ianpaschal

Well my original point was sort of that "real scale" seems to be a bit open to interpretation. Although JasonCW's last building was, in fact, honest-to-God 16 meters wide in real life too, the builds from people like Vanderaap and Haarlemmergold mysteriously appear both too large and too small, while both filling a 16 meter tile with "12 meters worth of building." So I am trying to say that although I understand no matter what, every tile in game is in fact 16 meters, the amount of "real meters squashed or stretched into 16 at export" seems rather open to interpretation. That I do. The question is more if other people would plan on using mine. I'd like to think I'm contributing to the community given all the effort I will put into my BAT projects, but if so, which option is preferable? A: Real-scale. Roughly 3 buildings per tile. Will likely look too small compared to other player's content. B: Inflated-scale. Two buildings per tile, scaled up to fill. May look more "in-place" but if 1:1 realty to game proportion is no longer used, what's the right ratio?

Well either way when it comes to scale the reference point is arbitrary. It can't be forwards or backwards, Jason. My point though is that considering how it's not much work to create new content at a larger scale and it's an enormous amount of work to reduce the scale of every prop, sim, and automa, why not take the original game stuff as the reference point? I'm not sure if I'm actually clarifying anything here or not, but my point is that it's all relative. In many ways it's like Simoleons and USD or Euros. Simoleons are an arbitrary scale used to simplify gameplay. "16 meters" is a rather arbitrary number picked because of of its base-2 properties, since the actually stuff on that grid does not reflect the size that it supposedly is. In this sense, although I'm aware the game uses "16 meters" as a tile size, this number seems mostly symbolic. Edit: I suppose though since that too is rather arbitrary, so putting 3 buildings on a tile will look small compared to other BATs but if you maintain that scale across the entire city and then take steps to use the road space correctly, it should be OK. The question that remains then is, "Do you use the inflated 12 meter scale to make your buildings look more in proportion to the rest of the game, and match with existing Dutch BATs, or do you go for 16 meters, 100% real scale, and accept the fact that Dutch houses will look minuscule next to American houses?" I don't know the answer, although in many ways it's a bit ironic that it is the ST community who insists that real-scale is the way to go when a large amount of the content that is created is in fact not realistically scaled at all.

The issue is HD textures. VMWare can't handle hardware rendering for some reason, so HD textures (water, terrain, beach, etc.) cause a CTD. I'm desperately trying to figure out how to enable hardware rendering on VMWare Fusion. No luck yet.

Joy and happiness. Reinstalled Windows 7, and Simcity 4, and I can't get past the SC4 Deluxe Edition splash. I'm about to give up.

I've had nothing but problems trying to run it on my Windows 7 VMware machine. Earlier today I actually had it working, but: - Installed Direct X 9 update to get SC4Terraformer to work. - This really messed up my display settings. Everything was very LQ and aero was gone, etc. - I re-installed Windows 7. - I installed SC4 Deluxe. - I installed SC4 Update (hadn't done this previously). - Game would get to the SC4 splash then crash to desktop. - Re-installed SC4, didn't install update. - Game would get to the SC4 splash then crash to desktop. The problems just don't end. Anyone have any idea what might be wrong?

Thank you my friend. I will check that tomorrow.

Yep, using Warehouse models is generally not looked upon as very... well... legit. I too hate math and physics, but they're not that important for Gmax. That's right, you're wasting your time in math class. Really all that's important to understand how 3d Modeling software works (on a basic level I mean) is basic geometry; how many points does it take to make a line a line, and how many to make a plane a plane, and understanding 3d coordinate systems. Once you see how that stuff is represented though, it's not hard since we live in a 3d world that you experience every second of your life. I would just recommend learning to do it yourself. Those warehouse models aren't high enough quality that I'd use them anyway so it's not really like you're providing the game with much needed objects. (At least not for me. If the buildings aren't done really well, they might as well not have been done.) Anyway, here's the latest from me. Not totally happy with the 2nd one, but the 3rd picture I'm pretty satisfied. Now I'm actually going to BAT a building. I'm trying to decide between light modern industrial and 70s apartment block.

You simply need to model them in BAT, like a building. All models in 3ds max are exported the same way (not entirely true, but close enough). What makes one model a building though, and another a prop, is a simple process with the Plugin Manager after the export process. If you want to create custom props you need to learn to BAT.

