BSC - VIP team - Girafe's skills on the BAT

[BartonThinks]

The tractors look excellent! Also, for whatever it's worth, I've already started lotting with your (seasonal) alders. The overall shape of the foliage is a great contrast with your other deciduous trees (the walnuts are the closest tree I can think of to their overall shape, but I have an easier time fitting the alders onto lots).

[Badsim]

I continued to extend my tractor props collection, few extra and I will be able to time them for seasonal fields

Hi Antoine,

That collection of rural props is fabulous,  ... and, yep, I’ve spotted a grape harvester ! 

Timed props are a good point but I can also Mod an MMP  with them ASAP (Send them to our Dropbox when the set will be complte  ) so you could add it to their upload. 

While you're on this kind of rural props, maybe could you  release a decent irrigation prop to upgrade Maxis'one ?



... just saying... 

C.

[manga rivotra]

I will have to urgently think about finding space to expand my fields in my city-tiles. Superb job as always! 
And, to my taste, the new color of your Grand Firs is perfect: it seems quite in tune with the generally "softer" light of latitudes far from the Equator. 
I agree that NAM has been driving innovation for Sim City from the start, but I also believe your Flora is at least as important to a lot of players including me. I don't think I could have continued playing the game for so long without the happiness of being able to place your trees on lots, or as MMPs. Seeing what others are doing with your Flora is also very satisfying and always inspiring.
Your work and that of the VIP team is really essential, and I think it deserves to be said more often. 

[Girafe]

Thanks for the likes and comments   

@Cedric, yes there is a grape harvester  I know you like this kind of props. They are all in the dropbox (some are timed, some not). I included 2 irrigation props (32m and 48m large). They are not amazing but you can surely make use of them for the time being.

@manga rivotra, thanks for this warm comment and recognition 


Nothing much these past few days, I am finalizing some cereal LOTs with timed props:

Wheat:

Rapeseed:


I developed as well corn, but they are not yet timed and LOTed (moreover some tractors need to be changed like the harvester  )


I tried to convert these LOTs (which are so far only park ploppable) into (additional) growable farm field but without luck. If someone has some knowledge about that, it would be welcome. Replacement growable farm field could be considered but it requires to edit some exemplars directly in Simcity1.dat which is tricky.

[Andreas]

Those farming props and the new farm fields look excellent alright! It's been years since I did some modding in that regard when I published the SFBT vineyards, but what I remember is that the growable farm fields depend on some farm building lot that has set the field lot ID(s) in the Exemplar file. It is not really necessary that the farm building lot has an actual building, you can design it just like the farm field lots themselves. Feel free to take a look at the SFBT vineyards, and try a Maxis farm blocker in an otherwise empty plugins folder with your farm lots, then those should grow exclusively.

[BartonThinks]

I'd be happy to help with modding the fields -- I've done a few for personal use -- but as Andreas mentioned, the big stumbling block is assigning the fields to farms so that they will grow. There are three basic solutions that I can think up off the top of my head:

1. Create a set of custom farm lots and building exemplars that are tailored to go with the fields.
2. Find an existing set of custom farm buildings/lots and create override exemplars so that they use your crops.
3. Create override exemplars for Maxis farms so that your fields grow on Maxis farms.

Again, more than happy to help with the creation of any exemplars you need.

On the chance that you want to go with option 1 but don't have the time to create custom lots yourself. I'd also be more than happy to create some custom lots using existing props/buildings (e.g., Manchou's or Fantozzi's farm props for European-style farms, or JMyers's farm props for North American style lots).

[Girafe]

@ Andreas, thanks a lot for pointing me to the right direction. I, somehow and stupidly, did not see this property that assign field(s) to farms.
Reviewing the SFBT vineyard helped me a lot.

I managed to turn wheat and rapeseed into field and farm and I decided to go with the same LOT for below reasons:

@BartonThinks, thanks for your message

1. Create a set of custom farm lots and building exemplars that are tailored to go with the fields.
In absence of farm buildings in my collection, I would go for "plain" field without farm without visible building. If you or someone else would like to develop a new set farm pointing to my fields, feel free /
2. Find an existing set of custom farm buildings/lots and create override exemplars so that they use your crops.
I am not well aware of all existing farm buildings available for the game, but from the ones I know, nothing really convinced me mainly due to their aesthetic.
3. Create override exemplars for Maxis farms so that your fields grow on Maxis farms.
Unfortunately, I did not manage to make my fields (or SFBT vineyard) grow by editing field lot properties of SC4 farms 

I spent a lot of time to understand that the field LOT had to be ploppable and not growable to avoid maxis farms to grow or enlarge to my fields but finally wheat and rapeseed are here:



I tried to figure out this texture issue (it is one of the maxis base texture for fields but somehow it's color varied between farm and field) 



Corn field might follow,

[BartonThinks]

Having them grow as simple fields without farm buildings is a perfect solution. Wish I'd been smart enough to suggest it. 

Looking forward to having those corn fields available!

[mgb204]

I tried to figure out this texture issue (it is one of the maxis base texture for fields but somehow it's color varied between farm and field)  &Thk/

Are you using a Maxis texture which includes a Texture Family? In such cases each tile gets a randomised texture from the group of textures sharing an ID.

[Girafe]

Long time I did not update this thread.

Nothing major but few developments happened since then.

Agripack was released on the LEX, thanks to all for the help to get this one out 



Grand firs are also available there:



Regarding flora, I have quietly updated many packs to include LE props (timed / non-timed):

for example the Oaks:





I encourage you to have a look at a Maxis fence replacement mod created by Flann with some of my fence / hedge models 



https://community.simtropolis.com/files/file/33965-girafe-maxis-fence-hd-replacement-mod/

Finally, I continue my cooperation with NAM team on the RHW FLUP project:

Hopefully, you will be able to use the following versions in NAM 40 (mis, RHW2, RHW3L, RHW3R, RHW4 S, RHW4) in US / EU / maxisnite / darknite. Credit to NAM team for all the modding involved   

[Girafe]

Working on small projects 

I scaled down the FLUP RHW portal to 3 tiles for smaller networks like road, street... and started with the US Road portal:





I was in the mood to continue to extend my Parisian Bus stop with the addition of new shelters, LOTing of double shelters for Avenue and the introduction of small pole for street:

They are hidden among the previous versions 










The tiny "bus pole" does not seem major development but behind the scene it required quite some work with baking the street texture with the marking and tweaking the sidewalk props taking automatically the texture of the installed sidewalk mod.



I am thinking to add the new design to this tiny pole and make a family:



While doing some Parisian bus stops, I had the energy to  recover an old project, Parisian tram station 

[kelis]

Everything looks really nice !!

Is it possible to create tunnels for differents roads/streets, etc... ?

[mgb204]

I particularly like the GLR Station/Shelter, I'm sure I'll be making use of those. But all of these transit Props/Models are excellent, even if I'm not particularly interested in the Paris theme personally.

Also the replacement FLUP Ramps, it'll be really great to have a version that is absolutely free of Maxis sidewalks, whilst minor compared to the other items that used them, the Road/OWR/Ave ramps are probably the last items left in my game with them. Great to see you making the most of these fantastic ramp models.

[noahclem]

Awesome work on the portals, bus stops, and that lovely tram shelter  Neat implementation of the markings and sidewalk models as well!

[art128]

Tram stop looks nice! I made a long time ago a diagonal stop modeled like yours after the T3 stops (since I lived close by). Will be interested to see a night view.
Yours have more details than mine, they're really nice. The bus stops are nice as well, I might adopt them in my region.

Will the underpass have support for LHD users?

[Girafe]

Thanks for the comments and likes,

@Kelis, if you think about the new FLUP RHW moddind system included in the recent NAM update, the idea is to translate this modding to other networks like road, street... so far they don't exist yet but we start working on that 

@Arthur, I am not sure about the functionality of LHD users but as a design the FLUP are modelled only for RHD. Combination between US / EU / maxisnite / darknite / entrance / exit duplicates a lot the number of models to design and export so I let aside the LHD but I guess they are functional.


I have done few last tweaks with the sidewalks and zig zag texture:



Tram station integrated to the game with its night view:





And I forgot to mention that Vnaoned let many gems to VIP team before leaving. Let's see if I can finish the LOTing of this small typical Brittany house

[mgb204]

I have some ideas about making the FLUP portals LHD, by just messing around with the Textures and switching the Red/Green lane markings. This could be accomplished as such with little more than a texture override. I'm pretty sure looking at them this won't cause visual issues, since there is no difference (like shadow) symmetrically to worry about. But I totally understand 4 renders per model is probably already enough.

[bladeberkman]

Love those bus stops, particularly the greenery on the roof of your shelters! Have you considered creating some HD subway stairs to complement them? There aren’t many HD subway stairs that work for road-top applications (Maybe none? Can’t think of any off the top of my head.), so that would be a welcome addition.

Great work as always!

-Blade

[Andreas]

Those FLUP portals look great alright (as does the rest, natually). For the sake of simplicity, maybe you can move the interactive sign and traffic lights at the top to the center of the tunnel portal? Then it would look good for both RHD and LHD.

[mgb204]

There aren’t many HD subway stairs that work for road-top applications (Maybe none? Can’t think of any off the top of my head.), so that would be a welcome addition.

McDyre made a set for RTMT, honestly I don't know if they were previously released or not, but very high quality in four colours and one with London Underground signage. The latter one I re-rendered with some tweaks in 3DS Max not so long ago. All those will be options for the upcoming RTMT 4 release.

I'm pretty sure Simmer2 made some recently too and he deals almost exclusively in HD props.