c.p.'s BAT and Lot Workshop

[metarvo]

Nice work on the church, C.P.  The accompanying house is a nice touch, since many smaller churches I see have them.

[belfastsocrates]

Absolutely stunning! The break from grid is one thing but the sheer amount of lotting, building creation and detail is just wonderful. What a joy to read through!

[vortext]

Nice church! 

In other news, look what I found in an old MD . . .



. . . from 2007!!      

[Jack_wilds]

popping in to say hi and review the coming attractions... 
hope that progress is happening; may this projects never languish... 

[Jayster]

This is my first post in probably two years, so forgive me for being out of the loop, but have any of these made it to the LEX?

Loving the progress on everything!

Cheers!

[danwaxx]

Mind-bogglingly cool! (I lived in Rhode Island for four+ years and was surrounded by buildings like these).

Please release, at least some of the stuff you showed at the beginning...

[Aaron Graham]

OMG!!! I love the town it's so pretty. The church is beautiful too, I want it when you finish them up. :O

[Swordmaster]

Fantastic work over the past few months here Brian! I have to admit, this is some of the best work you've ever done.


Cheers
Willy

[c.p.]

Thanks Matt, Arne, Noah, mave94, Art, metarvo, belfastsocrates, vortext, Jack_Wilds, Jayster, danwaxx, Aaron, and Willy 

vortext: Yeah, that mill building has been around for a while.   At the time, I wasn't completely happy with how it met the sidewalk.  But at this point, I'm probably not going to worry about it.

Jayster: most of the stuff I've been working on in the last 2 years hasn't made it to the LEX yet (but I do have a lot of older buildings there).


It's pleasantly odd that this thread was revived while I was preparing the first update in almost 3 months.

Progress has been extremely slow lately, but I've been chipping away at it.  I made the Paeng version of SCILT.  I made some of the lots for the Gloribee Church and house.  But there is more lotting and modding to do.  Progress will continue to be slow for the next 2 to 3 months, but then after that, hopefully I can get the SCILT and civic stuff finished and packaged and uploaded.

In the meanwhile, here is a small seaside town: Fillmore Cove (population 5500):


This is West Main Street.  Across from the factory and train station is a pleasant neighborhood of middle-class houses that slopes steeply down to the cove:


You can see a brick version of the Gloribee house in the previous picture.  Here is the seaside version of the Gloribee House:


I made this city as a test to see if it would take on a "seaside" look if I turned off most of the buildings except the "seaside" version.  The following picture, of a neighborhood on the western shore of the cove, ended up with a pretty good concentration of "seaside" houses:


Finally, further out on the windy headlands near Millard Point, sit these drafty little houses.  Because this area is remote and exposed, it is considered undesirable by the sims in-town.  But the sims who live out here have beautiful views of of the ocean, and Fillmore Cove:

[threestooges]

It's always pleasing when I happen on here to discover a new update from you, especially when it's as visually pleasing as this one. The seaside look is indeed there. It has that open-yet-dense feel that comes with a concentrated seaside town. Looking forward to more.
-Matt

[vortext]

Nice town! You're really putting the foundations to good use! 

[romualdillo]

c.p. The grid-breaker is back!!! I am not worthy of your knowledge and capacities!!! 

About your knowledge... How do you do to keep all your props/buildings overground? My buildings always appear to be half buried when they grow on a slope!!

[Jack_wilds]

luv Filmore... its that mid-Atlantic seaside charm... well done...   

truly hoping, expecting that you will be able to finish and share  ... as this would add so much variety and charm [that word again  ] for many sims to gawk-n-vacation to...

[Simcoug]

I'm with vortext, the foundations are top notch 

[noahclem]

Stunningly beautiful little town    All the details are perfect and I think yours is my favorite use of the Appalachian Terrain Mod. Great to hear from you again!

[danwaxx]

Beautiful! How do the FAR residentials from earlier work?

[c.p.]

Thanks  Matt, vortext, Romualdillo, Jack_Wilds, Matt, Noah, and danwaxx

Romualdillo: I do a combination of things, which varies from building to building.
1. When I put the buildings on the lot, I raise them up approx. 1 meter.  (Less for a small building, and more for a large building.)  This leaves a little foundation sticking up, even on flat ground, but this is totally realistic (in the U.S. anyway).
2. I usually BAT the building so the 0,0 coordinate is a little bit front of center.  Maybe 1/3 of the way into the building, rather than 1/2.  (It is usually more important that the front of the building remain unburied than the back.)
3. The LODs of the building can be slightly larger than the actual building (especially in front).  Unless you don't need to place a prop next to it.  The foundation LODs need to be tight to the foundation, however.
4. If the building is deep, I try to avoid placing doors near the back of the building.
5. If the building has a very large footprint, you may want to reduce the allowed slope.
6. Reduce the occupant size in the prop exemplar before you place it on a lot, so no part of the prop footprint extends beyond the lot (otherwise, your night lighting might not work).

danwaxx: they're ploppable CO, CS (bed and breakfasts, etc), ID or IM.  You just have to be sure you have enough demand before you plop them.

                                                                         
So, when I return to work on this project, later in the fall, I'll probably be taking it in a slightly different direction.  My idea is to put buildings that are characteristic of a particular city in a separate mini-set.  For example, 8 or 10 of the buildings I have previously shown are in the style of/inspired by mid-19th century New Bedford, Massachusetts architecture.  These would be taken out of the main "generic" set, and put in a "New Bedford" (or maybe "Coastal New England") mini-set.

I'm thinking each mini-set would have maybe 10 to 15 residential building designs and 2 or 3 commercial building designs (and each design would have 3 or 4 texture variations).  A person could combine different mini-sets, plus still have the option of choosing different combinations of wall textures (brick, wood, painted brick, seaside, stucco, etc).  If a person is using Startup Manager, he/she would be able to give each city a unique look by checking and unchecking the different folders that these would be installed into.

I have chosen about 10 or 12 cities that I would like to attempt this with.  Many of them are smallish/obscure cities like New Bedford, and some of them are bigger and more well-known.

So with that in mind, the following picture shows my first attempt at making buildings specifically to capture the mid-19th century architecture of one of these cities.
I wonder if anyone can guess what city it is . . . 



(Hint: it is a large and well-known U.S. city, and the buildings are meant to be packed very close together, side-by-side, on the lots).

So this is the look I'll be trying to achieve with these:

[Jack_wilds]

I'm a midwesterner and expected to guess mid-atlantic sesibilties through the years   

fine     I'll take a whacks at it... 

portland maine
baltimore
crawford



the sets will mix things up... variety is teh spice of life and teh mid-atlantic needs midwest spice...

[Simcoug]

That's an awesome old pic - Your models are spot on... you might as well have just taken them from that pic. 

[c.p.]

Thanks Jack_Wilds for attempting to guess the city.  I guess this is probably an annoying/boring game, so I'll just say it's actually the (midwestern!) city of Chicago.

Thanks SimCoug.  Yeah, I love that picture.  Really old pictures of residential neighborhoods (especially in Chicago) are hard to come by.

I don't know if anyone will find this interesting or not, but here are some street shots of residential buildings in Chicago that may have been built before 1870: