fabfab

jackel.22 > I don't think that there are a lot textures at all. To me it looks like well-set materials, which looks a lot better, of course...

Great! That's what I needed - thank you so much, mate! I'll use a NightLib right on the next project... OMG, this will save me lots of time adjusting lights for faking Night-Windows. And they will even look better - HOORAY!

Hail all talented artists and BATters out there. All of your work is great, and since I was using a lot of custom content I thought I might give something back to the community. So I started BATting. To be honest, I'm still in the progress of "starting" - haha. I need to thank the members of the SFBT who helped me through the first problems and answered my questions (which were quite a lot). So here are a few steps of my first BAT project (which is finished so far but not released - yet). OK, the guy will shut up now and show some pictures (tata). (after some first other "concrete" testsi decided to keep working on that bunker-complex entrance) (the first texturized version, after ~4 hours) What followed were a few of bugfixes with the LODs and textures which took another 4 hours (rendering included). After that I proudly built the first LOT, tried (and failed) to transit enable it and "modded" (haha) it. Which brings us to the last picture for now, the first InGame Screenshot. Thanks for your interest x fabian

Long time no see... *cough* Here are some teasers for my upcoming work. The ultimate RG-Propaganda-Central! ... seems like the Rcombination Group evolves into kinda regime or some authoritarian government. Note that I used SimFox's customized IESun/Sky CameraRig the first time in this one. For the next 2 weeks from tomorrow on, I will be offline and gone. But I will have my desktop with me as I need to work with it, so I think I'll come up with some finished projects after that... Have a good time, y'all x Fabian

Yea, I know about the special shadows and lighttypes for MR. Just off topic: I found out that I need to completely disable Area Shadows in Rendering-Settings to boost the Rendering-Time to 1/3 with MR (other shadows applied, of course)..! I guess I have to thank you for sharing your knowledge in the Forces Of Light-Thread, without it i had never found out... Normal Preview Render in all Zooms and user-perspective worked fine. Sample: I went on exporting that thingie using MR-Renderer without any lights except the BAT-LightRig at all and here's the result: I still have no clue what was the reason for the error, but I keep getting it. Now I will set up the new Rig using Sky/Sun. I assume that this has nothing to do with my issue, but it will look fantastic on future projects, i guess edit Oh and i forgot: A Night-Library Tutorial would be fantastic..! Thanks so much!

version of MAX type of lights used: default, photometric (which), other type of shadow assigned to the light (to each type) rendering engine used (Scanline, Mental Ray, other) rendering setup ( AA, Indirect Illumination) were any night Windows used with any preffix/suffix (nite/night ect.) was Night Library used any other settings differing from absolute default in max > 1: 3DSM 8 > 2: default > 3: several combinations, but only 2 types - Area and Adv. RT > 4: At that time i tried Scanline, but MR failed, as well > 5: AA default setting but disabled for maps > 6: No NightWindows (due to max8-bug), but nitelite_Lights > 7: No Night Library, I don't know how to set up one (though I really want to! ) > 8: Nothing special I could think of, except a envi-map (jpeg of some sky/clouds) and several materials I set up (but nothing too odd, just some bump-maps, raytracing materials and/or facettes enabled) Meanwhile I finished 1 render with default scanline which yielded in a color-checkerboard-like building. I merged the model without any lights to a clean scene and am now rendering with MR-Renderer (still in progress) just to check if the model is corrupt. Thanks for sharing your knowledge on skies and lighting! I got your Sky-Setup from the STEX and will try using it on the next project. But still I couldn't find a thread which explains how to actually set up any Night Library and how to work with it. Would you mind explaining how to do that? Do I need to add materials with a nite_ prefix and assign them to clones of my geometry? Or whats the deal about that? Thanks again, mate!

Sorry, haven't tried it in max8, but I can say so far that I used the boolean right, I guess. I'll try it the next days again!

Yea, I have thought of that, as well! Along with SimFox's Self-Illuminating Nightmaterials this would be a solution for the missing Nightwindows (and even looks better with a falloff that allows more variety on lighting-levels)... I rendered my model that caused the problems i described above, using some night-materials that illuminate. I'm not sure if it works, but I'll have a try ingame now...

