Francis90b

You don't have any idea about what "people" might think. As a fact, in general only a fraction of those using a BAT cares to comment on it - fewer would get into a detailed feedback, fewer still would know about BAT threads, and even fewer within those fewer would actually have their say there - therefore, the maximum someone might hope for is to know what a very restricted minority of them might (usually) think. You might know what Libellibicus, Art128, Darknono or Simcoug might think - but, you don't, and won't, have the slightest idea about "what people think". Wheter real life building's canopy is "dreary" or not, Skyscraper, portray it as it is. This way everyone might like or hate the real thing or something very close to it - and not just like or hate something that has been "corrected" to please the whims of a vocal elite... People will speak if they wish, and in the mean time, we ought to give our best effort into representing something that, before existing in our judgement and in our perception, exists in itself, and in that way should be offered to other people - basically: A BAT should speak, it's BATer should stay silent. (this applies to those posting feedback as well).

This is Dover House: Perspective drawing Another part of the brochure (please notice graphic style) Floorplan 1 Floorplan 2 Floorplan 3 While looking at the plans i might reckon that the unit layout might somehow remind of an apartment hotel, Dover House is a specimen of a "style" that was emerging just in the late 1930's (buildings completely devoid of any ornament, with some setbacks arranged in a somewhat attractive way). Even if there might be a very slight chance that Dover House could have been built in the prewar era, it's architecture would be quite different from what, in general, prewar architecture was (again, if you except the late '30s), and perhaps would not exactly fit in the common notion-idea-expectation of "prewar"... On the other hand, i'd submit to your attention, 995 fifth avenue (Built as the Stanhope Hotel). I think that JackWilds could get a prewar Hotel (that clearly looks "prewar"), and Aaron could get yet another building on his collection. I am not making a request for it to be done, i'm just proposing a better way to reach a goal.

You've done, by yourself, far more than many people would ever have done...so, while you might have missed until now some things, downrating yourself for "domestic blindness" seems a bit too much.... I'd be happy to see what the fixes will bring...i'd also feel like asking wheter you might, in the future, considering releasing the corner section alone, so that someone might use it and the long wing, and sheds of his own liking, to build an on-grade stub end railway station (that's an uninterested suggestion, heheh..).

Oh, it's nice seeing the link to the RL building! There is a reason why you are confused - the fire stations, sims and automatas all follows different scales (think as if someone at Maxis red Gulliver's travels, and decided to merge all the universes visited by the protagonist within one...so, you'd have tiny and gigantic creatures, one next to another). You can pick one specific element, and try scaling your building against it - it wouldn't look to scale against other elements, and it's no mistery, as no unified scale had ever been used in first place. Trying to "scale" things against other things, however, means you might not know how much room your building would take...for example, I model one building that is "x" mtrs wide, and then scale it up against, let's say, sims...g-d knows how much it will end up being...same said with everything else.... You wanted someone to make up your mind with, so, let's state the following: 1)Maxis did not follow a scale - but modelled things to different scales in first place, as you've realized. 2)Therefore, picking anything Maxis did as a reference, and scale things accordingly, doesn't mean it's going to fit. 3)Scaling things means you'd have to work up your mind deciding what reference to pick, and having little control over the model's final dimensions - you'd need attempts over attempts, and you might get insane in the process - basically, what's happening there. Therefore: Ditch it all - follow Jason's advice, it's a simple and pratical one.Things won't necessarily fit - but not even Maxis ever wanted them to fit, if they wanted to, they would have thought more about what to do, and followed a serious approach about scaling.That's it.

The whole result is mind-blowing, but i'd say there might still something left... I notice lack of details (details that should have been there) and discrepancies in the stone-clad section facing the river.... For example, there is an arch between the round area and the sidewalk. The round area itself is depicted as a flat surface punctured by window openings, yet there should be an overhanging cornice above them, as well as stylized flat columns in the gaps between them - the diagonal, covered passage beyond the rounded area should be partially clad in glass, rather than being all in stone, as it is now. The stone basement of the biggest cupola above the corner section seems to have arched windows for each side of the dome that faces away from the main facade, while all one can see in your depiction is a flat wall (*). (source:street view, looking north from the bridge south of the railway station.) These windows, seems, upon a closer look, to be complimented by other two windows on each side of them, the appearence of the whole ensemble resembling a palladian window. Roof parapet on the sides away from the corner looks shorter than roof parapet on sides facing it. (source - bing maps aerial views over Flinders st. and surrounding area.) Speaking about the roof parapet above the main facade (the sides facing the roads), i'm under the impression that the area that is taken up by the balaustrade, if compared to the flat wall area below it, is higher in comparison in real life than depicted in your model.In other words, given X as the total height of the roof parapet, Y as the height of the balaustrade, and Z the height of the flat wall below the balaustrade but above the lower parapet line, i'm under the impression that the ratio between Y and Z in your model is different than the ratio between them IRL so that Y(rl):Z(rl) is different than Y(md):Z(md) and Y(rl):Z(rl) > Y(md):Z(md) I'm not so positive about this last one, though. (source:closeups of the building's facade in street view) (*) by flat wall i mean, in your model as well as in real life building, one wall area that is flat, not interrupted by either mouldings, cornice, trims, sculptures or windows)

