MFP 1
MFP 1......Nexis Bats are back!
First a little about me you should know, if you don't already.....In the early seventies, I finished my agronomical diploma in the MacDonald College (McGill University) in Montreal, Quebec/Canada. I was going to become an Agronome. My interest for farming was great and stimulated by my father's "Gentleman's farm", which had a dozen chickens, a few sheep, 2 or 3 pigs, a horse, some ducks and 1 cow. lol
Then all of sudden I turned into architecture which I also studied at the same time, to become a custom loghome designer in 1972, which I still am today. To satisfy my "arty" (artistical) desire and talents, I do a lot of painting (oil, lead and aquarell) and some taxidermy as my hobbies.(I love animals)
When my father died in 1973, I bought the farm from my mother and started to expand the farm, having bought more land and starting the Beefcow/calf system and gathering therefore my experience with farming, buildings, farmanimals and machinery etc.
Although I actually "farm" (work hard on the farm) very little myself, I am always around my farms, even more today and I even live on it. I have several folks that run the farms of a little more than 900 acres (approx. 425 ha), but for driving the machinery, helping the birth of a calf, I am always available.
That explains the farming knowledge I have since 42 years and my interest in this project.
.........................................................................
The MFP 1, Modern Farm Props Vol 1.
Let me explain what the MFP 1 actually is to those who don't know yet. It started a little over a year ago with an idea I had since a few years back. Then I met FranKU on SC4D, who was about to release a new simcity farming set, but as he was limited with the amount of BATs and Props for his Dutch based project, it inspired me to offer myself to make a few for him.
At the same time, my project idea to make a whole new farming community came back alive.....so, why not make it both. A European and North-American farmset
That is how the project of the MFP 1 actually started. Thanks Frank.
There is already a thread out on this subject since the beginning on SC4Devotion, but since I know that many members of other simcity sites do not go to their forums, apart to download some unique "stuff" from the site, I decided that it is time to open a thread here on my original site where I am a member since 2002 (under a different name for the first 6 months) and where everyone will be able to see what's coming up to the simcity Farming world.
In the beginning, it was meant to add some modern farmbuildings to the game, while we already have lots of good looking older farm buidlings available, such as the Maxis farms and the better SPAM of course. But no new looking and modern sheds, silos, barns and stables are on the Net to make today's real life farms appear in game, and this project was meant to be of an approximately volume of some 30 to 40 BATs at the start, but to make a complete Modern farm set, it expanded into several hundreds of BATs.
Now, don't panic, you will be able to download only what you like without being forced to download everything.
The MFP1 contains 7 sets (maybe . One of them is seriously big, the mainbuidlings, and the others are reasonable sized. And there's always a way to extract modelfiles from the datfiles if absolutely needed/wanted.
I decided to open this thread a few days ago, when I realized that I am about to finish all the sets and it is time for the rest of the players to see and read about the MFP 1.
Why the Volume 1 of the Modern Farm Prop Pack? Well to be honest, the project expanded itself into a whole new direction after having started with a few farmbuildings. The idea existed already since years. Because it is totally impossible to cover all and the total of the "farming" means with only one pack, I decided to make a conclusion of a Volume 2, to be available by the end of next winter. (hopefully)
While the first Volume will cover the main subject (agriculture, horticulture and animal production) of farming as most everyone knows about, such as Cattle raising, chicken, ducks, pigs, sheep and even rabbits, dairy farms, horse stables, plus vegetable growing, small fruit and even treefarming, not forgetting cerials, both for food, feed for animals, grains for reproduction as seeds and fuel for machines as ethanol... etc. The Volume 2 will be smaller, but as important, productions, of seafood, fish, crabs and lobster, mussles and clams, algae and seaweed, including the spirulina, ethanol production, also it wll include futuristic farming of all sorts, farms that don't even exist yet , as airfarming, underground mushroom farming, on top of water and under water, and everything else imaginable. Farming is the future, if we want to feed our kids and grandchildren properly.
MFP 2 has already started btw, as many as 20 Bats are either started or finished sofar. This is top secret though, sorry, because the last time I wanted to start something (a few years back), I talked about it and then someone else did it before I wasn't finished.... ...and somehow I lost interest in BATting for a few years.
This Project is big, a lot bigger as I imagined, but it grew on me, all by itself and without realizing where it took me. It is indeed my biggest project. Now it's too late to reduce it much. More than a thousand BATs have been made, from which I am choosing the best at this moment and render them into Props.
I am not alone in this though, there is my partner who will do the LOTting and the Lot "Tweaking" (stats etc). FrankU will take care of the Dutch farming sets (usable for Euro farms). He will himself explain what he actually will be doing. Then there will be other LOTters, Renderers and Testers, which we will meet later also.
