Jumpthefence

Hey, Todd does wake up during the day! I thought he drank coffee, went to class, slept while they the teacher talked about why windows are made of glass and not concrete like the rest of the building, woke up for lunch, ate, drank coffee, did something else for the rest of the day, drank coffee, ranted with some random guy on the street about Soviet Russia (while still in a sleep mode), drank coffee, and then, finally, replied to my posts. That would be a good day for me, at least. I would just drink twice as much coffee. And in such a good day I might also post a picture of a building. So, I started from scratch with the brick texture, as you can pretty well see. Nothing really special, each brick is just a block of color, and I prevented the tiling problem. And yes: I did make it in GIMP! For the most part. Aren't ya proud? It came out pretty nice, even if it does look like a pizza topping, but it is Little Italy! In the back I prettymuch copied the spline from the front of the building, except I filled in the hole that the facade occupies. 'Cept now my problem is that there's a giant 5 meter empty space where the facade used to be. I tested it with a sign or advertisement, and graffiti could be another option. I could also leave it blank. Ideas? Anyone? Also, what is the approval of painting the back wall green, white and red like the Italian flag? It's like this on a number of buildings in the area, and is painted in this scheme on the white brick building. I just don't want to overdo it. After all, people without a lot of money can't afford paint. Ideas? Todd/any architect, what's a cornice? And you also seem to keep changing the definition of flashing... Also, could you add some flashing to the tops of the cornices? I thought flashing went under the tops of the walls for waterproofing. Or does it go on the tops of parapets? I'm all confused. And finally, I darkened the edges of the roof texture. The roof looks pretty darn close to done. Though I can't seem to hit the nail on the head as far as the roof access goes, but I think I'm close on that. Thoughts? Alright, I have school tomorrow assuming we don't get much snow. Y'all have a good night/Thursday. Postscript: What's up with the new post format and smilies? I'm voting against it.

Originally posted by: T Wrecks The roof tops have definitely improved (I'll leave the details to Todd, lest he directs one of those "Todd no like" smileys at me) , but I see some rather obvious tiling on the red brick texture, both at the back and at the side. You may want to fix that before he wakes up. Then again, I suppose the backs and sides aren't finished anyway, because you wouldn't want to leave them without any window, door or whatnot, now, would you? Anyway, it's good to see your dedication - I'm sure these BATs will be a hit once they are done.quote> Oh yeah... Todd was the guy who wrote the tutorial on anti-tiling with bricks, wasn't he? That's convenient. Or inconvenient? I dunno. Well, I figure I got 12 hours or so to go fix it. As for whether or not to add anything to the sides, I wasn't planning to. It's a W2W building, so I don't know what the procedure is for hidden walls. Do I add stuff? Do I keep it as is? Does it vary among certain people? And for the back, again, I'm clueless. I can't see it with any satellite images, and since the back would just lead into an alley surrounded on four sides, I don't know what good a door would do. Y'know we've been focusing so much on 129 Mott St that I forgot to ask: What are the opinions of 109 Mott St? The one where the building on the right is taller than the others? Can I render that one? Or are there suggestions?

EDIT: Oh, this is one interesting post. It's post #333 for me and I now have 1,234 points. Gwail: What pressure? What year is it? Who said I was going to give up? Was it Todd!? Todd... Besides, I'm OCD, so if I'm still getting suggestions, that means the buildings are not yet perfect, and they have to perfect, or they're not perfect! And not perfect isn't perfect, so it doesn't meet my standards (which are perfect). So when everyone's happy, I'll upload them. Todd: Yeah, I was never good with roof accesses. Here in Cold Spring all our commercial roofs have trapdoors or ladders. There is, literally not a single real roof access for me to look at. Then again, we only have a few non-gabled roofs, so people don't go on the roof of most buildings (cause the'd probably slip). I re-detailed the roof access, yet it still looks a little messed up, but that's probably just the colors. So I don't know quite what to do with the roof access, but you might. And probably do. I also added random dirt and cracks to the roof texture. It's getting pretty easy now; I can add various defect effects in under 10 minutes! Now that's something I can brag about to my friends. Yes, I am a full time sleepwalking commie architectural student from NJ coming to destroy your capitalism! Fear my farming tools, sluggish movement, and unquenchable thirst for coffee! quote> I am so going to quote you on that! Hell, I should print it out and carry it around! ...You don't mind, I assume? No copyright issues? This was the last time in a while that I actually fell out of my chair laughing. (Seriously, I did.) Y'all have a good day! And in the case of Todd, who probably won't read this until late at night, sleep tight! I got the day off for helluva lotta snow. Let's see what gets done.

