Panda

I'm very interested in the prospect of additional building styles. However, may I ask what the intent behind the public and private IIDs ranges are? If I am understanding the post correctly the private IIDs are intended for an author to assign their own files a building style that is distinct and separate from anyone else's building style. The public IIDs would be free for anyone to use once they are established. Is this correct? My concern is that with over 4000 potential IIDs available, there is a high potential to fragment lots across so many styles that they become useless. I can imagine the frustration of trying to troubleshoot why a particular building was not growing because you forgot to toggle on the particular style. Others have brought up the issue of having sufficient lots in a building style to allow for growth. While having a style limiting growth to a very bespoke collection of lots could be powerful, it may also cause frustration because there are not lots in that style that match your current demand. Another concern is how will these styles be controlled in the game? Adding an extra 4, 8, or even 16 styles to the existing UI seems reasonable, but how will potentially dozens or hundreds of styles work? Will there be a search function to find that one style that you forgot the name of? Now I'll admit, I'm not particularly experienced with tinkering beneath the hood of SC4, so some of these concerns may have solutions I'm not aware about. However, the core issue remains: how will people use these tilesets? What problem are they solving?

Here are fixes for the misaligned icons:

I'm continuing to work on the Octangle tower. I've improved the rooftop equipment models and textures. I added a track for a maintenance crane, but need to add the window washing crane dolly and arms. I've been working on the rest of the textures. I think the glass is now a little too dark, I plan to lighten it up int he future. I've also added a ground plane for reflections. I'm still experimenting with what looks good for the reflections. I've also added window shades. I experimented using geometry nodes. I've used geometry nodes for several other elements in the model including the mullions, but I wasn't happy. I ended up just modeling duplicating the window mesh, applying a texture that is half transparent, half opaque. I then randomly selected and adjusted the UV position to make it look like shades were up or down. It's not as modular and adjustable as I had hoped to achieve using geometry nodes, but it works. )Right now it is an array, so each side of the building has the same shade layout. I plan to fix that later.

Thank you for letting me know, I'll double check the alignment. Sometimes the layers accidentally get shifted or the icon image doesn't get perfectly centered for each state. it's easy to miss when they are all sitting side by side when editing.

I'm experimenting with BAT4Blender. I've been mostly modeling and texturing though and haven't tested exporting or the lighting much. So far it seems to be working well though.

I'm working on the submenu icons. Here are three buttons for the Landmarks menu: Landmarks: 57 - Government 58 - Entertainment (theaters, operas, cinemas, stadiums, night clubs, etc.) 59 - Religion (Churches cemetries) Let me know your thoughts.

@Andreas Roth, As others have said, the design for the "top-level" sub-menus tries to mimic the Maxis UI. The reason the circles are relatively small is to accommodate the drop shadow which helps the button "pop" and clarifies that it is a sub-menu not a lot. In order to accommodate the drop shadow within the 44 x 44 pixel size allotted for the icon, I had to shrink the circle so the drop shadow fits completely within the 44 pixel square. I tested aligning the button to the left which would have allowed it to be larger, but the in-game appearance was not centered and didn't look very good. Using an oval didn't make sense since the space available was a square and an oval would have just limited the height rather than provide extra width. An option without the drop shadow is possible, but I haven't finished the complete set of the top level buttons yet. They way I have my file set up, It shouldn't be too hard to swap out the frames, but at this point I'd prefer to finish the set first. For the image, @atsf189 mentioned duplicating the image three times and de-saturating the leftmost image. The Maxis UI buttons also have a slight de-saturation and add a blue hue to the white icon on the second from the left image. (See below for an example) Maxis UI: Submenu: Of course, this menu button design was developed primarily for the top-level sub-menus. I think it could be used as a template for other submenus, but I don't think it is set up well for showcasing an image of a lot or lots like the University of Clayhurst example demonstrates.

It's so frustrating and stressful that this happened. Although I try to be safe online, this would be so easy to miss. I know I downloaded a copy of NAM 48 back in August which was before the ModDB file was infected. I know I downloaded a copy of NAM Lite in November, but fortunately that file wasn't impacted. I'm pretty sure I did not download an infected copy (but the uncertainty is frustrating.) My virus scan came up clean, so I think I'm in the clear. Still, it is very frightening and I feel for any who were unfortunate enough to be impacted by this attack. I'm glad that this was discovered and applaud all those who are involved in the investigation of this issue.

@memo This is very exciting! I'll have to test it out.

@memo It's been a busy several months, but things have finally started to slow down. I will have more time in the near future and am planning to finish working on the submenu icons.

