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Century Building - pak128.Britain Style

Started by Sarlock, October 23, 2013, 06:51:03 AM

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Sarlock

As discussed, this building may work also for pak128.Britain.  It may prove too ornate/detailed, but it's worth a try.

I've made some quick adaptations to the colours, let me know if you think this style of building will work for this pak and we can continue to work on it to get it to fit the pakset style.  Being my first building for pak128.Britain, it may take a few attempts, but I'd certainly be interested in sharing some of my future material with multiple paksets, especially as I work on a bunch of buildings in the 1850-1930 range.

I changed the bricks to more of a brown colour, lowered the intensity of the blue awnings (maybe these need to be a totally different colour to better match), darkened the slate roofing and increased the door colour.  It's getting late for me, so I'll leave it here for the night.

Tips/suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen

Windows should be completely black (with white frames), pavement texture needs changing, roof slates could even do with more darkening. Otherwise looking very good! :)

wlindley

Lovely!  As for being a little ornate, perhaps dat-file parameters of a slightly lower probability and a unique density level would make it a bit of a "jewel" in our cities?

Sarlock

Thanks for the comments and suggestions.  I agree, I lowered the probability for pak128 for the same reason.  Making it more of a rarity would be ideal for this design.

Implemented the suggestions and made a few other modifications.  I've included both a front and rear view.  Fitting in quite nicely, now.  Any other suggestions?  There are likely some subtle things that you experts will notice that my novice pak128.Britain eyes can't see :)

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen

Looking very good - minor niggle is that the brick texture used on the building sides has different scales on the different rotations - I prefer the one with smaller bricks. Great job :)

Sarlock

Nice catch!  Very subtle difference and I agree.  Was just a slight difference in the UV mapping for each side.  Fixed:

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen


jamespetts

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sdog

Now, it's really difficult to decide which looks better the 128 or 128.britain version. Perfect fit to the pak style. And what a lovely model.

Milko


Sarlock

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

jamespetts

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greenling

Hello Sarlock
Those Building looks very hot out. :thumbsup:
Opening hours 20:00 - 23:00
(In Night from friday on saturday and saturday on sunday it possibly that i be keep longer in Forum.)
I am The Assistant from Pakfilearcheologist!
Working on a big Problem!

Sarlock

And done... maybe :)

I set the date for 1880 but you can change as desired to better fit pakset.  I set level at 24.



PNG file, optimized with optipng -o7:



DAT file

Edit as you see fit.  You can also use for pak128.Britain.Experimental, of course.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen

It really does tower over houses! Hopefully it will only crop up in the centre of big cities :)

Sarlock

I hope so... I lowered the chance, we could lower it even further.  We could also consider raising the level to 26 which puts it 1 past the last office building at 25 (which is actually a bit taller than this building).
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

jamespetts

Thank you - added to the Experimental Github repository now.
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kierongreen

Problem with chance is that (if I remember correctly)  it is the chance spread across buildings of that level available at that time. So if you make it level 26, and it is the only level 26 building then even if chance is 1 (out of 100) then it will always be built. That needs work on city building code though to solve that!

Sarlock

Absolutely agreed: in a high density city it will become overwhelmed by this very building.  Perhaps we could set it to level 25, the same as the other commercial high-rise, and with a low chance.  Then it will only be a small percentage of the level 25 buildings overall.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen

Yes, although then different heights being the same level might cause people complain about that... can never win!

AlexSmith

it's stupid remark, but is there a fountain on snowy image?

kierongreen

Yes it matches city pavement as it should :)

Sarlock

#22
Fountains?



This is kind of fun...


Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

jamespetts

I think that the "fountains" are actually streetlights...
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wlindley

I love the alley image.  You can almost smell it...

The Hood

Always nice to be offered good quality work, but I'm worried it still doesn't quite fit the style - it seems too pale/washed out compared to the existing buildings. Also the vertical scale seems too big. Assuming this image wasn't created in blender (in which case easy to change some settings and render with the pak128.Britain tools) then it might be worth trying to play around with saturation of colours and squashing the building vertically (if not blender does it exist as a layered image file eg gimp xcf?)

Sarlock

It is made in blender, so any of those changes would be easy to do.

I hesitate on the vertical rescaling as this building does have larger story heights, especially on the first two levels, as many buildings of this generation did (thus becoming nice high ceiling/loft apartments in recent years).  I'll try and see if it has a negative effect on the overall proportions of the building.

Thanks for the feedback!
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen

I had similar thoughts when first looking at it - it's worth pointing out that the front of the building is actually set back a fair distance from the pavement compared to other office blocks. This has the effect of making the first story look higher than it actually is.

Sarlock

#28
Great observation, kieron.



It's actually almost perfectly to scale with this building.  Being set back in the tile perhaps gives it a bit of an optical illusion.  I think also the detail tends to make it look taller than it is (probably a specific design feature done on purpose on the real building).

EDIT

Modified building, most textures receiving significant darkening:



I killed a lot of the contrast with the white trim, I could slightly increase the white brightness a bit to bring the contrast out a bit more again.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen

I'd like to see a version with the white whiter again :)

Thanks for your patience Sarlock :)

The Hood

Looking much better. Did you render it with the pak128.Britain tool? That always helps get consistency. If you are getting fed up of our stylistic nitpicking then I'd be happy (when I get time of course!) to make the alterations in blender myself. I'd also be tempted to make versions with fewer stories too...

kierongreen

Versions with different stories would be a good idea also different colour awnings for shops etc all gives a bit more variety :)

Another thought I had would be to make a corner version of this. I'd be happy to join in tweaking too i needed...

Sarlock

I'll keep poking away at it and present a few drafts, it's a good way to learn a new graphics pak style and some of the nuances.  I don't mind the nitpicking, it helps me learn :)  It doesn't take long to do this in blender, lightening and darkening textures is super easy.  My time is a bit limited for the next few days, but I'll have more time during the week to pump out a lot of different samples to see if we can get closer to an optimum.

I have thought about doing a corner building as well, kieron.  It wouldn't be hard, just mirror the building on each side and then build an angled section at the corner with shop doors.  Different coloured awnings would give nice variety as well.  My only hesitation on doing this was whether we wanted this building to appear frequently enough in cities for the variation to even matter or not.  I am concurrently working on some similar era buildings that are less ornate that may be a better fit for this adaptation.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

kierongreen

Smaller versions of this building are relatively common in Britain at least so I wouldn't worry about how often it appears too much.

And yes, it's useful how quick things are to change in blender :) I've huge admiration for artists who paint images pixel by pixel with the amount of time that takes!

jamespetts

Ahh, splendid, it looks even better now. Do you have the final source graphics files that I can use for Pak128.Britain-Ex?
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