Yeah, I want to upload these ASAP too. In fact, I wanted to upload them by today, or at least have them done by the weekend. But I do want Todd to "sign off" on them. Why? He lives in New Jersey, and that serves some importance, I guess because everyone hates New Jersey... or something. Or maybe it's because I suspect he's a Soviet who's logged into his Sputnik and is prepared to come my house with a hammer or sickle. Or it could just be that he's a good BATer. The only problem seems to be that Todd is nocturnal and only replies after midnight. So I don't know when he'll reply. On the other hand, that's sorta what I'm expecting when I get into college. I could say something about how much he must be partying, but I'm starting to realize that's how people get banned from this website. So I'll just say this: when essentially everyone involved is on board, I'll upload. I'm OCD. It has to be perfect. Perfect!!!1!1!!1!!!!1!one!!1!

I'm very moderately pleased that you think it's OK!!1!!!!1!1!!1!!!one!!1! I've run out of mildly witty things to say! Bring out the picture! So, if you're okay with the roof junk, I'll leave it as it is. I couldn't add much large stuff, as it is a recreation and anything large or contrasting to the roof color would have shown up on the satellite images, right? As for the roof textures, they look fine in the render, but they could use a little more contrast. So I'll go do that now. On the other hand, Nascar is on soon, so we'll see when that actually gets done. Of course, I added random grunge, just like you did in that Photoshop. Finally, I brightened and desaturated the white brick texture. So. What now?

Originally posted by: madhatter106 How about a night lighting shot of these?quote> I don't see why not.

Err... how can I reply with this page flip bug in the way?! Edit: There we go. And welcome to page 36! I CHANGED IT!!1!!1!!!11!!!!one!!!!1!1!!! I added contrast to both wall textures, so the flashing has extra viewable-ness. It's not especially visible on the front of the building though, so it might be hard to see right now. I could post a side view picture. I also got around to lightening both textures, but I guess you can't tell. On the other hand, I think they're pretty darn close to the real thing. On the other other hand, I've said they're "pretty darn close" a number of times now, so who knows? Oh, and I tried adding graffiti. You can see some there. Darn kids. As for the roof stairs, I took an approach a friend at school suggested to me. I put a bunch of boxes around the stairs and covered them with a cloth/tarp. I also put on random pipes, electrical boxes, vents and soda cans scattered around. Unless you have any ideas to specifically make it more detailed, I think I've done all I can do. So, what approval do I get? or ? Oh, and why were you and Triforceseek posting at 2:28 and 3:22 in the morning? BATing zombie much, Todd? Or are you just too sleep deprived to realize you need sleep? Have a good weekend, y'all!

Alright, let's bump this thread with a Photoshop á la Todd. ...Well, actually it was made with the Paint program, but whatever. I dunno. Are they done? Or are they "done"? The scale doesn't look far off, everything considered. I know the parapets on three of the buildings look the same. I simply won't do it with the buildings furthest left (the actual buildings sure look to have a large outline on Google Maps), and that tall building sticking up above the others just adds variety. Honestly, I don't want the parapets to be repetitive. But, if I get enough complaints I'll change it. I'm just sayin'. The colors look pretty good. They're a little bit darker and more faded than the actual buildings, but heck, let's perpetuate that Chinatown is a fading neighborhood. So, are they ready for upload, once they're rendered and on lots and modded and stuff?

Originally posted by: Sgt Pepper @jumpthefence- Yes we can all type in pretty text. IT'S REALLY FUN!!! By the way, your stupid signature made me lose the game you jerk! I was once a pro... Oh and nice BATs. Looking better and better.quote> 1. Chuck Norris can't write pretty text! Nothing Chuck Norris does is pretty. 2. I have super skills at not losing the game! Forget that I'm losing right now... but I can look at my signature without thinking about it! I'm starting to wonder if the words "I lost the game" turns off some switches in my brain. Someone once told me that they lost the game, and my mind was just blocking it. It's difficult to explain, but it's a cool experience. Oh, and my signature isn't stupid just because you hate it! You're just prejudged against the game... which you just lost. Again. I'm so evil. 3. My BATs are getting better... why, let's bring one out right now! Yay! It's "done"! Jason: I used some graphite/lead colored flashing textures incorporated onto the wall textures. Thanks for the tutorial on your blog! Though I didn't use it more than once today, I bet it could come in handy later. Oh, and thanks for clearing up some architecture terminology for me. Todd: I have to admit, the thinner parapets look a lot better. They're not a horrible monstrosity like they previously were. As for the brick texture, just taking it off of Google Street View seems to have worked. I couldn't really find any other details to put on the roof access, so I put some soda cans and trash bags around it. It's better. This more faded, but still pretty colorful-ish building (is there some smarter-sounding architectural term for that?) looks pretty good. Have a good Friday y'all! My vacation went by fast... Oh well. I'm going to watch the Olympics now.

Originally posted by: Jasoncw jumpthefence: I usually make my flashing black, because I think that the contrast looks good. In real life, flashing is made out of metal but it used to also be made out of ceramic tiles. So black or dark grey or a silver grey would work, green would work for copper if it's an expensive building (which this one isn't, lol) sometimes they're a red clay color but I don't think that would work in the game very well. But I'd definitely go for a black or dark grey.quote> I'm confused! Originally from: Wikipedia.org/flashing_(weatherproofing) Flashing refers to thin continuous pieces of sheet metal or other impervious material installed to prevent the passage of water into a structure from an angle or joint.quote> Okay, that explains why I was screwing up. I thought flashing was... the faded leaky texture and general discoloration at the seams of the building. ...Is that common knowledge I should know? What flashing is? Oh... ...You can tell I'm not an architect. Don't rub salt in the wound. Well, I'm just going to continue what I was doing with the building. Making flashing doesn't sound difficult (now that I know what the heck it is). Parapets are fixed, and I'm happy with the textures. I'll post a picture this afternoon. Hopefully. Have a good day y'all, and learn some vocabulary so you don't make mistakes!

Originally posted by: SimHoTToDDy Jumpthefence: To know the best course of action for that wall, I need to be sure what kind of object it is. If it is just a simple piece of geometry (extruded spline, box) you can either change one of the values (width, height, depth, extrude amount), or use an "edit mesh" modifier and move the verticies. Even more simple, you could just use the scale tool ( the % you enter is given by: {size you want it/ size it is now}*100%. ex: it is .5m now and you want it to be .3m; {.3/.5}*100% = 60%). Unless you want to do something fun like punch a hole or take out a notch in an object, I'd avoid using Boolean and stick with the above, especially edit mesh.quote> It's an extruded spline like most of the walls on the building. The scale tool seems like it'll work, but that just means I have a long day of math ahead of me. "Fun Fun Fun!" as my algebra teacher would say. The white building is just painted brick (damn near every building in the area looks like brick)quote> So it's not plaster! Thought so... Its pretty clear in google street view.quote> It's not! Or I'm just an idiot. I'm going to blame Google. Oh, and I'm not officially an architect... yet, but I appreciate the complementquote> Tomato, tomahto. You know more than I do about architecture (that's what I assume, at least) so in my mind you're an "architect". And I don't know if saying you know stuff is an overwhelming compliment. Then again, it probably feels good that someone asked for your help... I'm not good with compliments. How 'bout this: Your shoes look awesome. Here's a picture from yesterday. Really, the only questions I have are: -Is the brick color/texture right? I took it right off the actual google street view images, but I fiddled with it, so it could be a little off. -Do the parapets (in blue) look good? I was merely messing around, so I didn't save, and I can do whatever to them. They were .25m thick by the way. Postscript: I can write pretty text too.

