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Corn Farm

Started by Sarlock, September 26, 2013, 06:20:40 AM

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Sarlock

I've been working on this for a while and have made a lot of revisions and changes lately as my skill with blender has improved.  The beech tree that I created was actually for this project (in front of the farm house).  I can't decide if I've added enough detail yet or not... input is always valuable at this stage.

I wanted to add a corn farm to the pak since the only one we currently have is for the ethanol factory line and is only useful in the late stage of the game.  It could either be added as a grain producer or just add corn earlier in the game and add it to supermarkets, etc.

It's basically complete now so I am looking for thoughts/opinions on it, anything I should remove/add, before I produce 4 rotations and snow versions.  I've also created fields for it (you can see the autumn fields in this picture) but I want to clean up the divisions a bit more and make them as seamless as possible (I want to make it hard to see where one tile stops and the next begins).  I didn't add any modern machinery to make it so that it can become available in 1930.

As always, your input is valuable.



EDIT:
Because pak64 needs love too.



Large version, for detail:

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Markohs

Can you post the .blend file too please? :)

ӔO

My Sketchup open project sources
various projects rolled up: http://dl.dropbox.com/u/17111233/Roll_up.rar

Colour safe chart:

Zeno

Oh my gosh... that's beautiful! :·D~

Fabio

Absolutely!
I think more rural factories are the way to go, both for gameplay and landscaping.

cy087

Absolutely beautiful!

Two comments:
The silo looks a little high to me for a single farm.
There is no water tank for the windmill.


Sarlock

QuoteTwo comments:
The silo looks a little high to me for a single farm.
There is no water tank for the windmill.

Wonderful observations!  I think you're right, I'll lower the silo a bit and position a water tank.

Thanks for the positive feedback... Markohs, I'll post .blend files as soon as it's done :)  I am actually thinking about setting up a repository for all of my work, finished and unfinished, for anyone who wants to use objects from my blends for their own projects, or just generally learn about the process.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

mEGa

As everybody said : Beautiful !
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

greenling

Hello Sarlock
The Photos from Corn Farm looks Very hot out.
I hope i get by my projekt on weekend to roll.
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!

Markohs

Quote from: Sarlock on September 26, 2013, 02:25:21 PM
I am actually thinking about setting up a repository for all of my work, finished and unfinished, for anyone who wants to use objects from my blends for their own projects, or just generally learn about the process.

Wow that whould be great, Sarlock! Invaluable resources. Thank you!

greenling

Hello Sarlock
Can You try to translat the blendfiles in pngfiles too?
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!

prissi

Why a corn farm needs a Silo? Isn't a silo for making animal fodder? (Making hay out of straw and cut corn strunks.)

Aquin

Not neccessarily. It can also just be used to store dry grains or corn.
To produce silage (fermented food for animals) you can use a silo but the big heaps covered with plastic foils and old tyres are cheaper to build and operate.
And the silo looks very farm-ish ;-) so I think it should stay.

Sarlock

Interesting question.  Not being a farmer, I had to do some searching to find the answer.
Seems that the main use for silos these days is for holding silage (animal feed), though there is some use for actual corn in the silos as well, either to keep as feed as well or some farmers elect to keep some or all of their grain for a while and then sell at a later point when market prices may be higher.  Silage for animal feed is either held by the farmer who wants to use the feed or stored and then transported to nearby farms to supply feed as required.  Less and less farms seem to be using silos these days.  They are quite dangerous: lots of fatalities.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

Sarlock

#14


Lowered the silo height, added a water tower beside windmill, made a few other small changes/additions.  4 rotations done for summer view.  Working on winter view now.  I want to be able to make it in blender, just need to revise a few textures.  Also going to work at making the fields appear seamless.

Worthwhile having a discussion about the factory supply chain for corn.

As it exists now, corn is a late game feature (year 2000) that supplies corn to an ethanol plant.  Adding a corn farm early in the game (this one is designed to work for a pre-1930 release) will need an end market for the corn, one that doesn't require the addition of any new end factories or goods.  I'd like it to fit in to the current factory infrastructure.

Ideas:

-Bakery currently accepts grain.  Accept corn as well?  Corn bread is more of a local thing, though, for corn growing regions.  Still, it could work.
-Cattle and chicken farms.  Accepts corn/silage as feed.  This complicates the industry chain for meat/milk/fertilizer, however, by adding another production layer.
-Input for Food factory-->Supermarket.  This one seems to be the most logical.  I like supporting the more generic production outputs like "food".  I am going to develop more urban style "factories" like restaurants akin to the Simutrans Fried Chicken to consume "food" and "meat".

[EDIT]:

Apparently it was easier than I thought to make a winter picture.  I just changed the saturation, contrast and brightness on the roof and ground textures and it came out quite nice!  I also desaturated the walls of the barn, house and silo to make them more like they would look reflecting all that white snow off the ground.

How does it look?  This took me only about 10 minutes to create.  I am excited about how good it looks after such a short editing time frame.  I feel liberated!



[EDIT 2]:

Snow rotations done.  Made the snow field as well, took a bit of work to get it to mesh cleanly.  Needs a bit more work but it's close now.

Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

greenling

Hello Sarlock
The Corn Farm on The Photos looks super out.
Very good work. :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!

