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AntigOne's Projects: Elsewhere.

Started by Badsim, January 17, 2007, 02:14:19 PM

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dyoungyn

Looks great &apls  Reminds me of where I grew up in Utah at the ski resorts which are numerous.

noahclem

#2601
Absolutely beautiful  &apls Love the creation of the snowy textures chopped up by skis and boots--adds a great detail! Road and sidewalk textures are truly top-notch and I always like the way you do nice crosswalks a bit more realistically offset but never really copy that--should make a point to borrow that one a little more  :evilgrin: The namspopof bat fits perfectly in there as well and really helps support some of the zoom6 details. Shame there's so few snowy-roofed bats around. The only one I can think of that I don't think I've seen, and also isn't St Basil's Cathedral, is "my retreat". Not as much a ski condo or mansion as a little cottage so might not fit but a possibility to consider if you work on an area a little further away from it all ;)

EDIT: Ah! Didn't see you posted again before me :D Huge thanks to Matt for the snowy roofs there  &apls  FSH editing actually turned out very nice as well. But do you really need to put the snow on all 5 zoom levels or could you just scale down the biggest one? Perhaps that shows my ignorance of batting but just sounds like something that might be doable, even if only the snowy part and paste just that over the original ones. I'm going to go ahead and say this is the all-time best ski resort made in SC4--and that ought to be worth some karma too  :squirrel:

art128

Can you tell us a bit more about the process of FSH modifying? I had the idea of doing it but never really went to look at that too much. Now that i know it's actually possible, this opens up quite a few possibilities. :)
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

mgb204

Quote from: art128 on November 26, 2017, 11:37:35 PM
Can you tell us a bit more about the process of FSH modifying? I had the idea of doing it but never really went to look at that too much. Now that i know it's actually possible, this opens up quite a few possibilities. :)

It's simple in theory, the problem is that it can be hideously complex to actually do. So each SC4 model is rendered with 20 or more FSH textures, one for each zoom and rotation. In essence you extract the FSH files and convert them back to BMP/PNG textures so you can edit them in an image editing application. But, since the renders are all at funny angles, there is your first problem in re texturing them. The largest zooms typically (depending on the size of the model), have more than one texture for each rotation, so those need to be combined/separated during the editing process. Where it gets tricky though is the smaller zooms, zoom 1 textures are 16x32 pixels in size, zoom 2 is 32x64, working with such tiny textures is hideously intricate work. In short, as soon as you've tried it, you'll probably come to the conclusion most who've been there have, it's just easier to make a new model from scratch. That way you can customise the textures/renders however you like.

One useful tip if you are set on trying this out, use GoFSH, which makes the process of extracting, converting and re-importing the textures painless. But even if you are a master with textures, which you'll need to be, the results of editing textures is rarely worth the effort of doing it. Especially if you are competent at making BATs yourself.

Badsim

#2604
Hi Robin , thanks for having replied so promptly to Arthur ,  you're right but I've to specify  some points ...

Quote from: mgb204 on November 27, 2017, 12:55:11 AM

It's simple in theory, the problem is that it can be hideously complex to actually do. So each SC4 model is rendered with 20 or more FSH textures, one for each zoom and rotation. In essence you extract the FSH files and convert them back to BMP/PNG textures so you can edit them in an image editing application...


With Null 45 FSH Format Plugin for Photoshop , no conversion needed , you can read , build and slice canvas , edit and save .FSHs files directly , ... I use Photoshop CS2 and that works like a charm .  ()stsfd()

Quote from: mgb204 on November 27, 2017, 12:55:11 AM

.... Where it gets tricky though is the smaller zooms, zoom 1 textures are 16x32 pixels in size, zoom 2 is 32x64, working with such tiny textures is hideously intricate work...


In fact , FSHs are the same for zooms 5 & 4 , then FSHs for zooms 3 , 2 , 1 & 0 are simple sizes reduction and repositioning of FSH 5/4 , so , once the work is done for FSH 5/4 it takes a few minutes only to generate the others ... far to be an hideously intricate work . :)

Quote from: mgb204 on November 27, 2017, 12:55:11 AM

... In short, as soon as you've tried it, you'll probably come to the conclusion most who've been there have, it's just easier to make a new model from scratch. That way you can customise the textures/renders however you like.

One useful tip if you are set on trying this out, use GoFSH, which makes the process of extracting, converting and re-importing the textures painless. But even if you are a master with textures, which you'll need to be, the results of editing textures is rarely worth the effort of doing it. Especially if you are competent at making BATs yourself.


Right for Arthur ( still depends of what he has in mind though ... )  , but  I'm not a BATer ( but I'm rather determined  :P ) and if I'm not  able to tell how much time it would take to re-BAT and re-render one of these BAT from Matt , Antoine or Namspopof I'm using here , I can show what I've done today , taking me a few hours :

Girafe's Chalet Edelweiss re-textured ,

Zoom5



Zoom4



Zoom3



Zoom2



Zoom1



Zoom0



And on the same picture , re-texturing of Girafe's Chalet Edelweiss and Ski Lift , Mattb325's Emporio Apartments and Englewood Condos :

Zoom5



Zoom4



Zoom3



... sorry for the other zoom levels but I've planned  things for an extension of that ski resort and I don't want to show it right now . $%Grinno$%

For the time being , the task is done for that angle of view only , but , considering these results for a single day of work , be sure that this re-texturing work will be done for all angles of all past and future BATs I'm using there ... I even intend to replace the last BATs that Matt kindly provided me by their original versions re-textured by me ( sorry Matt ... the scene request standardization  :) ) .

Thanks Noah , I've got some ideas to develop this , just a clue : at the same time than my texturing works , have started to resize and   move the Z axis of some old , very old props from Tag-one ( 2006 ) ...

Arthur , if you want further informations , PM me , I spend too much time with translation for a complete tutorial . :-[

Thanks all , :thumbsup:

Cédric.

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Akallan

I love snow, and in SC4 it's hard to create a scene with snow. But when I look at your images and your work, everything seems easier! Very nice pictures! :popcorn:
My CJ :


My european road textures project : S N T - v.2.1

dyoungyn

WOW, just plain WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  Is it safe to assume all your wonderful imaginative buildings/condos/hotels be made available and includes in your snow/ski pac?  I especially love the single level duplex'. 

Simmer2

I can almost hear..."JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE BELLS, JINGLE ALL THE WAY"

Faaantastic! &apls

Nick
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Krasner

Great  :bnn: Mattb's re-worked roofs are just perfect along with your work  :thumbsup:
ANARCHIST !!

kelis

Now the snowy scenes are complete !! Those apartments looks very good  &apls
.                                                                                                                      

                                                                                     || Benelux Team || Windows on the World || My Photos on Flickr || Kelis BNL Projects ||

mgb204

First off, congrats on getting snow on those roofs, it's those details that really make a huge difference to the scene.

Quote from: Badsim on November 27, 2017, 01:55:43 PM
With Null 45 FSH Format Plugin for Photoshop , no conversion needed , you can read , build and slice canvas , edit and save .FSHs files directly , ... I use Photoshop CS2 and that works like a charm .  ()stsfd()

I'm aware of it and have it installed, only I am stuck in my ways of using BMPs. GoFSH will take them and re-package them into a DAT for me with the IDs, so neither method is hugely more labour intensive.

QuoteIn fact , FSHs are the same for zooms 5 & 4 , then FSHs for zooms 3 , 2 , 1 & 0 are simple sizes reduction and repositioning of FSH 5/4 , so , once the work is done for FSH 5/4 it takes a few minutes only to generate the others ... far to be an hideously intricate work . :)

That's not quite right, (sorry nitpicking here), zoom 6 & 5 use the same texture. Because Zoom 6 was added at the last minute to the game, what we see is an upscaled z5 texture (or the reverse for HD renders, i.e. z5 is downscaled from z6). Then it's zooms 1-4 for the remainder, I guess you've been seeing too many IDs recently  $%Grinno$%.

Anyhow, the main point here is that each of the 5 unique textures/zooms, are not exactly scaled from the next size up. I.e. zoom 4 is not, as you might expect, exactly half the size of zoom 5 and so on. Sure the texture in terms of the pixel HxW may be, but the image within that is not. Each zoom brings about a slight variation in terms of the relative dimensions of the image. I know this from my work in this area, but you might want to take a look at this article by Rivit. That gets into a lot of the technicalities of BAT renders.