Originally posted by: autoVino It looks excellent!quote> Thanks man. Originally posted by: autoVino Try working on the glass though, it is usually not that smooth, and it should have an IOR of about 1.52 (Or check the normals on the glass, it seems rather strange in its refractive properties). quote> I just used an MR Arch & Desn Mat with the glass preset with it's color changed from light blue to white. The lack of depth to the glass probably has to do with the fact that all those bottles where frying my aging laptop at higher render settings. I actually stuck it in my room mate's mini fridge. Originally posted by: autoVino Kind of looks like a bottle of "Izze Sparkling Clementine" I just had :-Dquote> I did a project once where I drew a pile of vector graphics of Fizzy logos, which were really just slightly modified Izze logos. I did this to avoid copyright problems and for posting them in my portfolio. Last night I decided I really wanted an Izze, but I didn't have one. This was the solution and it killed two birds with one stone: 1. I now have an Izze (undrinkable yes, but very realistic looking). 2. I now have a way cooler way of showing the label drawing project than just a bunch of little rectangular images.

Rawrg. Can't see the last few posts.

Nice stuff guys. Always cool to see new BATters erupting. Generations and generations of content creators. Anyway, today I opened up 3ds Max for the first time in a while to experiment with really milking mental ray. The result (sorry it's not actually a building):

Hey Everyone, As many older members know, I don't really BAT much for anyone but myself. I have a great time making the models, far more than playing Simcity, so I kind of just dropped the whole exporting process and just kept modeling. I'm surprised to see though that things are moving along here as good as ever. Great stuff being created. Also, while I may not do so much SC4 content creation my self, I though I'd take the oppertunity to share some resources I use. A new one that I'm working on is a huge, but well organized, collection of all my reference pictures I have for BATing. I think looking at lots of reference pictures and making buildings similar to what you see in real life are key steps to becoming an accomplished creator of content. Sometimes finding pictures like this can be hard. Not many people photograph roof junk, driveways or the sides of houses, not in cities and especially not in suburban neighborhoods. This is where I come in. No one who doesn't know my hobbies understands why my camera is full of photos of tarmac and loading bays, but there's a reason: So I know how to model it. I think it's time to just give the URL. http://picasaweb.google.com/emmerbucket You'll see here several albums. They're arranged by city, and sometimes by neighborhood when there are two very different sections of a city. For example, Holten Dorp (Holten Town) and Holten De Haar Industrieterrein (Holten De Haar Industrial Park). So what's so great about this besides the fact that they're nice photos? - Several photos of each building give you the feeling that you can walk around the building to take a look at it. - Even if you don't BAT, you can see what the aesthetics are of the cities where the photos were taken. - Many photos are taken from the front of the building. With a little tweaking, they can easily be used as textures. You're welcome to them. Especially the Paris, Geneva, and Berlin wall to wall photos (not yet uploaded but coming) lend themselves quite well to texture making. - Every one is tagged with an address, and pin point (like crazy accurate, man) on Google Earth. This means you can easily find the building in a photo in Goole Earth and use the measuring tape tool to find out how big the foot print of the building is. With the footprint and the photos, you should have no problem making a realistically scaled BAT. Anyway, I hope someone finds this useful other than myself. If I'm going to have no life, then I want to drag you all into all-BAT, no-life land with me. I'll be uploading more pictures every day and while right now they're all from the Netherlands (since that's where I've been living for the last few months) when I go to other cities/countries I'll be sure to upload plenty more HQ architecture reference photos for people to use. Check back here. About Credits: Feel free to take my photos and make them your own; at that point feel free to call them your own (like if ya slice and dice it to hell and back and slap it on a BAT you made). Please don't just repost them under your name though. I wasted a lot of time riding my bike around these neighborhoods. In either case though, don't bother crediting me. I'll just be like, "Oh, okay." What does really make me happy though is if you find this handy (if you don't, no harm done) please let me know! Also, feel free to tell me what you think I need more of; "Do you think you could take more pictures of the back sides of commercial buildings?" I have no idea if that's everything I wanted to say. It looks like a lot of text. Oops. I'll readily admit that it's probably not worth reading. Enjoy!

Well I can certainly take more pictures. There's not much heavy industry around here in the Netherlands, but I've been thinking about riding my bike out to the old docklands in my city of Deventer (much larger than the town of Holten) and making photos of the new office parks and light industrial there. Let me know if you find this handy. As for the weirdness; yes. At first I look like a super-tourist photographing all sorts of random crap. Then it becomes weirder when they see me carefully photographing every inch of the building, and then then next on the street, etc. The worst reaction I've had was a man who came out of his house and said if I was from the railway company, go away; he wasn't didn't want any more of his back yard stolen. (This was one of the houses on the Deventerweg in Holten that backs up against the rail line).

