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原作是simtropolis的Phillippbo
http://www.simtropolis.com/forum/messageview.cfm?catid=140&threadid=78721&enterthread=y
原篇是整個的BAT>SC4教學，這一篇，當初我列印下來，有空就看的，現在再次重看它，當時很多不懂的，現在很多都領會了。
((題外話，原作對那種有點英文基礎、而且對制模有興趣的行外人，是不錯的詳細學習流程))
以下這片段只是該篇結尾的"附件"(Appendix)
這附件收藏了制模過程的一些bug及其解決之道。
Appendix
Tips, Tricks and Troubleshooting
This page will cover a (very limited) few more advanced tips, some time-saving tricks, and a little troubleshooting.
First, the troubleshooting.
Don't you just hate it when something like this happens? This one is simple, the building was not centered on the origin before it was exported. Simply go back into gmax, center the building (group the whole building and X/Y move it to 0). They get harder, I promise.
What if in the render, or in the LE and SC4 all you see is something like this sitting on your lot instead of your nice, beautiful building? This one's simple too, the LODs are too small for the model. Refitting LODs in the BAT rollout will fix this one. The difficult ones are coming, I really do promise.
If you get something like this, watch out cause your model is done for...
No, just kidding, it can be fixed. Maxis suggested that the above problems could be a lighting rig or LOD problem and suggested that the lighting rig should be deleted, then re-fitted, and the same for the LODs. For me, that didn't work. Instead, I did the following (can be considered a general "fix-all" solution for something really wonky that nobody seems to know what it is):
1. Select your entire model, leaving out any cameras or lights you didn't add;
2. Go to File >Save Selected and give your building a unique name (this is the same as exporting just roof junk);
3. Open a completely clean BAT file (the best way to make sure this happens is close the BAT and re-open);
4. Go to File >Merge and select your building model;
5. Re-export.
Problem solved! Something like this is just like Maxis suggested, an LOD or Lighting/Camera Rig problem. Since it went all buggy for no apparent reason, it's a good idea to start with a clean slate. Note that first, you may want to double-check to make sure you don't have any geometry or splines unexpectedly sticking way out of the model.
If you export your new skyscraper, and then notice to your dismay that the lights don't seem to go all the way up, it can be heartbreaking. This is usually (not always) a lighting rig problem (ie - the rig isn't big enough for your building). To fix this, delete your current lighting rig by going to File >XRef Scene and removing whatever's there. Next, hit the "Add" and navigate to:
C:\gmax\gamepacks\BAT\scenes\CamLightRigs
There are four lighting rigs - Rig (default), RigMedium, RigBig, and RigHuge. Maxis seemed to indicate that these rigs should accomodate all possible sizes of buildings, but it is possible to create your own (I'm not even going to begin to get into that - check the BAT help files for more information). My suggestion would be that if the huge rig is still too small for your building, then your building will probably cause all kinds of problems in game due to its size. Scale it.
Suppose you've gone through all the hard work of creating a building, exporting it, and putting it in the game only to find out it's way out of scale? Or, suppose you want to re-use your gorgeous HVAC unit and turns out it looks way too big on your new building? Select and Scale will help here.
- WARNING -
This becomes very tedious. It's always better to try keeping the correct scale in mind at all times.
The first thing you'd want to do is decide exactly what needs scaling. Does the entire building need to be taller? Shorter? Wider? Or maybe that overhang is too small after all? What you'd want to do is select everything you want to scale (most likely it's going to be the entire building) and group them (not absolutely necessary, but it really helps). Next, you'll need to pick one of the scaling options:
1. Select and Uniform Scale - keeps the object's proportions while scaling - so if you make the building narrower, it will also make it shorter and smaller front to back.
2. Select and Nonuniform Scale - does not keep the proportions - will give it a "stretched" or "squashed" look - whatever you change will be the only scale changed.
