Droric

Just turn up the in Samples per Pixel - Quality:0.5 in the Render options. Something like .5 or .75 is good. I thought everyone had gamma issues with 2014... It normally renders things super bright.

Soo.... you know that problem? The one where MAX 2014 doesn't work with bat4max. I just uploaded this here file to the stex...

Yes that is the Student portal to purchase/obtain Autodesk software.

If it says in task manager you are using 7.2 GB of ram then yup your out of RAM. See if you have any other memory hogs open like photo apps or other graphics applications.

That is relative based on how much your system is using. How much free uncommitted ram do you have? Either way just remove some elements of the scene and test to see if it is the ram. You could also open task manager and monitor your RAM usage to see if it peaks out or gets within 2gb of your max. Also what OS are you running? 32 bit operating systems don't support more than 3.2 GB of ram or so.

How much system RAM do you have. Judging by the error text it states it can't allocate memory which typically means your out of RAM. Try removing some elements from your scene and rendering again to see if less objects fixes it.

Has anyone had any luck getting the lighting rigs to function properly in 3ds max 2014? I haven't been able to... I changed my input gamma to 2.2 and output gamma to 1.0 in the INI files for max but it still doesn't look right. I had to take the MR exposure from 16EV to about 14.875EV to get a passable looking model. If simfox is reading this what needs to be changed for this to function properly? Perhaps I can take a look at the Maxscript and see if there's any way to fix this? I resolved this with the BAT4MAX 5 fix posted on the Stex. More fixes are to come...

Um not sure how to delete this... mispost

Thanks Huston. I have been working my butt off trying to learn Max better so I can get this right. It sounds like I've had at least some success. I have a plane on the ground with two images mapped to them. I marked it as invisible to camera in the object properties. Picture's speak louder than words so here's an imgur link of my scene setup. https://imgur.com/xsLsUi9 If anyone has any tips on how to get materials to emulate what it looks like in real life I would be grateful. They indeed look like boxes with (somewhat plain) texture's in real life. Here is a picture of the said station as it stands in Chicago. I feel it looks much too dark. I spent the majority of my CPU time last night letting this render in different lighting environments since 3ds max 2014 doesn't quite match the game. The color tint is fine but the gamma is off so it's all a matter of messing with the exposure settings. I got this render last night but I think it is just ever so slightly too bright still. I also removed the reflections but if anyone has opinions if they should stay or go that would be great!

Thanks for the kind comments. I do actually have one file currently on the STEX. The DAMN-NAM, check it out From the jist of the comments it doesn't sound like I have too many issues with my BAT as is and maybe I should move forward and start the nightlighting.

Thanks dubaidude303! I render in SD using Simfox's render scripts in Bat4Max. I don't plan on using Zoom 6 until I start my next project which will be for some railway signals that are modeled to look like Chicago style signals (or maybe another NAM project?) FYI This is droric from SC4D but I figure you guessed that. I apparently can't change my display name till next year

I think all you need to do is run as admin. Right click the 3ds max icon and select run as Administrator. Try the script again after that. Oh and FYI I am using 3ds max 2014 without issue by changing the output gamma setting to 1.000000 in the defaults file. Just search for the section gamma in the file and change the value from 2.2 for output image gamma to 1.0. I have been getting good results with settings changed in this file. This is no longer valid since I fixed the gamma issues and released an update to the STEX. C:\Users\[uSERID]\AppData\Local\Autodesk\3dsMax\2014 - 64bit\ENU\en-US\defaults\MAX\CurrentDefaults.ini Your path may vary.

I seem to be having an issue exporting a BAT. The BAT lines up properly in 3ds max and the previews but when viewing it in game it appears at an angle. One end of the lot is too high and the other end digs in. Any ideas? I am using 3ds max 2014 with the latest patches. I imported my scene into a new one without the camera's or rig setup and everything is back to normal now.

Nonny, Would you be interested in that script? I could compile it today to an EXE if you wanted and you could give it a shot in Linux. All the script really does though is triggers a sendkey command to issue a CTRL-S every 10 minutes based on a timer. I didn't spend too much time on it since it does what I need it to.

My launcher is power shell but it also incorporates the diagonal bridge extender enabler options with auto save. Again this wouldn't help Nonny since its .NET based.

