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Thingfishs is having a B.A.T Downunder (wanna take a look)

Started by thingfishs, November 11, 2009, 11:33:22 PM

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thingfishs

Thanks guys,

I have continued and have a couple of new queries. Gottago I have had a shot at the "black hole" and setting the door back from the wall a bit looks good (as does lightening it's texture). Although the wall itself now appears to be set back as well, and the texture of the stone is too dark (still further clarification needed, I haven't forgotten earth quake ;)), but it will definitely look a lot more real in the end. Kwakelaar I did as suggested and left the lawns blank, which worked well.
However there are some problems...



Now as far as the textures themselves are concerned they still look bad, even though I changed the brick one to a supposedly tileable one. And the orangey one on the right is supposed to be bark chips, I was trying it out as an alternative to the dirt. I'm really starting to get what's been said about the need to create non-repeating, whole versions, and I will get there. (I just found that part the most tedious, back and forth, render, re-render..., so I'm saving it for as long as possible) For now I am still just focusing on the general layout mostly. On the smaller lawn on the right you can see the extension of the concrete strip underground. Why? I thought everything under z axis 0 was ignored?
Also you can just see on the far left of shot a ridge between two areas of dirt. Because I grouped these objects before I saw the error I am unable to even them out.  Normally when something is wrong like this I have been "erasing" it by creating a box where I want to be erased/selecting what I want to be erased/compound objects/boolean etc. In this case, I assume because of the kind of object it is, boolean mode is greyed out. Is there a way to just blanket erase a selected area regardless of object type and without doing the boolean thing?

Cheers

thingfishs

Hi again,
Small update. (mainly a question)
The underground concrete thing is annoying. It, like the dirt areas, won't be erased by compound/boolean. Both areas were created as lines, then filled via cap holes. How do I get rid of it?



The door is looking better. I've started playing with the textures again and though the pavers still look pretty crummy (indiscriminate use of dodge and burn), at least they're not tiling. Ignore that horrid yellow texture on the right. I'm not too concerned about the dirt as it will be almost entirely covered by plants.
Any advice always welcome.

kwakelaar

Your paving is looking a lot better
I do not know how you can fix the shapes you have made at the moment, but it should not be too much trouble to create new ones. In the top view, draw a continuous line (with snap to vertex on) along the edges. Change it into an editable spline and attach the outside/inside line of your shape. Use the extrude command to give it thickness and reapply your textures.

thingfishs

#43
Thanks Kwakelaar,
I've tried to follow your advice but keep getting stuck at the same point. I've drawn a line (via splines menu with initial type = corner & drag type = smooth) with vertex & grid points selected in the grid & snap settings. Then I have converted it to an editable spline, but that's as far as I get. When I click attach (in the geometry section) nothing seems to happen regardless of where or what I click on. What am I missing?

-Also another question, when I had a go adding potted plants I found that most of them were out of scale with the courtyard, they were too big. I've had a bit of a hunt for other smaller props but it just occurred to me that maybe there was a way of simply reducing the size of a prop? yes? no? If anyone knows of a pack with some smaller potted plants please let me know.

adroman

Excellent progress here Thingfishs... Sorry I can't be of more help.

Havva good one,
Adrian.
737s, Air Force, Australia... what next?

kwakelaar

When you click on the 'attach' button does it turn orange? (or any other colour, meaning it is active). When you want to attach something in the viewport you should see some kind of 'bubbles' attached to your cursor.
As far as I can make out you are doing everything as you should.



For your props do you have the prop packs of D66, she has made quite a lot of different plants and potted plants.

thingfishs

Hi & thanks,

well I noticed this time that even though I converted to an editable spline (via right click) the blue box with edit spline on it didn't show up like it has in yours.


Any ideas?

kwakelaar

Even without the 'edit spline' you should be able to attach one line to another. Are you sure you are hovering with your cursor over the correct line, the line you want to attach?

thingfishs

OK,  I checked again and I was hovering over the right line and it still wasn't working. So I thought, bugger this (um, Australian expression, it means 'enough of this') and I deleted the concrete. I drew a new line next to the other line I had been trying to attach the concrete to, assuming this would be an easier approach. (I should have done this earlier, I just wanted to understand why it wasn't working) This time the line attached to the other line without issue,



however when I try the extrude command this happens. I tried other mesh settings commands as well as the cap holes trick without success. Hmmm... ()what()


gottago

Hi thingsfish, and thanks very much for your comments on my BAT, it's really appreciated  :thumbsup:

The door looks much better, but looking at the lot, I can't help thinking that that looks extremely difficult--I'd certainly not want to do it--and I can't help but think it'd be less painful to create a 1 to 1 texture of the lot in Photoshop, where you can control everything (tiling, colors, scale, etc. and avoid the spline nightmare) much more easily, and then apply it to a simple plane. I'd like to know what kwakelaar says on this, but that would be my method.

