madhatter106

Cartoonist Jack Davis dies at 91 Last of the surviving EC Comics horror artists, also famous for his contributions to Mad Magazine and countless TV Guide covers.

This is rather impressive, if daunting, for a first attempt at modelling. The end result is a pretty good start, though. What I always suggest to people taking their first steps is to "start small." That is, take on a project that is one, maybe two, stories tall - something relatively simple, so that you can see the entire process through to the end...modeling, texturing, lighting, exporting, modding, playtesting, and in some cases, starting back at one of those steps and redoing things. Since you're learning the ins and outs of the modeling program (gmax in this case), you are already working at a very slow pace; compounded with the fact that doing a complex model also takes a lot of time even for advanced BATters, the end is so far away that many people abandon their first projects because it would take far too long to complete. With smaller buildings and more "modest" offerings, it's easier to cross the finish line, even though you're slightly hobbled because you're still finding your way through the interface and shortcuts and all the bells/whistles of the program. It's a real bummer that the images for the phillipbo tutorial in the Omnibus are washed away; that tutorial, though long, was so full of kernels of knowledge, and was where most of us got our start. Also, sadly, there were three gmax video modeling tutorials there as well, but their links are gone, too. I did manage to download them and I have them somewhere on one of my laptops - I should see about putting them somewhere for viewing so they aren't completely lost forever.

How about these from SimGoober...

I won't be using 3dsMax - my underpowered toaster oven of a home laptop couldn't handle it, and I don't have the time or inclination to download, install, or learn anything new. (I'm too old that way...get off my lawn!) Plus, if little old gmax was good enough for SC4 ten years ago, it will still be good for me now and for the foreseeable future. As for darknite, I never use it nor do I really like to look or effect of it, so it's not on my radar. I would hope that my stuff proves that even with the rudimentary box of crayolas that gmax is, with a little ingenuity and determination, you can crank out a decent BAT or two if you put your mind to it and have half a brain. I am on a kick with these older buildings - here's the texturing on the last one, with some details loaded in and modeling fixed. Still needs things like fire escapes on the sides, etc. Something about the texturing bugs me a little. Need to step away from it and look at it again with fresh eyes. Plus I hate making awning textures....

Taking myself as listed in the example above, I am probably an anomaly - the only reason for those 900 downloads was because I released a new pack of stuff, and most of those downloads were probably that. (There is likely a little bump in my other stuff, too.) But you will notice that the gaps between pack release dates are longer and longer on these more recent offerings. To follow along with the "cooking" metaphor, there is still some action in the kitchen, but some of the old chefs have moved on long ago or are cooking at a much slower rater - we aren't seeing nearly as many uploads as, say, five or six years ago. We probably had pots on all four burners of the SC4 stove back then - we might have a kettle on one or two now. Which is not to say that the quality is down; I like to think that it's either the same or the bar has been raised. But I would venture that the quantity of custom content being released has slowed, which is entirely natural considering all the other stuff that has come along since (city builders, as well as other stuff).

Unless the contract or agreement includes a severability clause elsewhere within. Which I would assume EA would include to circumvent this issue...

Some small details and character loaded in to give it life... Here's another one that started off really quick, and then ground to a halt. Stuck on figuring out something for the roof; the building from my swipe file has something similar but I'm messing around trying to improve on it...and probably not succeeding at the moment...

Always commenting and showing support in BAT threads. spa

(A little banner I made ages ago when I wanted to dilute and minimize Bennett...haha) I have three buildings in my very first office pack that were made with LODs at or very very close to the size and shape for Bennett. I even took the properties for Bennett and put them on to those buildings, so in effect they are Bennett clones or twins in all but appearance. (Those three are Cayce Communications, Berlitz International Travel, and Taylor Consulting Group in the Midrise Offices Volume 1 pack.) I have been tempted to do more, and some others to compete with other Maxis buildings, but everything I've done lately has been larger. I don't think Bennett is the greatest sin in the Maxis canon per se - it's fine in terms of modeling and color and all that, but it does seem to appear with frightening frequency. Much like Depiesse's Diner, it can get really repetitive. Using my content will indeed dilute the pool and give the Maxis fare some competition, but it doesn't speak to the original problem in that despite using the BSC Maxis blocker, Bennett is somehow making it past the blocking to begin with. Are there other buildings in the Bennett family that are showing up, too? Or is it just Bennett on this particular lot size at this particular growth stage? Perhaps Bennett was somehow overlooked in the coding of the blocker - or perhaps there is a dependency or pack or something somewhere that has Bennett or pulls Bennett (or heaven forbid, uses Bennett as a prop..."the horror") and thus it is circumventing the BSC Blocker and finding its way in - like a cockroach...

