Rickk

Edit: ^^ Beaten by Fox.

The Bishops House looks great! The gradient is a bit too stark, but not as much as some people may think. I would reduce it only slightly. Possibly make it 75% of what it is now. I love the Standard Insurance Plaza. I dont know why!

The Library Tower was my first "real" BAT, and you're right - it was no where near perfect. I can't wait to see the progress of this one. It's looking great!

Heck yes. That's all I have to say. A few weeks ago I went to a game there against the Rangers, it was awesome. Reggie hit a grand slam. I was sitting in the third row right behind the M's dugout. Very awesome seats. Almost got killed by a foul ball. Good times. Can't wait for this one.

http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/yeon_03.jpg align=baseline> http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/yeon_04.jpg align=baseline> I wanted to post my progress on the Yeon Building as it is right now, as I probably wont get a chance to really work on it again until after Christmas. My wife and I are moving this week (good timing, eh?) and thus my computer is going to be apart and then, once its back together, we'll be celebrating the holidays. Next to do: The windows, then the roof and the base, and then the rafters/details. Sparky, can I hope to see some pics of the tower? You're right about Emporis, it has a few good ones, but its mostly from one side. Fortunately there's a night-time view of it as well. Huzzah!

Hey sparky, I've been thinking about doing a small skyscraper to pass some time between a couple of my bigger projects I'm slowly cranking out and I came across a Portland tower: The Yeon Building. I think it would make a great BAT and I'd really like to do it. Is there a certain scale you're using that I should take into consideration if I decide to do this tower? 1Unit = 1M or something? Also, I've only been able to get one photo of the building. Do you have anything in the pictures you've taken that shows it? It's located at 522 SW 5th Ave. I believe it was built a little before 1920. Thanks!

If you were going for a Shock and Awe campaign at SimTrop, you've been quite sucessful. This tower is simply the most amazing tower I've ever seen here.

This is a thread for all the smaller BAT projects I'm doing (or, rather, will do) that I don't think would justify the creation of their own thread (like the Shanghai World Finacial Center). This means that I'd like to devote more of my time to creating some smaller buildings for the game and not just skyscrapers. My first project is going to be a set of churches. I had been thinking of this idea for a couple of weeks, but SimGoober just released a pack of four different churches so I needed to revise my plan. I am now going to do a series of rewards based on the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints (hereby known as LDS for ease of fingers' sake!) - or Mormon churches. Here's how I envision the reward system to work: The standard Church Buildings will be made available like the SC4 churches, or when you reach a certain population score. Once you have built four Church Buildings in the same city, a 'Stake Center' will be made available to you. Once three Stake Centers have been built in the region, a Temple will be made available to you (based on the current design of smaller Temple buildings). I would also like to get a 'Seminary Building' in there somewhere, as I found out they have those too (I didn't know that until I did some reseach today). For those of you not familiar with the Church (and I would expect that to be most of you ), here's a run-down of the various buildings: Church Building: This is your regular meeting hall for general Sunday activities. It includes a Sacrament Hall, a dozen or so classrooms for Sunday School, some Bishops Offices, and so on. They sometimes include a small multipurpose room (a carpeted basketball court, for example). Seminary Building: Here high school kids go each weekday morning before school to learn a little about the Bible, the Book of Mormon, or other religious teachings. Stake Center: These buildings are the hub for several Wards which make up a Stake - and the Stake Center is where most of the Stake's activities take place. Sometimes Wards will meet in these buildings on Sunday like regular Church Buildings - but they're also used for Confrences and for Stake General Authorities offices. Temple: Temples are probably the highlight of the LDS structures - but there aren't too many of them. By last count, I believe, there are like 120-or-so active Temples in the world, a lot of which are currently being built in South America and Europe. Any more than that and I'd have to go into a religious discussion, which I don't want to do. I'm just highlighting the.. uh.. highlights. (I need a thesaurus for Christmas.) The first building I've been working on is the Stake Center, which is probably the second hardest of the lot to do (the Temple will be the hardest). At this point the modeling is about 40% done and the texturing is 0% done. It shouldn't take too long to finish if I just push through it, but I'm going to have to work on it when I have a day off this week and try to concentrate on other models or work first. Here are some images: http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake01.jpg align=baseline> http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake02.jpg align=baseline> And it is based loosely on this general Stake Center design: align=baseline>

By no means are these buildings regular, even around where I live (Northwest US). The Stake Center (the building I did) is very large as it holds lots of stuff. The church buildings that I will be doing for this set will be about half the size. Most churches of other denominations around here look like this: (Except it usually has grass out front )

