19th Century 3D Ballparks

[Garlon]

asrivkin, thank you for clearing that up regarding Boundary Field. I have updated the file.

Here is the revised list of ballparks without a model. We can always put in a substitute placeholder model for these ballparks.

Perhaps we have a generic 19th century ballpark model we can use? We can call the folder 19th century generic or something and I can put that file path into the era_ballparks file. If more of these ballparks get created, we can always update the era_ballaprks file path with a new folder name.

If there are some ballparks which we just want to use another model to make it easy we can do that too. For example, the Brooklyn Gladiators in 1890 AA, we could just give them the Brooklyn Eastern Park model in rather than going through the trouble of making the Ridgewood model.

If we go this direction, and we like the suggested models I have entered, then we only have about 18 more substitute models to select. so that we have a model for each team each season in the game file.

[asrivkin]

Thanks for the list, Garlon!

Some of the parks in the list are very doable. I'd actually already started St. George Grounds (screenshot below) and KC Exposition Park has plenty of information. I think Forepaugh Park is similarly doable, and we might be able to scratch out a few other ones.

I'm happy to try to create a generic 1800s ballpark, with the warning that it is very likely to look a lot like one of the existing ones.

[dfswans]

Hello Gentlemen, I will be sharing Haymakers' Grounds, Perry Park, and Grand Duchess/Kekionga Ball Grounds soon. I just need to lock myself in a room over the holidays for a few hours as the models are already built. These will be fictionalized versions of the parks, though I did get panoramas of the locations so they will still feel unique.

Wishing everyone a Happy Holidays!

[BaseballMan]

Nah don't worry about the ballparks.
As much as i and i believe others enjoy them,
they can wait.
Enjoy your holiday....

Then lock yourself in your room and work on the ballparks.

[dfswans]

Grand Duchess

The Grand Duchess baseball park in Fort Wayne has a real “you had to be there” kind of history — it’s best known as the home of the Fort Wayne Kekiongas, who played there in 1871 as part of the brand-new National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, making the park the site of what’s widely considered the first professional league game ever played. That original grandstand didn’t last long (it famously burned down later that same year), but baseball stuck around the location for decades under different park names, hosting a rotating cast of Fort Wayne teams — Indians, Farmers, Champs, Cubs, and more — across a grab bag of early leagues like the Inter-State League, Western Association, Central League, and the Illinois-Indiana-Iowa League from the late 1800s into the 1930s, before the ballpark era at the site finally faded out around 1940 — leaving behind a spot that quietly sits at the very beginning of pro baseball history.

[dfswans]

Perry Park

Perry Park in Keokuk, Iowa was one of those old-school baseball grounds where pro ball briefly touched the western edge of the country — built around 1874 and best remembered for hosting the Keokuk Westerns during the 1875 season of the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, which many baseball historians count as a major league. At Perry Park, the Westerns kicked off their season on May 4, 1875 against the Chicago White Stockings and played their final game there on June 14, 1875, after which the short-lived club folded with a tough record. Though that pro chapter was fleeting, Perry Park stands as a neat footnote in baseball lore — a simple field in a quiet Iowa town where some of the earliest organized pro ball in the Midwest was played.

[Torito_Mancha]

Anybody who wants to model Middletown, please reach out to me for reference materials.

[dfswans]

That is next on my list. I'll send you a PM.

[dfswans]

Haymakers' Grounds

Haymakers’ Grounds in Lansingburgh (now part of Troy, New York) was where Troy played its early pro ball. The Troy Haymakers called it home in 1871–1872 while competing in the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, hosting many of the top clubs of that short-lived era. Years later, the field saw another brief run at the top level when the Troy Trojans played some of their 1880–1881 home games there as members of the National League.

[Torito_Mancha]

Originally Posted by dfswans

That is next on my list. I'll send you a PM.

Let me know if you received my PM.

[Torito_Mancha]

I know a Pennsylvania-based baseball historian who has offered to help with the three remaining Philadelphia ballparks. Anybody who would like to model them, let me know and I’ll get you in touch.

[asrivkin]

Good morning, and Happy New Year!

Today I'm posting the St. George Grounds, home to the AA's New York Metropolitans in 1886 and 1887, and occasional home to the NL's Giants in 1889. Despite often being referred to as the "St. George Cricket Grounds", including by the Wikipedia page, the park was apparently just the "St. George Grounds"--cricket was played before the baseball field was built, but apparently not afterward. The colorful history of the site is recounted in this SABR article, and includes multiple stagings of big-budget, epic shows, sometimes during the baseball season. For what it's worth, I think this now gives us ballparks in all five boroughs of New York City, though it's possible that the present-day ballpark at nearly the same site has been modeled?

Google Drive link to St. George Grounds 1887

A few notes about the model, etc. There are suggestions in some of the period artwork and histories that fans could watch the Statue of Liberty being constructed, but using Google Earth suggests that the viewing angle wouldn't have been right (at least for the grandstand), plus the size of the statue is small enough that it wouldn't have realistically shown up at anything impressive at model scales. On top of that, it was finished early in the 1886 season. So, I decided not to make a special effort for it. I tried to be reasonably historical in general for this model, but perfect was definitely going to be the enemy of good enough for it, at least for me right now.

Relatedly, I took the background from a spot close to the historical site, but not quite at it--the real site is in the parking lot of the current, modern ballpark, and so a panorama would include that ballpark. So I shifted over a little bit to basically be atop the Staten Island Ferry terminal. The panorama also includes the modern-day NYC skylines, and I suppose the ships that are visible are probably _very_ anachronistic to folks who know about ships. Creating an 1880s-appropriate panorama from that site is beyond my skills and available time investment right now, but I'm happy to incorporate one if someone comes up with one.

