especially difficult because it hits every angle at once, including up, so its really hard to find the right combination of light/dark/colour/reflection/saturation that suits every angle, this was the closest I could find. I'm happy with it at the moment but as I say I need a bit of a break from looking at it, then I might make a few more tweaks Here's a couple of quick night renders to finish the weekend off. I've been a bit lazy with the lobby so I won't post the other side until I've done a bit more work on it I think I want to darken the blue on the signage a bit as well.

Some may remember this interchange I posted a while back: After development of the area, it looked like this: And later on, I thought of a way to improve it: But then I thought of another improvement it needed, to complete the traffic movements (as I had given up on doing that and making it look good at first). After a lot of messing around with designs and rebuilding it, it finally came to this: Now the important route it had been missing before is available to commuters and trucks, albeit with some pretty sharp curves which will slow traffic. But the interchange wastes a lot of space in the middle of it, right? Well, I eventually figured out a way around that: Now, the area is beginning to see some development. I figured it wouldn't be such a bad thing to have an intersection along the ramp, since the curves will have traffic moving pretty slowly already and it's only a few factories so there shouldn't be a huge amount of turning traffic. Also, you can barely see it, but I added a turnaround along the highway before it turns into one-way roads, for trucks to have access to all directions of travel after leaving the factories. I imagine it would have a "stop here for signal" area so they can turn around at a traffic light. Unfortunately, entering the factories may be difficult but hopefully I can work something out later on to add more access.

some creative use of the viaduct rail road

Thanks Roger, yeah I know you're right about the sign but I couldn't get it any better. Any lower and it didn't look like it was lit. In hindsight I should have not lit the sides, only the front, that would have helped. I've already exported and ready for upload, its not bothering me enough to worry about now. Good to hear from you, someone else who's been AWOL LOL @ Batman building. Yes, there's definitely a few similarities there I did a bit more work on the library yesterday but I got distracted ... Someone requested this in PM, (disclaimer: no I'm not taking requests ) and I thought it looked pretty cool from the images I looked at, but not realising its only just being built, there are almost no good references for it, so this will sit on the shelf for a little while until I can get some better references to finish it off (mainly the roof and the base) - sorry requester Infinity Tower (Brisbane):

Close up of a tunnel that runs under the skyscrapers downtown.

This one is now released on the STEX. (Seeing this thread was part of what gave me the motivation to finish it... Thanks!)