Todd: Oh... I see my problem with the parapets now... Alright, I will certainly work on that. What do you think of using the "Boolean" function to slim them down? At this point, it seems like the easiest way to cut off some. That is, unless you have some other way. I have a feeling there are other ways to do this in Gmax, but I just figured out the Boolean function Thursday and am willing to run more tests with it. Also, it looks like you darkened the parapet tops. Would you suggest I do that? I assume so. Also, thank you very much for giving me an idea for what colors I should be shooting for on the facades. I tried and I made it either too purple, too red, too pink, too dark, too light, too contrasting, et cetera, but you seem to have it pretty close. I didn't think it was natural for bricks to be that color. Oh, and the white building is made of what? If you can make a guess, it would probably be helpful. I was previously guessing plaster. You may know 'cause you architects know stuff. The material looks pink, but I don't know why. Yes, I really like these buildings too. (I can write somewhat hidden text too! Whee!) Aaron: It shouldn't be goo... I thought it was pretty sturdy! Are you prejudiced against amoebas? French Guy...Whose name I don't know. Are you Ghislain Deschamps? My French pen-pal?: I was actually going to remake those. The textures were pretty bright compared to the work I'm doing now. They'll be on the STEX whenever the heck I feel like remaking them.

Alright, I did some general darkening of 129 Mott Street: Before After I didn't know what to do with the mortar for the left building, so I made it a darker grey so it would basically blend in with the rest of the facade and structure. I also played around with the wall color. My problem is that now it's not saturated like the real building. I could give it a pinkish-reddish hue like its real counterpart, but that would be a tad weird. It's not a huge problem; I wouldn't worry much if I were to upload it at this moment, but don't exactly know what to do. Opinions? Oh, and anything else you'd like to say would be helpful. I'm still working on 109 Mott Street with the suggestions given to me. If all goes to plan, I can post another picture tomorrow of what I've done. See y'all later.

Oh look, page flip! Francis90b: I wouldn't call them "cute". Just my opinion. Although I have been known to call these sort of neighborhoods "charming" or "unique" or "hard-working" ... or something else.

Originally posted by: SimHoTToDDy 112 Mott Street looks fantastic, good details, good saturation, good roof texture. You might want to add some flashing to the red brick building, but otherwise I think that one looks great.quote> There is flashing (so that's the technical term for it... I called in "faded stuff hiding under my wall tops". Shows you what I know) on both buildings. It's not apparent on the front of the brick one because of some detailing, but it's visible on the right hand wall. For 109, try making the tops of the walls (flashing) a dark gray like in 112, and try making the walls thinner (.3m is usually good). Also try adding more detail to the roof, the stair "towers" look really boring, like a black box.quote> -More contrasting flashing. Thought so. -Reducing parapet (that's the wall thing that keeps you from falling off the roof when you're standing near the edge, right? You can probably tell I've never finished an architecture book) to .25 meters. It's more convenient when things are rounded to .125m for me. -More roof entry stair detail. I was considering it, but now it looks so bad that I have to. You need to spend more time on the textures, making them less bright and more interesting. Quite frankly I don't think the bright white mortar on the red building is convincing. Roof needs just as much work as 109, plus additional work on the roof texture.quote> -Would you suggest I essentially eliminate, darken, or do something else to fix the mortar? -All white-ish textures have actually been fixed/darkened to some extent. Sort of. I've been playing around with them. This includes the roof texture, but I just feel like starting over with that. Besides, the roof textures look a lot darker [than I have them] on Google Earth. Originally posted by: T Wrecks I second every word Todd said.quote> Well, what about "-Todd"? Is your name Todd too? All joking aside, I really appreciate the help of some of Simtrop's best "Grimy City" BATers.