Posted more pictures. You may find the Paris section quite interesting. It includes: Just some nice architecture pictures: Some roof junk photos: And some "straightend" photos, great for BATing. I'll put more up as fast as I can make these: Check em out and browse around.

Halo wins. Make New Mombasa if you want a stunning future city.

I played Spore and that got boring in less than 6 days so it's clearly not the answer.

My parents didn't force anything onto me when I was little and so when I got older and started to think for myself I came to two conclusions. 1. I learned history and it seemed like people have always been religious but it never amounted to anything and was just recycled every world civilization. 2. Science could always support itself with empirical evidence that could be proven by anyone with knowledge of the scientific method - even little old me, as compared to requiring my faith in the possibility of a miracle that one person experienced and cannot prove happened, as compared to events which scientifically proven. Later I was told that most scientific things I believe in are just theories, nothing more. Unfortunately, if one does not take stock in scientific theories, they consequently don't take stock in things like, say, gravity. So given those two things, I decided I would buy stock in science as compared to religion because it appeared to be for the most part continually advancing over the course of human history and best of all was something that required no miracle, no devotion, and invited me to doubt it which usually resulted in an eventual higher understanding of what I had originally doubted. As such, I chose atheism. I've also had to write papers for school on my beliefs. For anyone interested to read how I determine what is true, take a read: Although I cannot give any broad, flawless or water tight definitions of what exactly truth is, I can however explain how I believe truth can be experienced, proven, and accepted. To put a broad label on my beliefs, I find myself accepting the ideas of empiricism (with the inclusion of logical empiricism, also known as neo-positivism) and existentialism. Again, I cannot say these are ultimate truths or faiths to me, like for example, the absolute truth in the existence of God to a devoutly religious person, but that they merely reflect certain ideas that I feel I can agree with. These ideas are simply that knowledge arises from experience (meaning what we can gain from our five senses and what can be proven logically) and that it is this knowledge that allows human beings to create meaning and purpose in their lives as opposed to any doctrine from a supernatural deity or authority. How exactly I have come to this conclusion (at least for the time being) is as follows. John Locke, the first to explicitly define empiricism, described the human mind as a "tabula rasa," meaning "clean slate," implying that without experience, memories, and knowledge, the mind is empty. He argued that what knowledge we do have (meaning processed information that we can then use in thought), and how we determine what is true, is based completely on what our body can gain through our five senses, and therefore we are not born with any knowledge beyond basic instinct (as inherited through DNA). This makes sense to me, but it brings up the question of whether or not we can trust our senses. If all my knowledge is the result of my senses, how can I prove that although a pencil in a glass of water appears to be broken, it is actually straight? If John Locke's definition is to be taken literally, I would explain to myself that as the pencil enters the water, the submerged section "moves" to the side a certain amount, thus giving it its broken appearance, and moves back when removed from the water. This is where we're required to expand the definition to include logical and mathematical proof, as well as what can simply be observed. This is known as logical empiricism or neo-positivism and is the idea that since both science and mathematics follow rigid rules based on logic that ensure accurate conclusions, they can be used in addition to our senses to gain knowledge and understanding. I can use this example to explain the fact that although the pencil appears bent but is not, can be proven in a variety of ways once you take science and mathematics into account. For example, one could prove that water behaves with light in a certain way with all objects way by conducting a series of experiments based on the "scientific method." A mathematical explanation for the apparent displacement of the submerged half of the pencil could be derived by examining the way water has been proven to behave with light, and calculating how much the image of the pencil will be bent based on how much water the light travels through. The addition of logical empiricism allows us to believe things that we cannot actually physically experience ourselves, and greatly expands the amount of knowledge available to us. Perhaps most importantly, I feel I can accept the very concept of logical empiricism because the related ideals can be derived logically. In much the same way that I feel truth is derived from human thought and experience, I believe that it is through this ability to determine truth, and gain knowledge from it, that I form my second belief; that it is up to individuals to provide their lives with meaning and purpose. Although I don't agree with everything that has been said in the broad realm of existentialism (even among the various famous existentialists there are many disagreements about what the philosophy entails), I do agree with the main idea involving giving meaning to things, specifically purpose in life, and feel that the fact that we as human beings are responsible for determining what is true, is a vital part this belief. For example, the meaning of the word "apple" is defined by human beings as the noun to describe the physical fruit apple, which would be nothing but a combination of letters if not agreed upon to represent something. This is a very literal example of the phrase "giving meaning to" but it applies to all human concepts. To give a deeper example would be to examine how we give our lives meaning. The question of what is the purpose of life is timeless, and rather than give a global answer for all people (i.e. "The purpose of life is to do good in the world, have happy, healthy children, and pass on to Heaven."), or a religious answer as defined by a holy book, I believe the meaning of life is different for each person based on their experiences and more importantly based on what meaning they give it though their actions. This ties back into the concept of what is true; the only things we know are true are what we can prove or experience, and the only meaning of life is what we as individuals give it based on these experiences. Although my beliefs are constantly changing and expanding based on new information I encounter, this concept of "worldly truth" is one that for the time being, I have found to accurately explain my view on the world and more specifically the question of how to experience, prove, and act upon what I believe to be truth. I strive to never imply or assume truth in things that I cannot prove or observe, and to make calculated decisions based on what knowledge I have gained in my life thus far.

