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Truly NUTS: Cali at BAT

Started by Cali, February 26, 2011, 10:04:34 PM

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Cali

Ok, I've been around here for a while. I picked up batting a few years ago, And after reading philipbos tutorial 500,000 times I figured it out.  But tragedy and real life struck. It has prevented me from ever achieving anything more than a few maps on simtrop and a street light or two . Thus I forgot how to Bat.  Anyways with out further ado, I present the first for the sc4d community with many more in the works. Please feel free to critique as any advice is still better than none.

This one I have deemed to be a Dr office. At the moment I have some bugs( out of scale, couple outside lights don't work, plus it's about ten feet in the air...lol.



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It does however show up in game(whew)


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so?...what do ya guys think?
"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

MandelSoft

It's a good start, but there are some things that need to be done:
- This building would require custom LODs, so the streetlights won't dissappear on any other props.
- The model misses some detail, although I don't know what. It just feels empty.
- The LOT textures look horrible, but I guess you'll gonna work on that later  ;)

Best,
Maarten
Lurk mode: ACTIVE

Ciuu96

In addition to what Maarten already said:

- Textures are bit weird and not very detailed, you should change at least the roof texture.
- LOT indeed needs a lot of work.

Otherwise, nice start, with bit of tweaking that should make a real good building!  :thumbsup:
Has it really been almost 2 years?
Must return. :)

Cali

#3
Indeed, the lot was only used so I could see if it would show up in the game. I'll change the roof texture for sure. thanks so far  :)



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I changed the roof textures. I'm thinking about doing away with the whole pitched roof thing(at least for this) Let me know. More updates later.
"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

Cali

ok, nitelites work...yay!


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also fixed foundation, retextured some walls...


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"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

Cali



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ok all. Works in game. let me know what you think.


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"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

MTT9

Nice start. Way better than mine years ago  :thumbsup:
First of all, i would recomend you to place your model next to other's custom bats. This will help you to fix your scale issues and to see what your textures should be like.
About the pitched roof, is just a matter of taste, so is up too you. Although it might work if done properly, i don't think it fits very well. But again, i might be pretty wrong about this last ::)
Hope to see some improvments ;)
Matt
You can call me Matt

Cali



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I decided to go with a flat roof for this building. Still have a little tweaking to do then it should be done.
"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

Cali

Ok ,Another update for you. I fixed the roof and added a couple of things as well as fixed the nightlighting.



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once i figure out how to export it with out it looking all screwy ,Il'll Post in game shots.
"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

meows

Not knowing a thing about batting, but loving the creations in my citys, I must say I LOVED the piched roof. Most buildings I see in game are flat. But Pegasus docks have some great sloped roofs.

Where can I get this great doctor office?
  &apls

Cali

Hey all!, Ok, I have some new updates, I know I've been gone for a while and I apologize, but real life has really messed me up. But now all is quiet so I figured it's time to start working again. so here is a building that I haven't decided what I want it to be, so maybe my fellow Nuts can help me out.

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"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

Cali

here is the second creation for ya guys


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I'll post ingame shots as soon as i can :)
"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

namspopof

The textures of the last BAT are much better. :thumbsup:
STRATEGIUM ALLIANCE
The French site for strategic simulation in real time, member of French associative network Jeux-Stratégie.com
My BAT for SC4
ToutSimCitiesFrench site for SC4.

Cali

thanks, i put it throug lot editor and and got it into the game, but i cant find it anywhere. once i find it i'll post a screenie :)
"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

Cali

ok ,I have two new in-game shots for ya guys. please critique these and let me know ok?


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"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

Utvaw

That Willcox House building looks cool, but that red is way too clean and bright, it looks like a toy. 

Also what kind of building is it?  The lot is fenced in and I am assuming it is a hotel or apartment building, in which case I would say the lot seems out of place.  It would need parking, a better suited lot. Overall the lot seems too big/ out of place.

