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ÆRDEN ~ new streets!

Started by vortext, May 31, 2013, 11:31:03 PM

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Girafe

Quite interesting things, nice to see you trying the different options from 3dsmax, it s a nice approach.
This software is amazing and with infinite possibilities
You are already showing nice skills  :thumbsup:
I would be careful in the process of defining the right shades of colors with the terrain mod you show, which is IMHO a little bit too dark and could wrongly influence you (especially for MMPs).
Regarding the rendering of the haystack, to avoid the halo, try to export with a background close to a black color (ideally dark grey color 5,5,5).   
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kbieniu7

Your idea of sc4viewer, that allows to "walk around" the city is a really interesting idea! I had the same feeling sometimes - how to show the city to the audience. Photos cuts off a big part of experiencing a city, showing only small parts of it, sometimes losing connection with each other. Allowing the viewer to move freely around the town is a huge difference, allowing to see both details and a big picture!
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evarburg

Just found this thread -- amazing stuff in here ! And that big haystack just looks great !  May I ask if the castle & fortification pieces are available for DL somewhere ? As I am no batlotter, I rely on the savviness of others to feed my insatiable appetites for new & nifty SC4 stuff, especially in European & rural settings...

Vizoria

The street/track textures look great as do those haystacks. Any chance of an update on your medieval settlement?

Kergelen

Nice to see you BATing. I rreally like the big haystack  &apls

And great work on the SAM curves. Interesting and nedeed project :)


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vortext

#465


Quote from: compdude787 on April 17, 2016, 11:44:22 AM
The stuff you're working on is pretty nice! Great work!

Thank you!


Quote from: Themistokles on April 18, 2016, 08:54:20 AM
:o Well, you're doing this the detailed way... and to me everything looks really good. &apls

Quote from: vortext on April 17, 2016, 10:11:59 AM
[...] they'll make for good MMP material.  ;)

They sure will! :D

Wait, what . . there's another way of doing things?!  ???  $%Grinno$% Thanks!


Quote from: JoeST on April 18, 2016, 12:23:24 PM
Quote from: vortext on April 17, 2016, 10:11:59 AM
Thank you, I thought it was pretty cool as well!  :D Definitely gonna take you up on that offer, will get in touch some time this week.  :thumbsup:
I'll be waiting :D feel free to email me direct rather than relying on the forum pm if that's easier for you?

Thanks for your advice so far!  :thumbsup:


Quote from: Girafe on April 20, 2016, 01:11:49 PM
Quite interesting things, nice to see you trying the different options from 3dsmax, it s a nice approach.
This software is amazing and with infinite possibilities
You are already showing nice skills  :thumbsup:
I would be careful in the process of defining the right shades of colors with the terrain mod you show, which is IMHO a little bit too dark and could wrongly influence you (especially for MMPs).
Regarding the rendering of the haystack, to avoid the halo, try to export with a background close to a black color (ideally dark grey color 5,5,5).

Thanks for the kinds words and advice. It's quite fun to see what 3DSMax offers indeed, the hair modifier was a nice find. I'm also rather intrigued by the AEC Railing object, especially since I can no longer use my T21 mod with ALN fences as they're impossible to fit with the draggable wide curves. Also thanks for reminding me to check colors with various terrain mods (which was vanilla btw), I used to do this all the time when making LE textures but somehow the thought had not occurred to do the same with BATs.  :thumbsup:


Quote from: kbieniu7 on April 28, 2016, 03:04:47 AM
Your idea of sc4viewer, that allows to "walk around" the city is a really interesting idea! I had the same feeling sometimes - how to show the city to the audience. Photos cuts off a big part of experiencing a city, showing only small parts of it, sometimes losing connection with each other. Allowing the viewer to move freely around the town is a huge difference, allowing to see both details and a big picture!

Thanks, I also thought it was a nice idea! I'm currently re-doing it with a different Javascript library which hopefully will get rid off all the weird control issues.


Quote from: evarburg on May 01, 2016, 07:52:52 AM
Just found this thread -- amazing stuff in here ! And that big haystack just looks great !  May I ask if the castle & fortification pieces are available for DL somewhere ? As I am no batlotter, I rely on the savviness of others to feed my insatiable appetites for new & nifty SC4 stuff, especially in European & rural settings...

Thanks! The castle and walls are available on ToutSimCities, here and here. And if I'm not mistaken you've already commented here before, but glad you found it (again) nonetheless!  :D


Quote from: Vizoria on May 02, 2016, 04:50:30 AM
The street/track textures look great as do those haystacks. Any chance of an update on your medieval settlement?

Thank you! Observant readers of this MD may notice a certain date rapidly approaching. That's all I can say for now.  $%#Ninj2  ;)


Quote from: Kergelen on May 03, 2016, 01:09:49 PM
Nice to see you BATing. I rreally like the big haystack  &apls

And great work on the SAM curves. Interesting and nedeed project :)

Thanks! Admittedly RULling can get a bit boring, if not outright tedious, so knowing it'll be put to good use later on is motivating!




