CT14
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Everything posted by CT14
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@DavidDHetzel Sounds about right. Most of these gasworks were shut down in the 50s, so I might have to ditch the BN for strict accuracy... @metasmurf Thanks, I hope they will be useful. Regarding textures I do plan to lighten the bricks - something more like the brightness of Gascooker's brown brick here. Well, here's the Small Gasworks: Aside from the Troy Gasholder House, this lot has only two dependencies: Gascooker Vol 1 and Jestarr Vol 09. Gasometers still blinking in and out as if timed... I'll have to look into that.
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@DavidDHetzel Indeed this was definitely an "everything and the kitchen sink" approach to prop selection - I think the Fukuda cars are not prototypical for the type of lot anyway, but I do like the PEG steam engine and smaller ore cars. We'll see what makes the cut. I'm really waiting for the @Angry Mozart railcar props - hoping for diagonal and FA versions, there. You'll also like the "Small" gasworks, which should be achievable with just one prop pack - Gascooker's. He put all the necessities together including brick buildings with monitor roofs, gasometers, cleaners/washers and so forth. @Simmer2 Glad you like it, more is on the way. I didn't see a gasworks lot after making the gasholder building, and that got my gears going... @matias93 The gasholder itself is inside the brick building, the prototype of which has only one story made up to look like two. It would look much like the one you show, but with fewer telescoping sections. These gasholder house "shell" buildings went out of fashion about 140 years ago due to being unnecessary and actually more dangerous than not. If a gasometer exploded, what happened to all the bricks?... I may do an old fashioned gasholder model as well, although I do like the ones by Gascooker - after copying the entries to a different lot type, they ended up as a timed prop on this lot which is really bizarre - gotta fix that.
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I did one more lot with the gasholder building... a medium sized gasworks. The lot uses props by @jestarr, @gascooker, @Glenni, and @Simmer2. I'd like to do a smaller gasworks without rails, and a larger one with more retorts and a proper coal washer... Here is the annotated version:
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A first look at the Troy Gasholder Building:
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Here is a new BAT I've been creating on the side: the Troy Gas Works Gasholder Building. The bricks are quite a bit bright compared to high quality tilesets from GC/Jestarr/C.P. I may darken them some along with the ashlar masonry courses, especially since this is a Dirty/Coal setting. I also want to experiment with a Wide Radius Curve filling lot. It looks like it will go into the pocket of a wide street curve nicely. Challenges included: Getting scale measurements from elevation drawings Learning the Array tool in a radial setting Getting better with UVW mapping (default values for map sizes are usually not good) Scaling a lot of vertices for the roof pitch curve Modeling windows in Gmax (no prefab 3dsMax windows as in the elevator model). Scaling the weathervane: one of those details that looks great, but just doesn't show with fully realistic scaling. This part had to be at least 200% of prototype dimension to be visible in final render. Here's my marked up copy of the elevation: The billboard on the lot is meant to evoke scenes like this one from 1938 NYC: But in testing, the billboard puts too much restriction on which way the lot faces - a separate billboard lot makes more sense. Now, back to modular stuff...
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Someone managed to sneak a US Air Force nuclear powered tunnel boring machine into my rail freight automata... It must be headed to...
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@rsc204 Hey, that's great to hear. I did use the path from that ID in the NetworkAddonMod_RailViaducts.dat file (just dived back in to make sure). I appreciate the depth of detail you're providing here. The next task for that station will be to get it working with multiple tiles, as I want the ploppable to be 2 tiles long. I am wondering if a stop point would add to realism, since it is a freight station. I don't usually see this in lots in game but feel it would be nice to have the train automata pause on screen for a while.