Just a heads up, I'm pretty busy recently, so I will not be working on the submenu icons for several weeks. I plan to finish them, it just may be in a month or two.

Also, if you are using Gmax, you will likely want the HD export scripts. This gives you the option of rendering in "SD" (Zoom 5 is rendered at 1:1 pixel resolution and Zoom 6 is just zooming in) or rendering in "HD" (Zoom 5 is rendered at x2 the size so when in game, Zoom 6 is actually viewed at 1:1 resolution while Zoom 5 is shown at half resolution.) The HD resolution is great for small props or lots, but does increase the render time and .sc4model filesize significantly. Also, while it makes the highest zoom look very crisp, my understanding is it can introduce some minor graphic issues at Zoom 5 since the game is having to resample the images down. Fortunately, you can toggle which export you want to use depending on use case and your preference. There is also some information on adding true anti-aliasing to the Gmax renders. You can find more information here.

I'll jump in and add my 2 cents. I'm exploring BAT creation myself. I'm no stranger to 3D modeling, but I've never created custom BATs until a few weeks ago. As far as I know, right now Gmax is your only option for the final rendering and BAT creation. With Gmax, you are limited to its older rendering engine, so no raytracing, global illumination, PBR materials, or any other rendering advancements in the last 20 years. Additionally, I recall seeing a post indicating that some of the elements in the Gmax BAT tool don't work correctly, such as bump maps. With that limitation however, it is still possible to make perfectly passable buildings using the Gmax renders. You may have to be a little strategic about how you model and texture, some effects just won't be possible with Gmax. The workflow that I've been using is to model in Blender first, then export to Gmax for the final render. I'm currently using blender 4.0. Reading back it looks like the initial experiments to create a BAT4Blender plugin were back when 2.8 was very new. It seems like Blender has come a long way since then, for example, Blender does support exporting a 3ds file. My initial 3ds export test worked fine and showed up in Gmax. However, objects are limited to 8 characters otherwise the import will fail. Also, the 3ds format has some other limitations on file size I believe. What I have also done is work around the problem by exporting as an .obj file instead. I found some post, I think here on Simtropolis, which eventually let me to an import script on an old Battle for Middle Earth mod site (script direct download). I only use the "Wavefront OBJ Import" portion of the script, the "OBJ Import/Export" script seemed to crash when I ran it. However, that seems to be enough to render for the BAT. You might also run into the following error: "Runtime Error: Out of scripter memory- use options to increase". Gmax limits the scripting memory available, so you have to manually increase it. You can type in "heapsize += 10000000" where 10000000 is the amount of bytes to increase by. This will allow you to import larger models, but you will have less memory available for the rest of Gmax's functions. You also can't decrease the heapsize. Reloading Gmax will set the assigned memory to default. You could also add the command to a startup script so the memory is always available. It is an inelegant solution, but works ... kind of... If the model is too large, Gmax will have trouble importing, but you can split up the model and import it in pieces. I also encountered the graphics glitch when right clicking. While I don't know if there is a way to fix the problem from occurring in the first place, I did find a workaround without having to restart Gmax. If you change your screen resolution and then revert the change, the glitch disappears. Mostly I try not to right click. Not a great solution I know, but since I'm mostly using Gmax to export BATs and not to model, it helps if I accidentally do right click. I occasionally get the Direct3D message, mostly when I swap to another application. It seems to go away for me when I return focus to Gmax. I'm sure I'm not alone in being interested in a BAT4Blender tool. To my mind, for SC4 modding to stay alive, there has to be a viable way to create new BATS. The Gmax BAT is something like 20 years old and has some serious limitations. Yes it is a functional tool and still performs those same functions today. There are just none of the niceties and improvements of a more modern software. Autodesk works on the subscription model and has drastically changed their student licensing model, severely limiting the availability of their products. That and the lack of a BAT4MAX compatible with any version later than 3DS MAX 2017 seems like it is a dead end at least for SC4 modding. Since Blender is free and open source, it is of course much easier to obtain. Additionally, if some future BAT4Blender plugin relies on some specifics that change in later blender releases, it will always be possible to continue using a previous release. Now I know there is a huge gulf between wanting or supporting something and actually making that happen. I’m no programmer, so it’s easy to say it would be nice for someone to make this, but it’s a whole lot of work to actually make that happen. Despite my ignorance, I’m happy to help however I can to make Blender a feasible replacement for Gmax and BAT4Max.

Here is the rain garden in PIM-X. There is a leaf-shaped weathering steel filter garden system with tall grasses surrounded by planters and overflow filtration gravel beds. I modeled the tree and shrubs in Blender instead of as separate props so they can cast shadows on the rain garden.