3. Select and Squash - seems to do just about what Nonuniform Scale does, but I've never really used it.
Once you have your scaling option selected, and your objects grouped, it's now time to scale! Unfortunately, scaling doesn't seem to be an exact science as shorter buildings in SC4 have been exaggerated to show detail and taller ones have been scaled back so they're not overwhelming (but if you model the way I showed you, this shouldn't be a problem). What you're going to do is type in whatever you want to change in X, Y, and Z. Just like with moving, X will always change left/right, Y front/back, and Z up/down. The numbers in these boxes are percentages, so if you want to increase the height by 10%, then you'd type 110 in the Z box. If you make a mistake, it's easily undone by changing the number back to 100. Just be forewarned, you can spend hours scaling something and still have it turn out wrong. Also, if all you need to change is the building itself and none of it's detailing, you will need to manually move the detailing back to where it should be. See, told ya it can be very tedious.
NOTE: If you change the value for Z, you will have to place the building back on the X/Y plane (2d world), or else you'll lose that part of your model underground!
With enough attention to detail, with just the information I've given, you can model some pretty amazing stuff.
Some tips: 1. Detail, detail, detail - almost every detail you put in will show in the render.
2. Text - for any kind of text to show well at all, it needs to be extruded (just like any other spline) - for something that's "painted on", an extrude of 0.1 or a little less will do nicely.
3. Textures - they need to be at least 2 shades darker than you think they need to be to show like you expect them to.
4. Realistic buildings - avoid faking detail like the plague! Yes, the above model has faked detail, but just like MaxisBrian (I believe it was) suggested, detail should never be added with textures, textures should accentuate the detail.
5. Don't overlook the lot - you can have the bestest BAT building in the whole wide world, but if your lot is grass with a tree or two, people will likely ignore it.
6. Windows - it is OK to place a rectangle behind the glass of a window to give it the illusion something's going on inside - how insane would it be to model every single room of a 55-story office building (note that you can put one huge rectangle behind the glass and use a bitmap with lots of little squares going on)?
7. Window glass - instead of modeling every single pane of glass, why not put one huge rectangle centered in the wall? This is great if you're going to do the night lighting inside modeled rooms, not so handy if you're going to use "nite" to light up the glass.
8. Never release before you're ready - no matter how much other people are pressuring you to release your work, remember that the building and the lot reflect on you. If it's not exactly how you want it, keep working and ignore the beggars! After all, what's most important is that you're happy with it, right?
9. Save often, and in multiple places - you never know when your file will be corrupted or your computer will lock!
10. If you don't know and can't find it, ask - the only way you'll ever know is to ask if you can't find the answer on your own. The only stupid question is the one never asked!
Now that we're just about finished, a few tricks:
If you're creating a taller building, like this 20-story office building (well, the wall of one), array is your best friend. Just like when you arrayed the window openings on BAT Tutorial, Inc, you will need to array your windows across. Unlike the tutorial building, however, you will also need to array the windows up. To accomplish this, you'll set your 1D array just like you would if it were only 1 floor, and change the 2D array (make sure to select the radio button) to the number of floors. Note that here, it's only necessary to make the Z for 2D the height of the floors. A few seconds later, you have a wall full of window openings! (After an extrude, of course.)
Let's suppose that you have something like the upper left-hand picture, but you want it to look more like the night render? You'd need to light it, of course! (I did this one in a bit of a hurry, so it looks like crud - but anyway.) I'm really not going to explain this in explicit detail, but I included a screenie of the settings I used for this particular model. In this model, there are 6 spots and one omni light. Also, if you want shadows to cast onto the ground, you'll need to put something on the ground in the BAT - otherwise no shadows for you!
The lighting above is for example only. Whenever I'm lighting a model, I usually end up playing with the settings and doing test renders over and over. Just remember that for this, unlike the texturing, SC4 has a tendency to make lights darker. That means you'll need the lighting to be a bit brighter than you actually want it to turn out. (For Vu Quest, I think I did about 30 or so test renders, and 4 exports.)
Now, a few tips about editing your splines.
Let's say you want a nice, bendy shape like this one? All you have to do is put an edit spline modifier on a spline (like a rectangle), use the selection method of "Vertex" in the edit spline rollout, and move the verticies up.