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Subway and El Rail use the same automata, so I'd expect you could do this by transit enabling for El Rail, then adding a custom SC4Path that specifies proper subway depth for the path. I don't know what depth that is (search didn't turn anything up) but someone should know around here. You could copy the SC4Path file from a lot that has GLR, then just change the numbers for depth from 0 to whatever subways are, when you find out. Love the idea, keep us posted on how it goes. Edit: See @rsc204's post below for an better and easier way! Apparently the shared automata don't signify. Here be dragons
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Pathing and historical prototypes I've worked out the elevated heavy rail lot's pathing issues and it is quite a nice feeling to see the props collide with the tunnel. Strangely, the trains don't derail at all. I'll increase the tunnel height to clear the double stacks. Using "Modern" clearances as opposed to "Classic" or "Old Time", in model railroader terms. I would never have figured any of this out without the following resources: ST thread for the introduction to concepts: SC4D wiki for important implementation details: http://www.wiki.sc4devotion.com/index.php?title=SC4Path_Format @MandelSoft's tutorial section on SC4Paths: https://www.sc4devotion.com/forums/index.php?topic=11023.msg329941#msg329941 SimsWiki on LotConfigPropertyLotObject syntax: http://simswiki.info/wiki.php?title=LotConfigPropertyLotObject I also want to share this amazing prototype, the St Johns Park Terminal to Manhattan's High Line. This is an elevated freight rail station several NY city blocks long. The air rights on the property are currently bid up to $50 billion so there is little chance it will be preserved. It's on my list to BAT, though. My direct inspiration for the transit lot is industries like Merchants Refrigeration Company: This packing company on 14th St. Notice the line enters each building around the third floor: This unidentified building on the High Line: And especially the Nabisco plant: Bonus historical shots from Boweryboys of completely bonkers street running on 10th Avenue: the "Avenue of Death", no kidding. Notice how many horses are still on the road. Most commercial traffic had motorized here by the end of World War I. And very VERY early elevated rail: Final style note for NYC-style viaduct rail architecture: the High Line was constructed during the Art Deco period, but it modified many older buildings.
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@rsc204 I had to read that about six times and a bunch of other pages, but think I understand. Sometimes there is wealth grass showing between the props and the FA network. I'll circle back to this after the basic models are done. @Silur Glad you like it, the skylights are really for the 1 and 2 story versions of some BATs to give light in the understory of the urban jungle. I'll be removing them from the 3 and 4 story versions, generally. Taller buildings tend to get enough light from the windows. Also, I want it to be less blue too - a simple tweak in the material. Here's the latest ortho versions to illustrate. Here is another experiment with stations - there should be at least about 2 tiles of platform length to match prototypes like Manhattan High Line industries, but I wanted to try with 1 tile to get it working. Paths aren't showing up with drawpaths and automata fades on entering the lot. Not sure what's up yet. I copied the path file from the "straight over empty ground" Viaduct Rail puzzle piece. The tunnel will need to be taller. The square shaped opening seems protoypical.
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@rsc204 thanks for the kind words! Here's a view of the left diagonal model. I've mirrored it, and will also be making a triangular version (same footprint as the Gridbusters piece here.) Still to come are mirrored FA-3, FA-2, height and texture variations, and lot modding. Side note on triangular blocks: real life buildings that end at sharp angles usually have a fifth wall at the point, just wide enough for a window to cap the angle. The models above have somewhat unrealistically sharp angles at the narrow end, with windows on each side quite close to each other from an interior perspective. This is to allow more seamless filling when continuing along the diagonal. Ideally, I'll be able to render versions specifically for triangular ends, with the more realistic/gentle capping of the angle.
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FA-3 filler model preview:
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FA-3 depth 3 is roughed out. Tar paper on roof now has better coverage around the roof edges, and is sun bleached a bit more; this is the lighter side of the range of variation that seems to look good for tar paper. Probably time to lighten the black painted roof junk as well: There are a few minor model issues to work out visible in the above pictures, and at least three more models to create: FA-2 D1, FA-2 D2, Diagonal.
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Ring the alarm! Fire escape nerdery has officially broken out. In addition to correcting the omission so adroitly pointed out by @rathefalcon, I've fixed a couple of other errors: there are always hand railings on the ladder bits, and the ladders themselves were off center to the openings in the platforms. The mesh for the horizontal railings was also so small it was hard to see in the final render; it's been doubled in diameter, with the result that it's visible. I went with the @matias93 version, a spring loaded ladder at the bottom. @T Wrecks the plan is to do both growables and plops, and use four stories of height variation and a few more model tweaks to make things more seamless. For example, the roof tar paper can go nearly to the outer edge of the cornice, as in prototypes. And of course this will be accomplished through the mini-game of arranging prop families by building footprint, so you can gamble for your favorite facing material or height as you fill your FA zones...
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Update - models with depths 1 and 2 for FAR-3 are shaping up. Experimenting with wood textures - thinking of something more aged rather than this fresh wood look, but it might also be nice for historic recreations to have the shiny version available. There will not be this many skylights overall in the final tileset
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Thanks @rsc204, I guess I just hadn't found them yet. I'll watch the video and see what I can drag. Here is depth 1 more or less complete for FAR-3; much of the work will transfer over to the second and third depths. The 4-story versions will have old fashioned roof water towers, with ~7500 gallon redwood tanks. I also whipped up a FAR-3 fire escape, and improved roof access: These models are pre-133% scaling.