Yeah, Maxis went overboard with some of that stuff - on one of the buildings, it looks like there's a racetrack. There's a couple of Maxis buildings that dialed that back a bit, but there are some that are gonzo in the opposite direction. My stuff is never modded to exclude tile sets or zoning densities - I suppose I could but I just haven't done it. So no matter what you are growing or how dense it has been zoned, they should grow. I have tested their growability before uploading - maybe try bulldozing some similar stage 3, 4, or 5 crummy Maxis office buildings, and see if some of them pop up. The files are unzipped and in the appropriate plugins folder, I am assuming...?

Yeah, like I said, I would need to figure out the appropriate and applicable CS to merit the pitched roof. I do have a folder of little middle American houses of the sort, for which I wanted to do an antique store; maybe it will happen sometime. Ah yeah, Thomas Commercial Realty - in hindsight, I wish I had really lavished the attention on the restaurant part of the BAT. Looking at it again recently, it lacked just that right amount of "oomph." There's a beautiful old building here in Los Angeles that is the former west coast headquarters of the National Biscuit Company (ie. Nabisco), which was converted to live/work lofts about ten years ago; they have a restaurant called Church and State on the ground floor, and the layout and design of that recently inspired me to try my hand at doing a ground floor restaurant for a CO building again. It's such a common occurrence in commercial districts, and Maxis sort of tried to do it with their varying (horrible, in my opinion) ground floor prop facades for their buildings. I think it's better when it's modeled in, personally.

Thin White Duke - I think there are a couple early CS buildings of mine that have pitched roofs - Mambo Yvette's Gris Gris and Gumbo in my first occult pack, and Captain Sid's Bait and Tackle (which is a modified version of the Mambo Yvette model). Plus I think Wanda's Wiccan Wonders in my second occult pack has a mansard roof. Pitched roofs speak to a specific type of building, usually residential - or if they're commercial, they weren't originally built as such. (Think a small town antique shop or bookstore that was originally zoned as a single family house.) Regarding the textures, I need to look up Thomas Commerical; is that the one where I modeled the restaurant on the ground floor? I have so many shifting around in my brain RAM, I start to forget... TWrecks and matias93 - I think if I were to make this a CS building, I would do it as a hotel or something of the sort, and then tweak the details and interesting bits accordingly. I kind of hate the fact that Maxis reused models between their CO and CS; it serves the game engine, but visually it makes for a lot of repetition. It's a shortcut/cheat that I can understand ("thrift, Horatio, thrift") but the end result just makes for a boring looking city if you're playing vanilla. Here it is with basic color added. I was inspired by some of the tall Maxis rooftop patios with their skylights and hedges and benches, and wanted to emulate them for the roof details. There are still tons of tweaks on this - lots of details to load in or finesse, plus some work on the textures. And fire escapes to add to the back, etc.

The top row of windows looks awfully close to the roofline - I would raise the height of the building/roofline a bit to compensate. Also, how the heights of those windows relate to (what I am perceiving to be) the height of what looks like the front windows seems rather odd. That is to say, if you continued those horizontal lines across the sides at the same heights you have in the front, where they relate to the side windows doesn't seem to be consistent or make sense spatially.

So, I was going to dive in and do some smaller medium wealth commercial services, but this fell out of me when BATting... I am going to have fun with the roof details...

They're uploaded. I wanted to do it earlier today, but my Dropbox pooped out on one of my computers, so I didn't have access to the files. I'm really happy with how these came out. The ones in this pack were what I was aspiring to years ago when I first set my sights on midrise commercial offices. Here are some in-game screenshots...

