wolverine

Originally posted by: Xyloxadoria Heres a warning to sketchup designers: Your model will be brigther in gmax/the BAT. To fix this just make it darker than normal in sketcup then it will look normal in the BAT quote> That's correct. Something I should have mentioned earlier. It has alot to do with the way Sketchup displays textures in its working mode. Be mindful that textures may be way more saturated too. If you want to texture a skp model in max, you can make it easy by assigning certain colors to faces in your model in sketchup. Walls, yellow, windows orange, roof pink for example. When you bring it into max, you can just use select by color, apply a UVW map, and drop your new texture on. Or I suppose in sketchup, just make things components that you want to have a certain texture. Those components will remain preserved in Max, although now "instances and groups" Drag and drop your new texture on the group.

Alright, so it wasn't so much the UVW, rather I needed to give the contrast a little boost, although it saturated the texture a bit more. Desaturate a bit? I also added a roof texture. Tomorrow, I'll complete the back wall texturing, and then move onto windows. Hope to have a modeling and texturing wrapped up by the end of this week. FYI, I've never reached the point of night lighting before. This could potentially be disastrous Tonight, I also plan to get a ton of work done on Hudsons

FYI, if you are able to export to 3ds via the trial or pro version of sketchup and then import to Max, you should NOT be losing textures. Versions as far back as 7 will properly display sketchup textures when rendered. If you moved all your files around after you exported the sketchup model, be sure to let 3ds Max know where you placed the textures. If you don't, it will ask you to locate the folder prior to rendering. If you click cancel, it will just render a shaded model. Max 2010 on up Users with CE can disregard, as Max opens .skp files. All skp textures should display when you hit "m" There should also be no traingulation and your layers and components are preserved.

No prob

Here's the first pass at texturing the front walls of the NY building. Suggestions. The four textures added are. 1. Cornice, 2. Red brick, 3. Limestone bands, 4, base limestone block

Thanks for the nice comments! Alright...Hudson's. I mentioned I'd give an update. I really want to get back on this project, but I want the above NY apartment building to be a test for how well BAT's from sketchup will turn out in the game. I don't want to invest any more energy into Hudson's until I know this works. My workflow is definitely different with the new utilities available to me, so hopefully it will all work out. Attached are never-posted views of Hudson's. Previous versions were done in Max way back in 2005 and were never accurate. I ditched the whole model and began new in late 2008. Some work was completed July of 2010 excuse the typo at the end If the NY BAT is succesful, there will be a Christmas Eve release of Hudsons

It's a shame autodesk does not make ConnectionExtension Available for free. Basically it allows sketchup files to be opened natively into 3D Studio Max. All your textures, cameras, and lighting system is preserved. No conversion necessary. 3DS max basically recognizes the .skp file as a supported format instead of something that has to be imported. Unfortunately it's subscription based. I do all my BATing in sketchup. Fortunately my company owns the connection extension or else I'd be doing 2X times the work to get it into Max.

Here's an update of the work I completed Sunday night. Would have started texturing tonight, but I fell asleep when I got home

Thanks guys. So I finessed the base a little bit. Added detailing and columns on the archway + basement windows. I also added the storefronts where you see that blank opening on ground level. There's a liquor/grocery store and a barber shop. I'm usually busy on the weekends so not much has gotten done. During the weekdays I have much more time when I get home. I'll post the building fully modeled tomorrow after I get it rendered at work. I'll work on textures the rest of this week and begin modeling this building's neighbor. Since I do all my modeling at home in sketchup, I can always share screenshots of the work I've done before I render in Max if you guys don't mind. I know it's not as polished looking.....

Thanks guys! citybuilder12 If I get time next week, I'll do a quick render of it. Basically, I almost have most of the large 15 story base modeled. About 80% done with that. The rest is the penthouses and tower which are sure to take up alot of time.. GuerrilaWarfare LOL, my bad. I like hip-hop so I was in the mood to name the thread. I hope to get something going that will end up looking like this: photo by me spa Thanks! So you are saying I basically shouldn't use HD cause it will take up too much of the games resources? I'm cool with the regular rendered view.