The MFP 1 consists of 7, maybe 8 complete sets.
Set.1 : Main Buildings, consisting of barns and stables, the bigger and more important buildings on a farm.(except farmhouses) Some of these could easily be used for industrial lots, such as hangars and little manufacturing shops.
Set.2 : Manure, (the smelly kind) which consists mainly of "by-products" of animal productions. It doesn't sound big and important, but if you really get into the sh*t of it, you'll be surprized how many variations of manure storing, disposel, re-cycling, composting, refining and using exists. This will contain manure composters, liquid manure tanks (purin), piles, hydraulic pumps and manure ladders etc. The second biggest set.
Set.3 : Silage. Another big set with means of silaging and storing everything from grains and cereals to green silage, ground silaging, open air silagers, vertical and horizontal silos for feed and gaz production, ethanol, etc. Most of the names I don't even know in English, but with time they will be explained and named.
Set.4 : Sheds and Shacks. There are toolsheds, machinery sheds, also little shacks for chicken, called chicken coops, and big sheds for storage, hangars etc. Again, another set of models which can be used for industrial lots. Sounds simple and small, but be not surprized when I told you that I have made more than 100 models for this category. Of course, there will be a lot less to be included in the MFP1, only the best models will be chosen.
Set.5 : Harvesting, which includes the buildings where harvests will be stored, such as smaller barns for hay and straw, also some hay and straw stacks,loose straw piles plus ways to store other harvests. Although this is one of the smaller sets, it still has at least 25 or more models.
Set.6 : Machinery and implements, containing almost all machinery used in fields and around the farm, such as tractors, wagons, plows and disc harrows, pumps and tankwagons for liquid manure, balers and harvesters, backhoes and small bulldozers etc. A lot of smaller props, which some might even be made into MMP's later on.
Set.7 : Other. This set will be the "dump" of everything else which doesn't fit into one of the above category. There will be bigger models and also small ones, ranging from buildings to some other things that we find on and around a farm, sand and dirt piles, tree stumps, woodpiles, fences and gates (open, closed), wheelbarrow, barrels, logs, gaztanks, rockpiles etc. Some could end up into MMP's.
?? Set.8 ?? : Then there is the eighth set which is not yet quite decided for if it fits into another category or not. Greenhouse farming. Growables, ploppables, small, medium, huge and immense (industrial), see through or opaque. All kinds and all sizes and styles. A complete Greenhouse kit.
Now, in this thread we will follow the development of my props set as it approaches the final steps of rendering, testing, improving and uploading, the same as I do on our co-operational thread with FrankU on SC4D.
First, here is what I am at this moment.
Set 1 is finished, rendered and sent to FrankU for final testing and then LOTting.
Set 2 is finished and I am rendering them as I write this. It should be send to FrankU by the coming weekend.
Set 3 is finished and only partially rendered.
Set 4 is finished also and not rendered, some models have to be re-sized first, as I saw when testing them ingame, they are too big and out of scale.
Set 5 is about to be finished, shouldn't take more than a week or so. Not rendered yet of course.
Set 6 is still partially in the making, trying to search for good pictures of different machinery. I have received a set from Rambuckel, which she kindly allowed me to use, include and "re-build" into a machinery set. Her tractor, wagon and a harvester are very welcomed. Thanks Rambuckel.
Set 7 is almost finished, there are some fences to finish and that's about it I guess. Fences will be rendered in HD by Krashspeed who is willing to help out, since my computer does not accept the HD rendering program. Krashspeed will do the HD rendering of the barbwire fence set. Thanks.
Set 8 (?) is finished and some parts rendered and sent off to FrankU for LOTing and using them as growables for his farmfield set. The other half is finished, but not yet rendered. This shouldn't take long since there's only 7 models left to render. Maybe some resizing is necessary, we'll see.
So, this is one year's of BATting, testing and so on......
The props of the MFP 1 will be available a little before FrankU has finished his Dutch farm set on the STEX and maybe other sites also. These Sets will you give the chance to build your own complete farms of all sorts and with all details, maybe one (or several) of you will make some North-American farmsets with these props, so that I don't have to do them all next winter.
Meanwhile I will keep you informed here (with pictures of course) how the Project of the MFP 1 is coming to an end. Pictures of many different models from each category will be coming this and next week or when I will have the time. Some ingame pictures also.
mrb/ Fred
Just to give you a tiny idea what these props look like, here is a preview of an assembly of a few different MFP 1 props.
Enjoy and start dreaming about the farmworld you will be able to create.
Have Fun with Nexis
Note: On the second picture there is an error rendering of the picture. You can see the top of the blue steel silo being damaged (white cap). The model is actually as nice as on the first picture.
Direct links to the original sized Pictures, more detailed.