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@MushyMushy Thanks for the link to the draggable FAR intersections. I admit I still get a headache when I try to draw those forms. I"ll keep at it and try to figure out which block sizes can be dragged. Closing in on a theory of FAR fills now. Each type of FAR needs one depth per tile run. In other words, there are 3 different depths possible for FAR-3, and 2 different depths for FAR-2. This means I'll need to make a total of at least 10 models for left and right versions. If done right, the ortho-FAR models should serve as transitions when plopped next to ortho W2W. Here's how it looks working out the footprints and their repetition in different block layouts. One fun possibility will be the small FAR-2-Ortho-FAR-3 W2W blocks, as seen in upper left...
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@DavidDHetzel That's the goal, modular W2W filler buildings/props for lotting. All the props are intended to fit seamlessly side by side with each other. Work on FAR-3 has begun - getting the props into the right place is tricky without using differently sized building models. I may end up creating new models for the FAR pieces with different dimensions... I prefer to use draggable FAR in favor of these puzzle pieces, but we don't have draggable FAR intersections yet. I may just design the structures around the currently draggable ortho-FAR intersections instead, for now. There are a few different "unit" sizes for the 1, 2, 3, 4 tile gap intersections... it should be possible to distill these into modules.
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@rsc204 For sure, the tunnel size must be related. @rathefalcon Thanks, this tutorial helped me a lot with settings for glass and lights: I figured out how to apply a color map in the Output rollout of the Bitmap mapping, to darken the final result. This is a mono map with a single point added at .67, .33. I like the red brick. And not having to go to an image editor and change the bitmap, etc. The glass texture got a few tweaks. I'm really happy with the windows now - the parts all show clearly in game. Some of the windows got bricked up, and the top story got rotated back properly. Staircases don't usually change corners in real life. There is an LOD related rendering glitch visible in the right side of the tunnel portal now, but a test showed no more derailments. I'll fine tune LOD again and test some more.
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This is SABER's famous graffiti piece on the Los Angeles River. While it existed, it was the biggest in the world. For more background: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saber_(artist) The prop has been scaled to the same size as the original work. The lot is an eye candy landmark, modded to have neutral stats. Use the 12m hole digger or raiser to create the bank of the river, then plop the lot. The footprint is 1x5, and like all LAR lots its props overhang to 2 tiles depth, for 2x5 final size. Credits: @RebaLynnTS for LA River Project, SABER for the art Dependencies: LA River Project 1.1 https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/19370-la-river-project/ @smoncrie's Hole Digging Lots https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/3599-hole-digging-lots/ Version history: 10/14/2016 -- initial 1.0 release- 4 Reviews
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- la river
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Saber's giant roller piece on the LA River:
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Some more shots of the industrial WIP gone wild in a test city. I made a prop family to jumble the different sizes - next up is roof variations and building material variations. There's a W2W STR freight station that fits on a 1x1 lot. The train was derailing a little bit as it went through here... custom LOD on the tunnel seems to be working fine, but I wonder if it's derailing because the tunnel isn't tall enough. I did make it regulation Canadian size... the only good reference on clearance I could find. I'll have to double check the scaled height of the portal in gmax. Here is the station without a train in it.
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New industrial WIP:
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@DavidDHetzel One of the following, most likely: More large industrials, including diagonal and FAR. Grain elevators. FAR W2W commercials. Plenty of historic prototypes in my area to work from. Coal breakers. Elevated freight stations. Rail car props, although @Angry Mozart is doing everything I'd imagined there. I may do historic engines or something instead. More historic period vehicle props or automata replacement mods similar to the 60s car mod, etc. A 40s car mod or horse and buggy era mod would be nice. Alleyways. Pegasus alleys are nice but I can't seem to mod out the bus spam... I have some other ideas but I want to keep a few things up my sleeve... also want to figure out Gmax lighting as it was highly troublesome in the last project.
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I revisited the North American Freight Sidings lots and improved a few aspects that had been bothering me: Added custom icons to make using the lots easier Changed base textures from transparent to dirt to avoid water bug Added a few props to some lots The STEX upload is now updated to 1.1.0, with these changes.