As advertised bit more BAT stuff today. The dovecote is close to finished I reckon, but I'll leave it to your judgement whether you agree, so here it is.

click pic for fullsize


Minor yet annoying issue noticeable in the bottom right. For some reason there's texture tearing in this one specific orientation, though it changes upon zooming out:



Since it wasn't as issue before I think it's just a rendering error and I'll have to re-render it. Or maybe it's because I applied noise modifiers to wall and roof?  &Thk/(

At any rate, perusing Wikipedia one night and following links and references as one does, I came across various archeological/anthropological/historical musea which have plenty replicas of so-called byre-dwellings on display. And thanks to modern technology you can actually visit one of them in Google StreetView! I also remembered there's actually a replica of a prehistoric village in Eindhoven, which is about an hour from me so needless to say I'm planning a field trip sooner rather than later.

So. ..  can you guess what happened next . .  ::) ;D



Right. . .erhm. . yes. ..  matching real world scale to SC4 dimensions is tricky indeed. . .

click pic for fullsize


Bit better, could do with a bit of tweaking still. Started working on a material library with various plaster, wood and tatched roof textures.

Finally today an unusually angled sneak peek, for no other reason it took forever to figure out how to make arches but as it turns out they're not even visible in SC4's stupid lovely isometric view. &sly  :D


It's modeled after a real building btw, can anyone guess which? Hint: it's a church.


Thanks for reading! :)
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

Simmer2

Wow! Erik I'm impressed!!
Your batting skills are progressing by leaps and bounds  &apls
I just started and for the time being I'm stuck with Gmax, Hexagon and the free version of Sketchup for model making. I can't justify spending $1400 per year for 3Dmax  :(
Perhaps one day.

Keep it up  :thumbsup:

Nick
________________________________________________________________________________

vortext

#467
Quote from: Simmer2 on May 04, 2016, 09:15:35 AM
I can't justify spending $1400 per year for 3Dmax  :(

Nor can I!  $%Grinno$% However I'm administered at university for a couple of months to finish study, so I made use of the educational licensing - just on time I might add, nearly done.  ()stsfd() ;D

Also, have you heard of Blender? It's free as well and from what I've seen pretty powerful - though not sure if it can export to gmax/BAT format.  &Thk/(
time flies like a bird
fruit flies like a banana

Themistokles

Another great set of models! &apls To me it looks like we'll soon be able to mmp the whole village of Asterix! :D

And although the houses are maybe a little small in scale, I don't think it is too far away actually, considering that medieval houses and doorways were much smaller than modern ones, probably even in comparison to the smaller average height of the people.
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Vizoria

The models look good. Also I'm glad to see an update will eventually arrive.

manga rivotra

It's seem clear that you are already a excellent bater ! that will improve again your wonderful MD for sure  &apls &apls &apls
I'm also very impatient to see your progress on the smooth curv for the SAM network  :)

korver

#471
I love to see people making unique building sets like this - can't wait until you release it! Looks awesome so far :thumbsup:

I've also been looking around for a nice looking haystack to complete some of my farming scenes but never found one - so definitely looking forward to seeing yours in the future.

P.S. Wallibuk made haystacks..? This is new to me.. :P

Mandarin(a)

I can just smell the prehistoric times from your pictures ...
??? ... that was weird ...

One way or another, amazing models, again.
About the church: if I am not mistaken, it is made entirely from wood, right?

art128

Nice seeing you picking up the BAT so fast. The church certainly look nice, but yeah it's a shame some details won't be seen in the game.
What you can do is try to make the pillars actually visible by moving them a bit closer to the edge of the roof, though that way it won't be like a possible real model you are basing yourself on.
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Gugu3

Always good to see new things coming along! &apls

vortext

#475
So . . this is gonna be kinda awkward update because while it's a teaser, I didn't intend it to be a teaser. Erm yes. . let me explain.

It began with me planning for the 3 year anniversary of my MD, last June 1st. Seeing Korver's Greece update around that time I got inspired to take the 'day in the life of' approach as well, in which we'd see the return of the Potyomkins' Brothers. However, a number of things occurred between then and now which prevented the update from seeing the light of day.

Obviously SC4D's server outage threw a wrench in the spokes in the first place. Secondly, as I said on Simtropolis I hit another snafu which forced me into a partial rebuild of the city. I wrote a long exposition, including population graphs and what not, but it's kinda boring really so long story short: I had a few immortal lots in the growable residential set which gave rise to 'ghost' population during pruning. :facepalm: Ahem. Yes, quite foolish indeed.   ::) ;D

Luckily I could revert to a back-up from December, without any city development but with farmland and major terraforming already in place. So now I was faced with a dilemma. On the one hand I needed to rebuild the city, on the other hand I had it in near perfect shape, all MMP-ed and whatnot, and I could still use it for the story update.