What I _did_ put in the model is a nod to "The Fall of Babylon", which was the epic that was staged in the summer of 1887 on the field, wreaking havoc with baseball play as a result. So, that's where the Hanging Gardens of Babylon come in, thanks to 3D Workshop. There are no dimensions for St. George Grounds that I ran across, so the listed model dimensions are based on the entire lot. However, I made the grid go around the Hanging Gardens so players wouldn't disappear into it. I also have the park factors all set to 1, so it shouldn't affect game outcomes but just act as an Easter egg.

As I'm posting this, I also realize I should have put a couple of tents on the field to serve as the dugouts, but in the interest of getting this out those will need to wait for any version 2 that's needed...

As usual, comments/questions are welcome!

***HAD LINK TO WRONG FILE AT FIRST, FIXED AT 9:37 PM EASTERN TIME ON 5 JANUARY 2026***
if you downloaded before then, please try again. It'll be obvious if you've got the wrong zip file. :\

[asrivkin]

Originally Posted by Torito_Mancha

I know a Pennsylvania-based baseball historian who has offered to help with the three remaining Philadelphia ballparks. Anybody who would like to model them, let me know and I’ll get you in touch.

Maybe?

Forepaugh Park was on my eventual list, but I had a few others I wanted to tackle first--I think I'm going to try KC next, for instance. If anybody wants to jump in, I encourage them!

[Torito_Mancha]

Originally Posted by asrivkin

Maybe?

Forepaugh Park was on my eventual list, but I had a few others I wanted to tackle first--I think I'm going to try KC next, for instance. If anybody wants to jump in, I encourage them!

No worries, offer won’t expire any time soon

[BaseballMan]

Is it possible for ootp to use more photo realistic photos for in game play?
I had ai make new photos of the South End Grounds and St George Grounds.
I like how it automatically put some fans in the outfield of the St George ballpark which would be realistic for 1871.
Just think if ootp could automatically switch the ballpark to the type of weather for that game.

[LansdowneSt]

Originally Posted by BaseballMan

Is it possible for ootp to use more photo realistic photos for in game play?
I had ai make new photos of the South End Grounds and St George Grounds.
I like how it automatically put some fans in the outfield of the St George ballpark which would be realistic for 1871.
Just think if ootp could automatically switch the ballpark to the type of weather for that game.

Can you use these ones you just made in 2D as mods? I feel like we played using photos years and years ago for the actual stadiums before 3D was part of OOTP. Been a long time since I opened the 2D settings though...

[pstrickert]

It'd be amazing if we had a stadium pack with 2D photos of this quality. Maybe they could even be incorporated as background images for different screens. Who knows?

[BaseballMan]

Originally Posted by LansdowneSt

Can you use these ones you just made in 2D as mods? I feel like we played using photos years and years ago for the actual stadiums before 3D was part of OOTP. Been a long time since I opened the 2D settings though...

I'm not sure. I can try but i think you modders could do a better job with it.
I can get ai to create some of the things i might think of but as far as making it work with the game im a bit of novice.
I just thought what we could do with ai might open up some new ideas with
what we can mod or create in ootp.

[asrivkin]

Before giving my two cents on BaseballMan's question, I wanted to make sure to thank dfswans for their great contributions! The pre-NL parks are extra hard, so I'm extra impressed.

As far as the AI/photorealistic backgrounds--those (great!) images BaseballMan posted for the South End Grounds and St. George Grounds could already be input as-is for 2D play, as LandsdowneSt suggests.

(Long exposition follows)

The thing with doing it for 3D is that (at least in my models) some elements are 3D objects while the background is a 2D texture. I'm sure basically everybody already knows this, but for any newbies reading and to make sure we're on the same page, I put in a screenshot of Detroit's Recreation Park below. The park, buildings, and trees were done in Sketchup (I made the park and made or downloaded the trees/buildings from 3D Warehouse). The background pictures on the rectangles that line the circle's circumference generally come from Google Earth in my models.

Different folks handle the background differently, and while I haven't done any experimenting, I suspect there's a tradeoff between the camera angles you use and the size of the ballpark vs. how much of the background you even care about. In these smaller parks, where I'm using the default minor league camera angles, there's a lot that's visible outside the ballpark itself, which has driven me to including some of the nearby streets (which then usually means putting things like trees and houses on those streets) and a 360-degree background, with a scene that usually stretches 500-600 feet from home plate. Games and camera angles set in physically bigger stadiums just show less of the outside world, so people do great jobs with models that show less (or nothing) outside the stadium itself.

The 2D samples above look great, and I agree there's some real potential. I think some factors for making 3D backgrounds this way are going to be:

--The camera angles you want to show will dictate how much of the background you want
--I expect anything should be made in color, since folks who want to play 3D in black and white can do so via the in-game filters and some folks will want them in color.
--Obviously, the parks themselves need to not be in the prospective 3D background.
--The existing backgrounds live in the texture folders, so in principle folks could work from those and replace them with AI-ed versions of the same size using the same tricks that some folks do with replacing logos, ads, etc. if they felt like experimenting
--I think good-looking standing fans in the outfield is a whole other topic, though one I feel could be solvable by someone clever. I've wondered if the same kind of thing that's done to make the animated crowd could be used to create an animation for a line of standing fans and/or a line of fans sitting on the ground, which we could then use the way we use the crowd texture?

That's it on this for now. I'm happy to update or experiment with models as need be or desired with backgrounds that folks give that they think will work, but I don't have the bandwidth to do any of the hard work on it.

I do have a new park to post a little later today, plus I was going to summarize where I think we are with this.

[BaseballMan]

I did very little work on those pics i posted.
Just a few lines on a prompt telling ai what to do.

If ai can give me something like that it with very little effort
i was just thinking how helpful it could be to modders and how creative they could be with it.