I absolutely must second that. See, I dropped into the SC4-Community just a few weeks ago. I bought the game this year (yea - believe me, or not - 2007!) and since I am a big fan of the modification of it. After having started to BAT i rarely play the game anymore. It's unbelievable how much creative and analytical power this game sets free at so many people. And your work (on BATting and scripting and analyzing the structures behind it) is simply (along with some other fellas) the best ***** i've seen on game modding out there... Err, what I wanted to say is just 'Thank You' for so much input and inspiration // edit: oh yea, and keep on posting your postcards - i love them! try some clay-renders, those would definately look gorgeous on your projects!

Hi again! I'm stuck on the nitelite_ problem with 3dsmax8... The last time I used the prefix on lights, everything worked pretty well (on the RG comm center found on the STEX)... Shadows were done using a combination of area shadows and adv. raytrace and everything worked very good (even with the omnis). At my current project I did exactly the same, but MAX delivers an error 2 right after hitting the export button. I tried deleting all the lights - and voila, everything works great. So I deleted them again without setting up any new - success. I tested to set them up, without assigning them as nitelite_s - success. So I get my lightlights to be rendered in day-view.. haha The error occurs even with 1 assigned nitelite_ :/ I'd be happy if anyone who found a solution to that issue before would post it... xx

I finished this today, and it'll be up the STEX by tommorrow, i guess... Dont worry, the LOT is just temporary to see if the model works > MarcosMX I will upload the models of the files that my go well with the SM-Project, but i don't think that i want to work on the project seriously...

I promise, this is my last post-in-a-row about this... because i got it to work - hoooray! So I thought I'd share what I finally found out - maybe it helps a bit in improving the whole script (which would be great). My scene consisted of 4 different models, each modeled in a separate file (i mentioned that). I reinstalled max and upgraded to v8 (which seems to run a lot faster than v6) and reassembled the scene in all possible constellations (A/B/C/D - A/B/C ... A/D and so on) and found the error in one of the groups that i assembled the buildings in. It were the nightlights, as this is the only thing that differed from the other 3, they were assigned in the pre-modeled file and merging it into another scene didn't seem to work. The last test I will do for today is to go back to the original file for that building, un-assign all nightlights there and re-merge. I hope this did make any sense at all. Again, SimFox, thanks for your answers on my problem

Thanks for your constant replies so far, i'm really glad someone leads me into any direction at all Yea, it would have been too simple to just blame it on the LODs, hehe. Thanks for making that clear. I converted the Nurbs right after my post and it didn't have any relevant effect, as far as i can see. Which brings me to my last suspect: the cameras. I have to thank you again, for letting me know, that the cameras are xreffed automatically whenever i try to export. so it shouldn't have anything to do with that, right? After some further testing, all i received were Code 6 errors right after Zoom 5, Rotation 1. I deinstalled 3dsmax after that, backed up my scripts and will reinstall it this evening. If I can't come to a result after that, I assume that my problem is a model specific problem. SimFox, you mentioned that it is a common problem, that no rotation takes place - how does this come? Are there known fixes for that? The BMPs mentioned in the Listener were each a render-output image with a relating alpha-channel-bitmap, stored in a common folder, along with a FSH file. I began to BAT just a few weeks ago (as you might have read in my bat-thread) and therefor not an expert concerning the whole structures, all this depends on. I try to learn fast, but i'm thankful for the pros out there to help me a bit (like you do)

Sorry for my frequent posting, but as this may maybe help anyone else i thought i'd update on the way to a solution for that. I did the same as above, but i resized the created LODs to 100,5% and voila, it worked. Now it's time to find out what leads to the errors. # 1) Materials All buildings of the project were modeled and textured in each a separate max-file using the same materials (but no library!). i guess this worked fine for a normal max-render, but the BAT got confused (im not an expert on this). So what may be a solution is to reset all materials on each project and do the texturing later in the final scene. # 2) Meshes The building i failed on rendering contains a Nurbs-Surface, which could lead to an error. I will have another try on it but before convert it to a mesh. # 3) camera rigs This scene now which obviously worked well had no rigs and no xreferences to any cameras, maybe this is another issue, but i guess rather not, because gmax uses xref rigs in every project and leads to no errors on that. Testing goes on

