IDS's (mostly) Minnesota BATs

[gutterclub 2,729]

Oh Zarul how I've missed your subtleness the past few weeks

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Ok, so how about another crappy lot design? I thought I'd make something plain and simple, no-frills, to go with the overall appearance of the building - and of course, something that would complement the building unobtrusively so that BAT and lot look like one.

This is where we're at:

Many of the flora props as well as the people on the lot are randomised. I hope the final result is acceptable.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Acceptable? That crappy lot design is fantastic. Awesome work!

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Wonderful stuff T Wrecks One small comment though, the lines between the squares of paving seem a bit to obvious. It might have always been this way though and I just never noticed before now.

  Edited June 29, 2012 by Ion_Cannon  

[Girafe 1,729]

The lot is nice but I would prefer a batted street at the entrance, it would avoid the problem of TE but it's up to the batter and not the lotter

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Yeah, that's the way these Maxis overlays are - no way around that effect, I'm afraid. :| Anyway, I'm glad that at least two people so far seem to like it!

There are still some tweaks as well as behind-the-scenes stuff to do, and I must double-check dependencies. In the absolutely worst case, we're looking at 3 dependencies. I suppose there are only two.

EDIT

@ girafe: What "problem of TE" do you mean?

[Jack_wilds 550]

Excellent lot interpretation Twrecks!... like the use, placement of the softscape, in and around the hard scape... its a very typical look for such an office... also, can the TE be option that is -one lot normal and another TE'd ... IDS ought to like this... it really suits the model well...

  Edited June 29, 2012 by Jack_wilds  

[Girafe 1,729]

[IDS2 3,344]

Wow! That looks spectacular! I absolutely adore it. What's the next step, then?

[Jasoncw 11,839]

Actually to overcome that problem with the pavers overlay texture, you can mirror it and duplicate it. Only one edge of the texture has that problem (the missing row of pixels) so if you mirror it and overlay it on top, the problem is solved.

[T Wrecks 10,209]

@ girafe: Oh, this is what you mean. Yeah, I might just have a solution/workaround (see below).

@ Jack: Nice to see you here! I suppose "hardscape" means the building itself, the paved plaza, and any planters or flower beds, and "softscape" is the flora? In any case, I'm glad that you think I managed to get the look right - and I even learned some words in the process!

@ Jason: How do you know that? You're a lifesaver!

@ IDS2: Whoa, I'm really glad you like the lot design so much. Next step is - was - addressing some shortcomings that were mentioned here. The result looks like this:

No more ugly lines, and no texture offset between lot and road network.

Next step after this will be a look on the values and a decision on the transit-enabling feature. IMO, it can safely be done for both ploppable and growable. Here's why:

The only reason that speaks against TE'ing growable lots is that this makes them impossible to overgrow with some better building automatically. Instead, you have to bulldoze the building manually in order te free up the lot again. Now this is a problem when we think about a 4x4 car cinema. You'd probably want to keep the possibility that the game will eventually upgrade from that lousy cinema to a beautiful skyscraper, right? So TE'ing that 4x4 cinema would be a bad idea, because once grown, it would block the 4x4 lot for better buildings.

This raises the question: When you keep the growable WFP without TE feature - what exactly do you have up your sleeve that should be able to grow over WFP and upgrade that 5x10 lot with something better? Uh... probably nothing, right? You probably zoned those 5x10 explicitly in order to get a WFP there, and once you have it, you basically high-five yourself, click that "Make historical" button and think "Mission accomplished" before you lean back and enjoy the look.

Once this decision is made, there's a lot of copy/paste in the reader to do. Then one upload for me, one download for you, and the rest is in your hands. Next stop STEX.

[Girafe 1,729]

Ahah it's much better. The lot is simple but fits perfect with the style of the BAT; The BAT is well done (have to go to check the lights as I don't remember about them )

[Jasoncw 11,839]

lol yeah I think that's the only technical contribution to a lot that I'll ever make. Normally I'm the one asking questions.

But I just noticed, looking more closely, in the bottom right of the screenshot, the shadows cast by the lowrise part of the building look messed up.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Ah so there was a way to fix the maxis texture, good news

[Sgt Pepper 864]

I also noticed what Jason was referring too, it's like there's a second sun casting the back of the lowrise building's shadow in an opposite direction than the rest of the building....

It could be just overlooked, since the building is fantastic as is. It could be something ingame and not with the building itself. Maybe it would automatically fix itself by placing the building again or elsehwere?

I love the lot itself as well. T Wrecks, once again your lotting magic proves true.

[Jack_wilds 550]

Twrecks: the tweaking improvements cleaned the lot up well... however what Jasoncw pointed out may need looking at...

FYI: As for 'hardscape', 'softscape' terms; your guess is essentialliy correct... as I've been in commercial landscaping design for too many years... and those terms are more for the landscapeing design/install aspects... Hardscape= typically applies to all structre with in and surrounding the job site or project zones -existing, planned new, add-on or as-build [sometimes rock work can be considered hardscape if its permante to the design] Softscape= typically applies to all plant material, bedding, soil amendments, etc [sometimes landscape accessaries fall in to this term as those items aren't permante ie: bird feeders, simple artsy stuff, seasonal items]...

You and IDS2 ought to consider further collaberation concerning the rest of IDS2's business park project...

[IDS2 3,344]

Even better! I think we should keep it TE. Might as well, right?

I wouldn't worry about the shadows thing, but I usually play with shadows off anyway. I've had the shadows get a little weird on custom content before, but maybe it's just my graphics card.

[IDS2 3,344]

WFP is finally almost to the STEX I've spent most of the past couple weeks practicing my modeling skills (Working on WFP for so long sort of limited my opportunities for growth), but I thought I'd show you a couple things I worked on a bit earlier:

1) Progress on my generic office buildings. I really like the two at the bottom left, but the one at the top left continues to confuse me despite the fact that it's almost a copy of the real life building. I could really go either way on the ones that haven't been textured yet, I'm sure I'll keep a few but probably ditch the rest. Most of them are pretty old and, as a result, aren't done as well as I'd like them to be. I've come to the realization lately that just because I have a lot of unfinished buildings doesn't mean that they're all worth finishing.

2) I've sorta started to revisit that residential building I was working on a while back. I worked on the foliage and roof textures, but the glass is still far from where I'd like it to be. I'm toying with the idea of modeling the windows with more conventional shapes. Does the red look any better than the blue did?

3) Finally got around to working on the roof equipment on my Riverview Office Tower. The facade is tricky because I'm really not sure what material it's supposed to be (some sort of brushed aluminum from what I can gather), but right now I have a nice blend map that combines some Arch and Design metallic stuff and some brush patterns I derived from my WFP concrete textures. I keep wanting to reduce the saturation on this thing, but the real life building is really that bright. Gonna tweak the dark roof texture in the middle some more.

I'm not sure which building to focus on next. I forgot about CNA Center and the postmodern one I was working on, but I'm thinking I might wanna tackle a shorter building first. I've been looking at these buildings so long that it's easy to forget how to critique them, so please don't hold back

  Edited July 2, 2012 by IDS2  

[Francis90b 748]

I'm split about the apartment's glass...there's something I like in both versions, but i can't decide over which...

Please don't model "conventional" window for that building...i think that the current design really helps in making it interesting.

I like the riverview tower, but i think that it might be tricky to get it right - best of luck with it.

Also (just to throw an idea), i would envision the riverview as being covered in light opaque glass, like, for example, the Vuitton store in NYC...

[IDS2 3,344]

Wells Fargo Plaza has hit the STEX!

@Francis: I'll keep the windows, then I like the opaque glass idea. It'll be tricky to materialize, but I'm not getting much from the photos of the real building.

It's really hard to tell exactly what it is...anyway, I decided that Riverview will be my next project! Let's hope it doesn't take a year this time Modeling itself is about 90% done, but texturing is still far from finished.

Anyway, I updated my line of generics a little bit in an attempt to salvage some of the worse ones:

I cut the long, white one down to a third of its original size. I'll probably end up ditching the fat, brown one in the middle, but something keeps me from doing so...

  Edited July 7, 2012 by IDS2  

[darn42 1,268]

Woohoo! It's finally here! Looks fantastic, truly. Congratulations on a great release.

About the YELLOW! one, I think that the windows could be just a bit bigger. Not sure if it's just the view, but it looks like the ratio between the spandrels (I think that's what they would be called) and the windows is different than in the picture of real life. Also, the yellow could be a bit more orange I would say. Also, in the real picture, the yellow tiles on the wall have slightly different colors sometimes, think about making them like that. Overall great.

All your smaller buildings are looking good at the moment, I'd love to see what they turn into.

[Sgt Pepper 864]

Oh my many goodies in this! Many goodies! I've started numerous projects before at once, and that usually doens't work out for me. But looks like you're handling it well.

I'd love to see all of them in my cities.

[Ion_Cannon 677]

Downloaded I'll get a chance to play around with it properly next week hopefully. The other office buildings are coming along well

[AcmeSigns 97]

Maybe one of these will help with the cladding on Riverview?

[IL. 1,043]

Glad to see that BAT uploaded finally

[Jack_wilds 550]

its all promising looking forward to further development... concerning the un-named apartments with the neat windows... that when Twrecks begins this one that it be apartments, and then add a hospital, lifrary, city hall and/or courthouse as this structure lends to a flexibilty towards civic uses too...

[T Wrecks 10,209]

Are these recreations? If not, a light court right in the middle of the fat brown one might make it look less fat and ugly.

[Jasoncw 11,839]

For the gold building:

It looks like the facade is made out of metal. And it's reflective. So for this, I think you'll want to try increasing the IOR to something like 22. And then in the BRDF rollout, change the reflections to "By IOR (fresnel reflections)". This will make it metallic. It will basically look like a giant chrome building.

But even though the metal is reflective, the reflections aren't sharp, so you don't want the glosiness to be 1.

And then even though the building is sort of mirror like, it's not really super reflective, so you don't want the metal to have a reflectivity of 1. You want it high enough that you can tell that it's reflective metal but not so high that it starts looking unnaturally perfectly reflective.

For the glass, it has a gold tint to it but it's not really very gold if you look at it. Try just making normal reflective glass, and then change the refraction color (should be right above where you change the IOR) to gold. You should end up with normal reflective glass that has a gold tint to it.

[gutterclub 2,729]

Hope this comes to fruition, it's both awesome and completely needed

[IDS2 3,344]

Darn: Thanks! Fixed the yellow, I added more variation to the color too, I think it looks a lot better now. I'll check on the windows, I kinda see what you mean, I think it might be partly because of the angle of my z5 render but it might be worth making them a bit bigger so you can tell they're bigger than the spandrels.

Sgt Pepper: I've been told I have a short attention span Don't worry, I plan on finishing all of them!

Ion: Sweet, thanks! Let me know if you see it at all around the CJ section, I'd love to see how people make use of it

Acme: Woah, thanks man! Definitely helped I hadn't thought about looking it up on flickr, I was going mainly using Bing Maps.

IL: It's a huge relief, I'll tell you that

Jack: That's probably what I like most about it, the fact that it looks like it could serve several purposes. Unfortunately, that also makes it very difficult to model...without a solid direction, I have to be more vague. When the time comes, I'll definitely mod it in a few different categories.

T Wrecks: It's only very loosely based on a real building, so I think I'll try that light court I believe the adjacent building actually has some sort of atrium, so I'll try combining the two.

Jason: Ooh, thank you! That made it look a lot better! I didn't even notice the reflections in the photos. When I was changing the glossiness I noticed a box that said "metal material," should I check that? I also changed the glass, it looks more orange now but I think it's good.

Gutterclub: You're in luck! I've been tweaking the glass and foliage a bit and I think I came up with something that I'll show a bit farther down.

I'd like to once again thank all of you who guided me through working on WFP and everyone who has downloaded it so far!

I took another look at the real building and noticed that the facade has changed slightly in recent years. Upon a trip to the site, I confirmed my suspicions that my rendition was far too yellow, so I came up with this:

Other than the side louvers and checking out the window size a bit more, maybe scaling them up, is there anything that demands immediate attention?

Also, tweaked this a little more...I think it's getting there.

Finally, can anyone explain what's happening here? I even tried merging the geometry into a new scene and it still happened, so I dunno...