If you move those little green boxes around, you can change the curve of the line.
You can also delete verticies to create interesting shapes. If you delete a vertex, gmax will connect that side between the two verticies that the deleted vertex used to lie in the middle of. Be careful, though. If you delete all of the verticies, they will disappear, but the spline will still be there.
If you want to create a quick and simple arch (this can be a little tedious if you don't have a good eye for it) you can simply edit the spline. All you have to do is apply an edit spline modifier to the rectangle, and (using the selection method of "Vertex") pick individual verticies to move the green boxes around until you get a pretty good curve out of it.
Lastly, if you don't want the sides to be curved, but don't want to mess around with changing the curve of the line, an edit mesh modifier is for you. Slap an edit mesh modifier on your spline, choose vertex or face in the rollout, and move until your heart's content. There will be no curvature to the faces, they'll just use the shortest possible distance.
That looks complicated, don't it? Well, I'll explain it. Let's suppose you wanted to make a roof like what's on top of Vu Med farther up the page. You'd follow these steps:
1. Set Grid and Snap Settings to "Vertex" and "Grid Points".
2. Assuming you already have an extruded rectangle on the roof, snap a pattern of lines like so (note that you have to complete each side - ie, the shapes on all four sides are complete polygons). When you snap that last vertex, window 7 will appear. Click "Yes" so that the shape becomes one poly.
3. Put an edit mesh modifier on each of your roof sides, and you can either use the "Vertex" or "Face" selection method in the edit mesh rollout to move the tops of them up like so.
4. Snap a rectangle into the opening in the top, and move it down a bit. Also, in this step, you'll need to snap rectangles in the empty space between the rooftop and the upper edge of your side roof pieces (4A). For these, the rectangle will be made facing you. So, if you snap the rectangle in the left view, the rectangle will be facing left. So you don't have to go through messy extrudes, simply rotate the rectangle 180 degrees to face the opposite direction. Clone and/or create new rectangles until you have all of the empty space filled.
5. So there's some kind of edging to this roof, snap lines with the Generate Mapping Coords and Display Mesh boxes checked. Note that for this, you only snap the lines where you don't already have one - you don't want them to overlap.
6. SUCCESS! You now have a complex-looking, but pretty simple to make, rooftop for your new buildings.
Remember when we deleted part of our bend pipe for the back of the HVAC and I said I'd show you how to fill in the empty spaces later? I didn't lie, it just took me awhile to get to it. (Go back to Minute Details if you don't remember about this.)
OK, I took a cylinder, put an edit mesh modifier on it, and using select "Vertex" deleted all but the outer 3 rings. This will leave the back part of the object empty and see-thru. To fix that, you'd need to pick "Edge" selection in the Edit Mesh rollout, and rotate one of your viewports until you can clearly see just the back part of the cylinder (like the picture with the yellow circle on it). Very carefully, select the edge that's over the empty area (it will turn red). Next, in the "Edit Geometry" rollout, change the Extrude to the negative of the height of your shape and hit the Extrude button (ie- if your geometry was 120 meters tall, then the extrude would be -120). Do this for all the remaining edges until the back is filled in.
Remember also that if you fill in the back of the cylinder this way, the back will be one face. This means that if you put a texture on it, it will be stretched across the back face. Just thought I'd warn you so you didn't get the same nasty surprise I got.
When you're done, you will notice some very strange shading on the geometry. Do not worry about this at all, it doesn't show in the render. Well, I could go on and on and on with tips and tricks, but I suppose that's about it for now. Using all of the methods I've shown you, some pretty impressive buildings should begin to appear on the STEX.
Remember our deal, though, NO DUPLICATES OF BAT TUTORIAL, INC. Please - I don't wanna get in trouble with Grampa Al or dirk.
HAPPY BATTING!
If you have any questions about htis article, please PM STomnibus.
[ 本帖最后由 天唐永thianz 于 2008-8-5 11:45 编辑 ] |
SC小狗仔
发表于 2008-8-5 09:40
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