Sam Johnson's BAT Bunker

[Sam Johnson]

Thank you, thingfishs 

Well the building is allmost done, but still some textures aren't ready yet and the nightlights are missing at the moment.





I hope you like it and I'm always open to suggestions

[rooker1]

That my friend is one fantastic BAT!!!
I am in love with this.....but if I could make one suggestion it would be to make the bricks older or dirtier looking.  Other than that, you have a gem here that I am dying for.  How big is it?

Robin 

[Sam Johnson]

Thanks rooker1 

Yes you're right the bricks are a bit to clean for this bildung, I added a bit more dirt but I'm sure if it's enough so far.
And it will take 13x5 tiles in game at least.

Well I was trying out ways for nightlighting this, but the usual ways weren't looking good in my view. Then as someone meant it could be a foundry I wanted to bat some "low poly" things of the inside but well it got a bit out of control 

But well  it isn't much left of it, anyway 



But well I hope you like it this way, too

[sim-al2]

It looks so great...  now I just have to reserve a place for it! Too bad we can't see the interior in-game because it's awesome!

One question: Why is the door to the track running in closed?

[manchou]

Fantastic, your two last BATs are awesome  So beautiful , I hope your exported them in HD 

[Sam Johnson]

Thank you both 

@sim-al2: hmm that's a good question But However I opened the door now:


@manchou: Sorry for HD both buildings are just too huge, for smaller buildings or props with a lot details HD makes more sense in my view. But thanks anyway

[Girafe]

 

Night lights are awesome 

very nice work, for the HD, I understand that for such building it is very long, it's up to you 

[Air6]

Fantastic work. I really like details of this building.

[Gilikov1994]

great factory, I must have them

- Giel

[Sam Johnson]

Thanks for all these nice comments 

I started today another project: A blast furnace


As you can see there's a still a lot to do

[sim-al2]

It looks really great, even if it's purple...

[Girafe]

looks like very promising  ,

you remember me a previous japanese member of TSC  (Fatsuhono) who began to bat lot of industries   

and it is a good field for news bats, few persons bat in industrial items

[Sam Johnson]

Thanks

@Girafe: Yes his industrial-bats are great, espacially their texturing.

So I added some stairs and othere details but still a lot is missing as you can see, (for example many struts) and well it's still purple 

[Sam Johnson]

After a few days without batting, there is a bit progress on my Blast Furnace. In terms of modelling the blast furnace itself and the cowpers are done, but the casthouse exists still just in a broad shape as you see

[manchou]

Awesome  Splendid 

[SimFox]

the modeling it top notch, but the visualization, unfortunately not... It is way to dark and lighting in neither here no there (meaning neither sunny side nor shadow looks good/compatible to game) I don't want it to sound like a shameless plug, but you should really give a try for Bat4Max 4.5 and its lighting rig and render settings to see what it can give your models.

Apart from that the general rule of thumb is not to allow things falling into pitch black abyss. Only small details, portions may be close to black. Otherwise it will look weird in game.

[Sam Johnson]

Well I really respect your work about bat4max 4.5 and let there be light, SimFox. But I personally think the lighting of your light rigs doesn't fit well enough in the game. Of course this kind of lighting is probably the most realistic, but in my opinion it's much more important to that the different BATs ingame harmize well.
I tried out your bat4max and your let there be light a several times but the most times the textures of my BATs look weird with it.
Well I tried your bat4max today again. And at the blast furnace it doesn't work well in my opinion.


On this block it works better with the textures, but it takes really long to render on my system (even if I adjust some final gathering settings)


Because I'm currently not sure which kind of lighting is the best I tried to create a similar light rig like yours  it works better but the colours are still a bit cold. Maybe I gonna work a bit on it.


The Lightrig I'm using at the moment usually is mainly based on the lightrig which are used in gmax I only changed the way the shadows are casted, so I think it should fit well in game and I got some affirmation in the german community.

Well I'd like to hear some more Opinions about this, because I'm not sure about this as you see .

[SimFox]

Well testing it (my rig) with your textures (already created adjusted to your rig is an unfair comparison.
Instead you have to test it on a so called clay render. Create a mid-gray material (50% neutral gray) and assign it as a over-ride material in Mental ray  - this way you don't really need to replace any of your current materials on the models to do the purely light tests.
Render and see the difference. I made LTBL rig not to be most realistic, in fact it isn't, but to be most fitting the game environment. It actually provide lighting similar to that of original GMAX and MAX(in case of Maxis) rigs on a simple cube, but doesn't have their shortcoming when complex shapes are introduced

Lighting rig in GMAX was never intended for anything but a simple box shaped models. It fails miserably on any complex shapes. You can't use but it is original advocacy on it either. Maxis didn't have really complex shapes in game. I'm sure for that very reason. Also one should be careful not to mix "i accustomed to" with "fitting".

Textures... well those will have to be adjusted to the rig in use. However rig does MUCH more then simply create some color.
So try clay renders with both rigs and see the difference.

PS remember to make sure that gamma settings are correct with my rigs - that is a crucial detail.

[Sam Johnson]

Well I compared both rigs without textures (gamma settings were correct of course the shadows look in your light rig more realistic and some details are a bit better displayed, but somehow from my point of view I don't like the way it lights up everything.

Even on some BATs on that my Textures were adjusted to your Rig it doesn't look that way I wanted it sorry. Because of that I gonna use for now my Rig. I also don't see on BATs of other creators with similar Light rigs as mine, any problems with many lost details or a unfitting kind of lighting.
But about the maxis Rigs..these Rigs are in some way really bad looking. I espacially think that there loose shadows make some models look bad.

But could you give the reasons why you think your rig fits best into the game environment? Maybe then I'll feel confident about your Rig.


However there is also a bit modelling and texturing on the blast furnace progress to show 

[rooker1]

Fantastic work.
I hope you release some of these.

Robin