OffshoreTacos

Sometimes you're trying to build a low-wealth neighborhood, but middle-class condos keep sprouting up. Or you're trying to build a middle-class suburb, but rich folks keep moving in. I'd love to have some lots to selectively increase the local desirability for a certain wealth level and/or reduce the desirability for other wealth levels. This would be especially useful for building high-density, low-wealth neighborhoods, where you need high desirability yet you have to keep the wealthier Sims out. Ideally, I'd make two lots: one to anchor R$ areas, and one to anchor R$$ areas. Is this possible? Does anyone have a rough idea of how to do it? I'd be happy to mod it myself and maybe even do some BATing for each of the lots. I'm just looking for a pointer in the right direction.

I've found that you don't need Sketchup Pro if you have 3ds Max. In the free version of Sketchup, export to Google Earth format. Change the .kmz extension of the exported file to .zip. Unzip it, and you'll get a .dae file. This file is in the Collada format. 3ds Max can import it using a free plugin.

This is my first BAT. I've heard industrial lots are in demand, and I certainly could use some more, so I thought I'd make one. This is a 5x5 warehouse. If it looks boxy, that's intentional. I've noticed that the real world is full of boxy warehouses and manufacturing plants. They're often short--only two or three stories tall--and very broad, with little more than an array of vents on the roof. I've tried to recreate that feel here. It's smaller than most of the real-life warehouses you might find in the suburbs. And the material is brick rather than concrete, suggesting an older building. So, I imagine it in the warehouse district of an old industrial city. Speaking of the brick, do you think the texture is scaled too large? I'm undecided on the matter. And is it just me, or are those forklift and palette props way too big? Any criticism would be much appreciated. There are more industrial BATs to come.

Thank you, Odainsaker. From the sound of it, I will, more likely than not, have to live with the seams. That's fine by me. I have a new and rather weird problem. I've had great luck with Bat4Max 2.5 so far. I'd even done a successful export of Wallace Distribution. But now, when I do my DAT FSH Insert and look at the file in the Reader, all the S3D files show the LODs as pure white boxes. The FSH files appear fine in the reader; it's just the S3Ds that are wrong. Has anyone seen this before?

I ended up making a landmark with C$ Capacity Satisfied at 100,000. I tested it in an empty region, and here's what happened. The R$ demand skyrocketed, predictably enough. Within a few years, the city's population hit 40,000. But then, R$ demand started a slow decline, while C$ demand went through the roof. I built many more parks and even a minor league stadium, but to no avail. Plopping another of the same landmark had no further effect on R$ demand. So, it seems that R$ demand is being limited by some factor, but I can't figure out what it is. Any ideas? Could it have to do with the Commercial caps at all?

You're right on both counts, Todd. It looks way too shiny in that render, but it's so small in-game that you can't tell. I'm currently working on modding the building so that it creates very high, steady demand for R$. The idea is to have a landmark that will help me quickly build up R$ hi-rise complexes. I'll release it in that form, as well as a CS$. The building is 14m x 14m, so I'm going to try to figure out how to add it to the CS$ 14x14 cohort. I'm having one problem. In-game, the model has unsightly seams at certain zooms and rotations. I know this is a common problem, but I haven't heard of how to fix it. Any thoughts?

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A side project: Once I make a final decision on my custom light rigs, I'll render Wallace Distribution, lot it, and put it up on the STEX.

Well, the Lot Editor doesn't allow for growables beyond a footprint of 6x6 tiles. Try to enter any number, it will revert to 6.quote> Oh, ok. I did encounter that rather strange problem making Stein Logistics. I went into iLive and set the lot size manually (in every place I could find the size, which was several). That took care of it. I hope that's all I needed to do. It works ingame as far as I can tell. Thanks for the compliments, Todd! Your work is great. I'm going to try and learn a thing or two from your textures. And although you say you have trouble with your roof junk, I think yours looks better than mine.