I'm kind of glad I found this glitch - it gave me the opportunity to go back and do a couple of things to a few of them that I had overlooked. Plus it let me tweak a texture or two - even screenshotting the test renders in gmax over in-game pictures doesn't give you entirely the same result as seeing them pop up when you test their growability. And strangely enough, the model files were all smaller is size - I think I saved over 1000K in space when I re-rendered those ten; on average, each model was around 100K smaller than the prior, lousier version. So it was a good hiccup to have. I hope to have these up very soon. Testing is done, and they look good. It's just a matter of finding some time to write the description, finish the readme file, and bundle it all up for uploading... I think as much as I love offices and CO work, I might turn some attention to doing some medium wealth commercials. I have a lot of CS$, but not very much CS$$ in comparison. I think I need to dilute the Maxis pool on those...plus it would give me an opportunity to do some smaller stuff - just about everything I've done (with the exception of Minnie's Maxi Mart last year for the STEX anniversary) has been rather larger than what I started out doing.

I originally was trying this, but had to do it in the "other direction," ie. what TWrecks had written on the prior page. Strangely enough, the type and group numbers were virtually the same for all the models - only in two occasions did I have a different group number, and I think it's because those two BATs were rendered on a different computer. With a little testing and trial and error, I found that changing the instance numbers in the .desc files to the ones used on the newly rendered .model files was enough to get them to show up properly. But thanks to both of you for the help - as I suspected, it ended up being much easier than I initially thought. These fourteen models have been tested in-game, and they're looking pretty good. I need to grab some screenshots of them and write the rest of the readme file, and then they should be ready for uploading soon.

Forgive the double posting...but I've stumbled upon something rather curious in the process of testing these in-game...this is what I call a Tale of Two Nightlights... Since I usually don't use nightmaps, I've probably never encountered this before. The model on the left was the original nightlight render using nightmaps only, which was brought into the game and lotted and being tested. I knew it looked kind of odd when I did the preview renders, but I couldn't put my finger on it. It had a jaundiced, washed out "dead" quality to it. The "lighting" so to speak looked way, way off. I put these in-game and was testing their growability, and compared to all the other Maxis stuff, as well as my own plugins in earlier packs, these really stood out in the night scenes. They all had a warm pall and glow to them, which didn't look right. Which really is a pity, as ten of the fourteen had this symptom that I couldn't put my finger on. So I reloaded the BAT, opened up one of the models and began looking to see if something had been tweaked or changed in my settings. When I couldn't find anything along those lines, I began to think what I had done differently, and then I hit on the nightmap trick I had worked out for this pack. And then I realized that nearly all of these models only have nightmaps for their nightlights - no omnis or target spots, just the "nitelite" prefix added to windows. So I took the above model, put a tiny target spot inside of it (where it wouldn't be seen at all), and presto, a properly nightlighted (as it were) model. Looking back, I think even in the scant few models that I made using nightmaps before I employed the specific nightmaps trick for this pack, they all had a combination of nightlights and nightmaps, so I wouldn't have encountered this before. It's only when relying solely on nightmaps did I get this weird, sickly, yellowish nightscene lighting. So, a question for the modders out there - I know I have to re-render ten of these. (Ugh!) But since I already have the .desc and .lot files, can I use the Reader or another program to direct them to use the new rendered models' ID numbers? Or is that too tedious? Any advice is appreciated - I would rather not want to redo all the queries and lots and all that for these re-renders...