Also, if you want a quick look-see of how a new texture looks, use the preview tab in the BAT rollout; you can do low- or medium-quality previews that only take a minute or so to run, from any of the 4 viewpoints.

And as for the texture problems, check out arroway.de for non-tiling concrete, stone and brick textures. It's the best free source of pro-quality textures out there.


choco

normally on a transparent extrusion like you've shown, the problem is likely that the verticies of the line need welded together.  more generally, when you see such a problem with an extruded geometry, there is something wrong with the original 2-D object.

thingfishs

#51
Gottago: Of course!!  &apls
I had dabbled with the idea of doing it in photoshop and then cutting it up into tiles as base textures, but had forgotten about it. As soon as you said it, it was obvious, and I've already begun (with ten minutes in between coming to terms with throwing it all away again.) Actually it turns out I haven't lost my work. I have simply imported an image of it into photoshop, and blown it up to the right size. Now I am turning the different areas into their own layers and just like that I will have hitherto undreamt of control.  :thumbsup:
Thanks a lot, this is really going to speed things up.
Oh & choco, thanks for your help, I started to look into your suggestion but photoshop's lure was irresistible.
In case I'm rushing into this blindly and am unaware of problems this approach may cause please let me know.

thingfishs

#52
Well what a difference a day makes. Gottago your comment was revelatory for me. Thankyou Thankyou Thankyou  :thumbsup: :thumbsup: :thumbsup:

Fortunately I do have some experience with photoshop and I was quickly able to catch up and pass the struggling me of the past couple weeks. It's so much easier and faster this way, and I'm able to fine tune where before I'd just go "too hard". So this is what it looks like today. For the first time as a whole I feel it's really starting to come together.

   

Well it's what it looks like in game anyhow. However it seems this new approach isn't without it's own problems. These first two aren't too bad, most of the textures are showing, with just the back left corner grass instead of gravel. But I had to shoot quick because a few seconds later it would turn into this...




Does anyone know what's going on here?
It's not dampening my mood too much though, I'm very happy with the progress I've made in the last 24 hours. (Just please don't tell me this way isn't going to work ;))
This is, I'm fairly sure, the whole 4 by 4 block. I was glad there was room for the road at the back which will allow the trucks access to the crusher as well as the weighbridge (which I will install.)
Also the garden is very much a work in progress, I'm just trying different things & figuring out what's out there. Any plant prop pack suggestions gratefully accepted.

Hooray for photoshop!


mattb325

Nice one!!!!!

Make sure in the PIM (or PIM-X which EVERYONE should use) that all zooms 1,2,3,4 & 5 are selected when making these props.

THEN

In the Lot Editor, hold down the control and up arrow keys to lift your "prop" overlays up by .1 or .2m off the ground.

Also - if you are using prop overlays - set the whole lot to have a foundation at a relatively low value - othewise your garden beds might dig in on slopes which will look awkward.

thingfishs

Thanks matt, great info there. I haven't used the PIM-X yet, looks like now's the time.

thingfishs

#55
Thanks once again Matt  :thumbsup:,

at .1m there were still issues but raised .2m and everything appears to be fine. (Ignore the extensions of the LOT where all the extra trees are. For some reason the delete function doesn't work for me in the LE so I have to  either save after every step or try out a few things on the border. I am hoping upgrading to the pim-x will solve this issue)

   

There's still much to be done, but this all represents a huge jump forward for me. In a month I've gone from being completely intimidated by all this to being well on the way to a fair re-creation of the winery. ()stsfd()  Once again as far as the garden is concerned most of what is there will be replaced, I am just experimenting. For starters I am using too many packs here (about 8 or 9 all told- cp, d66, mjb, sg, bsc mega & misc, jes etc, the usuals but still a bit much) so I need to consolidate what I am doing. First the blue flowers will go (I didn't realise I'd planted blue ones until they flowered) and then the eucalyptus trees, they are much too big.
Also the car has disappeared. I suspect this is something to do with it's being automata, it was coming and going for a bit, then vanished entirely.

       

I have posted a few more pics just to remind people what it looks like in real life.




dobdriver

#56
 

What  a revelation thingfishs !!

Like something just clicked for you. Excellent progress there

take it easy

kwakelaar

What a difference, the ground textures look good now.

gottago

hey it's like night and day since I last checked in here--the lot looks really good now  :thumbsup: great progress--you're over the hump!

thingfishs

#59
all thanks to your idea. Between finding out about making the ground a prop (thanks matt) & then finding out I could make that prop in PS, I now have the level of control I was seeking.  &apls
Also the pavers (which I think have come up really well) started out life as a shot from arroway, so cheers for that too.

Thank you Kwakelaar & Dobdriver, it certainly has come along. Additional thanks to Kwakelaar for all your ongoing assistance.  :thumbsup: