ACE's BATs

[ACEfanatic02]

I've been working on a Japanese-styled region, and while the existing BATs for residential are pretty great, I wanted some more variety.

Based loosely on this house in 'rural' Chiba.  I decided to make it less vividly blue than the original to help it blend better in-game.

Needs texture tweaks to make the clothesline more visible and some more tweaks to nightlighting (it's leaking somewhere), and then it'll be ready for export and lotting.

More to come.

[ACEfanatic02]

Preliminary lot.  Not 100% satisfied with the building textures, a little too saturated and the lack of gradient is really noticeable next to kei's houses.  Not entirely sure it's worth going back and fixing, as every other render out of gmax has corrupted Z5 views.

Will end up as a few different R$ stage 2 or 3 lots.

Anyway, onto a (slightly) more ambitious building:

A 民宿 (a small inn), based on a building in Miura, Kanagawa Prefecture.  This 民宿 was used in an episode of the Lucky Star anime.  Real-life reference photos at the bottom of the page here (an excellent site if you are interested in Japanese street scenes and good anime).  I am, again, taking heavy liberties with the structure -- especially the back, as I can't find any photos of it.

Should fit on a 2x1 lot when done, with room to spare for alleyways.

[FrankU]

Hi ACEfanatic02,

We are always happy when someone starts BATting.
I myself do not BAT. So for the fancy tricks, you cannot ask me for advice. But I can recognise a good model when I see one...
Your house looks good. And after having seen the photograph of the original I see you are doing a good color job. But then I look at the result next to the kei house and I ask myself; is the model not too blue? It looks a bit like everything was made blue, like you had made a mistake in your colorscheme.
What I see from the original house is that there are tiles on the roof. Probably even ceramic ones. I guess they are black. It might help your house if you would change the color of the roof into black I think. Because the all blue result is a bit unrealistic looking. Even if it were correct! That is maybe the point here: realistic looking is not always the same as making it like the real thing. Your model is part of a game which has its own colorschemes, realism, graphic detail etc etc.
So to keep it short: a beautiful model, but I think it is a bit too "overall blue".

But keep in mind: every comment, like this one, is always someone's opinion. It is up to you if you let it influence you and your work.

[jmyers2043]

... as every other render out of gmax has corrupted Z5 views....

When you say corrupted ... do you mean a gmax test render? Or do you mean that some textures go crazy when you export?

- Jim

[Dantes]

An interesting house with an unusual floor plan.  I like your implementation of the building.  The little snack You've done very well. He is very Japanese.  If you are looking for other galleries with Japanese buildings look on this link:
http://www.japan-photo.de/wohnen.htm

[ACEfanatic02]

FrankU:  Believe it or not, I've done this before (around 2006-2008) -- but I've been away from the community for a few years and both my thread here and at ST appear to have been deleted at some point.  (Imageshack's almost certainly nuked the images at this point, so whatever.)  Perfectionism and technical issues kept me from ever actually releasing anything though.

As far as the house, you're right, a closer look at the photo shows the roof is indeed black tiles rather than blue.  I also scaled the tiles up somewhat, but artifacts left over from correcting the skew of my base image added a few tiling lines:

(East view, because why not?)
I think it looks acceptable like this.

jmyers2043:  By corrupted I mean one or more of the zoom-5 views turn into blocky gray mosaic when I get it in the LE.  IIRC, it's an LOD issue, refitting them seems to fix it.

Dantes: どうも～。

Some more detail work and a first shot at nightlights on 魚萬民宿:

Somewhat instructive to see how little light comes out the windows, despite the rooms glowing that brightly.  I'm doing this *before* finishing the geometry around back as it gives me a chance to easily change any internal walls I need to in order to block light leaks.  (A particularly bad leak earlier lit up that garden hose like neon.)

New details (the base of the tower section and the sign) come from having found the inn on Google Maps. (Seems the restaurant portion of the inn is closed now?) Also gives a pretty clear look at the building immediately next to this, which I'll probably BAT to fill out the 2x1 lot.

[ACEfanatic02]

Visible progress being made:


Geometry around the back of the tower still needs to be fleshed out, and I need to do a bit of texture and detail work, but then the main building will be done and I can start on the adjacent one.  Currently sitting at 7856 polygons (the fence on the roof counts for 1000 on its own).  Gmax is not fussing as much as I expected, but HQ preview times are starting to get above a minute each...

[ACEfanatic02]

The following update brought to you by excessive caffeine and a やなぎなぎ binge last night:

魚萬民宿 is (mostly) done -- geometry done, roof textures that don't suck. It *may* get some more nightlights if I can figure out where the utility room is leaking.  Started working on the adjacent building, appears to be apartments.  There's some interesting, almost Brutalist styling on the side wall of this building, along with an entrance, so I think it'll make a nice corner lot.  Currently a *very* tight fit for a 2x1 lot -- I'll either need to scale it slightly or use an overhanging prop to make it fit.  I'll also probably include a 2x2 version with parking, which may blend better into "American" styled cities.