Alright! We're back in business! Did everyone have a good two week vacation? Well, at least the Super Bowl was good. Welcome back everyone. Let's get down to business. 112 Mott Street This is the building I conveniently finished just this morning. What are the thoughts on it? Here's a good trivia question: What program do I use to make my roof textures; it's not even an image editing program? Well, the answer is Microsoft Word. I'm poor. At least the method works. Or, at the very least, I made it work. I wonder if I could write a tutorial about that. 109 Mott Street 129 Mott Street As you can see, I now have three buildings "done". If you have any suggestions, I'll give you a few days to voice them before I render. So speak now or forever hold your peace. I don't want complaints after I upload these. I hope to upload these before my school vacation ends on the 22nd. I don't know how likely that is, but whatever floats NYBT's boat. On a side note, I placed third in a math competition. Yeah, I'm lame. That means I'll be going to Boston for the state finals. I fear people from Eastern Massachusetts. Like Kryptowhite. I also fear Deval Patrick very much. And the Big Dig. How can I summarize it in an extreme manner? Help me out, Scott Adams. Except replace "the new guy" with "Krypto" and "New York" with "Boston". Alright, have a good week y'all!

Alright, pressing "O" solved the problem, but nonetheless, I should clear much of my hard drive, I guess for prevention. It's at around 2% free, so, yeah. I'll get rid of some programs. Anyways, thanks for the help.

I just have a quick question- When I pan or rotate, it looks like wireframe mode, but it immediately stops (without lag) when I stop panning. Is there a way to prevent this? Is it a viewport problem? It's not urgent, but it is rather inconvenient. Thanks in advance.

Originally posted by: zmurrell ok thanks i have gmax i will try this outquote> Alright! I applaud your incentive to learn BATing, especially with nitemaps! A good starting place is with Part One in the Omnibus, and Part Five is where the author gets into nitemaps. I tell you, it's not easy to BAT, but it can sure be rewarding.

Capt City has been beating everyone to answers here at the forum myself included. ...And b22rian isn't exactly under my radar either. Pretty large blip actually... I can't think of such deserving members! Congrats!

Sorry, but this is done with a program called Gmax / 3ds Max / the BAT. Basically, it's the modelling programs through which the Simcity models are created. Unfortunately, due to the way buildings are rendered (they are rendered into images, then put on a simple box), you are unable to edit their lights sequence. There are a few light props for the BAT, but it can't in any way replace the "nitemaps" that appear on buildings. Sorry, but I sincerely wish you good luck.

Originally posted by: Larks2242 Wow congrads Un1, thats over 600 more points then postsquote> You think that's skill? I have 1190 points after this post! That's over 850 more points than posts. Thanks to my sub-moderately terribly-good uploads.

Originally posted by: nathanthemayor I tried "Print screen', but nothing happens.quote> Pressing Print Screen doesn't actually print the screenshot with your printer. On the contrary, it places it on your Clipboard, often replacing whatever is there now, for future use (in this case, as an image). Now, if you go into Paint and press Ctrl+V you will paste the image onto your painting canvas. This is, of course, assuming you haven't already put something else on the Clipboard in between hitting Print Screen and Ctrl+V. I hope to see more in the future from you! You've got a lot of BAT potential!

Here's what solved it for me: As the result of my nitemaps issue i had to reinstall the BAT. I uninstalled it, but to reinstall it, I needed to have Simcity installed. Too bad that 3 days earlier I had uninstalled it due to technical issues. I needed to find disc 1, which I thought was in my basement, but a 5 hour search found nothing. So I had to borrow Simcity from a friend. He got it to me and I couldn't install it. I essentially gutted all my Simcity related anything software, and it installed without problem. Then I was able to reinstall everything. This is in the time span of about three weeks. ...quite a tale, eh?quote> That was from a post on the NYBT thread, but anyways. I don't know if reinstalling Simcity will help, but if you're as desperate as I was, I think you'll at least give it a shot. Of course, after reinstalling Simcity it would be a good idea to reinstall the BAT. Best of luck.

I could care less about what's actually sent to me when it's wrapped in bubble wrap. ADD much? Maybe...