Subject:
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Re: new site on converting LDraw buildings to Sim City 3000 Unlimited Building Architecht Plus
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.cad.dat.models
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Date:
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Sun, 2 Sep 2001 13:02:06 GMT
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Viewed:
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782 times
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In lugnet.cad.dat.models, Michael Horvath writes:
> Yeah, before they updated their website it was easy to find all this stuff.
> I admit their website is better now, but some of the old content is now
> obscure or, I suspect, nonexistent.
G'day Mike,
Yeah, I finally started using their Site Map yesterday to find things.
Originally I was worried it was for the entire EA world, but it's
just for the SimCity site. It's about the best way to get around
there now IMHO. Using it I was able to find that SC3K_URK is
grouped with BAP. The only active in-line link to it from normal
web browsing seemed to be from the School Design Contest page.
So anyhow, before you replied I spent yesterday mucking around
with URK. Not for the "LEGO interface" but just to figure out
how it worked. I decompiled some existing buildings into images
and then built them back again to get familiar with it. I also
looked at the templates to understand what they did. They're
the same layout as many other games used, notably CivII (and I
believe SMAC), except for .BMP vs .GIF I think.
So then I jumped on the bandwagon and made my very first custom
landmark! No, it wasn't LEGO. You can see the results here:
http://www3.sympatico.ca/flightdeck/Share/SimCity/
(WARNING! Some of the images are over 300 kB.)
That's my true Canadian landmark! Hehe, there's no torch,
but eat yer heart out NYC! ;] The helicopter in one of the
images was a nice touch. Also be sure to read the news ticker
in one of them.
So this amusing little exercise not only beautified my skyline
but taught me the ins and outs of using Photoshop and the
templates to make buildings. Combined with your advice for
angles and scales, I think I can toss some buildings into it
now. Hmmm, I'm already imagining a Classic Space city...
I wonder if there's a hack yet to editing the vehicles, roads,
etc? It really bugs me that those items are high resolution
whereas the buildings look like crap at the closest zoom level.
> dimensions. If you want my advice, 1 baseplatewidth in ldraw should equal
> one tilewidth in SimCity. I came to this conclusion by comparing the school
> bus and pedestrian size to minifigs and ldraw vehicles. The scale seemed to
> match pretty well.
That makes sense. That way small buildings will occupy one game
tile just like the game buildings. Also I read on SC3000.com that
roughly 25 squares equals 1 mile, if you want to give it a
real-world perspective.
> Also, you'll find that when you render an image in
> povray, the baseplate will have a height equal to one tile. You don't want
> this, so erase any indication of baseplate height from the rendered bitmap
> in your favorite image editing utility. This insures that all your
> buildings will line up correctly, without looking out of place.
I suppose it depends on the look you're after. If you want the LEGO
buildings to look like they were just set on the ground like toys,
then I guess this could be left in. But I think the way I would
handle taking it out would be to raise a floor plane 1 tile in
L3P so it clips off the baseplate thickness. Then I guess the
floor would have to be non-reflective so it comes out as one
solid colour, which I can then magic-wand delete in Photoshop.
Hmmm, I'll have to fiddle with it some more.
> There used to be a bit more detailed tutorial on creating renderings for
> import into SC3K on the SimCity website. But, since their website overhaul
> I have been unable to find this information. It dealt with setting the
> correct angles for lighting, light source intensity, and some other stuff I
> can't remember. Don't worry about that, though. L3p's default settings
> look just fine.
The only guidelines I found were in the URK readme file. It advises
lighting direction for each view of the building, but that's about
it.
> That's about it. Good luck!
Thanx for all the help, Mike! Let me know if you want the file
for my "landmark" above and I'll put it in my webspace..., it's
still on my Win98 partition right now.
Say, if we make enough of these, we should start a SimCity LEGO
building exchange. You've got 2 up already..., comments?
Thanx,
KDJ
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LUGNETer #203, Windsor, Ontario, Canada
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