OK, so here's an update. After i found out that my MoBoard only supports 2 slots to be used on 2-sided-dimms i just could add 256megs, but better than nothing Now these are the steps that I came up with: 1) I isolated 1 Building (4 in total on that scene) 2) Deleted all materials from Scene and Objects (via Script, i'm using max6) 3) refitted LODs, exported to gmax and rendered 4) rendered my model in max ==> success! (hooray so far) 5) ran the cmds, built my prop and here i am The result now was Which is a lot better than getting an error-code Somewhere above in this thread I read, that this error could be fixed with reinstalling MAX. But before, I will have another try on one of the other buildings of the scene, with slightly bigger LODs (i usually extend them to 100,5% before rendering). Still, i'd really appreciate help on this

OK, here we are with another tricky one (I guess)... After I tested the BAT4Max successfully a few first times, I came to a point when i wanted to test-render my current project. LOD-Export to gmax and exporting them was successful, but when I come to render the main model, I experience a Code 38 at about 85-90% I tried the usual fixes like merging with a new scene, new LODs, etc. "E:\3dsmax6\gamepacks\BAT\OutputFiles\i_am_teh_testor-0x5ad0e817_0xb3074fa9_0xb0000\0.BMP""7ab50e44_b3074fa9_90320" "E:\3dsmax6\gamepacks\BAT\OutputFiles\i_am_teh_testor-0x5ad0e817_0xb3074fa9_0xb0000\1.BMP" "7ab50e44_b3074fa9_90321" "E:\3dsmax6\gamepacks\BAT\OutputFiles\i_am_teh_testor-0x5ad0e817_0xb3074fa9_0xb0000\2.BMP" "7ab50e44_b3074fa9_90322" "E:\3dsmax6\gamepacks\BAT\OutputFiles\i_am_teh_testor-0x5ad0e817_0xb3074fa9_0xb0000\0.BMP" "7ab50e44_b3074fa9_90330" "E:\3dsmax6\gamepacks\BAT\OutputFiles\i_am_teh_testor-0x5ad0e817_0xb3074fa9_0xb0000\1.BMP" "7ab50e44_b3074fa9_90331" "E:\3dsmax6\gamepacks\BAT\OutputFiles\i_am_teh_testor-0x5ad0e817_0xb3074fa9_0xb0000\2.BMP" "7ab50e44_b3074fa9_90332" "Error Occurred Somewhere" Processing time was : 10.5083 minutes Now what I am going to try is: - Install another 512megs of RAM, although my model isnt too big - If this doesnt help, reinstall MAX and setting anything else up again I noticed, that the renderer does several Files from the Perspective view, although I imported (and tried all) CamLight Rigs via XRef. And the renderer doesn't seem to switch views, it looks like it always does the South view over and over again (but this may just seem to me). MentalRay-Render lead to a Code 6 right at the first Viewport and relations of the model were messed up so I switched back to scanline (which should work fine on my model, due to its size). Apart from Raytrace and a global Environment there aren't any special FX, so i guess it shouldn't be any memory-related issue. If I can come up with a solution for this, I will post it here, but for now I dont have a clue. My first test-render in MAX ever worked pretty well. I also thought about the nightlights (several set to random-off and random density) being the problem. Apart from them there are no custom lights in the scene... :/ If anyone has a hint - give it to me. *drools*

Thanks for all your replies, I'm currently getting used to max and its features (hooray, nurbs!).. i tried your script, simfox, but it leaves me with nightlights turned on, after changing the boolean to 'false' (without ' ' - hehe)... im glad for all your hints, i first had to find out that i needed to XRef die CamLightRig in order to choose them as render-source. the preview now works really fine!

> Gecko_2006 Err, no, I haven't considered that. To answer your question: I don't think I'd like this... I create my Lots for use in a contemporary setting, and for users who'd like to add a little anime-ish look to their cities. But maybe I should offer the models, so that they can do with them whatever they want... thanks for that hint

Originally posted by: Jasoncw BAT4Max is the BAT for 3ds Max, a different program than Gmax. In the BAT Mega FAQ there's more information about the two. To preview in 3ds max, set your render output size width to 795 pixels, and then render from one of the cameras.quote> > Whow, that really makes my day! I do own a 3dsm6 copy (haha, even legal!) and installed the Bat4Max_v2, but I ever thought that previews were impossible... Your plane-method sounds very interesting. I'm looking forward to the first results, as I'm regularly going mad about the nightlightning being not smooth enough on the rest of the Lot...