Like TV-VCR said, your BATs look like they come from a highly experienced 3d artist. Were you modeling before you got into BAT? Anyhow, your rooftops look great. I especially like the junk on top of the utility sheds--very detailed and dense. I've been searching high and low lately for photos of hi-rise rooftops. Do you have good reference photos, or do you just wing it? The windows are quite realistic. Are the frames modeled, or is it a texture?

Thanks T Wrecks and Jasoncw! Jason, in autoVino's BAT thread, you said: You might need to get fancy modding done if it's going to be a growable over 6x6.quote> Why is that? Stein Logistics is on a 6x7 lot, and I didn't do anything unusual modding-wise, but it works properly. Do you know what might make something require fancy modding?

I had the exact same problem. It was because I applied the patches in the wrong order. I restored the original file from my CD, then re-ran the patches in the correct order. The patches didn't report any errors that time. The correct order for the patches is listed in the Omnibus tutorial on night lighting for BATs.

Thank you, Andreas and Geronimo. Although I've been using the techniques you describe, I'm looking for a more reliable way to cause low-wealth highrises to grow. Unless I set the middle class tax rate ridiculously high, I get a lot of R$$ condos where I don't want them. Hence my desire for a lot that specifically attracts R$. From what I can gather, park effect increases desirability for all R wealth levels and can't be used selectively. But, I have noticed a property in certain buildings called "demand created," and it appears that it can be tuned for specific wealth levels. I realize that this isn't a local effect, but it still could be useful for my purposes. I'm imagining a ploppable that has a strong park effect and creates astronomical demand for R$. If you plop it amongst undeveloped, high-density residential, two things should happen. The desirability for all R wealth levels in the area should go up, and citywide demand for R$ should go off the charts. Even if there's strong R$$ demand, the much higher R$ demand would cause only R$ high-rises to be built on your undeveloped land. Then, you could mark them all as historical and demolish the modded lot. R$ demand would surely bottom out then, and you'd probably see some abandonement (which might actually be realistic). But at least you'd have permanent R$ high-rises, and they might eventually fill up again as the city grows. What sort of ploppable could have these two properties (park effect and demand created)? If there's no type of building or lot that could have both, then what kind can just have demand created? (After all, it's easy enough to raise desirability just by building parks, schools, hospitals, etc.)

I use a custom rig for night, but I deliberately tuned it to match the Maxis stuff. I'm thinking about increasing the size of the "moon" light, thereby softening the shadows. The Maxis moon shadows are just too strong, in my opinion. But I haven't done it yet because I wanted to play it safe and make it match. Although Wallace Distribution isn't the ideal showcase, raytracers like Vray and MR can do wonders for night lighting. I can't find the thread now, but someone was doing some beautiful neon using the Vray Light Material, which allows you to make light-emitting objects of any shape. As for daytime, I use the default rig, but I add a couple twists. First, GI is turned on, meaning that the light bounces. This obviously brightens the picture, so I have to darken my textures to compensate. Second, I use an invisible ground plane. It doesn't appear in the renderings, but it reflects light for GI purposes. This is the "real" raytracing that one can fake with Photoshop, as described on the Omnibus. The light reflected by the ground plane creates the brightness gradient on walls. I've been mulling over further improvements to the lighting, but I haven't decided on anything yet. I'm pretty conservative about it, because I want my buildings to match. LOD5 is for zoom 5, and would be more detailed than LOD3quote> By that do you mean, the geometry of the LOD itself--i.e. the polygons as drawn by the game, which have the renderings projected onto them--might sometimes be more complex at the higher zoom levels? I realize that the higher zoom levels get a higher-resolution rendering projected onto them. But I didn't know that the LODs were ever anything other than rectangular prisms, or that their geometry could change depending on the zoom level. Is that what you mean?

You can easily make a shell that follows the footprint of the building, and then there will be no problem with props.quote> So LOD shells don't need to be rectangular prisms? That's new to me, and very encouraging. If I'm going to be making my own, rather than just hitting "refit LODs," I'll need to understand them a little better. I understand what LODs are for and how the renderings get mapped onto them. But can anyone tell me why there are three?

