BAT Essentials Part 1

[part 1, part 2, part 3, part 4]

Introduction
Everybody was asking for it, so here it is. This is going to be an all-inclusive tutorial on the BAT that will take you from starting the model to getting the lot into SC4. I hope to establish all of the absolute basics you will need to create the building of your dreams, texture it, light it, export it, define the properties in the Plugin Manager, place it on a lot, and seeing it in game.

There will be a few of the more advanced features covered, but by and large this will be a basic tutorial for beginners. Below you will find the index of all pages (I divided each section into a different page to save page-load time for all those on dial-up, and to save my sanity when trying to organize this tutorial). This tutorial will cover a Commercial Building, but the lessons learned here could easily carry over to a Residential, Landmark, or even an Industrial Building. I chose Commercial as they are usually boxes, and it would be easier for me to explain to you (and for you to model) a rather simple building. Without further ado, I now present the tutorial.

Getting Started
(At this point, I am assuming you already have gmax, the BAT, the Plugin Manager, the new Lot Editor, and the SC4 patch installed on your system. If you don't yet, go get them now.)

Well, to begin any good tutorial, we'll have to begin at the beginning. In this case, we need to familiarize ourselves with the BAT/gmax. Firstly, open the BAT by double-clicking the "SC4 BAT" icon on your desktop.

NOTE: I refer to the "BAT" and "gmax" as interchangeable terms. In reality, gmax is the modeling program, the BAT is simply the pre-made Maxis lighting rigs and export tools (among a few other things). Just remember that if I say "the BAT" or "gmax," I'm referring to the same program.

Once you get the BAT to open, take a minute to look at the interface. It's broken down below:

1. Command Panel - you'll be doing most of your creating from here. This is also where the "rollouts" everybody talks about are. I refer to this panel often, but I'll put screenshots to show what I'm talking about.

2. Main Toolbar - extremely useful shortcuts to the menu bar commands.

3. Bottom Bar - the two most useful things here are the X, Y, and Z boxes, as well as the "Snap" button (discussed later).

4. Menu Bar - just about everything within the BAT can be accomplished from here, but many are duplicated in other tool bars. 5. Bottom Bar #2 - all your zoom, rotation, and pan commands are here.

6. Viewports (not numbered) - four different views are shown here. The default is top, front, left, and perspective, but you can customize them to show anything you want them to. If I ever say "start out in the left view", then I mean to use the Left Viewport when creating whatever I'm having you create.

Helpful Tips Regarding the Zoom, Pan, etc Controls:

1. Zoom - with this button clicked on, you can left-click in a viewport and, by moving the cursor up and down, zoom in and out.
2. Zoom All - similar to the "Zoom" button, but it zooms all active views at the same time
3. Zoom Extents/Zoom Extents Selected - zooms the view out a fair distance (haven't been able to figure out the difference between the two selections yet--but I'm sure there is one).
4. Zoom Extents All/Zoom Extents All Selected - "Extents All" moves all active viewports out, "Extents All Selected" (when pressed) zooms in on whatever object(s) are selected.
5. Region Zoom - my favorite, allows you to drag a box into one of the viewports--when you let go of the mouse button, the view zooms into and re-centers on the box you created--the box is not an object.
6. Pan - with this button clicked on, you can left-click in a viewport and move the view around.
7. Arc Rotate - very fun to play with; with this button clicked on, you can left-click in the viewport and drag the view around to any angle your heart desires.
8. Min/Max Toggle - very simply, it makes the active viewport large enough to fill the area that all four viewports are currently occupying.

NOTE: Any button with a little arrow in the lower right-hand corner (look really closely at the picture above at buttons 3, 4,and 7) means hat button has more than one option. If you click and hold the button, gmax will pop a little box above the button giving you all possible choices. Take note that all of the button choices are available, even the currently selected one.

Now you're going to want to make sure the units are set up correctly. The BAT does ship with these set up automatically, but it never hurts to make sure. After all, you wouldn't want to spend two days modeling your dream building and then realize the scale is way off, would you? Take note that with these settings, the grid lines that are shown will give you the SC4 scale. In other words, the lighter-colored "blocks" will be 1 meter on each side, and the darker-colored ones will be 16 meters on each side - or one tile in SC4.

Customize>Units Setup

Ensure "Generic Units" is selected.

Customize>Grid and Snap Settings

Home Grid>Grid Spacing 1.0 and Major Lines 16.