Nooo, I was agreeing with you (I think). The scale I've got them at now looks right to me - as well as being true to life proportions. Regardless of other BATs like the ones I put next to it before. On the other hand, if (as before) it turned out that I'd built them at a drastically different scale to other BATs, then it wouldn't do any harm to bring them in line with that. I'm not arguing for a uniform height-per-floor or anything, but it's nice to be able to mix and match creations by different users too without it being jarring. And it would be even nicer if two things, done by two BATers, could be brought together and reflect what their relationship that might actually have existed between them, should they have had, by chance, be built one next to another IRL - wheter the observer finds them "jarring" or not, because, whatever the observer's opinion might be, part of why the world is nice and lively exactly because is jarring, contraddictory and unharmonious.... Differences between things help us to appreciate, and value, things in themselves...one example, Rockefeller Center and Midtown manhattan as a whole.The first was built following an unified developement scheme, and follows a common architectural language - the latter was mostly developed parcel after parcel, and is a showcase of whatever idea architects could have had from 1850's to now. One could walk into midtown, and then go to rockefeller center, and probably be impressed by the latter's uniformity, so much in contrast with what he had witnessed before...one would value and appreciate it because the other situation is completely different! And one could not fully appreciate Macy's grand scale and generous floors, weren't standard buildings, like the loft one i pointed out before, next to it....

Please define "looks redicoulous"..."looks" impiles a perception, and "rediculous" a strong, subjective value judgement. Take a look here, Macy's and a standard 1920's multi purpose loft building, one next to each other. If someone were to BAT both according to how they are, and put them side by side, one, or both, would probably look "rediculous"...yet, that would be a good depiction on how they are - you might try, if you want to, to make them "look less redicolous" - losing some of the qualities of both buildings, and bringing to anyone else an edulcorated, flattened and unfaithful depiction of it for the sake of a subjective perception....

Basically, the only good scale BAT you might find is actually not a BAT. Other than Maxis and those trying to follow it more or less carefully and in depth, many other people would try squeezing or enlarging things according to how they would look next to some other BATs (the look of things is quite an interesting point....for, you might easily infer that if you try following another BAT, without knowing what precise criterias the BATer had in mind, wheter he took liberty to exxagerate or reduce things, wheter he correctly took the dimensions and proportions from any real reference, wheter that reference does actually exist or the BAT is just the fruit of a BATer's idea, then the result of this "fitting in" attempt would be something that looks good (subjective opinion, and what does "good" mean, BTW?) but is not actually following any scale!!) - Then, some others would try following what appear to be RL dimensions, but even there, you might never be 100% sure about how faithful or precise is their work...you'd need to check the RL reference, if it exists, by yourself. Therefore, the BAT that is "good" for comparisons is actually not a BAT, and the actual idea of comparison is quite a myth (*). (*)Unless the aim of this comparison is just estabilishing a correlation between things with no information but only and solely on the basis of a subjective and probably preconceived idea.... The only thing you might do is to consider what dimensions things have IRL, and try spotting and recreating them to your best - and don't overindulge on idle ideas like "comparison" or "matching" - there is actually nothing to "match" your things with, as a BAT, any BAT, is the result of a fallible individual effort.

Your own pic of 10 east 40th street is looking nice .

The image of 10 east 40th street that was posted actually comes from a firm that makes cast metal miniature models....see it. I would also suggest everyone to take a serious look at the whole website...there are lot of nice cast metal replicas to look at! The other images, on the other hand, are original work, and i appreciate the effort that was put into them .

That's the Four seasons Hotel, by I.M Pei.