You can easily make a shell that follows the footprint of the building, and then there will be no problem with props.quote> So LOD shells don't need to be rectangular prisms? That's new to me, and very encouraging. If I'm going to be making my own, rather than just hitting "refit LODs," I'll need to understand them a little better. I understand what LODs are for and how the renderings get mapped onto them. But can anyone tell me why there are three?

autoVino, this relates to your post on the last page. Sorry for the delayed response. A problem that I do have, which is what I think may be the culprit, is that there are many instances where a glass material touches a solid black material.quote> I think you're right about that. I don't use MR, but often with raytracing, coincident surfaces are treated as special cases. In other words, when two faces are flush against one another, the renderer might treat it entirely differently than if they were separated. If you ever try to render a glass of water, you'll run into these issues. A workaround is to create a tiny gap between the surfaces. This sometimes leads to results that are not physically correct, but it can eliminate some weirdness. The cooling tower is beautiful. I love all the fans. I like the subtlety of the texture on the main body. And the detail inside is really impressive.

That's a lot of detail! Excellent work. I love the storage tanks, and especially the ladder on the smokestack. Nice job on the corrugated texture for the tall building. The supports for the water tower could use some more detail. Maybe some thinner, diagonal beams would help. The water tower would probably have a visible concrete foundation in real life and a pipe down the middle. You might want to add corrugation to the roof and walls of the smaller building. Beautiful work overall.

Thanks, un1. If I make it a prop, will the scaffolding still be the right size during construction? I think the night-lighting is done, unless anyone has suggestions. I used TruNite. I think I reproduced Gmax's night-light colors and intensities rather faithfully. (click for full-size image) I've been thinking about getting rid of those strong shadows cast by the moon. Maxis has them in their buildings, but they seem unrealistic. So what do you think: should I go for realism, or should I just let make my building fit in? In any case, this building is almost ready to be released. Also, I'm probably just going to release Stein Logistics as-is. It's not terribly impressive, but I don't think there are major problems with it.

More textures and roof junk added to Wallace Distribution. It's almost done now. (click for full-size image) Is anything missing? Does anyone have ideas for random junk to place around the perimeter of the building? (Because of its shape, there are probably some large areas where I won't be able to place props.) Night lighting is next. I'll be using TruNite, hopefully. (I promise I'll get around to writing that tutorial. I just want to have one successful TruNite BAT under my belt first.)