Cadillac Tower is looking great. The game does not have enough of these type of buildings

Page flip bug or something. Or else I'm a bit rusty coming back to this forum and doing things wrong

Did a little work on Hudsons this weekend. Keep in mind this is a complete redo from the model renders posted a long time ago. That model was massed okay, but it wasn't very accommodating for the more detail portions. I'm doing the model in sketchup, but I regularly convert sketchup models to .max files for photo realistic renders at work, so I know this will work for BAT for max. For the time being, I'll knock out progress renders in Vray at work. I'd really like BAT for MAX installed on my machine at work , but for some reason I can never do it correctly. If I can get it to work, I can assign my jobs to a render farm, which would make it easy. And then there's Ford Field.... Ford Field has been rescued from the depth of my external hard drive. I have two files, one of the warehouse portion done in Max very poorly back in 2004, and what appears to be a very accurate sketchup file of the stadium portion. I'd love to get this one back up and running as well, but I'm going to focus my attention on Hudsons first.

Originally posted by: SimHoTToDDy Actually, Wolverine (don't see him around very often) was working on Hudson's over in the BSP thread. The last render I saw was from March of 2009, but I believe he still has it floating around, waiting to be finished. Unfortunately, the render isn't hosted anymore, so I can't show you, but suffice to say it was a really nice model. Jason: Its looking really good so far! Its come a long way from the little doodle in our conversation thread My only concern right now is that there is too much contrast between the bright facade and the very ark windows. Perhaps just changing the window texture around so that there is less black might do the trick (the light spots seem fine to me). I especially love the ornate crown you decided to put on this quote> I'm still alive and yes Hudsons is still alive. The problem is I use 3ds Max all day at work, and the last thing I want to do is go home and do more Max....especially when it's summer and I live in downtown Chicago. Definitely toward the end of summer, I should be posting some progress shots

Hey does anyone have any experience farming out BAT for MAX renders? We have a rendering farm at my office and BAT for max is now installed on my computer. I haven't tried it yet, I'd really like to hear if anyone has tested this before I start setting things up. I can harness up to 200 processors which should knock out things pretty quickly. It's absolutely great when we use vray for max to do 3d animations.

This has been going on for quite some time. I'm already two versions behind. Guess I'll upgrade......

oooooh nice! Love details, and this type of building of course is very needed in the game.

Incredible historic photos of Fisher. Here's some pics I took inside that same factory in 2009 The recognizable green windows of the factory Floor slabs failing Paint Level Mid Level or Paint level, not sure

Hey all. I'm going to attempt to install BAT for Max at work. I could model at home, but my computer at work is connected to a rendering farm. I've gotten pretty far on my model of Hudsons department store (sorry no photo updates yet). This is a project I've been wanting to restart for a very long time.

Wow, nice work on this nofunk. I hope you continue to make more of these midblock commercial buildings.

Well that just blows me away. Amazing work

The factory looks excellent and the window textures are great. Chalmers was MY idea! Only because I glanced over that name while looking at Detroit's urban prairies on a map. Next buildings better have my favorite Detroit street names. John R, Cadieux, Lonyo, Yolanda, Trumbull, Dequindre, Kercheval, Mack, John Kronk, Caniff and Chene.

Great questions nickzou. I got a masters in transportation planning, so hopefully I can lend some insight. Subway planning and construction have always been secondary to central city growth, but not to fringe growth. What I mean by this is when existing transit infrastructure became crowded in the growing city core, plans were put forth for grade seperated systems that would also satisfy future growth forecasts. This explains why when you go to places like New York City, you find blocks upon blocks of homogenous tenement housing above central park. These were speculative, meaning builders were predicting an influx of population after the opening of a new transit line. And I'm glad you mentioned Toronto. You can see the speculative growth over time along the city's major subway lines. So really, the planning for subways was the result of current congestion and the need for grade seperated transit, also to satisfy future growth needs and in a way, stimulate new construction. So what cities do subways work best in? Linear ones. In fact, anything that runs on rails works best in cities that are stretched out along a line....just look at Manhattan. The reason for this is that more customers can be served along a trunk line instead of diverging lines in all directions to serve scattered populations. Of course, that doesn't mean non-linear cities will fail to operate a heavy rail system. Remember I mentioned that future planning is also important. Depending on a city's master plan, they can reshape its form through transportation...much like Toronto's North-South density was shaped after the 1960's Hope this helps.

Honestly, alot of this thread is assumptions or based off fiction. How many here actually have real qualified background expertise in urban growth and transportation. I know nofunk is qualified to make these statements. General Motors is NOT to blame, but they did take advantage of the "transit crisis" at the time if you will. The streetcar system was failing miserably. It wasn't profitable despite the fact that ridership was up. Yes GM was behind National City Lines, but it was mostly the failure of cities to get their act together to keep transit afloat. Keep in mind during those days, there was never much talk of public subsidy of transit....Something that is incredibly subsidized today. If you want to point blame somewhere, consider cities themselves. Free Parking is the main reason for shifting urban form. Today it still continues to inhibit urbanism.