Customize>Preferences

System Unit Scale: 1 Unit= 1.0 meters

Helpful Tip Regarding the Viewports
If you right-click on the viewport name in the upper left-hand corner, it will give you this menu. You don't necessarily need to worry about all the options, but the most important ones I will explain. "Wireframe" is the default view for the Top, Right, Back, and Left viewports. The "Other" option gives you additional display options (I'm not going to explain them all - you can experiment and see what they do). If you uncheck "Show Grid", the grid lines will be hidden - unless you really want to do this I wouldn't recommend it. The "Views" option will let you pick from all of the different available views (the only views you need to concern yourself with at this point are Front, Back, Left, Right, Top and Perspective - but you can choose to see your model from perspective of one of the cameras, or lights, or anything available). The "Configure..." option will take you to the same window as Customize >Viewport Configuration... You can play with that to see what it can do, but it's not really necessary.

How To Select Objects

(selected objects become highlighted in white)

1. Click on individual objects--using the cursor, click on individual objects in one of the viewports - if you hold down "Ctrl" on your keyboard, then you can click on multiple objects to select them (if you accidentally select something you didn't want to pick, simply click on it again with the "Ctrl" key still held down.
2. Drag Select--hold down the left mouse button in a viewport and drag a box around the object(s) you want to select - when you release the mouse button anything within the box will be selected.
3. Select By Name--press the "H" key on your keyboard (this is know as a "hotkey") and it will give you the "Selected Objects" window (above right)--you can choose to hide things you don't want to see and use standard Windows list selections (discussed below) to pick from the list--notice that you can select by name (type what you're looking for in the blank box above the list), so name everything.

Windows Selection Methods "Shift" select - hold down the "Shift" key and either use the arrow keys or cursor to move up/down the list (you must have at least one object already selected in the list) - this is a "sequential" selection "Control" select - hold down the "Ctrl" key and click on names in the list - very useful if you want to select multiple objects that are not listed sequentially.

Quick and Dirty Guide to Basic Geometry Part 2

(3d World) This is a rough approximation of the 3 dimensional world. Keep in mind that here, the 2d world (that of the X and Y axes - also known as "the ground") lays completely flat, but it retains the same grid point system. Unlike the 2d world, however, the 3d world also adds the Z axis, which moves up and down above and below the 2d world. This also adds another value to the point system.

Anytime you move "up" (above ground), Z is positive. Also, whenever you move "down" (below ground), is negative.

So, in this system, if you wanted a point that was 3 spaces to the right, 2 spaces back, and 5 spaces down, you'd represent it like this: (3,2,-5)

This is the world you will be dealing with in the Front, Back, Left, Right, and Perspective viewports.

Think about it like this: If you wanted to move a wall to the right, 8 meters, you'd make X = 8. If you wanted to move the same wall backward 16 meters, you'd make Y = 16. If you needed to move that very same wall 3 meters into the air, you'd make Z = 3. This example would also be expressed as: (8,16,3)

Keep in mind that even though the Front, Back, Left, and Right viewports look like the 2D world, they are in fact a flat representation of the 3d world. Don't worry too terribly much about keeping this completely straight - if you ever get confused, the little X, Y, Z thing in the lower left-hand corner of the viewport will remind you which way the axes are oriented. I hope this didn't confuse anybody, but I think at least this basic understanding of geometry is very important if you want to model in the 3d world. I'll try to explain it the best way I can as we go along, and it'll eventually become second nature to you.

NOTE: One tile in SC4 is 16 meters by 16 meters. This means that if you want your building to be a certain size, you will need to keep this in mind. For example, if you want the building to fit one a 2x3 tile, then it would need to be no larger than 30 meters by 46 meters (2 meters subtracted from each side as the Lot Editor does not allow overlap on buildings). Please keep this in mind as you are modeling--nothing is more heartbreaking than exporting your model only to find it's way out of scale. It is possible t scale the entire thing later, but that can become extradinarily tedious and can be avoided by keeping this in mind at all times.

If you zoom out far enough in the viewports, the smaller "blocks" (the 1 meter boxes) will disappear and only show the larger "blocks" (the 16 meter boxes). This is very important to remember because when you first open the BAT, this is how the blocks will show (only the 16 meter boxes will be seen). If you model to the grid like this, you're building will be HUGE.

OK, enough preaching.

I was in the National Guard at one time, so my motto, like so many in the Infantry, is K.I.S.S. ("Keep It Simple, Stupid"). There is no need to make anything more complex than it has to be, and the simpler I keep something the better for my wee little brain. I refer to this concept often, so just forewarning you!

You're now ready to start modeling your building!