Using Bat4Max If you can't figure it out, this may help. I downloaded Bat4Max 2.5. It's great, but I couldn't find any documentation besides SimFox's post at the beginning of the Bat4Max 2.5 thread. I'm guessing there is a more comprehensive manual somewhere on the Web, but I couldn't find it. So, for anyone else who needs to know the steps, here's what works for me. Your results may vary. Changing the gMax path In CPTB2MainUI.ms, I had to modify the function SFLODExporter. This line: exportfile ("C:\\gmax\\gamepacks\\BAT\\" + getfilenamefile (maxfilename) + ".3DS") #noPrompt selectedonly:true had to be changed to this, to reflect my directory structure: exportfile ("C:\\Graphics\gmax\\gamepacks\\BAT\\" + getfilenamefile (maxfilename) + ".3DS") #noPrompt selectedonly:true If your gmax is installed anywhere other than C:\gmax, you'll have to do this step. You only have to do it once. Exporting LODs SimFox describes how to do this, but you might not know when you're supposed to do it. Well, it's the first step in the export process. Refit your LODs, then export them . I believe you have to do this every time the model changes in size. They should be exported as a 3DS file to the path you set above. Rendering in gMax You thought you were done with gMax, now that you have 3ds Max. But no, you still have to use it. For reasons I don't know, you have to create your initial .SC4Model file with the gMax BAT. Bat4Max will subsequently insert your renders into that file. In gMax, go to file>>import and select the 3DS LOD file you made in the last step. You must uncheck "convert units." I select "completely replace current scene," but I don't think this has any effect since you're starting from a blank scene anyway. No need to refit the LODs. They're what you just imported. Save the scene and render it on draft quality. The renders will be totally black. You're done with gMax. You can close it now. Getting the model name Go back to 3ds Max. Now you need to tell it where the newly-created model file is. For some reason, when I tried to "Get Model Name," the BAT raised a MaxScript exception. I didn't bother to debug it. Instead, I just manually copied and pasted the model name into the text field below the button. Apparently, the text field is where the model name is actually stored. Just paste in the filename, NOT the full path, like this: test-0x5ad0e817_0xd46c7df3_0x60000.SC4Model and not like this: C:\Documents and Settings\YourName\My Documents\SimCity 4\plugins\test-0x5ad0e817_0xd46c7df3_0x60000.SC4Model Rendering in 3ds Max Once you have the model name in the text field, click "Render BAT." Unlike in the gMax BAT, this will not yield a finished .SC4Model file. Instead, it will create a huge number of intermediate files in 3dsMax\gamepacks\BAT\OutputFiles. Updating the .SC4Model file Open the Batch CMD rollout under the BAT. Run FSH Batch Build. Then run DAT FSH Insert. For me, these steps were very straightforward. I don't know exactly what these two steps do, but the end result is that the .SC4Model file will now contain your rendered building. (In other words, your model is now in there, whereas before, the file contained nothing but transparent boxes.) Once again, these are just steps that worked for me. I can't promise that they're the correct way of doing things. And now a question I think I've figured out TruNite. It rocks! I'm going to write a tutorial about it. But trouble is, I have the dreaded "BAT night-lighting doesn't display in-game" problem. I've read Night Light for BATs on the Omnibus, and I followed the instructions. However, the 638 update says it didn't update simcity_1.dat, because the file contents didn't match. Ouch. I bet the crucial night lighting fix is in that file! Oh, and my Windows CD drivers are dead, and I haven't been able to replace them. So a reinstall of SC4 seems impossible. Does anyone have ideas? Is there something I haven't tried?

Beautiful! I always appreciate quality industrial BATs--they're relatively rare. I agree about desaturating the roof, and I would also add some grime. The storage tanks and the ductwork going into the wall could both be darkened some.

Good catch, Bixel! I'd forgotten to change the default setting in Vray. It was on Area 1.5, which produced a blur. (I thought I was imagining it, so I didn't go back and check the render settings.) Vray has Catmull-Rom, so I switched it over to that. Both the edges and the textures look better now: (Click for full-size image)

Wallace Distribution is almost entirely textured. I still have to figure out the best way to handle the trim around the roof. Any suggestions? The solid dark gray just isn't cutting it. I'm thinking of using a tar paper texture. Do you think I overdid it with the roof texture? (click for full size) I know I also need to dirty up the concrete docks and the metal roof in the upper-left corner. Roof junk will be forthcoming. Only a cooling tower is in so far.

Thanks for the encouragement, bixel! I wasn't sure if anyone else found this information useful. Since you do, I'll post more. SimFox: Thank you for the explanation. Now I think I see the big picture of how the BAT handles units. Wallace Distribution Progress For a work-in-progress thread, I haven't posted many images. But Wallace Distribution is in the middle of being textured. I'll post pics tonight or tomorrow (sans roof junk, which I like to save for last for some reason). Unwrap UVW Tutorial Fixed A while back, I wrote a tutorial on UVW Unwrap, a very useful modifier in 3ds Max/Gmax. It got partially deleted at some point, and all the images disappeared. I just discovered this, so I rewrote it from memory. It's now available, complete with images. Air Handlers Wallace Distribution needs about 850 tons of cooling, give or take. So, I'll be installing nine of these bad boys: http://www.onsite-energy.com/rentals/AH100.html Does anyone have an opinion on the realism of that? For an 850-ton application, would engineers likely install nine 100-ton air handlers? 100-ton is the largest I've found for sale online, and it seems to make sense that you would space out a bunch of small ones rather than have one large one (contrasting with cooling towers). Also, would the water pipes for the chiller system be on the rooftop, or would they be hung from the ceiling on the inside? And under what circumstances is HVAC equipment installed on the roof versus on the ground nearby? I've seen a lot of both on real buildings. Any HVAC engineers out there?