My BAT and Lot Workshop

Since I'm so grateful to all of you for letting me come back to AIN, I'm going to make all of my future BAT releases available exclusively to AIN for a full week before uploading them to the STEX. It's going to be a while before I start releasing anything, though, since the project I'm working on right now is so huge:




If you haven't seen my BAT thread at either ST or SC4D, this is a supertall skyscraper that will be the focus of the next official update of my CJ. It's going to be over 800 meters tall when it's done, but before I model the finished building, I'm making a series of seven construction BATs. I've had to do a bit of research on Wikipedia to decide on how to model the building's inner workings; I looked at the floorplans of the old WTC towers to figure out how the central core of the building should be constructed, and I've learned about mechanical floors to figure out how many this 160-story tower should have, and how they should be distributed. I've received criticism that the façade as it is now is rather repetitive, so I'm trying to figure out how to dress up the mechanical floors to break up the monotony of the façade. Unfortunately, school and social obligations have kept me from BATting in the past couple of weeks, but I hope to get back into it soon.

[Jaw dropped so I can't speak]

Houston, we have a batter!

WHOO!!! another batter!!! .. just one request ... if you run out of ideas could you make a cool arena or like the Metrodome in Minneapolis? the stex is kinda lacking good arenas...

:!: Speechless

Yeah Arenas would be amazing Plus it wouldnt be as hard as a open seat stadium

Wow. Good job!!! Maybe some sort of giant window three or four stories tall or a floor built a little bit in for a balcony of some sorts would give it some diversity.

Really, really nice. Glad you're here! Love the ground-floor windows.

:shock: That building is freaking sweet!!

WOW!

i am amazed! that is truly spectacular

Thanks a lot, all of you, for your warm welcome!

Tyler wrote:WHOO!!! another batter!!! .. just one request ... if you run out of ideas could you make a cool arena or like the Metrodome in Minneapolis? the stex is kinda lacking good arenas...

An arena is certainly one possibility for the future. Since I'm planning to do a modular university set at some point, I think I'll throw in recreations or spinoffs of RL collegiate arenas (particularly ones I can visit).

KoV Liberty wrote:Wow. Good job!!! Maybe some sort of giant window three or four stories tall or a floor built a little bit in for a balcony of some sorts would give it some diversity.

A little more "diversity" in the façade wouldn't hurt, I agree. I was thinking of some sort of geometric pattern of reliefs on the mechanical floors, which come in pairs every 20 floors, though I have yet to decide exactly what it would look like. Maybe I could also try varying the window widths in between the mechanical floors...

Well, due to having a busy quarter, I haven't been able to open up 3ds Max 2010 in weeks, so I have no progress to show on the King Zachary Tower That's not to say that I haven't been doing any custom content creation, though. Over the past couple of weeks, I was inspired to remodel Ridgeland Park in Nyhaven to look more like my old description of it as a formal garden, which resulted in my decision to make my first set of overlay textures for the LE. Those textures will eventually be released on the STEX, once I've made a bunch more to make the texture pack more useful to other lotters. Meanwhile, I've been using those textures to make a set of custom lots, which will be put together like a giant jigsaw puzzle to form the new version of Ridgeland Park. Here's what the first nine of those lots look like in the LE:



Those textures I mentioned are of paths angled at 26.6° (for a slope of 1/2), an angle never before used in texture or network creation (the FAR(R) in the NAM is angled at 18.4°, or a slope of 1/3). I'm sure that once I've expanded my original set of 24 textures, lotters will go crazy designing new lots with "oblique" paths, as I'm calling them.

Nice work!

I really like your work

But I can tell we have to download quite a number of dependencies which I think I have most of it.

Thank you both! Aran, I tried to minimize the number of dependencies I used in making the Ridgeland Park lots, though they probably require 4-6 dependencies total.

I'm BATting again!

looking great! you should release the KZT as a construction lot

Nice job!

Amazing job, I am trying to BAT.

I'll have to say that that is amazing. I should start learning BAT for a couple of projects I want to do.

I love it! Especially the lower level windows - they make the building unique...

Anyone know where I can find a tutorial to convert sketchup models to BATs?

Whoa great!!

Neil wrote:Anyone know where I can find a tutorial to convert sketchup models to BATs?

I wish I did. I downloaded an SKP of a crane from the Google 3D Warehouse without realizing that I didn't have a way to import it into 3ds Max :oops:

Well, after a couple more months with no progress, aside from further discussions with SimHoTToDDy, I've returned with a major update for you all! I've revised the floor layouts so that there's now a second "staircase" of floors going the opposite way to the original "staircase". As a result, the tower is now going to be considerably shorter than I had originally planned, at 100 floors instead of 160. I've also made the outer walls thinner in an attempt to bring them closer to the glass, to give the façade a smoother look. Here's how it all turned out:

Is this just a construction BAT or you're making the finished version too?

This is the third in a series of five construction BATs of this building, which I will also make a finished version of.

Good idea with the height reduction. As long as it's still the tallest building...

Great job!