Galemp

Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the 'Wall.' Can I ask one now?

Yuck. Lighting on the exported building doesn't work. I've read through the "BAT Help - Lighting" thread here... I have all my lights prefixed with 'nitelite', the building's power consumption is over 15 units, and I'm powering the building. Other custom BATs I've downloaded do light up, so I know I have the Maxis patch. Am I missing something obvious? Also, I'd like to change the Query SFX, but SC4Tool won't let me change any values. Maybe I can take my problems to another thread, if someone will point me in the right direction.

Well, I haven't made any changes to the mesh, but I've reworked all the texturing and lighting from scratch. I think it looks much better.

Ouch, some pretty harsh words there Fox. I can't claim to be a 'pro' but I did say I was 'experienced;' that is, I'm used to working on polygon meshes and can make my way around the Max interface, so I only have to learn the nuances of the BAT extensions and not how to make a box. I agree that the lights are overblown; I really don't know why they're so extreme since they seemed fine before. What aspect of them should I change? Do I darken the color, lower the multiplier, or narrow the hotspot or falloff? Making the spotlights cast shadows left ugly criss-crossing shadows from the tower on the arches. I turned shadows off for aesthetic purposes but if you think realism is more important I'll try it. Perhaps I can reduce the shadow opacity. I'll darken and matte the saucer a bit more, but I'm kinda stuck for the base. As a reference I'm using the pyramids at Teotihuacan ( http://www.richard-seaman.com/Travel/Mexico/Teotihuacan/index.html ) which as you can see don't have a lot of detail. Should I scrap the entire base and re-model it with more terraces, platforms and mastabas closer to the source? Extracting new textures from photographs and bump-mapping them could go a long way, but as the sides and tops are the same material it's going to be difficult creating visual depth, given the SC4 perspective. And I honestly don't think I can improve the modeling of the tower, arches, or crown any more than I have. I'd appreciate more constructive advice from someone as obviously experienced at this as you are, but mutual respect and patience will go a long way.

I think I'm done! I've worked on it all day and I think it's about ready for export.

I've done some more work, leaving the SimCity 2000 model behind and working towards SimCity 4-level quality. Still working out the big things right now, but getting closer to detailing. And, I got nightlights working. How's the spacing on the tower girders? I can make them sparser and thicker, or denser and thinner... it's a matter of taste, really, since they're all parametric (Tesselate + Lattice). Are there any tutorials on making animated props or nightlights?

Hmm. Scale actually raises a few problems. The original SC2K lot was 4x4 but that was the largest lot available at the time. I think 6x6 would be a better choice for SC4, with a total height of about 120m. That's neatly half the scale of the real-world monuments the Llama Dome is based on. Thanks for the tips on color. I'll make sure I keep a close eye on it. With some research I've found I can import/export to 3D Studio (with all my plugins) with .MD3 as an intermediary. I'll hope to find some nice things here.

Can't believe this hasn't been done yet. Now, I'm an experienced 3D Studio modeler, but I'm totally new to the BAT and SC4 modding. Anything I should keep in mind while I'm working?

That's cute, but it's waay too big for what I want to do. I need to conserve as much space as possible; remember, Times Square. The second image on my post is really what I'm looking for, but with full art and pathing in all six directions.

Hey everyone. I'm new here but I've been playing SimCity for fifteen years now. Great, great stuff. Anyway, there's an intersection that I'm having trouble with that should be relatively common, but I can't get it to network right. It's the crossing of a diagonal avenue with a four-way road intersection. This sort of situation crops up all the time in grid cities with non-gridded avenues, such as New York (Broadway) or Philadelphia (Ben Franklin Parkway). Unfortunately with SimCity 4 and Rush Hour there were no easy ways to do it. This is the traditional way I've handled it. It doesn't take up any more space than necessary but it slows traffic flow along the grid and doesn't really look nice. The NAM lets me do this, which is a tremendous improvement. We have a much tighter intersection and good traffic flow in one direction, but flow in the other direction is halted completely. To try and improve flow at the expense of a few extra squares I tried roundabouts. NAM won't let me run avenues diagonally into one-way roundabouts though so this is a bit of a hack converting the avenues into side-by-side one-way roads. As you can see the art doesn't line up right and neither does the pathing; vehicles on the outer lanes vanish when they reach the roundabout and the two extra junctions cause problems with flow as well. So has anyone come up with a better solution to this? Perhaps more work should be done on traffic circles to allow better integration with avenues/one-way roads coming in diagonally. Another solution would be to make a six-way intersection for the avenue for this situation, resulting in a large open paved area (like a four-way avenue intersection) with three sets of traffic lights. This would be the most authentic solution for places like New York's Times Square or Herald Square. The NAM team has done a tremendous amount to help further integrate avenues into the SimCity network system; bravo! I think a few more tweaks to the road networking system and we'll be all set. Thanks again for all you folks have done. Pete