Markohs


mEGa

It looks so nice, so realistic ! Graphic result vs time creating is good !
Brilliant.
Current projects in progress : improvements of few designed french paks

Sarlock

#18
Fields done, mostly seamless.  Some seasons better than others but certainly good enough!

The only thing to do now is decide how best to fit this farm in to the production system.  I suggest adding it to the food processing plant production line.



PNG (PNG file optimized with OptiPNG -o7):
PNG File

DAT:
DAT File

PAK, for those who want to play with it right away (note that it doesn't belong to any industry chains yet, but it would work with the ethanol plant post year 2000):
PAK File

EDIT:

I added corn to the food factory chain and it seems to work well.

Updated DAT file:
Food Processor DAT File

Updated PAK file:
Food Processor PAK File
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

greenling

Hello Sarlock
Thank you for the Corn farm. :D
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!

Yona-TYT

#20
@Sarlock

Great job ....!! :o



sdog

#21
Quote from: Sarlock on September 28, 2013, 04:21:41 AM
-Bakery currently accepts grain.  Accept corn as well?  Corn bread is more of a local thing, though, for corn growing regions.  Still, it could work.

first time i noticed the corn is actually maize,
corn and grain are exactly the same word (granum), just two different pronounciations. By just calling it corn farm and having it deliver to a bakery: People in regions where maize is the predominant cereal and where corn and maize became synonymous will also know corn bread [! oxymoron?]. People from regions where other cereals are the predominant food crop will just consider it to be exactly that and don't even notice the consequences for the bread.

Calling the output product of the factory 'grain' is safe in both ways, in one language corn (as maize) is a subset of grain, in the other corn and grain are practically synonyms*.

*practically since for synonyms they'd have to be different words.


QuoteHow does it [winter image] look?  This took me only about 10 minutes to create.  I am excited about how good it looks after such a short editing time frame.  I feel liberated!
very convincing, the change of light colour made it very convincing. I'd leave the coniferes green though.

I also quite like the way the objects in the window of the white house are still visible in the low-res version. Where the windows only have a few pixel.

wlindley

Beautiful! Can you recommend a tutorial on how to draw buildings in Blender? I used AutoCAD back in the 1980s and I keep looking for a command-line that will let me type "LINE (100,100)-(100,200)" and let me type in the buildings from floor-plans I have sketched out on graph paper... All the tutorials I can find seem to say "let's start by deforming a cube" which is of no help -- How do I draw a floor-plan segment-by-segment and then raise walls from it, and attach textures to walls? 

Sarlock

I had the same problem when starting with blender.  Using it for buildings in Simutrans uses such a small but important part of the toolset.

The most important tools I use are Extrude (hotkey "e"), Scale ("s"), Grab ("g") and Rotate ("r").  I will often use the X, Y and Z keys after these operations to confine them to a single coordinate.  I also use the length option often during construction so that I am building to scale.

I am going to work on putting together a set of tutorials for using blender with Simutrans, now that I have some basic functional knowledge using it.  After learning those 4 functions (and a few others) it was just practice on learning how best to use them to assemble objects.  Because we're just making small models we can cut a lot of corners during assembly.

The hardest thing to learn was texturing and UV mapping.  It took me hours to put the textures on the first house that I made last year.

This corn farm took me about 20 hours to create.  Still a significant investment of time.

If we can start to assemble a nice big bunch of models for Simutrans it will really empower future artists to make things for the game.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

cy087

One thing has always escaped me is blender texturing, I would really like to see it expained well.

cy

VS

Beautiful! If there was something I had an issue with, it would be the ground as part of building. But I can understand why you want that there...

Is the image finished?

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Sarlock

The image is done.  I agree, it would be ideal for the ground to be open but it would make everything look much more "chunky" as I wouldn't be able to have objects in front of others blend together in a smooth fashion like I can with an included ground texture.  Especially the snow.  I am considering some farm types that fit better with different climate zones and would include ground textures more appropriate for those areas.

I've tested it a few times and it seems to work well connected to the food processing factory chain.  I think you can go ahead and commit this: remember to include the updated .DAT file for the food processor as well so that it adds the corn to its inputs.

Now on to my next project :)
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

paulo francis PF20

Congratulations for the work! :) pak downloaded the file and put in the game, but when I open it, it says that the Simutrans stopped working. What should have happened?  ???
PF FRANCIS

Sarlock

Strange.  It works perfectly fine for me.  I even downloaded the .PAK and put it in a clean install of pak128 and it worked fine.

Does Simutrans load correctly once you remove the .PAK file again?  Is it in your pakfile folder or your Addons folder?  I tried both locations and it worked fine.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics

VS

I should probably mention: I didn't like that the food processing factory should get another dependency. Thus I included the farm as is, but didn't modify the food processor factory.

Deciding what to do is for the new leadership / team :)

My projects... Tools for messing with Simutrans graphics. Graphic archive - templates and some other stuff for painters. Development logs for most recent information on what is going on. And of course pak128!

Sarlock

Thanks, VS!  It doesn't even have to be a corn farm, it could be another type of farm, to better fit the existing factory chains.
Current projects: Pak128 Trees, blender graphics