Your "summing up" is just a shallow generalization. Generalizations try summing up a broad range of situations into a single statement or little more - they are inherently inaccurate.Moreover, when someone tries to get an understanding of one situation that happens to diverge a bit from what they state, or when someone has to act in a specific situation, they may even prove themselves a burden rather than an help.I'm afraid they aren't quite helpful for the individual experiencing the issue, either. I've read discussions and posts where Maxis scaling (or scalings) were analyzed (partly because i've been through this issue myself), and general consensus is that there had been a variety of scaling criterias used throughout the game's environment, with individual items sometimes coming close to what would be a "proper" scale, sometimes diverging from there, but often obeying to rules that were dictated by gaming convenience, and not necessarily to what someone would find in reality... It's quite curious to know that someone, after having gathered a bit of knowledge about that topic, would still believe for a single "base line" to be found within maxis stock... The last paragraph to my previous post was added in response to your perception of me "taking issue with your posts". -Back on topic: @Monkee_Boy I think what you have is looking good so far - however, i think the white areas of your textures might need some darkening.

Someone said "give a man a fish, and you will feed him for one day - teach him how to fish, and you will feed him for life". I personally believe that the most effective way you might help someone, should you ever be able to, is to tell him the working of the process, rather than what the result should more or less look like - in short, trying to teach him how to fish rather than carrying a fish i fished for him. I try approaching this with this spirit, in a jesture of respect for people, as i trust in their ability to become fisher rather than eaters, and because i do believe that becoming a fisher in what you do, from the most to least important thing, is the way to fully develop your potential. I try doing this, and i try doing so unless it becomes clear it's not going to work on that specific occasion. Unless you're talking in very broad generalizations, nothing, neither in BATing world nor in real world, can allow for some generic rule of thumb to be derived - no "valid scale", as you defined it. I have mentioned the situation of Maxis, that used several different scaling criterias for different elements within the game's environment, and i mentioned at least three ways in which a BATer might face the problem (without even mentioning all the possible general approaches). In real life, two rowhouses in Greenwich village might have 11' or even 12'6" ceilings on their bedroom floor, but a pre-war building in the netherlands or where I live might have ceilings as short as 9' - i could say, in general, that perhaps more recent buildings have taller ceiling heights, yet a fair share of turn of the century residential buildings in my hometown have ceilings ranging from 11' to 12', while more recent developements often are at 9' or 10'. Speaking of the same type of building, built in the same era and in the same town, i can tell you of two public housing buildings, one with 8' ceilings, the other with 11' ceilings....so, from all of this we can say that one RL building would, in general and according to time, location and purpose, range from 8' to 13'....is this generic statement helpful at all? And how helpful would actually be a broad generalization to catch a glimpse on things? I consider what you post when i think that it deserves some consideration, and i reply to it when i think it's worth replying - exactly as i would do with anyone else.Regrettably, the only two times when i felt like replying to your posts, i criticized what you said...i reckon that might have lead you to believe that the problem is you, and not what you post... If you feel like dropping me a line, do so - in the mean time, please let me exercise my right to review and if necessary criticize what's said on a free discussion.

