Howling

The ultimate lurker here - nofunk your buildings always look beautiful! Especially the medium rise W2W dense urban ones. I came across a couple of photographs on Shorpy which I thought I needed to share http://www.shorpy.com/node/8950 and http://www.shorpy.com/node/8949 Fantastic low-rise buildings aswell! Keep up the great work. I'll be lurkin' ya!

Never bought the game. And once again it's the old lesson: NEVER release an unfinished product. I promised myself not to buy CXL untill MC got it straight - but they never have and probably never will, if you ask me. Just look at their other games, they're always a bit 'undone'. Too bad. Now where's Will Wright!?

Those buildings are sheer beauties, Nofunk! Great stuff! I love the factory, we don't have enough of those buildings yet. Seems to me SC4 downtown are getting more dense and prettier all the time! Though I doubt I have to say this: Keep it up!

The green rim is excellent. The white rim still seems out of place though. Maybe add some green plating around it? Or else make it more orange? Or leave it - it's your BAT The awnings would be a good idea. The first two floors seem a little bland. Maybe a water tower would be a bit too much, but how about a small to medium size satellite dish on top? Or a smaller antenna? Nothing too big or too obvious. But something that does give it just a bit more character, a bit more contrast I guess. We've already seen pools, helipads and terraces up there. None of those would really fit it, I feel.

A Look At Urban Density Introduction For a while now i've been wanting to put down what exactly it is I feel is missing from the game. And not just from SC4, but from a range of city builders. I guess you could already feel it; realistic urban densities. These include the typical wall-to-wall density, the shadowcast streets and intertwined zoning. You see, real life isn't monospaced paradise. And since SimCity fans tend to be realism and not arcade fans, I think a look at this urban density thing could be useful. If not for someone else, for me at least. Living in the Netherlands urban density manifests itself slightly different than in the US. Of course, wall-to-wall building is everywhere. Here aswell. But the style is different. Added element is the typical grid-like city planning of the American cities. I'll be checking out New York City, Detroit and Los Angeles using Live Maps, old Shorpy photographs and other sources. Not living there gives me a handicap. I love typical downtowns. They breathe history. So I'd like to BAT buildings from these areas to add that bit of history so obviously lacking in SimCity 4, though I need to know a bit more about the real thing first. I feel that because of the grid system in SimCity 4, American cities (in this series at least) are perhaps best suited to look at. Also, SimCity's designed by an American game designer so it would be logical only to want to improve on what they wanted to achieve; a feel. Or; more specifically; that is what we fans want to achieve. In this look at density we'll kick off with the vague zone where high density transforms into medium or low density. Of, more visibly described; where highrise turns into midrise and lowrise within a high density area. Where businesses of a more retail-like nature dwell. Business that require floorspace and not necessarily height. Also, the parking lots, the fleet owners and the city utility workplaces. All within high prized real estate, now and in the past. That is why Detroit is in that list aswell. You can use this look into density as a source of inspiration. Perhaps for your own BATs. Perhaps for your own downtowns. New York New York was founded as New Amsterdam in the 17th century by Dutch settlers. Later, during the Second Anglo-Dutch War those dastardly British captured the colony of New Netherlands and dubbed it New York. [1] New York City has about 8,274,527 inhabitants and covers 54,556 square miles or 141,299 km². Between 1807 and 1811 a commission developed a plan to do away with the random city plan and design one for growth towards the north. It was decided to use a grid, consisting of 30 meter wide avenues from north to south crossing 155 20 meter wide streets from east to west. There were only a few squares because the commissioners decided that because Manhattan was surrounded by water it was unneccesary. The press put on pressure for a great park after the few squares and markets that did exist were built upon. This is what triggered the construction - you could call it construction - of Central Park. [2] Typical of the harbour of New York are it's many piers. Built stretching from the mainland out into the Hudson to increase the amount of dockingspace. Nowadays - especially around Lower Manhattan - many of these old harbour piers have gone and land has been reclaimed. Let's move from the Hudson towards the inner city and see how the landscape cityscape changes. We'll start at the area of the picture above. The little square on the Hudson at 11th Ave and W 14th Street. This area I find particularly interesting due to it's grittiness. The brick and concrete mid- and lowrise buildings. The piers that have been removed and the abandoned buildings - ready for demolition. Still there's industry and commerce going on - there's life! And there's history too - if you know where to look and what to look for. We're also going to philosophize and use our imagination on what certain buildings are or could be. We are - after all - hobbying around creating new buildings. If we move just a little bit further in land we see a whole bunch of interesting architecture around W 14th Street. Granted, it's not exactly what one would consider calling "interesting architecture" - but I think it is. Why? Because it shows the life of a city far better than any fancy Calatrava or Renzo Piano architectural wonder. It certainly breathes more life than anything constructed in Dubai in the past year. One important thing I want to point out in this picture is the remains of the abandoned Elevated Rail (known as the High Line) in the left of this picture. It runs from a building on Jane Street all the way north to the railyard on 10th Avenue. This ex-rail line is being redeveloped into a park, is the last update I picked up. [3] Aside from the High Line, look at the buildings here. They consist of large floorspaces and up to 7 floors. They have a distinct industrial feel to them, though they are wall-to-wall buildings. Bland brick facades or very basic concrete beam and plate construction. Lots of flat roofspace full and roofjunk. The building above caught my interest. It's a typical example of cheap industrial construction. Or; if you wish; practical construction. Building something that wields the most amount of floorspace. And by doing so, having a distinct look. This building has it's bearing structure on the outside (and undoubtly there is more on the inside). Still it's a very basic box-like structure. We don't necessarily have to get into what exactly type of zone this building is. It could be commercial, it could be industrial. In SimCity terms, it being in such a dense area it would probably be commercial. Had it had more of a fenced zone around it, it would most likely fall into the Industrial zone category. Still - we want W2W. Personally, I wouldn't mind seeing some industrial W2W lots. Consider the fact that Manhattan's edges were often bustling with port activity. Grond was scarce and industrial buildings were built in equally dense areas as other zones. I find this type of city very attractive. If the center of a city was surrounded by industry a cut-through would look a lot like this; Obviously the commercial zone could be right on the waterfront. Or there could be a residential zone in between. Maybe even another body of water, a park or something else. My point is that it's this mingling of zones untill you reach a 'pure' zone is something that, if you pay attention to it more, I think can enrich the realism even further. Often you won't find very beautiful buildings in here. These transitional zones are often riddled with re-zoned factories (for example; an industrial building has been turned into an art gallery or housing). often you would find commercial activity not far from industrial activity. If the harbour is where the money was made, the banks would be right behind it. Enjoying dry feet but huddled together around a stock exchange. Later on, as time passed and cities were modernised. Industry moved out of the city center towards it's outskirts. Though it leaves a footprint of industry. Even though the actual industrial zones are now elsewhere, the architecture, the city planning remains. The High Line is not an example of that. No, I mean harbours, ports, parking lots where once stood great factories. Empty allotments, city utilities, city maintenance, refurbished power plants (take Tate Modern in London for example) or industrial buildings being refurbished. There are already a good amount of buildings out there on the STEX and equally the LEX who inherit bits and pieces of this history. Some even have traces of industrial footprinting. One building I particulary like is spa's Sovereign Building. Available on the STEX. The front of the building shows that it's built for the inner city with it's column-like verticals. But flip it around and you see the sheer simplicity. Practicality. That side didn't have to be as ornate. Even though the Sovereign is already pretty gritty and not as ornate as some other buildings. There are also good examples of great industrial buildings that would be up for refurbishment into something else, in these dense city transitional zones. Many of the industrial buildings BATted by Jestarr (available on the LEX) would not look funny if made to fit wall-to-wall zoning. Summing up Okay, we've looked at a part of New York and philosophized on how it would transgress into a commercial downtown. Obviously residential zoning in between an industrial zone or even an industrial rim has not been included. A diagram with residential zoning and industrial footprint would look more like the following: Now each city is different. Some cities do not have an industrial rim but an industrial zone near it's downtown area. We will be looking in that later on. This isn't exactly exact science I am applying. It is a visual piece of research. It's called A Look At Urban Density for a reason. As in game we want to achieve a functional kind of representation of higher density (wall-to-wall) looking at it is almost enough. Because we want to replicate those dense areas. The game's a visual thing, not a historical one. And you can let your imagination go wild on what it is some buildings house. A mall? A business? Homes? Maybe it's being refurbished? Or perhaps only the foundations are left. We will be looking further into the possibilities when we examine Detroit and Los Angeles. But I want to leave you with a few more pieces of inspiration. Scrapbook And my favorite; a before and after shot: After: Thanks. More in the following installment.

Very, very, very nice! Love the bricks and the upper rims. Can't say the same for the white one, really. It doesn't rhyme well with the more salmon-colored ones. And I agree with joint1, there's not enough water tanks in SC4 as it is. I think this building would be excellent in owning one. A typical timber one on a frame. But very, very nice indeed!

Dang this project is awesome. I love the buildings from Detroit. My gawd! Would kissing anybody's feet make them appear on the STEX faster?

Oh my! My monitor just burned through - that's how hot your BATs look like. I can't wait to plop 'em! Excellent work.

Gn_leugim - Thank you - SimHoTToDDy - Thanks! It does need some decoration, i'll do a lot via textures. Also the sides now have windows and one side even has windows suggesting a staircase internally. Pingangster - Thanks! They do, don't they? I hope to finish more and more just by slowly ploughing through ideas Here's an update, this is a scale test with the model nearing it's texturing stage. Roofjunk has been added and the sides and base have been detailed. Not included in the screenshots is the back, it's actually a 1x3 instead of a 1x2. Being a tally one, I'd think this is quite normal. I love how the first floors all line up, except for the corner building ha! Cool, isn't it?

jacqulina - thanks Gn_leugim - thank you, it's good to be back. I'm a lurker though, so I might be off again without notice SimHoTToDDy - thanks man, yeah I agree totally. I love downtowns, the density of them. Hence my BATs. De Ja Vu - yes it is a bit I guess - hadn't noticed it T Wrecks - sometimes, miracles happen Thanks for your replies gusy - I'd love to get some constructive criticism too! It'll only improve the buildings. Here's something that has been sitting idle on my harddrive for two years. The Thornbush Bank building. I re-opened it and fell in love! I want this and the building(s) I showed earlier finished So far 3DS Max hasn't been sitting well with me. For some reason the program crashes sometimes. If you make one mistake in the process of exporting 3DS Max won't even prompt you with an error anymore. Weird... Long live gMax!

Hello everyone, It's been a while since I last BATted. Though last week I decided to yank old gMax out of the bookcase and - at the same time - try my hand at BATting in 3DS Max. Because I love dense downtown areas. So far there are already great bats out there by spa, Jason, Nofunk, dk2 and others. Still, one craves buildings that one hasn't seen yet. Now 3DS has not yet worked for me, i'm still learning the lighting and exporting business. So I decided to try and make a new W2W bat in good old gMax. Here's an example of what I have so far. It needs more detailing, especially the smaller building, the roof and the rear obviously. There will be a fire escape at the back of both buildings. With the larger building there will be one on the windowed wall and a fixed ladder next to the garage door (hence the extra space there). Is this a realistic approach? Also, there's the year '1897' on the fries (I think it's called?) at the top of the big building. Is this accurate? My main inspiration are those fantastic high-res photos from Shorpy. Now I know the windows ought to have a more curved top, but for this particular BAT I didn't. I will next time. The whole lot should be 1x2. I already did a scale test and had to scale the building down because the floors were too large. I just hope to finish it at the end of the week.

Originally posted by: Jasoncw I think what's he's asking is, did you create a .SC4Model file? After exporting the LODs, you need to import them into Gmax, and then export them to create a .SC4Model, whose filename you copy and paste into the slot above where it says "Render BAT".quote> A-Ha! No. So there's my problem. I hadn't read that anywhere! How do you import them into gMax? Just open and re-export? Edit: *gasp* I just found a BatForMaxInstruction.txt with the full workflow. I do think it's from V2.0 though. Just as reference, maybe it's a good idea to post it; ------- 1. Start 3dsmax and make your model. 2. In the rollout panel, click on the hammer icon and the all the new BATForMax panels should be available. 3. At this point, you can either use the rollout buttons (under "Parameters") to create LOD shells, or you can make LOD shells on your own. In either case, the procedure is the same as with the gmax BAT. 4. Once your LODs are created, select them. You can do this by hitting the "H" key and finding LOD3, LOD4, and LOD5 on the list of objects, and highlighting them. Make sure nothing else is selected before hitting "Select". In the "File" menu, choose "Export Selected", and save as a .3ds file. If it asks if it should preserve max's texture coordinates, I tell it no, but I don't know if this makes any difference.) 5. Exit 3dsmax and start gmax/BAT. 6. To import the .3ds file you saved in step 5, go to "File"->"Import". Find the .3ds file saved in step 5 and hit "Open". At the next dialogue, choose "Merge objects with current scene" and uncheck the box next to "Convert Units". Do NOT at any time hit the "refit LODS" (or any other of the LOD buttons) while you are in gmax/BAT. 7. You do not need to add any lights or texture at this time. The LODS are simply a poly area for projecting your final Model Fsh files. 8. Hit the "Export" button. 9. When it is finished (it shouldn't take long) exit gmax/BAT. 10. Find the file it created. It will be a .SC4Model file consisting of 3 hex numbers separated by "_". Highlight the file and hit f2 to edit the filename, and press alt-c to copy the whole filename; We will use this filename to paste into the model name edit box in the export panel. 11. Restart 3dsmax. Open your model. Open the "Export" rollout (see steps 2 and 3). If you are using the night material library nightlighting option (see below), open your "-night" material library. The rollout will tell you whether or not it will use your -night material library to perform night renderings. If you want to assign maxis-style "night windows" or to add nitelites, you can do that now as well. The process is the same as in gmax/BAT. 12. Under "Export", SC4ModelName, paste the copied model name from step 10 and tab out of the edit box. This will trigger a validity path check on your sc4modelname. 13. Hit "Render BAT". If it asks if you want to save the model, hit "Yes" if you haven't already saved it, as this may be your last chance. (At various times during the rendering process all materials in the scene are removed and replaced.) "Render BAT" will cause either one or three renderings for each zoom and rotation, depending on which nightlighting options are in effect. These renders do not necessarily correspond to what eventually ends up in the game. (Don't be alarmed if they look weird). In addition, larger renders will trigger a fourth, seemingly random 256x256 render of one of the viewports. It will look like it is malfunctioning, but it is supposed to do this, (for reasons I won't go into here.) In addition there may be a lag between renders, where it appears to be doing nothing. This is normal. (It is doing a bunch of calculating, compositing, applying night windows, generating alpha maps, slicing, swapping materials, etc.) This lag between renders can last for a few minutes on very large buildings (or very slow computers). Eventually, a messagebox will pop up telling you the export was successful. Note that you can cancel the rendering process by hitting "escape" but if you do, shut down 3dsmax immediately, and DO NOT SAVE YOUR MODEL. 14. When it is finished with a successful rendering, you can now play with the Batch CMD rollout panel. The default is the Batch programs will not auto execute until you have successfully tested them (one step at a time). 15. If you have just rendered, do not click on Clear Outputfiles as this will clear out your newly rendered FSH files. 16. Test the FSH Batch Build, this runs the batch file created by the rendering. 17. If the model name in step 12 is valid, the "DAT FSH insert" button will call up DATCmd with the proper parameters; updating your sc4 model automatically. 18. Once you are satisfied that all three batch CMD buttons are working properly, click on the check box "AutoExecute". Next time you render, the output directories will be cleared, fsh files will be rendered, batch processed, and updated into the SC4Model file. --- ^ Is this still up-to-date?

Originally posted by: SimFox Thanx for you input Howling. [...] Can you tell me what exactly did you do AFTER you have exported LODs? Did you render/exported them in GMAX bat?quote> You're welcome. I'm not quite sure I understand your question though, directly after exporting the LOD's I wanted to render the model, or export the model. Using the export box's button. That's how one should render the model, correct? Here's a screenshot of the box I meant. After having done the above, it prompts me if I want to save, then it prompts me if I want to render all 20 (is this correct?) views and then, when it wants to start rendering, it gives me the Unable To Convert Undefined (UTCU) error. It's all in 3DS Max 9 32-bit, not in gMax - so i'm not sure why you're mentioning that. As I understand it, when you modelled your building, you have to make a day-version and a night-version. In the night-version you change the ambient lighting and everything you want to have lit up and changed at night (within the existing LOD). Also, can one start with a blank scene or does one have to use a rig of some sort as template? In this case I started with an empty scene. Thirdly, does one have to texture in order to succesfully render the model? I did not because I merely wanted to test if it worked...

Hey guys, First off; kudos to you guys for the enormous amount of knowledge shared and work done. Wow! Now I do still have an issue, i've tried following all steps precisely, including the workflow. I quickly make a model in order to test (very simple extruded splines, only a couple of meters wide and 1 meter deep). Then I do the following: - 3DS 9 installed on C:\Max - Moved the two scripts to the Scripts\Startup dir - I use the blank empty scene with which Max opens - Quickly put together a simple model in order to test - in it is the directional lighting method as described by Jason in the Mega FAQ - even though it is a day export - I enable all the LODs (the buttons are pressed in and yellow) - I click Reset Lights & Camera's - I click Re-fit LOD's - And I click Export LOD's (works fine) - Then I come to step 5. of the workflow described on page 1 of this topic. This is where it goes wrong. -- In the Export box I click on Render BAT. It says "Library not loaded" aswell as "Night library will not be used." Are these important? -- It says things have changed and if I want to save; I click yes -- Then it asks if I want to render it's 20 (?) views; I click yes -- Then it gives me an error: "-- Unable to convert: undefined to type: String" Now i've done some scripting in the past (PHP mostly). It seems to me i've forgotten to set up a value? Though I've read that I shouldn't have to edit any .INI files using 3DSmax 9 and Bat4Max 2.5 - correct? Also, i've duely selected my Plugins folder in my My Documents directory. Still - no worky. Any help? Where has it gone wrong? I have batted in the past using gMax, which I remember as being very straightforward compared to this. Of course; different circumstances, still, despite all great help what I feel misses is a very ABC guide to batting with 3DSmax and Max4Bat 1-2-3. From setting up to rendering with every step and caveats outlined perfectly. Maybe i'm asking too much though =P you guys already rock out on all the work done! Thanks!