madhatter106

Have tried messing around with industrials. About six years back I was working up a big one, the Susquehanna Hat Factory, but only got as far as the texturing. The nighlights still need to be done. Eventually I will get around to them. I confess that I don't spend much time in-game in the industrial zones, but they do need some more variety; the trick is figuring out the way the game grows them - the mechs, the anchors, and the outs. I have a discussion of it bookmarked somewhere, but would require study for me to mod correctly. I do like the concept of the storefront props - I just don't think Maxis did them justice. Here are two more of the multi-storeys. Modifications of the two prior models. One is a café, and I think the one with the blue awning will be a music store...

I almost always make the ground floor taller than the floors above; more often than not, there's a high-ceiling lobby or mezzanine or some feature inside the ground floor that would account for it. Not only that, I do find that if the ground floor isn't taller, the building will have a squished or squat look. Like a Corgi. Not that I don't love Corgis, but it always looks odd to me. I also usually make the uppermost floor a bit taller too - you don't just get a ceiling on the inside of the top floor, with the bottom of the exterior rooftop just floating right above it. There's usually cornice or dentals or detail work, and visually it's more appealing to the eye.

Did you know that during the year 1968, there were a total of four mysterious disappearances and losses of submarines? Those lost were the USS Scorpion, the Soviet K-129, the Israeli Dakar, and the French Minerve.

Cheddar, all the way. Cheese with holes makes me feel cheated. I want the full slice of cheese. Boxers or briefs?

Converse. Although I have fallen arches and they usually have no support, I always like wearing my All Stars. Plus they're the one shoe with any character that don't make my feet appear stupid. (If that makes sense?) Have you ever been able to maintain or keep a New Year's resolution? And if so, what was it?

On my office midrises, I modeled the floors above the lobby/ground floor at either 4.25 or 4.5 meters each. Oddly enough, I rarely model stuff and then scale it; I've just accustomed myself to modeling with the scaling in the back of my head (ie. overcompensating for height and then just expecting gmax to squish things a little bit vertically).

I used to use the Maxis window texture a lot when I was BATting; in part because it matched the Maxis stuff and in part because it just sorta worked for what I was doing. However, it worked best if you were doing a whole giant sheet of glass to serve as the windows for all of one wall. One object = all the window glass for that wall, and then you put lighted interiors behind it. It made the modeling work, but I would have to slog through the nightlighting. I would always just do a huge sheet of glass inset inside the wall, and then mess around with the UVW maps to come up with some random window glass variation for all the windows in said wall. The BAT Essentials tutorial, if I am remembering correctly, has you creating different panes of glass to match each window frame. This is a bit more effort in the modeling but it can give you more controlled results when it comes to texturing and nightlighting (that is, if you are using nightmaps). Nowadays, because I am using a "cheat" (for lack of a better word) nightmap for my BAT night windows (as seen in my thread), I have to do the glass the BAT Essentials way, because I assign the nitelite prefix only to certain windows to light up. I have a half dozen flat glassy window textures that I use, to give a little bit of variety from one window to the other, so they don't all look the same, and I just slap them on scattershot to the glass objects and then go about my way. It takes more time modeling, but it makes the nightlighting much easier for me, since I'm working in gmax. And I'd much rather model and texture things than suffer through nightlighting...

For me, the difficulty in nominating was the time passage - even with the fantastic discussion threads and recaps, the passage of time really put a kink in my thought processes. I also agree with @T Wrecks assessment about the actual web-implemented process for nominations; it did feel "clunky," having to hop between windows and cut/paste and all that. I did love the elegance of the dropdown boxes of yore, but I did read that this would have been impossible to implement in the site's current state. I do agree that the ability to edit and review your nominations is a great feature; in the past, I've often forgotten about something or someone, only to realize that it was too late to reconsider a nomination or that I had overlooked a category entirely. I am glad, though, that members were able to nominate someone for more categories this time around. As far as the buildup, the discussion threads were great, as I mentioned before. As for the interviews, it was a lot of names that I've never heard of; which is not to say that their contributions are not worthwhile, but many were people that were almost entirely off my radar. It seemed (and I use this word because I only took a passing glance at the interview texts) that those involved were very CJ-centric, which I would be the first to admit is a section of this site that I don't have the time to look at. Granted, a lot of Trixies do revolve around CJs and CJ-related contributions... All in all, I am glad that the Trixies are still around and that the llamas are still kicking. Now if we could just get the prior years' Trixie medals reattached to our forum avatars...