Date: 11/14/2005 3:07:42 PM Author: T Wrecks Well, that's a real-life issue, and as such it's more important than a BAT. Good luck with those interviews, I hope you are successful. As for the BAT, it's good to hear that you're going to work on the things SimGoober mentioned. I don't have the slightest idea if I will ever use that BAT, because it's very America-specific. It would look very odd to me, but judging from the pictures, it's a wonderful recreation of the original, so congratulations and keep up the good work! quote> Thanks for the luck, Wrecks! As for the architecture, the Church is actually building lots of these buildings from everywhere from Mexico to Togo to Malaysia to Germany. Same boring style, but its becoming more and more universal.

Small Delay: Hey guys, I just wanted to post here real quick and let everyone know that I have to take a break from this project for at least a week (maybe two). I got a couple job interviews as a 3D Artist, one of them is at Zombie Studios (and I'm really excited about that). Wish me luck and hopefully I'll be able to get this finished soon.

SG, thanks for the reply. I am actually using a grey for the spire already, and its still bleaching out. You're absolutely right, though, and I will try toning it down even more. As for the texture correction, good suggestion. I didn't even notice how tiled the roof looks until you mentioned it. I will jump back into PS soon and take care of that problem. I'll re-render it and see what you guys think. Meanwhile, my wife and I visited a nearby church building and I took some pictures. Should be an easy model.

Okay, the Stake Center is finished. Now all I need to do is learn how to use DatGen or iLive or whatever to be able to make it a civic building, a reward, and how to set reward requirements. I really should contact SimGoober.

Modeling: Finished. Texturing: Finished. http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake05.jpg align=baseline> http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake06.jpg align=baseline> http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake07.jpg align=baseline> http://www.alturasforums.com/stuff/stake08.jpg align=baseline> Now it's time to take it into GMax and get the nitelites done and render it out. Once that's done I'll be ready to start work on the next one in the set: The Church Building(s) - I may decide to do more than one version, to add some diveristy.

Date: 10/31/2005 11:04:26 PM Author: sparkythepenguin Date: 10/31/2005 5:46:13 PM Author: JaWood but I'd love to see the Washington DC or Portland temple as well. Let me know if I can help out in any way.quote> Portland, Oregon has one? I think it's the one near OR 217 and I-5's interchange near Lake Oswego. And there's also one in Milwaukie too. Both are really cool I hear, but I've unfortuneately never been too close to them ever. (quasi Catholic, non-LDS member here )quote> The Portland, OR temple is my favorite temple of the church. I had the pleasure of being able to go to it earlier this year when one of my wife's cousins was married there. We didn't do any temple work while we were there, but I thought it was a lot fancier than the Seattle Temple. Here's a picture of the Portland Temple: I think for this project I'm going to do the new 'small' temples that are popping up in a lot of places. They're all the same basic design (no where near as large or as fancy as the Portland Temple, for example). This way players can have the generic temple that's unique to their city. Here's a couple of different ones that resemble what I'm talking about: They're not too much larger than a large Stake Center (like the kind I'm modeling). Hope that clears some stuff up.

Thanks Hordijk! I'm hoping it will be just as flashy in the game.

An update on the Stake Center building: Modeling is about 75% complete and texturing is about 15% complete. To do: Finsih the windows and apply textures. I also need to model a satelite dish and some AC units (I can probably steal those from my other models ). Let me know what you guys think.

So I've decided to actually do a new project (I think I've given up on the Chicago ones, sorry guys - it was just too much work with not enough to show for it in the end; especially without bump maps working). My newest skyscraper project is the Shanghai World Finacial Center, soon-to-be located in beautiful downtown Shanghai, China. It was to be the tallest skyscraper in the world until other ventures were laid - and as such the tower was redesigned in 2003 to reach 492 meters instead of the original 460 meters. Recently it has been redesigned to include not a round hole in it's upper-most facade, but rather a large box-shaped hole. My model will reflect this design. I know that there was another SWFC done by Lord_Quillian, but he was unable to finish it. I hope to finish mine in the next couple of months and will be using this thread as a way to show everyone here its progress on an (almost) daily basis. So here we go, the first design: Obviously the sloping needs a bit more work before I'm able to punch-out the hole in the structure. After that I believe I will move onto the base before I then move onto details in the facade and the hole. Then I'll hopefully be able to wrap up the base. Please, comments and crits welcome! This is the first major project I've begun since I started the Library Tower almost two years ago.