People could also stop because they feel bad about what they're doing. Of course, since I listen to trance, I can get a lot of contact with the artists. I don't know many other genres of music where the big names in it will chat with their fans on Facebook. First time I ever alluded to using pirated music in a DJ set on Trance.nu, the guy who wrote and produced the song flamed me. Since then, as someone who regularly chats with the artists they like, I've found it feels really crappy to say, "Hey Joni, just heard your new record. I downloaded it illegally so I'm afraid you won't get any money off of it, but I love it so I'm happy! At least that makes one of us!" Of course no one is going to have a problem with ripping off pop stars. So I guess it's hopeless.

The topic title pretty much says it all. After becoming notorious for displaying BAT projects that I never actually finished or chose not to release, I actually did one which I'm passing off as a project for school, and as a result, needed to finish so that I could turn it in and be graded. It just so happens, completely be coincidence, that this school project is perfectly sized for a SC4 train station! One problem: I don't have BAT for max and I really can't be bothered to install it. I've tried, I've failed, and I've become royally fed up with it. That being said, however, I'd love to see it in game as would, I suspect, most other SC4 players who want to have a highly realistic Dutch train station in their city. So what is the project in question? Ta da!: Are textures a big problem? Not at all. Each object (which can be multiple actual objects, for example I've attatched all the lamp posts into one Editable Poly called "Lamp Posts") has it's own texture and is totally UVW unwrapped so all you have to do is open the scene, open the material editor, and apply the Kiosk Building.png file to the Kiosk Building object in the scene. Easy as 1, 2... well just 1, 2, unless the 3rd step is "render." So, any takers to render this model? It would be highly appreciated and I would actually have released a lot; which almost never ever happens. - Scipio

I expect it's the same reason why I use the name "a vegetable" in Halo or other people use "your mom". In Halo, updates as to what's happening in the game are displayed in the form: You killed __________ or You were killed by __________ Which, when I'm playing reads as: You were killed by a vegetable As hym pointed out, if a user were to use "a jew" as a name, the game would read: You killed a jew

Is it important? Tee hee. Just kidding. This is indeed a cool idea, but I guess I just don't care enough about it to justify the effort. And His Divine Hand is right. Frankly I'm used to, and happy with, looking at my city at Zoom 5.

doodlea21: That's not what it looked like when my english teacher drew it, but then again, my english teacher sucks at drawing. dmscopio: OMG YES! Beautifully done. Glenni: For Christ sake hide the environment when you save your renders. I don't know what I'm looking at. Save as a PNG and check "Alpha Channel". Delecto: Very nice and cleanly done. I love buildings of that scale.

moar dirt plz

Originally posted by: Delecto Sorry for double post .....It's better? Only the white front wall is textured! I used the texture SimHottoDDy give me, edited in photoshop and used as BumpMap too. Personally, I am happy even if I find that it gives a look a little bit too dirty to the building. It is supposed to be brand new. If you find it ok, I continue in this direction. Pleaz give your opinion.quote> Personally I think it looks great, but I do slather my buildings in dirt. Here's an example of my kind of texturing: which gives a look like: Also, even buildings that aren't very old quickly get discoloration around the bases from moisture that grows moss and leaves mud stains from when it rains. At least, that's what happens in the netherlands. like this on the corners: or like this under railings: So to be honest, I don't think it's too dirty at all. EDIT: Oh, and of course it's supposed to be brand new when it's put into the game, but the months zip by, or at least if you play on very fast speeds like me, in the blink of an eye. To me it looks silly if 3 game years after it was built it still looks brand new. This doesn't mean it has to be delapidated with a messy yard, it can still be looked after by whatever middle wealth residents live in it, but some dirty weathering is inevitable.