Francis90b

Then first know why, then post. Personally, tho, i'd somehow second what Zahrul said - when buildings had both stone and brick cladding, stone, that was more expensive, was mostly used for ground floors, cornices, trims and small details - while bricks usually made up ther majority of the facade. I'd therefore say to use one light brick texture for the walls where stone is now, and stone, maybe, for ground floor.

You're quite wrong...i'm interested in University club as much as i am in Penn hotel .

The black things below the windows are HVAC grills, that is, part of HVAC units.At some point they began to incorporate it into buildings right from the start - before they didn't, and that's how, and why, you'd notice HVAC boxes sticking out of older buildings.

He just modified the floorplan of the real building by adding the balconies as they are in his BAT, to show how they would fit . And this is something i appreciate .

I like the railings you proposed in the first link (white building) - they can make terraces seem a lot "lighter". I'd be for giving terraces only to the units that are closest to the corner, to counter the "too many terraces" impression about which TWrecks talked about in his post - i say so because, while it's true that many modern nyc buildings do have them, i rarely saw any of them where terraces almost covers the whole facade...well, if you except the first building you posted when speaking about the terraces (brown building on Madison), and this one, which seems to be the very exception rather than the norm (i saw nothing else like this in NYC so far). On the other hand, terraces were often used, like in the examples you've shown, to emphasize corners (last two examples you posted, or 41PA) or to fill up a facade made up by extruded and recessed areas (the two buildings you posted when proposing terraces the first time) - all in all, and in general, they would cover less of the building facade.

I guess it might be feasible - you need taking a look at the building's floorplan to understand where one terrace might make sense, where they might not, where to put the dividing panels between one terrace belonging to one apartment and the one next to it...but yeah, in theory it might be feasible. Personally, though, i'd prefer to see this one without them - and have you making one of those two you posted with them

Personally, i like night option 3 - what was the building's reality, though? I'm not convinced by the fact that there's no light from the lobby glaring outside...but all the light from the lobby, or from the bottom of the marquee, would glare into the sidewalk, and this is something you can hardly fix in SC4. AFAIK the only ways would be to make one prop that could cast light on the street, or BAT the sidewalk (using one sidewalk that's very common) - and then threat the building as an overhanging building (but maybe you already have to do this, if the marquee is more than 1,6 mtrs deep). I think you've done an amazing job with all of it, and this is something i know can hardly be fixed...i just hope there's a way to do so, and that, if there's a way, i hope you'd try it.But i want to say, once again, that i think you've done the best possible job given the situation. Speaking of the bricks, i know enough about what you're aiming for, but i'd see wheter you can make it (slightly) more subtle.

As far as day view is concerned, i'd like to take a look at the back of the building. As far as night view is concerned, it looks like no any show going on in the theatre (ground floor is dark) - if so, then why the marquee is lit? Sure, more often than not shop fronts are lit at night past the shop's closing hours, and let's not even talk about big neon banners and similar stuff...but at a certain hour in the night it all shuts down...so, i'd like to ask you - if this was not a 24/7 theatre (i don't know about it, you might) - would you like to represent it at 9 PM (floodlights, lit up marquee, lit lobby, the last show going on inside) or at 3 AM (theatre closed - perhaps no floodlights so late in night, and dark marquee)? NOTE:By "marquee" i mean the metallic part overhanging from the building, where current show names and the theatre's name are written.

Sometimes it might happen that two walls, treated in different ways, meet at the very corner of a building. This would be one example - perhaps those were all bricks at one time...now it's painted orange bricks on the front facade, and plaster (?) on the sides. That's a second one - and this would be a third one.

I'm replying to Andisart post above mine - who actually suggested to model some of them - i asked him wheter it was the case to model each and any inaccuracy or infinitesimal detail a building would have, and moreover, doing that, at 10-20 times their size.

With all due respect - Actually, not even single bricks are in line, they slightly extrude, and the moretar between them is slightly recessed - rowhouse stoops would probably not be exactly flat, too, because people might have built them with a very slight slope to help rain flow away (sometimes they did) - then, the door and it's carvings might be corrected too, perhaps the door might have started leaning on one side after all those years, and perhaps the sawmasters who crafted them in first place might have made some line that's 0.002 mm wonky here or there....if someone made a nice design for a plot that's labelled to be 25 ft wide, chances are that it's actual widht might actually have been 24'10'' or 25'1'' .... why not adding all this, and then do some nice 0,05-0,1 chamfering here and there? I'm sure it would make the building appear more natural.... Why am I so critical of this? Recently i've been working on this: And actually a 0,05 difference matters quite a bit. I add 0,05 more, and the windows would start looking like deep wells (beyond what can be expected to be true) - 0,05 less and they would appear flush with the wall (another unrealistic situation) - 0,05 more, and the cornices around the windows would literally jump on your eye, 0,05 less, and you would not see them at all... I could agree on the statement that nothing IRL is perfectly flat, or straight, or even.The size of those inaccuracies, however, is usually even smaller than the size of small details (e.g. one brick would probably not stick past the mortar line for more than 0,01 mtrs, it's progressive weathering and wearing through the time might have softened it so much that there's 0,0005 of chamfering on it's edges, etc, ect) ... modelling those inaccuracies with dimensions that would belong to small details would force you to, in turn exxagerate small details even more (and far more) than what the SC4 perspective already requires you to - If it was done in this way, you'd get a much worse lack of realism, rather than the "realistic" situation you mention.

Closed before renovation, in the process of becoming an XXX theatre . Getting serious: I can understand how you feel about those details - and i mean this really, as i've faced similar problems countless times. However, i think that GC have really put it into the most effective and coincise form. I think you'd be better at trying to make sure that what you have doesn't get too blurry into Z5...darn 42 has posted something about using materials to avoid that, you might re-make certain details through trials and errors with their dephts to get things to improve somehow, and you might,for example, recreate one situation of the building where there were less metallic stripes on the marquee than those that currently are in your model (see the last photo you posted, and the one i posted) - marquee looks slightly different, with somewhat less stripes. Perhaps a combination of all those three might offer an improvement than any of those, alone, couldn't offer...

What you have now are two fire escapes, for each of the buildings, put into one area that's not very well served by natural light. I suggested something like situation 1 - a shared fire escape, shared means both building would have access to the same fire-escape - or, that just one fire escape would be needed for both of them. While i've seen shared fire-escape between different buildings, i'm not sure about wheter this could be a likely outcome for this specific set of buildings . however, their layout seems to suggest it. Then, situation 2 would allow you to have one fire escape for each building, but i placed them outside of the recessed area (one fire escape casts shadows, and would make a dark area even darker). It's also possible that what you have now is the most likely outcome, and all of my guessings are wrong...normally i would not like to talk about anything unless i'm fairly confident that something is likely or unlikely - however, i don't have enough datas to claim that, therefore take what i'm writing now cum grano salis (i.e. don't take it too seriously). .

All can be ploppable using the "buildingplop" cheat .

Just out of curiosity, was it called "midtown" or "metro"? From the pics i recall, i never saw it being called "midtown" - i might be wrong tho - off course, that would not matter for the game, just my curiosity. EDIT: Nevermind

However, anyone would also understand that an infinite amount of different situation, each determined by countless specific factors, falls under the umbrella term of "weathering". One could, from there, realize how "weathering" is not one specific way for things to be - and that the term weathering means everything and nothing. And, from there, one could realize that, in order to get a more precise grasp on the situation, for his own sake, not even in order to provide any constructive advice for anyone else, he/she should look past the idea of "weathering"...

I'd like to partecipate in a discussion about this topic, at any place where it should take place - including this one, if necessary. Opening a specific thread would probably not do - for this topic, like many others, would still resurface here and there - therefore, it would fail to fullfill it's very reason of existence. Personally, I would like to hear your answer about the last points i've made - if you feel like that, let's do it in private - you can always drop me a line. And if, then, you think that some mind-blowing truth has emerged from this eventual private confrontation, and public should be enlightened about it, you can make a thread out of it - is 100% at your disposal (: .

The point is that "character" is a subjective perception, like "bland", "boring", etc. Saying that one building has stains on the roof is one thing, saying that it has "character" is another...BTW, what "character" exactly is? From "every building should have "character", except "bland" and "boring" ones, it's quite easy to slip into the "you need more roof junk" mantra....those two statement are not too different between themselves, other than the first is more subtle and elaborate than the latter... Agreed on this one - as long as what we incorporate is what the building is, not our subjective notion of "character"...

Much noise about nothing. Any point, and from where that point comes from, might be discussed - it's in your own interest to make sure it has some ground - wheter you'd like to call it a scientific demonstration or not. You didn't.You just made an experiment aimed at finding one difference with an object that was too small to be an appropriate testing material - That's what i wrote, and i am responsible for what i wrote - not for the way you "interpreted" it, about which, honestly, i don't care. Again, whaat? Where does it come from? Not really - that's exactly what everyone using a scaling factor (120, 125, 133, etc) is trying to get. To be fully honest, SC4's perspective is actually a trimetric projection, this means, each side of an object would actually need a different foreshortening coefficient on each side.Of course that's not possible, therefore i limited myself to the relation between X and Z axis. I simply did so with one method, rather than relying on "the look" of it". If anything, to many people in the past centuries it looked like the sun revolved around the earth, then someone showed them it didn't exactly work that way... If i want the two sides to be of an equal lenght, the best way is to draw one circle with them as a radius - it's as simple as this. The expression "dog fight" it's quite wrong - it's not about you, it's about the points you make - it's called "discussion" Any discussion, in any thread, about any subject that might be related to the subject of the thread (therefore, even vertical scaling on BATs) is relevant. I'd say that it's up to Paul and to the Mods to decide wheter this specific discussion can stand there, or should be placed elsewhere - not on you - also, it's quite odd that this very same discussion was seemed a very fitting contribution to this thread when you started it, huh?

It actually was a roaring thirties theatre : Speaking of the roof, the RL building's roof seems to be way lighter, and parts of the HVAC ducts seem to be quite rusty (Google Earth, 3-11-12) - incorporating those features might perhaps fix the "roof character" issue (but, is it written in the golden books a building or it's recreation should have "character" on it's roof?). Speaking of the building, i'd be against rendering it in HD - in game you'd probably use Z6 even less often than you'd use Z5. If you thought that details, in the Z5 preview you shown, were quite blurred and confused, then by rendering in HD that problem would get even worse. Try some subtle play with the smallest details to see if you can reduce their "blurryness" in Z5.

Nice homage ! I'm not so sure about the "plant" on the billboard - it seems a bit "obvious", if you get what i mean. Other than this, i think it's looking quite good so far.

You nailed one very important point with the tiny 10 px cube which, according to you, was the perfect way to find wheter 120 or 133 were exactly correct - results were, one tiny 10 px cube with one pixel blurred, and hardly one pixel difference between them. Often, the things we look at are not clear - there's not an easy answer - many ways to interpret it are possible, this doesn't mean all of them (or even any!) of them are actually correct. Other things, far more important than BATing, have been and are an epic mess.Religions, pretty much all of them tried to create an articulate system aimed at giving an answer - but they were often more focused into organizing what was known, both in nature and in ethics, into a coherent system (basically, organizing what's already known) than into looking for new datas and elements, and analyzing them, as far as possible, with no bias. Sometimes religion didn't interfere with scientific process, some other times it imposed it's beliefs unto it, trying to stop or delay the acceptance of facts and elements that didn't fit into their pre-made systems. But, while it's easy to embrace one system of belief (that, when becoming public and commonly accepted, might often deserve the title of "religion") it's also true that the scientific method has allowed us to know things that couldn't have been known otherwise.... So, while it's easy to adopt a religion, maybe picking the one most pleasing to us, is it actually worth to adopt one? In your cube demonstration, that with the 10 (actually 13) px cube, you tried showing, with one cube so blurry that no one could actually tell what was going on, that your system was the best, and anyway, everyone could see anything into there, and that it's all a matter of personal opinion. In this second post, you showed a sphere, one semisphere and one cube (this time, yeah, at an acceptable size) - but not even this is a "scientific" demostration - it just shows some primitives, without actually saying anything, it just gives people freedom to adopt whatever system someone considers as most fit. Jason has tried one one demonstration with one reasonably-sized cube, and trying to pick lenghts from there - that's something far more serious. EDIT: This said...one experiment by mine to determine the correct scaling factor. def:A scaling factor is one number, by which the height (z axis) of a cube rendered to SC4 perspecive should be multiplied to in order to make it equal to the cube's base (x axis). I did the following: - Doing a scene with one cube, placed so that one corner of it was coincident with Max's X and Y axis intersection. - Set the viewport to SC4's perspective, as if to make a preview render.Cube was not scaled in any way. -Take a screenshoot of the result. -Cut and paste the screenshoot in Paint. -Crop it (without any resizing) till it was a perfect square. -Reopening max, making a new scene, one big square(100x100 mtrs) plane -Pasting the screenshoot into it as a texture with the minimum blur possible. -Drawing lines overlying the screenshoot's X axis, as well as the cube's two vertical edges starting from it. -Since my goal was to make all sides of the cube equal, i've drawn one n-gon, 90 sides (the closest approximation to a circle we have in MAX) - centered into the screenshoot's axis intersection and with a readius equal to the cube's lenght. -I then drew another circle, centered into the screenshoot's axis intersection, with a radius equal to the height of the "unscaled" cube. -I compared the two radiuses - 11,941 to 8,935 - and found the ratio between them - 133,642. -Therefore, the ratio between corrected height and unscaled height should be of 1,33642 - which means that 133% as a scaling factor should substantially be correct. Pic:

Sounds great! When you have the fire escape, would you mind showing a render of the back?