Yeah I seem to remember playing around with some of those a long while back, when I first started out. I can't remember if I ended up using any of them, though. In the process of packaging these up - they are being lotted, and then the testing and tweaking needs to happen. In the meantime, here's some trivia tidbits about the naming conventions for this set... Legion Enterprises – Appearing in the three Synoptic Gospels, the story of the possession of the Gerasene demoniac would become one of the earliest accounts of exorcism in Christian theology. In the narratives of Mark and Luke, when inquiring as to the demon’s name, the possessed is said to have answered, “Legion, for we are many.” Mannheim, Doe & Deen – Robbie Mannheim, Roland Doe, and Douglas Deen were three pseudonyms given to an unidentified 12-year old boy who was rumored to have undergone a series of exorcisms in the late 1940’s in the St. Louis area, after having been introduced to spiritualism and the Ouija board by a favorite aunt. A number of newspaper articles published about the case would become an influence for a young William Peter Blatty, who would go on the write the novel and screenplay for the blockbuster movie The Exorcist, earning him an Academy Award. The Bruner Building – Joseph and Theobald Bruner were two brothers who underwent a four-year long exorcism in the Illfurth area of France in the mid 1800’s. The boys would contort and entangle their limbs in such a manner that observers could not force them apart, and allegedly predicted the deaths of several local townsfolk. Loudun Marketing – In 1632, a convent of Ursuline nuns became the scene of a mass possession in the Poitou region of France, lead by the deformed Mother Superior Jeanne des Anges. Vainglorious priest Urbain Grandier would be tried, convicted, and burned at the stake, allegedly having been responsible for the supernatural incident (though in most modern investigations, it is believed he had been implicated after having made an enemy of the powerful Cardinal Richelieu). The story would be adapted into various books, plays, operas, and films, including a notoriously censored version directed by British filmmaker Ken Russell. Dugdale & Lukins, LLC. – Rural English gardener Richard Dugdale became famous for having endured a yearlong series of exorcisms after having claimed to have been possessed in the late 1600’s. Known as the Yatton daemoniac, George Lukins would undergo an exorcism in 1788, though many believed he had either faked his possession or had actually suffered from epilepsy. Talbye and Knapp, Inc. – Hanged in 1639 for the murder of her three-year old daughter, Dorothy Talbye claimed to be acting under instructions from God, though Massachusetts Bay Colony governor John Winthrop would dismiss this notion, believing her to be possessed by Satan. Predating the Salem Witch trials by nearly twenty years, the possession of farmer’s daughter Elizabeth Knapp would be documented in a methodical, nearly scientific manner by her employer, the prominent minister John Willard, whose letters to Cotton Mather would be included in his study of Puritan life Magnalia Christi Americana. Blumhardt Communications – Lutheran theologian Johann Blumhardt would become famous for having performed an exorcism on a young girl after a two-year long possession in Mottlingen in 1842, which he chronicled in his book Blumhardt’s Battle. The German minister would afterwards become renowned for his many faith healings, and purchased a thermal spa to serve as a Christian retreat in 1853. Michel Public Relations – Suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy, German student Anneliese Michel died of malnourishment and dehydration after a ten-month long exorcism ordered in secret by Bishop Josef Stangl in 1975. Michel would weigh less than seventy pounds at the time of her death, and was said to be suffering from pneumonia and several broken bones. The girl’s parents and two priests were found guilty of manslaughter resulting from negligence for her death. The case would serve as a loose inspiration for the horror film The Exorcism of Emily Rose. Schmidt Ecklund Mutual – Emma Schmidt and Anna Ecklund were two names given to an unidentified forty-year old woman who underwent an exorcism in Earling, Iowa in 1928. Performed by Capuchin friar and Catholic priest Theophilus Riesinger, the rite lasted for nearly a month, wherein the woman alleged to have been possessed by multiple demons, including the ghost of her dead father as well as that of his mistress. Nicola, Martin & Peck – Reverend John J. Nicola authored a number of books and articles on demonic possession, as well as serving as a technical advisor for the movie The Exorcist. Controversial Catholic priest and former Jesuit Malachi Martin wrote the bestseller Hostage to the Devil, and claimed to have aided in hundreds of exorcisms throughout his career. Influenced by Martin, psychiatrist and author M. Scott Peck originally did not believe in the existence of Satan, until he had personally investigated and participated in two exorcisms. Larson and Hammond Tax Specialists – A frequent talk show guest during the media frenzy surrounding the moral panic of Satanic ritual abuse, American televangelist and author Bob Larson claims to have performed hundreds of exorcisms throughout the world. For a donation of $295, Larson also offers to perform exorcisms over Skype. Christian author Frank Hammond was one of the earliest proponents of deliverance ministries, in which prayer and the removal of demonic or unholy influences are used to prevent demonic control of others. Aubrey Consulting – Sixteen year old Nicole Aubrey underwent a public exorcism in 1566 in the French city of Laon, after claiming to have been possessed by the spirit of her deceased grandfather as well as the demon Beelzebub, who stated that he was in league with the Huguenots. The church maintained that it was proof of Catholic theological supremacy, while Protestants decried the entire incident as a hoax, used as propaganda during the French Wars of Religion. Cele Data Solutions – After claiming to have made a pact with Satan at the age of sixteen, orphan Clara Germana Cele was exorcised at St. Michael’s Mission in South Africa in 1906. Nuns in attendance who witnessed the possession were astonished at her nearly superhuman strength and ability to vocalize bestial sounds that they thought no human could make. Ossett Venture Capital – after being subjected to an all-night exorcism arranged through his church group, Michael Taylor returned home to murder his wife and strangle their pet poodle in 1974. Found naked in the street and drenched in blood, he was acquitted of her murder on the grounds of insanity. This British case would serve as an inspiration for part of author David Peace’s study of police corruption Red Riding Quartet.