In essence this won't be a big problem if you are an expert with textures, not to mention adding detail to a roof like this, is a whole different ball game to what I was doing. Trying to replace parts of existing models entirely. It can be done, but very few people have the skills to get good results in a reasonable time frame, that's really all I was trying to say here.

Of course if you are able to work with all the funny angles and still get good results, bring it on. Sadly though, you probably can't release the modified textures, at least without the permission of the author. Since you only need all the textures with snow in an override DAT, to switch between summer and winter, it would be great if such a thing could be made available for others. Since we have some great snow-themed content from VIP already. It'd also be possible to procedurally replace all the grass on networks for snow, similar to the RRW ReSkin, but using my TGN repository. The results wouldn't be as good as with your dedicated textures, but it's a click and run job that would have greater support for all textures.

Badsim

So what , if I had the bad idea to become ... radical ?  ()what() Most probably I would « snowy-fy » all props used there ...  %BUd%

01




02




Work done for Buzzit's French medium voltage set and a few vehicles  from Girafe and Vnaoned . Coupled with the re-texturing  - once more  %bur2$ for a full snow version - of Matt's Emporio Apartments , some Moding of Xannepan's Weather Mod ( December's weather all year long ) and some more « snowy-fied » props ( Porkissimo's Trash Container , Peg's Mountain Sign and  Streetlights from BSCBATProps RT SNM Vol.2 ) , I get this so far :

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Now , I need to be clear : all these works are experimental for my MD , a personal challenge with no public release planned , sorry , too much work for an alone man as I am ... Unfortunately , the VIP Team like all other teams , except the NAM one , is moribund ... my thought is that the Snow theme should have been a complete world apart like SimMars and this project should have been done 10 years ago while the community was flourishing ...  Golden ages don't use to come back , that's the way it is .  &sly

Thanks , Robin , for your clarification  ( and interesting information about Zoom6 having been added at the last minute , never heard of this before ... )

Cédric.

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Krasner

Flourishing times won't come back yeah  /wrrd%& We have to be down-to-earth, but on planet earth some stunning stuff is still happening to this game. Like your images, even without possible release, I tell you :satisfied:

By the way, you may have seen on Simtrop' I started to BAT some new chalet-ish worker's house...



Would you like to get a snowy version of this ? I can try at least, to make it presentable ;)
ANARCHIST !!

Girafe

Awesome work Cedric.  &apls &apls

You know how much I love snow scenes, it was my inspiration to start BATing.

I am fighting with 3dsmax for a potential come back. Unfortunately, I am not able to install it properly and make it work with SC4BAT. After many hours of trials, I am completely demotivated and I gave up   &ops &ops
The Floraler

This is the end, hold your breath and count to ten, feel the earth move, and then...

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Badsim

Quote from: mgb204 on November 27, 2017, 12:55:11 AM

...   But even if you are a master with textures, which you'll need to be, ...


So true , Robin , and I've to admit that I wasn't ready for these very fine FSHs editing tasks ... I had to improve my Photoshop abilities , that's why results are so long to come , and , most probably , I will spend the next months to give to that ski resort the full snow appearance I've in mind , because I know it's feasible and never done before . I won't say that I became a Photoshop God , but I've progressed enough to get decent results : so Emporio Apartments has been re-textured once more , before I started to re-texture Almeda Townhomes and various props concomitantly :

01


02


03


Yeah , still a lot to do ... I've also started to « snowyfy» Girafe's flags , kind of details hard to spot .  ::)



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At the same time ...

Quote from: Badsim on November 27, 2017, 01:55:43 PM

Thanks Noah , I've got some ideas to develop this , just a clue : I have started to resize and   move the Z axis of some old , very old props from Tag-one ( 2006 ) ...