Why? Those buildings would "need" to be 4,5 mtrs tall only to fit together with the buildings of those who would arbitrarily select 4,5 mtrs as the height for "old buildings". In SC4's world, someone might decide to make floor height according to a given, pre-selected height, someone else instead consider things as Maxis's content (that was actually modelled according to many different scales e.g. maxis developers choose to make sims slightly bigger than they should, and R$ buildings smaller - someone else might not want to get into this boring stuff and make whatever "looks good" to him. However, the building fabric we found so much interesting and beautiful that we feel the need to BAT it for a videogame is rich of small differences, one of them (and not the least) that different types of buildings might have have different floor heights, and perhaps even the same type of buildings would have different floor height sometimes. You might say that don't caring about this would perhaps make your BAT fit better within the bats of those who choose not to care, yet, is it better to aim at a flattened, edulcorated "depiction" that would leave out anything that would stand out of the choir, or would differences enhance gameplay, rather than subtract from it? "10'-12' floors" The poster above me noticed that each pixel in SC4 means roughly 0,2 mtrs...but this could also be read in reverse - 0,2 mtrs for each pixel might mean that not many pixels compose our beloved renditions, especially renditions of smaller buildings...so, this should rather bring to the conclusion that each pixel would actually matter. The poster above me also mentioned "the 10'-12' ceiling height you have in real life". If i were to convert those measures into metric units, i'd say that 10' are 3,04 mtrs, and 12' are 3,65 mtrs...between the two there is a two feet difference...two feet might be slightly less than the height of the table where you eat...so, if we were to translate it to a dimension where 0,2 mtrs is just one pixel, it doesn't seem very much. However, this small, almost irrelevant difference would actually become more and more relevant as building (and therefore BAT) size and overall height increases - and it might even be noticeable on such a small thing as a five story building, as you will see. An example - Bob and Joe. I'm now going to show how a difference of something as little as two foot in floor height might be quite significant even in a small five floors building. Bob and Joe both want to build a building - those buildings are going to be very much alike, two five floors building, the only difference between them being the height of the ceilings above the ground floor - Bob goes for 10', Joe goes for 12'. There is no other difference between them - both Bob and Joe decided for the same height of the ground floor, both decided to leave an identical gap between floors for ceining, floorbeams and pavement to be put there, both decided for a flat roof of equal thickness, both decided for a parapet rising above the roof having the same height. Let's now add some other height dimensions in order to do some hypothetical math...so, both Bobby and Joe wanted the ground floor to be 13' in height - they also decided that there was to be a one foot gap between one floor and another, for ceiling, floorbeams and floor pavement to be put there.Let's also imagine that the composite height of ceiling+flat roof is of 2', and that they both wanted a 4' roof parapet above all of it. All those are random measures, and are meant to be able to make a simulation - which i'm going to do. Let's now consider Bobby's and Joe's buildings, and calculate their height according to the dimensions that were given in the above paragraphs. Let's remember that the only thing that's different in their buildings is ceiling height above the ground floor. So, the total height for Bob's building would be: 13' of ground floor 4x1' of space between floors - therefore 4' 4x10' of ceiling height for floors above the ground floor - therefore, 40' 2' of ceiling+roof above the tallest floor 4' of roof parapet. This gives us a total of (13+4+40+2+4) 63'. Let's now do the math for Joe as well: 13' of ground floor 4x1' of space between floors - therefore 4' 4x12' of ceiling height for floors above the ground floor - therefore, 48' 2' of ceiling+roof above the tallest floor 4' of roof parapet. This gives us a total of (13+4+48+2+4) 71' - that's it, 71' or 8' more than Bob's building. Now, let's convert those dimensions to metric - 71'=21,64 mtrs and 63'=19,2. Let's now say that I, the narrator, decide to make a BAT of both buildings. I follow the dimensions, and then i scale both vertically by a given factor to avoid the squashing effect given by SC4 perspective (SC4 uses a graphic projection that would make things look squashed and squat if no vertical correction is applied - a cube that's not been scaled vertically would not look like a cube, but as a squat something resembilng a cube, but with it's height shorter than it's lenght).One commonly used factor is 1,33, however other factors are used as well - for this simulation let's just use 1,33, and scale vertically both models by 133%.We would have those dimensions: Bob's building model - 19,2x1,33=25,53 Joe's building model - 21,64x1,33=28,78 So, we find how much those two heights would be in SC4 if we followed RL dimensions (that are, again, the same in anything but a small difference between ceiling heights of the two buildings, and then scaled vertically the two buildings by 1,33 to fight the squashing effect.How many pixels would be the models of Bob's and Joe's buildings be tall in SC4? Let's divide both heights we just found by 0,2 mtrs - that's more or less how much one pixel would be equal to...so, this would allow us to know how much Bob and Joe building's BATs would be tall in pixels: Bob's BAT would be 25,53/0,2=127-128 pixels Joe's BAT would be 28,78/0,2=143-144 pixels That is a difference of 16 pixels, which would be noticeable...and this, just because of a slight 2' difference in ceiling height! This means that, even if you spot a little 2' difference in floor height, you might need to be careful. What would have happened if Bob and Joe wanted other dimensions to be different too? What if they decided to have ground floors of different heights, and perhaps a taller or shorter roof parapet? I'd be ready to make this experiment with pics, should this be necessary. Conclusion: SC4 zoom, and GMAX rendering engine which is not actually the best (it's a watered down version of the 2003 version of 3dsMax) might make sometimes tricky to work on small details, like windows or railings, and might make small differences and details seem like irrelevant. Yet, each pixel counts, and the last thing you (or anyone else) could do is being simplicistic while thinking about it or about what to do about it.

I'd guess that there's about one meter and half between the lowest level window and the yard ground....now, tell me wheter you can jump that distance without getting hurt.... But then, i'd like asking Frex for how much that measure actually is... Then, there's something interesting in a song video i saw some time ago (look at minute 1:00-1:05):

I'd second Paul.