Miscounted. It's looking like 14 individual BATs for this group, not 16. But still, a record for me. Another one, inspired by a dumpy little horrid office building somewhere in middle America.

I am guessing these will see the light of day sometime in July. Unless I get trampled by a rhinoceros. The last one needs to be rendered, and there's another one in the pipeline. Then there's all the modding and lotting and custom queries to do; and then testing to see how/when/if they grow properly. So much to be done yet on this pack, which is looking to be the largest I've ever released - I think it will have 16 different BATs.

Awww, I remember BATting Andy's Gun Works. I agonized over every little tidbit. Memories... Here's another rather regal one that's coalesced in the past several days. I really like this one, it might be a favorite...

Toothless Stitch - oh sure, the textures were all there. I separate things out into different folders, so if I can remember a good texture that I made for one building, I can load it up and see if it might work again for another building - that is, if my memory lets me. TWrecks - yeah, that bleaching is really severe. I can't quite tell on the laptop I have at home, will have to look at it on another computer. I've always preferred doing textures on a CRT rather than a laptop, but sadly my desktop computer had its viking funeral last year. On the tall one, I was inspired by some of the Maxis rooftop patios, so I wanted it to look like it was part of that ilk. Indeed, I may be still going strong, but certainly a bit faster than past years... ---- I used to hate nightlighting in gmax. Hate hate hate it. I never liked the standard Maxis nightmaps, since they were essentially flat color with very little variation. So I was stuck with doing what a number of gmax BATters had done in the past - creating an interior set of textured boxes for rooms, using transparent glass, and lighting inside those rooms with target spots and omnis. It was a tedious process, but the results were fairly good; however, the sheer degree of laborious drudgery that it entailed meant that I often would set aside a BAT once it was textured, because I never wanted to deal with the nightlights. I had the idea some time ago to create a nightmap that had such a degree of variation and interest and noise that it could be used to simulate what I was doing originally with my nightlighting. After a few attempts years ago, I dropped the idea, because the results looked pretty awful, but last week I gave it another crack and finally hit on something that I rather liked. So this pack, I was able to use this custom nightmap and light up certain windows on my BATs, and it would create a very similar illusion of furniture and carpeting and walls and "interest" inside the windows, without having to create and light interior boxes. Here's the latest BAT with the nightmaps used... I really like how it turned out - there's the impression of "life" behind the windows, I don't have to do all this extra modelling and nightlighting, and I can avoid having to use transparency when it comes to the window glass. I will admit that this works on smaller windows - using it for a large glass-encased lobby would immediately identify it as a "cheat," but for smaller windows this has been a lifesaver. For those interested, here's what the actualy nightmap looks like... Now I can just individually label certain window panes with the "nitelite" prefix, using this nightmap, and let gmax do all the hard work. No more fussing with omnis and target spots and adjusting levels and brightness and all that...woo!

Yeah the taller one seems better. I am going to use that one. Here's another one inspired by a horrible monstrosity that I drove past several months ago. I was very tempted to keep adding roof junk to it. And this one has been sitting in my "working" folder for nearly two years. I finally dusted it off and did the rooftop, and I rather like the way it turned out. I think this one is the tallest BAT I have ever done; it certainly took the longest to render - just four minutes short of two hours. But then again, the computer I used for doing the rendering is about as high-powered as a Commodore 64... This pack is going to be extensive; with the naming conventions I am going to use, I have at least three more buildings to do to round it out. But you can never have enough CO variety...