So I decided to do the update anyway and continued working on the first few images. However, while doing so I came to realize why I'd retired the story line in the first place: I simply no longer enjoy the format and all the (re)lotting, MMP-ing and post processing it entails. I'd much rather make a massive mosaic of the entire city for the proper update - spoiler alert!  :D

So yeah, I'm not gonna finish what I'd planned but I hope you enjoy this half-backed-story-turned-into-teaser nonetheless.  :)






Night scene, a throw back to this pic from the last Potyomkins update and meant to illustrate the changing city.




Morning looms and the brothers would live in one of these houses I guess. :D

And that's about as far as I got before going 'meh, lets not do this anymore'. Stay tuned for more though.  ;)




Quote from: Simmer2 on May 04, 2016, 09:15:35 AM
Wow! Erik I'm impressed!!
Your batting skills are progressing by leaps and bounds  &apls
I just started and for the time being I'm stuck with Gmax, Hexagon and the free version of Sketchup for model making. I can't justify spending $1400 per year for 3Dmax  :(
Perhaps one day.

Keep it up  :thumbsup:

Nick

Thank you Nick! I really quite enjoy BATting!  :)


Quote from: Themistokles on May 04, 2016, 12:09:36 PM
Another great set of models! &apls To me it looks like we'll soon be able to mmp the whole village of Asterix! :D

And although the houses are maybe a little small in scale, I don't think it is too far away actually, considering that medieval houses and doorways were much smaller than modern ones, probably even in comparison to the smaller average height of the people.

:D I was actually thinking of one day making an archeological museum lot, so they don't look out of place in modern times. And yeah the average height back then was smaller indeed, however, another issue here is these kinda houses were semi-underground, like so. I tried to replicate that with custom foundations but things got way too complicated way too fast. Thanks!


Quote from: Vizoria on May 04, 2016, 03:24:12 PM
The models look good. Also I'm glad to see an update will eventually arrive.

Thank you!


Quote from: manga rivotra on May 04, 2016, 09:47:15 PM
It's seem clear that you are already a excellent bater ! that will improve again your wonderful MD for sure  &apls &apls &apls
I'm also very impatient to see your progress on the smooth curv for the SAM network  :)

Thanks! Yeah BATting opened up a whole new world for sure - knights anyone?!  ::)  RULing the SAM WRC is going slow but steady!  :)


Quote from: korver on May 05, 2016, 04:20:56 PM
I love to see people making unique building sets like this - can't wait until you release it! Looks awesome so far :thumbsup:

I've also been looking around for a nice looking haystack to complete some of my farming scenes but never found one - so definitely looking forward to seeing yours in the future.

P.S. Wallibuk made haystacks..? This is new to me.. :P

Thank you. Now that you mention it, I'm actually not sure it was Wallibuk. .  &Thk/( The haystack I'm referring to are in a file called 'BalkansPropPack1', however I cannot find it anywhere online. . maybe someone can help out here. Though honestly the haystacks are not worth it, there are some nice run down fences in there as well.


Quote from: Mandarin(a) on May 08, 2016, 09:34:10 AM
I can just smell the prehistoric times from your pictures ...
??? ... that was weird ...

One way or another, amazing models, again.
About the church: if I am not mistaken, it is made entirely from wood, right?

Thanks, I'll take it as a compliment!  :D And yes, you're spot on about the church material!  ;)


Quote from: art128 on June 07, 2016, 12:10:04 PM
Nice seeing you picking up the BAT so fast. The church certainly look nice, but yeah it's a shame some details won't be seen in the game.
What you can do is try to make the pillars actually visible by moving them a bit closer to the edge of the roof, though that way it won't be like a possible real model you are basing yourself on.

Thanks Arthur! Yeah I was thinking about moving the pillars indeed, especially since the front of the church has seen a number of changes throughout history. Figuring out windows and night lighting is the next step though.


Quote from: Gugu3 on June 08, 2016, 01:22:50 AM
Always good to see new things coming along! &apls

Thank you!



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fruit flies like a banana

compdude787

Nice little update; I like the night shots! Hopefully that fire doesn't get so big that it starts burning surrounding buildings. :P
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romualdillo

Nice update!! I didn't comment in the previous one, but your progress with BAT is awesome!! I'd really like to see that wooden church textured.
Looking forward to your great mosaic!  :thumbsup:

FrankU

Hi Vortext,

Who cares if you change plans halfways? I do it all the time... I enjoy whatever you show us here, so please continue.

APSMS

 :-[ I always forget to comment on your updates.

I hate post-processing as well for anything besides mosaics, but maybe it's just a reminder that I need to get more familiar with GIMP...Glad you were able to share what you had, and hopefully the degeneration of the story aspect of your MD doesn't detract from you building the region as a whole anyways.

Also, good luck with the BAT. I'm testing the waters with it to figure out automata modeling (I imagine Milkshape 3D is better suited--it's what Arne uses--but I can get 3DS Max for free), but it's slow going, and I'm not particularly talented in that area (or with texturing--that's gonna be a booger).

Look forward to what you come up with next time.
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