Also still assuming it's use is an apartment building or hotel, the nightlighting seems odd too, not every light would be on in all the rooms.

I like the building model itself and think if you put some more time perfecting it it could look really great.

Textures on the truck repair place look much better (although I would say the ground texture around the building proper is way too clean and bright for a place that does greasy vehicle work), but the nightlighting again is it's weak spot.  Try to add some color to the signs and put lights on in the open bays.

It is also a great model and something we don't really have in SC4 currently (lots of car repair but not really much for big truck repair places) so I hope you take the time to perfect it before releasing it.  We will happily wait a bit for a superb bat, which I think these can become.

Cali

yeah, i know they still need work, and the lots were only created so i could get it to work in game. thank you for your input..back to BAT! :)
"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

threestooges

Nice progress Cali. I think, for the first one, the wall texture needs to be desaturated a bit. As mentioned, it does look a bit plastic and toy-like. The basic style of it works pretty well though. It's a big lot, but it works with the building.

As for the second, it looks good. I like the bit of dirt at the bottom of the walls, but I would also suggest a slight gradient to it, darkening from top to bottom maybe 10-20% as it goes.
-Matt

Cali

ok, new update on the Willcox house. I retextured and darkend it a bit.(I know the concrete is a little off, i already fixed it :) )

I also worked a little bit on the nightlighting
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"It's not a design flaw, It's my signature"

mattb325

#19
Hello Cali

I can see you have been making quite some progress since February, and Willcox House is certainly coming along.

I can also see that you are using many of the textures that were shipped with the BAT.
Nothing wrong with that, as these will blend in with the game, but bear in mind that the Maxis modellers manipulated each of those textures considerably in an image editing program prior to using them on their models. In addition to learning how to model, an equally important part of the learning curve in using a program like the BAT is getting the textures right.

Do you have an image editing program? There are many free versions. I use Gimp; others use paintshop/photoshop versions. Any program will suffice, so long as it can handle layers. But it is imperative as every texture - even ones from very good sites such as CG Textures - need to be altered in some way prior to application. Alternatively, you can create your own textures.

So, back to Willcox House. I like the idea of the red feature areas...but using a block colour such as this won't work if you are aiming for something believable. I'll assume that this material represents painted concrete in your BAT.
So, continuing to use those textures that came with the BAT, I select the following: The maxis street tiles and the Maxis concrete. Both of these are 256x256px in size. These are designed to work in 16m2 world of SC4. When you have a larger area to cover, you will need to make the textures larger to cover that greater surface area properly.

The first thing I do is size up the BAT. For your walls on this BAT, you would need a texture anywhere between about 512 -1024px in height but for this demo I will just double the area and make a three new blank textures of 512x512. With this new size, I can fit 4 of the Maxis 256x256 images within the work space (2 across and 2 down), so rather than stretching and tiling the textures within the BAT, I am likely to have a single texture that covers my wall area.

Next, I fill one of my blank 512x512 textures with four of the Maxis concretes, then the other 512x512 with 4 of the Maxis street tiles. To each of these I add an alpha chanel (which is a transparency layer) and then fade the two by varying degrees (about 10-15% for the concrete and 30% for the street tiles). I manipulate the colour of the street tiles to make it a warm terracotta. I adjust the saturation and brightness until I am satisfied. I also blur the concrete texture so that the deep lines aren't so visible and add a little reddish hue.

Using my third 512x512 surface, I copy the new concrete texture and then paste the street tiles over that.
I then add a reddish gradient and use the dodge/burn tool to ensure that the surface isn't too clean. After adding these, I make a final adjustment to the saturation and brightness and save as a new texture. This took about 5 minutes.

I then applied it to a very cut down mockup of your BAT to see how it would look.
For comparative continuity, I've just used the brick texture that came with BAT, but would not recommend it as this tiles very poorly. Although, using the above technique you could adjust this texture as well. I have attached the red tile texture and the screen shots - feel free to use this, or adjust as you wish.

Good luck  :thumbsup: