alj

There is yet another thing I see. The orange "cage" on the top of the building: shouldn't it have a door? I think the HVACs outside it should be accessible for maintenance. Wait, I go one step back: which one of the boxes on the top is the end of the elevator shaft? Otherwise: keep up the good work.

Hi tcxalapa, some nice models that you are showing here. I'd like to second what others have said before: the Hotel & Residences model of yours (the two buildings connected by a bridge) looks very promising. I am looking forward to see it evlolve. On the Grand Pacific (the orange residential): interesting model but I have the suspicion that height is not appropriate. You have 30 floors there. The building should be something between minimum 110m and perhaps 140m. Your model is shorter, am I right?

Thank you! Glad, you like it. On the front roof I have played with dirt and desatured a bit. I have also desatured the front wall another bit. Am not sure about the result. It sucked too much color out of it for my taste. Those type of buildings not always look completely bloodless in real life. (I know real life is hardly relevant, what matters is that it fits into the SC4 scheme.) The problem with the frames on the dormers is fixed now. There are actually two frames. One is the window frame and the second is part of the dormer's structure. The contrast was too low which led to the appearence of one giant frame to which SimHoTToDDy was referring. I then darkened the roof of the dormers. Originally I had something in mind with the brighter roof tiles on them. They face the sun in a different angle then the surrounding roof. Therefore, I thought, they should stick out somewhat. But I couldn't get that done in a convincing way obiously. Partly because that bright/dark contrast made the area where the roof of the dormers met the main roof looked disconnected. Next I repeated my dirty excercise with GIMP on the back front.

Bumping a sleeping thread. But I have a new one for the collection. And so many have commented something like "interesting thread, keep them coming". Here it is: Dreideck-Eigentumswohnungen is the name in the German version of the game (don't know the name in the English version): it looks too similar to "Am Beethovenpark" condominium in Cologne-Sülz, though Maxis stretched the building to 8 floors, to justify its classification in the medium density category. Maxis made it a R$$$ which is slightly flattering. A $$+0.5$ would have been perfect.

Sgt Pepper, I was not referring to a gmax measuring tool. Your front wall is a rectangle, right? What are the parameters of the rectangle in meters?

Thanks for your help. Here's some progress. I have addressed a couple of the issues that have been pointed out: door height, position of stairway windows (front centre), saturation, size of gutters and downpipes. I have faked some ray tracing on the roof and I have smeared dirt onto the front wall. So much dirt that I just have downgraded my little baby from R$$ to R$. What do you think?

The shingles on the canopies look better on the front side IMHO. But I don't see any difference on the left and on the right side. Another thing: you don't have any windows on ground floor. It gives the building a bunker like look to it. Unless ... that's what you were after. I like the design of the 2nd building you have shown. Properly finished it should be very useful for many city building styles. But I also think the model has issues with its proportions. You have squeezed some 20 floors into it. My ballpark calculation on what I have seen on screen resulted that It should have 12, max 14 floors. What is the height of the model in gmax meters? Take this number, divide by 1.3 (to take account for the SC4 perspective "height bonus"), divide this number by, say, 4 (typical office floor height) and you should end up with a floor count of considerably less than 20. May I ask: do you sketch out your buildings on paper before you start BATting? I am not talking about a detailed design but basic proportions, like floor height. My own BATting experience is very, very, very limited, but I have found out that, without having sketched basic proportions prior to going into gmax, I quickly run into trouble. Consider a basic sketch a sanity check you are forced to do. Stretching or squeezing entire buildings afterwards can have disadvantages to it.

Model looks good, Sgt Pepper. I have a susupicion that it´s off scale, too. Assuming the model is 2x2 tiles large, your entrance would then be ca. 5m wide. That´s a reasonable size for a supermarket but for a residential ... I am not sure. Then there are only 2 windows on each side of the entrance. That may be to few (and too large) windows. I don´t know if this building is modeled afte a real life building, but the fact that a residential has a 2x2 tiles footprint without an inner court or any other source of natural light, strikes me as odd. Consider this: standing in the middle of the building, a sim would be 16m away from daylight. I don´t claim that this is 100% unrealistic, it just seems very 19th century tenement, while the looks of your model is more 20th century R$$. The texture of the canopies on the upper floor windows could be improved. You could play with tiling and set it from 1.0 to 2.0 or 3.0. As it is now, it looks like those a really long shingles. Keep up the good work.

The new model looks great. You really seem to develop a market niche, and I like it. I am not sure about the posts on ground floor, though. As thin as they are, they could not carry the weight of the structure above them. Not that that would be necessary in the first place, since such a compact building could afford some overhanging parts without supports to them (this, at least, relates to the right wall of the building). I was thinking something like "would an architect of a mid-market residential get such a design choice sold to the developer"? With regard to this, I think the posts are rather not realistic. Unless ... this is a true recreation of a real life building, the real building has really these thin poles, and I would just have talked myself into nowhere ... in that case I would retreat to saying: It looks great, keep it up.

Thank you very much for your interest and advice. Front door dangerous for tall people: I will increase its height from 3m to 3.5m. Hope it works. The roof glowing: I'll add some gradient and desaturate another bit. The latest shot has a saturation level of 85% (in Paint.Net, that is; or would I rather change saturation in gmax, if that's possible at all?). Part of the problem was caused by the settings of my laptop at home were I had put together this building. I was aware that textures were oversaturated, but I didn´t find out how off it was until I looked at the first pictures of this thread on my PC at work. Preview background too dark: How can I change from black background to another colour? Rainpipes offensive: They are exaggerated, indeed. I thought I'd follow the rule "make small objects larger if you want them to be seen in zoom 4" or so. I just now measured and and found out that the width of the rain gutter is 0.7 mtrs. Scary. It was one of the few objects of this model were I eyeballed size instead of figuring out in advance on paper what the parameters should be. The downpipe, however, has a width of 0.4 m which is not soo off, in my opinion (taking the small objects bonus into account, unless it's complete rubbish anyway). The rain gutter draws too much attention to itself as it is now, probably because it is, apart from its size, too bright. Stair case area too plain: I wanted the glass blocks to be flush (bündig) with the front wall like I have seen it on buildings in real life. I will try and move the glass some 0.20 m to the back and see if it adds some value to the front. Window frames invisible: They are there, but obivously too small. Maybe a brighter texture could help here. Will try that. Bottom line is: I find it encouraging that you took the time to look and offer advice. Thanks and stay tuned. alj

The Film Exchange building looks already very promising. With its moderate height and W2W feature it should be very useful for all kinds of building styles.

The details look great! The canopy/marquee with the "Peninsula" signage looks as if it was made out of granite. Is it what you have intended?

That´s a pretty huge warehouse that you have shown. With the help of you guys we should be able to get rid of industrial areas cluttered with way too small Maxis industrial lots. Thanks.

Copenhagen, Denmark. What a beauty.

Great update. One question about the Alexanderplatz train station in the upper right corner: is this a variation of simrolle