Here are a couple of them textured. The first is going to be a stationary store, while the second is a five-and-dime... These have been much fun to make.

What effect are you trying to achieve? Is it a texturing thing, or a modeling thing?

Actually, I rather hate the Maxis storefront props that randomly pop up on the buildings; I get what they were trying to do, but I never thought they looked good. There's been past discussion about creating BATs to match up with them (I think cogeo was exploring it a while back with some office buildings) but it requires BATting to a specific set of sizes and dimensions for LODs and prop sizes and building families and such like, which is a discipline which I frankly couldn't devote myself. I would much rather make ten different BATs of a variety of shapes and sizes and flavors than spend the time it takes to create something that aligns to the Maxis storefronts. Plus, I think their coloring is a bit too bright and garish - I think that's why they stick out for me and why I don't like them - you'll have a perfectly mundane looking grayish building that Maxis made, and then there's a bright orange and yellow entrance plastered on the storefront. Now, creating a storefront prop set and either adding them to or replacing them over the Maxis set would be interesting - I think if someone did it, it would be quite an achievement, especially if they can get a uniform look to match the buildings while still keeping a good deal of variety. Alas, it's not a project I would tackle (as the time it would take me to figure it all out, I could just create a bunch of varied BATs) but I think it might be a worthwhile endeavor for someone ambitious.

Indeed, looking good. It appears you've not yet done the overhang on the uppermost set of balconies (as seen in the reference pic). Unless you're intentionally leaving it out?

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Working up some shapes for the multi-storey ones. I don't think I'll be going above three stories - there are a number of dumpy two storey Maxis CS that I'm wanting to compete with, stuff like King Design, which I see too often popping up in my cities. Let's see where they go...

All I can say is...

The floor heights look to be between 4.0 and 4.5 meters, at a glance, so I'm not sure it's that. I think part of the squash might be the fact that the ground floor is a nearly identical height to the upper floors; I find that you have the cheat the ground floor just a bit higher or things looks too squashed. Also, the wall span between the uppermost row of windows at the top and the top horizontal edge of the walls is too short. If you look at all the cream wall spans between the horizontal window rows, they are all equal, except for the topmost, which is barely half the height of the others; according to the source photo, it should be taller, probably at least the same height as the other spans. If I were modeling it, I would make it just a bit taller than these other spans and taller than that seen in the source pic - to avoid the very squash described above.

* receives a plateful of pizza crusts and a jar of tapenade * * inserts a package of microwave popcorn *

Deliciously generic. We always need more basic buildings like this. Yay! On the modeling, I wonder, are your exterior wall thicknesses 0.3 meters? Maybe my eyes are bad but it seems the walls should be a tiny bit thicker. Plus the gray vertical insets between the window rows, I would also push them in a tiny bit, so that you get a sense of depth; the facades are looking very "flat." Also, I would drop the roof that is set inside just a tiny bit more; it looks like if you are standing on the roof, the walls would come up to below your knees if you stood at the edge. A quick gust of wind and you might fall off. As for texturing, I wouldn't do bricks for the white/cream texture - based on the style of the building and the pic you are referencing, I'm betting the actual material isn't brick of any sort. Maybe the gray base would be brick or cement blocks or some such. The details are what are going to make this building "sing." Not all balconies would have the same furniture and accessories; plus when you've added doors and side entrances and back entrances and roofjunk and HVACs, that's going to really make this one "pop."

That's the only modeling thing I would suggest - I was just looking at these pics and thought, "oh I wish those columns were just a tiny bit more substantial."

No matter how tight this sleeper hold is, you cannot help but loosen your grip once I begin to tickle you with a large rainbow-colored ostrich feather. And thus, I wriggle free and escape! You're bound to a chair, and I've just finished mixing the cement with which I am going to encase your feet; once dry, you will be thrown into the ocean. Mwahahahahaaha!

"You throw your best punch. Otherwise, don't do it." - Don Rickles

I'd be curious to see what the delineation was between 2015 noms and 2016 noms. Would it be possible to see at a glance if the 528 nominations were split fairly evenly between those two years?

The Great Allegheny Passage. Berlin, Germany.

* receives an old VHS tape containing the commercials from the 1980's Milk, It Does A Body Good campaign * * inserts Starbucks gift card *

Banned because your tree is too small.