As an aside: if any Japanese members happen by and can give me a reading for 魚萬, I'd appreciate it.  Google was inconclusive, so right now I'm going with Uoman Inn as the building name.
日本人のメンバーへの質問：「魚萬」の読み方を教えてくれませんか？ググってみたら「うおまん」と思うが、あまり自信がないので確認したいんです。

[Dantes]

I love this Inn

Fantastic work 

[Aaron Graham]

Looks great, keep it going.

[FrankU]

Yes, the blue house is better now. The other is getting great too. 

[ACEfanatic02]

Dantes, Aaron Graham, FrankU:  Thanks, guys!


This bit was pretty fun to make, and pretty interesting architecturally as well.  The windows all look strange because I haven't put any floors in yet.  Google Maps fails me again on rear views, so I'm going to make the assumption there are balconies back there.  Seems a fair guess, as balconies are so ubiquitous in Japanese architecture. (Trivia: this is due, surprisingly, to the country's electrical grid and its inability to run clothes dryers properly -- they bake clothes rather than dry them.  While balconies are often seen as a luxury in the US, they're a must on apartments in Japan so the residents have an outdoor space to dry clothes!)

Once this is finished (I expect I'll have it done and exported sometime next week), I'll go back and redo textures and a few missed details on the blue house.  It's not quite release quality at the moment.

From here, I have a few more projects in mind:
- 銭湯 (public bath) - thinking it will be a clinic in-game (also possibly CS$, but I'd hate to have these growing adjacent to each other...)
- Small, 2~4 floor CS$ shops - got ideas and references for a few bookstores, and a few restaurants.

Finally, have some livetune, just because I have that damn Google Chrome CM stuck in my head right now.

[Aaron Graham]

Looks good, most of the times you will have to guess when it comes to making the back of the building.

[ACEfanatic02]

Still needs nightlighting, details on the balconies and roof, and a custom roof texture as well.  May also need to add some kind of roof access, though I'm not sure how best to go about that.  I'll also have to revisit the staircase on the back of the inn, because it's hilariously oversized.

In any case, getting very close here.

Unrelated, but while looking for inspiration for the next BAT, found this: Link. Anyone recognize a certain CO$$$ weed?

[Dantes]

The back of the building I like as much as the front.  The building is planned exellent. Good work again! 
I hope you post the building as well in the LEX, otherwise I have to cry all the time.   

[ACEfanatic02]

完成！

(Medium quality preview render, because I'm lazy and can't be bothered to re-render.)

Ready for export, I think.  I expect I'll need to tweak scale and such once I've seen it in game, but for the moment it's done.  Really happy with the way the balcony nightlights worked out. The clotheslines, incidentally, are the dirtiest hack ever, but work surprisingly well.  It's just an extruded triangle, textured with a photo of clothes, set slightly translucent (70% opacity, I think?)

Still deciding on the next project.  Any suggestions?

[Dantes]

I have to make a suggestion. I like your work very much. The Inn looks very realistic and typical.  I'm curious how the LOT is designed to do so.
On your next project I'm very excited. You're doing one great job!

[art128]

Looks great, looking forward to put it in use.

[Aaron Graham]

Looks good, What's those green things at the bottom of the roof rails, They do not look like their textured, that and the green trash bin does not look textured.

Keep it up.

[ACEfanatic02]

Sorry for the radio silence here for a while, guys.  Calculus came down like a ton of bricks at the end of the semester, and I've spent the past few weeks pushing out a rewrite of my open source project.  Summer semester starts today (Calc II and Linear Algebra, at the same time because I'm out of my f'ing mind), so I may be scarce for a while longer, but have no fear, there's good news ahead...

Looks good, What's those green things at the bottom of the roof rails, They do not look like their textured, that and the green trash bin does not look textured.

The blocks on the roof are the mounts/footers for the fence.  It looks like the fence was installed after the building was complete, so there are these rather bulky blocks (grey in real life) that anchor it to the roof.  I made them green because everything else on the roof is grey (same reason the fence is black rather than grey).  And both those blocks and the trashcans are textured, but it's a pretty subtle effect that gets washed out in the render.  They're small enough that it doesn't matter.

I mentioned good news, right?  Got 魚萬民宿 exported and in-game:


Looks pretty good, if I do say so myself.  With some help from a native friend of mine, also got the proper reading for the name: Uoyorozu Minshuku.  I personally find the kanji to be a lot better looking, but I realize that not everyone can display them in-game, so I'll release both English and Japanese versions of the lots.

Speaking of lots: the lot pictured is the default spat out by PIMX, and will be tweaked.

Until next time...