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/1263/4425.jpg
http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/609/4426x.jpg
First a little about me you should know, if you don't already.....In the early seventies, I finished my agronomical diploma in the MacDonald College (McGill University) in Montreal, Quebec/Canada. I was going to become an Agronome. My interest for farming was great and stimulated by my father's "Gentleman's farm", which had a dozen chickens, a few sheep, 2 or 3 pigs, a horse, some ducks and 1 cow. lol
Then all of sudden I turned into architecture which I also studied at the same time, to become a custom loghome designer in 1972, which I still am today. To satisfy my "arty" (artistical) desire and talents, I do a lot of painting (oil, lead and aquarell) and some taxidermy as my hobbies.(I love animals)
When my father died in 1973, I bought the farm from my mother and started to expand the farm, having bought more land and starting the Beefcow/calf system and gathering therefore my experience with farming, buildings, farmanimals and machinery etc.
Although I actually "farm" (work hard on the farm) very little myself, I am always around my farms, even more today and I even live on it. I have several folks that run the farms of a little more than 900 acres (approx. 425 ha), but for driving the machinery, helping the birth of a calf, I am always available.
That explains the farming knowledge I have since 42 years and my interest in this project.
.........................................................................
The MFP 1, Modern Farm Props Vol 1.
Let me explain what the MFP 1 actually is to those who don't know yet. It started a little over a year ago with an idea I had since a few years back. Then I met FranKU on SC4D, who was about to release a new simcity farming set, but as he was limited with the amount of BATs and Props for his Dutch based project, it inspired me to offer myself to make a few for him.
At the same time, my project idea to make a whole new farming community came back alive.....so, why not make it both. A European and North-American farmset
That is how the project of the MFP 1 actually started. Thanks Frank.
There is already a thread out on this subject since the beginning on SC4Devotion, but since I know that many members of other simcity sites do not go to their forums, apart to download some unique "stuff" from the site, I decided that it is time to open a thread here on my original site where I am a member since 2002 (under a different name for the first 6 months) and where everyone will be able to see what's coming up to the simcity Farming world.
In the beginning, it was meant to add some modern farmbuildings to the game, while we already have lots of good looking older farm buidlings available, such as the Maxis farms and the better SPAM of course. But no new looking and modern sheds, silos, barns and stables are on the Net to make today's real life farms appear in game, and this project was meant to be of an approximately volume of some 30 to 40 BATs at the start, but to make a complete Modern farm set, it expanded into several hundreds of BATs.
Now, don't panic, you will be able to download only what you like without being forced to download everything.
The MFP1 contains 7 sets (maybe . One of them is seriously big, the mainbuidlings, and the others are reasonable sized. And there's always a way to extract modelfiles from the datfiles if absolutely needed/wanted.
I decided to open this thread a few days ago, when I realized that I am about to finish all the sets and it is time for the rest of the players to see and read about the MFP 1.
Why the Volume 1 of the Modern Farm Prop Pack? Well to be honest, the project expanded itself into a whole new direction after having started with a few farmbuildings. The idea existed already since years. Because it is totally impossible to cover all and the total of the "farming" means with only one pack, I decided to make a conclusion of a Volume 2, to be available by the end of next winter. (hopefully)
While the first Volume will cover the main subject (agriculture, horticulture and animal production) of farming as most everyone knows about, such as Cattle raising, chicken, ducks, pigs, sheep and even rabbits, dairy farms, horse stables, plus vegetable growing, small fruit and even treefarming, not forgetting cerials, both for food, feed for animals, grains for reproduction as seeds and fuel for machines as ethanol... etc. The Volume 2 will be smaller, but as important, productions, of seafood, fish, crabs and lobster, mussles and clams, algae and seaweed, including the spirulina, ethanol production, also it wll include futuristic farming of all sorts, farms that don't even exist yet , as airfarming, underground mushroom farming, on top of water and under water, and everything else imaginable. Farming is the future, if we want to feed our kids and grandchildren properly.
MFP 2 has already started btw, as many as 20 Bats are either started or finished sofar. This is top secret though, sorry, because the last time I wanted to start something (a few years back), I talked about it and then someone else did it before I wasn't finished.... ...and somehow I lost interest in BATting for a few years.
This Project is big, a lot bigger as I imagined, but it grew on me, all by itself and without realizing where it took me. It is indeed my biggest project. Now it's too late to reduce it much. More than a thousand BATs have been made, from which I am choosing the best at this moment and render them into Props.
I am not alone in this though, there is my partner who will do the LOTting and the Lot "Tweaking" (stats etc). FrankU will take care of the Dutch farming sets (usable for Euro farms). He will himself explain what he actually will be doing. Then there will be other LOTters, Renderers and Testers, which we will meet later also.
The MFP 1 consists of 7, maybe 8 complete sets.
Set.1 : Main Buildings, consisting of barns and stables, the bigger and more important buildings on a farm.(except farmhouses) Some of these could easily be used for industrial lots, such as hangars and little manufacturing shops.
Set.2 : Manure, (the smelly kind) which consists mainly of "by-products" of animal productions. It doesn't sound big and important, but if you really get into the sh*t of it, you'll be surprized how many variations of manure storing, disposel, re-cycling, composting, refining and using exists. This will contain manure composters, liquid manure tanks (purin), piles, hydraulic pumps and manure ladders etc. The second biggest set.
Set.3 : Silage. Another big set with means of silaging and storing everything from grains and cereals to green silage, ground silaging, open air silagers, vertical and horizontal silos for feed and gaz production, ethanol, etc. Most of the names I don't even know in English, but with time they will be explained and named.
Set.4 : Sheds and Shacks. There are toolsheds, machinery sheds, also little shacks for chicken, called chicken coops, and big sheds for storage, hangars etc. Again, another set of models which can be used for industrial lots. Sounds simple and small, but be not surprized when I told you that I have made more than 100 models for this category. Of course, there will be a lot less to be included in the MFP1, only the best models will be chosen.
Set.5 : Harvesting, which includes the buildings where harvests will be stored, such as smaller barns for hay and straw, also some hay and straw stacks,loose straw piles plus ways to store other harvests. Although this is one of the smaller sets, it still has at least 25 or more models.
Set.6 : Machinery and implements, containing almost all machinery used in fields and around the farm, such as tractors, wagons, plows and disc harrows, pumps and tankwagons for liquid manure, balers and harvesters, backhoes and small bulldozers etc. A lot of smaller props, which some might even be made into MMP's later on.
Set.7 : Other. This set will be the "dump" of everything else which doesn't fit into one of the above category. There will be bigger models and also small ones, ranging from buildings to some other things that we find on and around a farm, sand and dirt piles, tree stumps, woodpiles, fences and gates (open, closed), wheelbarrow, barrels, logs, gaztanks, rockpiles etc. Some could end up into MMP's.
?? Set.8 ?? : Then there is the eighth set which is not yet quite decided for if it fits into another category or not. Greenhouse farming. Growables, ploppables, small, medium, huge and immense (industrial), see through or opaque. All kinds and all sizes and styles. A complete Greenhouse kit.
Now, in this thread we will follow the development of my props set as it approaches the final steps of rendering, testing, improving and uploading, the same as I do on our co-operational thread with FrankU on SC4D.
First, here is what I am at this moment.
Set 1 is finished, rendered and sent to FrankU for final testing and then LOTting.
Set 2 is finished and I am rendering them as I write this. It should be send to FrankU by the coming weekend.
Set 3 is finished and only partially rendered.
Set 4 is finished also and not rendered, some models have to be re-sized first, as I saw when testing them ingame, they are too big and out of scale.
Set 5 is about to be finished, shouldn't take more than a week or so. Not rendered yet of course.
Set 6 is still partially in the making, trying to search for good pictures of different machinery. I have received a set from Rambuckel, which she kindly allowed me to use, include and "re-build" into a machinery set. Her tractor, wagon and a harvester are very welcomed. Thanks Rambuckel.
Set 7 is almost finished, there are some fences to finish and that's about it I guess. Fences will be rendered in HD by Krashspeed who is willing to help out, since my computer does not accept the HD rendering program. Krashspeed will do the HD rendering of the barbwire fence set. Thanks.
Set 8 (?) is finished and some parts rendered and sent off to FrankU for LOTing and using them as growables for his farmfield set. The other half is finished, but not yet rendered. This shouldn't take long since there's only 7 models left to render. Maybe some resizing is necessary, we'll see.
So, this is one year's of BATting, testing and so on......
The props of the MFP 1 will be available a little before FrankU has finished his Dutch farm set on the STEX and maybe other sites also. These Sets will you give the chance to build your own complete farms of all sorts and with all details, maybe one (or several) of you will make some North-American farmsets with these props, so that I don't have to do them all next winter.
Meanwhile I will keep you informed here (with pictures of course) how the Project of the MFP 1 is coming to an end. Pictures of many different models from each category will be coming this and next week or when I will have the time. Some ingame pictures also.
mrb/ Fred
Just to give you a tiny idea what these props look like, here is a preview of an assembly of a few different MFP 1 props.
Enjoy and start dreaming about the farmworld you will be able to create.
Have Fun with Nexis
Note: On the second picture there is an error rendering of the picture. You can see the top of the blue steel silo being damaged (white cap). The model is actually as nice as on the first picture.
Direct links to the original sized Pictures, more detailed.
http://img689.imageshack.us/img689/1263/4425.jpg
http://img542.imageshack.us/img542/609/4426x.jpg