Quote:
Originally Posted by Lawn Loaf
The quality of these fields are awesome, a work of art. I'd love to help out and create college parks too, how long does it take, what 3d info from the help me thread do I need to focus on?
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I heavily watched Silvam's tutorial videos. He does an incredible job of going through some of the nuances of SketchUp, and some tips and tricks. I do not have a huge amount of skills, but after the videos it is much easier than I thought they would.
I use GIMP a lot also to create and modify textures. GIMP is free and does a pretty good job for me.
I am using a program called SBuilderX to capture the satellite images. It was created to assist in creating ground textures for Flight Simulator X, but works well for this purpose. With this program you can capture images at pretty good resolution (I use level 20). This can be a complicated process, but there are some good videos to explain how it works. Sometimes it also takes using GIMP to make some corrections to the image. For example I have had to get rid of Batting Cages and a couple of lawn mowers in images. Make sure to correct the image before importing into SketchUp.
I also use Google Earth to create a video panorama which I then import into Image Composite Editor (both are free) to create the backdrop image. I had to watch some videos online to learn how to create the backdrop as well.
As far as time to create, I spend more time than necessary finding pictures of the stadium to make sure I get some of the character of each stadium. I try to get the advertisements to be the ones that are actually in the stadium. My goal with this is for someone who has been to the stadium and is a fan of that team to recognize the stadium as they would see it in real life. So finding an image for Doc's BBQ in South Carolina might mean nothing to most people, but to some one who goes to South Carolina Games they will recognize it on the dugout. Or my favorite, an advertisement for Attorney Davis Smith, the Gorilla Lawyer, at Texas Tech. I am still mad that I couldn't find the actual ad that used on the fence. Sometimes this takes watching videos of games played at the stadium which can take some time.
For the actual building of the model, the bigger the ballpark the longer it takes. Also, the more interesting things in the view of the player the longer it takes. I initially spent too much time building the exterior of the park that very few people will see because most of it was behind the plate. I would say that a small park can take about 1-2 hours, but some of the larger ones have taken as much as 3-5 hours of direct work. This includes finding the images for advertisements. I am assuming that the better I get at this the less time it will take.
All in all, you should try it out. It is not as hard as I thought it would be. I would also say that there is no one way to create a model. Find what works best for you and go with it. This community has built so many great content that has improved OOTP and has increased my enjoyment of the game over the years. I have seen some of the things that were once created by individuals that are now standard in the game. Maybe something that you work hard at today will be integrated by Markus and the team to a standard feature in the future? It might be in OOTP30, but you can be a trailblazer.