Here a picture of these props ,

04


And 2 prehistoric pictures about my laborious effort to make a ski resort with them in 2007 :

05


06



The complete ( and now laughable  $%Grinno$% ) scene is still visible   Page 38

Now , let's see , with « Yeti Bar » as example , what's feasible ten years after :

07



... in its planned background :

08




When I think that 3 weeks ago , I only knew the technique through some readings and  didn't know that I would take possession of it with , have to say , such fervor ... I told it many times by the past : to be unable to BAT is my bigger frustration and , in a way , I know now the feeling of a BATer seeing ingame  his/her work for the first time . I said « in a way » because , of course , I'm still just an usurper here ...  &Thk/(

Now that it is revealed that I can modify a BAT almost as much as I want ( as long as I respect the S3D files for my concern , but I know that Robin went further ... ) , the most complicated is to stay focused and patient enough , while tens of other ideas come in mind ...  &hlp




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REPLIES :



Quote from: Krasner on December 01, 2017, 10:52:02 AM

... By the way, you may have seen on Simtrop' I started to BAT some new chalet-ish worker's house...



Would you like to get a snowy version of this ? I can try at least, to make it presentable ;)


Of course it would be great to be an inspiration for some BATers like you are , to do so ...  :thumbsup: tell me if you want ( for consistency purpose ) me to send you the snow texture I'm using ... although I don't know if it's applicable to the BATing process ?  ()what()

.



Quote from: Girafe on December 01, 2017, 11:45:56 PM


You know how much I love snow scenes, it was my inspiration to start BATing.

I am fighting with 3dsmax for a potential come back. Unfortunately, I am not able to install it properly and make it work with SC4BAT. After many hours of trials, I am completely demotivated and I gave up   &ops &ops

Yes I know and I regret to have not shown more interest for your work at that period , so many things unfinished and now lost for good ... even pictures of them on your BATing thread have vanished !  :'(

Hope you'll be persevering , Antoine , against your re-installation problems : it would be terrible news for the community to know that we can't expect anything anymore from you . ()sad()



Cédric.

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Krasner

Still great work here  :thumbsup:Considering your proposition, I can use your snow texture as long as it is an image with a format like .jpg or .png, or whatever. I already made a try with some snow images I found on the internet, but I could try yours as well  :satisfied: That may add coherence.
ANARCHIST !!

art128

I was wondering when you'd be using tag_one's creation. Nice work editing the FSH! Looks pretty well done and not out of place and doesn't seem modified at all.
I'll take a quiet life... A handshake of carbon monoxide.

Props & Texture Catalog

metarvo

Capital idea with the snow props.  You rule the winter, Cédric!  :thumbsup:  It's only natural that the roofs of buildings and such should be snowcapped.
Find my power line BAT thread here.
Check out the Noro Cooperative.  What are you waiting for?  It even has electricity.
Want more? Try here.  For even more electrical goodies, look here.
Here are some rural power lines.

Girafe

I love these poles and wires covered by snow. Small details that makes your scenes always awesome and lively  :thumbsup:
The Floraler

This is the end, hold your breath and count to ten, feel the earth move, and then...

*   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *   *    *   *   *   *   *    * 

Badsim


Hi ,

... and thanks ! :)

I've progressed about snowy props and BATs but no new pictures to present you today , I wouldn't like to finally bother you with always the same scene till everything gets snow covered  ...  $%Grinno$% ... For what will be my last  update in 2017, I decided to show you another work which has taken me up during these last weeks , not that it was an hard MODing but it was rather arduous to do not lost my way in this jungle that automata are . If you ever wondered how would look SC4 traffic with properly sized automata , these pictures are for you :

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I made a serious sorting ( have had to say goodbye to mikeseith's outdated ones , for example  &mmm ) before to rescale them all ... there's an inconvenience though :  HD cars props from Girafe , Vnaoned and a few other creators look now under-scaled , what is rather funny because when I received them from Antoine and Vincent years ago  , I resized them down before to MOD the VIP Team Cars MMPs vol. 1/2/3/4 ... so yes , I'm going to resize these props again and , at the end , I'll get everything , regarding vehicles , maybe not perfectly scaled but at least scaled with coherence . I also made a first colors selection , suppressing the most aggressive ones : I can't speak for other countries but in France , there's a large majority of black/white/silver and grey cars , then a few red ones and a small minority for other colors , so I've added to my to-do list the editing of some of their skins FSHs , at least there's a single one FSH for all zooms/angles , this should be relatively quickly done ...

May you have  a merry Christmas and for each of you , my best wishes for 2018 . :thumbsup:

C.

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