To be honest i never really faced this problem - nothing i did so far ever required much thought or care about reflections, so all i did was to slap into the ground plane a bitmap that wasn't even mine - I stole it from another person's BAT that i exported, lol. This said, i'm afraid that much of the trouble comes from the angle where the roofs are...i'm afraid that most of the pics you might find wouldn't really do well in avoiding the "inception effect" - you would need a bitmap that both closely resembles SC4 perspective and that could work on a ground plane, and i'm afraid very few of them would really answer to both conditions. On the other hand, my experiment leads me to think that perhaps you might actually model (not in detail, just the basic outline) some stuff, or even use a ground + displacement map (never tried this satisfactorily, though) - and then play with the blurryness of reflection to somehow lessen the "peculiarity" of what's reflected into the glass (and in any case, even IRL reflections would probably not be very sharp or clear in most cases...) so that the BAT doesn't seem to belong to a specific environment.... ...which brings me to the point of environment - each building having a very reflective glass would reflect much of tne environment around it, and this is a problem as SC4 has NO environment - this means that one key feature of those buildings, and perhaps one that makes them so attractive to our eyes, is almost impossible to recreate....or it would be necessary for BATs to actually reflect what's around there, or perhaps having one BAT for each specific spot in each city of each secific player where it comes up . Either way, i'd be interested to hear your take on this - the overall problem, i mean - i'm rather confident you would sooner or later come up with something, perhaps something that would dwarf anything that had been done or proposed so far .

I never said the curved glass was the problem...i had another opinion about your ground plane, tho . IIRC jasoncw did nightlights on the Inland steel building by rotating the image so that it could give the illusion of depht...perhaps you might consider doing it for your ground plane...

So, i've decided for the sake of it to give a try at how glass would reflect other objects, were they not be part of an image applied to a ground plane but actually modelled. This is the scene i've used: I modelled one box, representing the glass building that was the subject - and i modified the ground plane, so that it could have different "building boxes" that were to offer the "modelled environment" the glass would have to reflect. The said environment is not, as you can see, very realistic - it does not represent a "city", so to say, unless you consider it at a very basic level - however, buildings might be thought as more detailed kind of "boxes". The glass building is itself a box, with one glass material (A&D thin glass) applied to it.I set transparency to 0, increased reflectivity to 2,2 to simulate an highly reflective glass (i red somewhere that glass IOR might vary from values lower than 1.4 to about 2.2 according to the type of glass) and rendered the result.I know this is an exxageration, meant to represent a mirror-like glass - there would be less, and far blurrier reflections on a decently-done glass. So, i rendered the scene in two situations, first with one glass box: Then with a 45 deg curve, similar to 333 N wacker: Thoughts are welcome - suggestions about how to improve this simulation are welcome as well - interpretation is up to you.

Speaking about 333 Wacker, i'm not a fan of the glass. You might, as someone had noticed, have used one Manhattan pic as a source for reflections....but wheter you used Manhattan, Mars, or the Moon, that's quite a minor problem. The problem i see is that the picture's angle is way off...i think you might know about "inception", you might have seen the movie, you might remember the movie's poster, that for everyone's reference i might post there: You see, the guys in the foreground standing in the middle of a road, then the road going beyond and then sharply bending itself at what seem close to a 90 deg angle....that's something i notice in the pic you used as a source of reflection for 333 N wacker, that is, your BAT seem to stand in a plane, and the buildings you've used as a source of reference seem to stand at another one...pretty much "inception-like"

I'd be curious to hear from Darn42 about the changes he has introduced, how, why, and especially what the real situation is. I took a look at what Bing and Google show in their aerial views - those might not exactly reflect what might happen if someone looks at the Chase from SC4 viewing angle, yet they are somewhat similar. Looking at Bing, i can see reflections going on on the building's glass, especially at the top - curtains sometimes interfere with them, but rarely happens.Those reflections seem quite sharp, but not as much as those portrayed in Darn's most recent version. Looking at google, i can see very weak reflections, and very noticeable curtains.

It would be better to make the landings face the windows, and the ramps face the yard. While designing things like this, it's not a bad idea to imagine yourself in that situation, i mean, to imagine yourself walking on that fire-escape - i found it to be an helpful strategy with a lot of things.

I'm afraid there's a lot of redundancy there - landing where there shouldn't be, sometimes covering the stair ramps. There are two ways it could work: Landings in red, ramps in green - basic scheme, only relevant things shown.

Can i get a closer look at these? I mean, one perspective render of them. I will speak once i see it .

I agree with above, furniture is waay out of scale...maybe half of that size would look better.