mcdrye

Heyhey sorry for disappearing, but I'm here I've exported the Underground Car Park several times but I can't seem to eliminate LOD problems. If I have the LOD tight, the entrance area tends to either go dark as though it is in shadow (created by the game not rendering) or it disappears underground when placed in the game. I assumed this was the LOD extending below Z=0 but that isn't it. Any ideas? Also below is a quick side project, pretty much ready for release. It's based on the street entrances to the gigantic Bank station on the London Underground, which is under the Bank of England, the heart of the historic City of London area. What do you reckon?

Ingame testing What should I do about the lighter pavement texture? Is there a proper way of matching the ingame texture to the rendered one? I still need to redo the LODs though as you can see, in the first pic, a car being severed in half as it enters hehe.

Incase you missed it in my BAT thread I've found a better way to add neon lighting to MAX BATs without using Self Illumination. The better method is to use the fabulous Architectural Material, in 3DS MAX only, applying your Diffuse colour of choice and bumping up the luminance to between 3000 to 15000. Then just apply the material to your chosen geometry. Make sure you are using mental ray though, and have enabled Final Gather. A much more detailed tutorial is available here www.freeitsolutions.com/3ds/viewTutorial.aspx The picture below clearly shows the difference, my method on the left actually illuminates its surroundings just like it should in real life.

I could just do two STEX versions, one with neon (and maybe a choice of colour), and one without the neon.

Update time : Toned down neon Parking sign! (Will be seperately rendered as a prop) Moved the parking barriers to the front so that cars pay on exit rather than on entrance (barrier will auto-open for cars entering) Lit up the entrance/exit area (I also intend to use Maxis street light props once rendered) Changed yellow curb to grey and added speed restriction sign to entrance And the picture:

Ar yes emmotic I was concious of this but I've tried to create a pathing neutral building, so it would look OK in both the left hand and right hand versions of the game

Update! I've been working on nitelighting. Heres my progress:: I couldn't resist putting neon in there, but I could remove it if the majority don't like it I also still need to light up the entrance area. Whadda ya reckon?

To make the neon was easy, I didn't use self-illumination SimFox, I used the Architectural material, allowing me to use a much larger luminance value of around 8000cd/m2, which looks much more realistic as you can see the light hitting other geometry. This illustrates it perfectly: Then, just choose your diffuse colour and apply it to your desired geometry. For the day scenes just lower the luminance. Make sure you are using Final Gather and mental ray though so you can render the light coming from the material hitting surrounding objects. Heres a great tutorial www.freeitsolutions.com/3ds/viewTutorial.aspx

Update, I've changed the elevator shaft roof (not sure what else I could do here?) and added a very slight reflection on the concrete walls And also here is something I love that I've just learned how to do properly: Light Emitting Geometry = Neon I don't plan to release as is, just excited that I can do it hehe. Can't wait to incorporate neon into future BATs

Thanks everyone! I have a question, I want to be able to path the carpark lot so that you can see cars driving down into the carpark. I know that the LODs will need to hug the road surface and that part is easy but the thing is I can't find anything that shows me how PATH it! I have daeley's SC4 Path Creator and the Reader SC4Path templates so that I can insert the paths I create. The sticking point for me is how I link the 9 SC4Path files to each respective Lot Tile?!

Hi mosin, no the underground rail pieces are not released yet, those and this undeground car park are being made side by side.

Sorry for week long absence, I've had to reinstall Vista but everythings back to normal. Heres an update on my carpark. Thoughts?

Heres the latest picture of my rail pieces, I've got two in-game: the straight piece and the tunnel portal piece. As you'll see they match fine now but the difference in the two seperate pieces is quite large in brightness, even though they have the same render settings.

Wow, I'd love to be able to model deep level London Underground stations at platform level! How has gonzalo1234 acheived this!?

Sneak Peek Time! The first picture is a circular underground car park entrance I'm messing with. Obviously textures aren't final. What do you think of the model/idea? This picture shows two other BATs I'm messing with, a sort of giant underpass staircase and the 1st piece of the SubSurface rail set I'm doing to compliment my London Underground sub-suface station. The problem I'm having as you can see, is matching up the 1 tile pieces. How do you do this? My LODs are 16m x 16m but I'm not sure as I've not done that sort of thing before. The last picture is another SubSurface piece in the works, a single track junction leading off the main line, the sort you would see leading to small branch lines on the London Underground. The crossover connecting the other track to the juntion cannot be seen as it is in the tunnel. Thoughts?

vershner you've read my mind! I'm currently BATting some eye candy pieces I'll reveal soon. I'm also sorta working on an underground carpark entrance with a spiralling road deck. I'll probs be posting a peek later today when I get home.

Yep transparent textures are possible, just enter the material editor and change the opacity of the material you want transparent.

Hey rumy-2 thats a great start you have there! What country is this from? Unfortunately it is not possible to have the underground portion of the building visible whilst in underground (subway building) mode. One way you could do it though is to modify your building so that the underground part would be visible from the surface, similar to what I have done below. Other BATters have also done this in making glass layers that reveal underground plazas and other wonderful subterranean structures.

Fantastic! It's nice to see my hard work being used in people's cities and it looks great in your's Owaen. Btw not sure if anyone noticed but look closely at the track signals as you change from day to night. I made it so they change from red to green or vice versa to add a little extra realism hehe.

Heyhey I've released the station onto the STEX! Check it out and let me know what you think. https://www.simtropolis.com/stex/details.cfm?id=21204

I've been working on nightlighting...here it is so far

SimFox: I don't think it's possible to have visible trains passing through the station, I'd love it if someone knew how though...

I hope the image below explains the gallery SimFox, I've hidden the wall to help illustrate. This kind of layout can be quite a common way of building stations in a cutting in the UK, though the basement ticket hall is not always necessary in less urban areas. Also if space is limited, the access staircases can be built into the cutting walls, like in the station below.

Yeh I feel it is a tad too dark I'm working on that

Heyhey, here is the model ingame using your rig Jasoncw. Reverse shadows are gone. Thoughts? I'm hoping to release this soon, need to do nightlighting though. Would you say the model is fine or any improvements to be made?