I found with Windows File History to be an awesome feature for this. It works by backing up changes to files in your library on a timed basis. I have it backup the changes every 10 minutes and auto save every 10 so I always can go back to within 10 minutes of any save. This automatically will use disk space on an external drive and is self cleaning when it runs out of space.

Nice work

FYI: An excellent alternative to the Windows search is Everything. It's a free app which runs as a background service (minimal resource usage) and indexes all your local files in real time. I personally use it, and would highly recommend it as a time-saver. When you type a search, the results are listed instantly in the window. It also supports wildcards and other commands (e.g. *.txt for text files), which can locate files of a specific type. Cool thanks for the tip! BTW the windows search will also filter by wildcards just fine.

Actually I am the same person I for one love the indexer service... i could not live without it but to each their own. I do alot of development and IT work on my home PC and not having to wait for more then 1-2 seconds for a search to be completed is important.

After the game crashes it creates two(it might be one but for some reason two is strong in my mind) files for each crash inside the documents>simcity 4>exception reports folder. These can be deleted. Some suggest that it is good to keep this folder clean, I do not know if it really has any impact. Essentially though, it is just a temp type of folder so anything that gets saved there is just junk or clutter. It might be useful if EA still supported this game as they would likely request these files upon you reporting an error. As for corruption... I couldn't say, my guess is no, I only say that because I have in the past had tons of crashes and none of them ever resulted in a corrupt file anywhere(not to my knowledge anyway). Once upon a time I had an issue with my plugins folder and did a complete reinstall of the whole game, later to figure out on my own that there is actually never any reason to install your game completely, if ever you have any troubles with your game just remove your plugins folder and viola, you have a vanilla copy again. There is an exception to that however, that is if you install something into your core install of the game, which I strongly suggest against unless it is for background pictures, the iLive's reader or altering the original simcity dat files to include the IH-T fix and/or the CAM, but in those instances all tutorials on the matters and readmes specifically tell you to make backups of the originals which again would keep you from doing a complete re-install. To further that, I really don't see how a crash can cause corruption. Think of your RAM like a brief case, you load all the documents you take home into your brief case to take them to work, this makes it so that you do not have to go home for every piece of paper you find you need throughout the day at the office, now it would be extremely inefficient to leave work to go home to get your papers every time you needed them. In the case of PC, your RAM is your brief case. There is a special note here however, through my travels on the many SimCity 4 fansites I have found a problem that plagues a few players, but it is inconsistent at best, only a handful of people have actually encountered it, and that is the Prop Pox. This problem, from what I have been able to glean from the many posts I read, stems from having duplicate and/or altered prop IDs of Maxis props(the altered Maxis props share the same IDs as the originals and conflict with each other), for some reason this causes a major issue with your save game files, from what I understand once this occurs it is irreversible. For more information on this You can Google "Prop Pox", it is hard for me to explain as I have not experienced it. To combat it, I just keep the most organized and clean plugins folder possible. I have yet to have any issues with it. I believe I even have the items that are suspected to cause prop pox installed in my plugins folder too. I can testify that I have only one set of duplicates in my plugins folder and that is the North Country Dude's Railyard and spurs mega packs. I have all three of them installed, at least one of them is out of date and is supposed to be included in one of the more recent ones however something is missing from the updated versions making it so that you have to have even the old original one installed even though it is stated you should not. But this is never mentioned as the cause to prop pox, nor am I saying it is, what I am trying to say here is that it is good to know your plugins folder in and out(the previous was just an example of knowing your plugins folder) just in case something happens like this. The reason I asked is I was having an issue with crashing when exiting or saving on Windows 8 and I would assume this applies to Windows 7 as well. The windows indexer service or Windows Search was indexing my SC4 Regions folder where games are saved and the temp directory where Simcity 4 was writing to while saving. This was extremely unstable and took a long time to figure out what was the cause. The solution was to go into the index options in Windows and make sure there are exceptions for your Simcity 4 Regions folder and your system temp folder, usually C:\TEMP. Good luck

What OS are you running? Also does the game result in corrupted files after it freezes?

You could try selecting the 'custom install' mode and then selecting 'Run Cleanitol' at the top of the installer and reinstall. This will check your plugins directory for incompatible mods and move them before installing. I am not sure if this applies to cleaning previous versions of the NAM but I think it does.