Unusual question/observation about Urban Sprawl 2
Steven-V
Posts: 727
Hey guys.
I have been starting to work w little with Urban Sprawl 2, which I love as an environment, and am planning to use as the main "downtown" area for my upcoming webcomic. It is big enough to look like a city, but small enough to fit for the smallish Virginia city (fictional) that will be the setting. It even, by happy coincidence, has signs for Interstate 495, which is actually in Virginia/Maryland, and could realistically be listed on street signs in this fictional town. Jackpot, no?
However, as I was mucking around last night, I noticed something. Although the city appears to be American, with US Interstate symbols on the signs, and American flags flying from some of the buildings, in the pre-loads, the cars are positioned driving on the wrong side of the street (left side, not right) and all the street signs are positioned on the wrong side. That's clearly not correct for a city in Virginia near Washington D.C.
Now, this would be an entirely trivial matter, except that the signs are grouped with other features like street lights in a way I can't take apart in the pre-load. I know I can go through and load everything by hand, and then move individual signs around, but it seems like such a waste of time to have to do that when, other than the sign positions, the pre-load is perfect for what I need.
Has anyone else faced this and found a quick/simple solution that would not involve me deleting massive numbers of props and re-loading them?
EDIT: I have also noticed that the signs are clearly placed in contradictory positions in some locations. For example, the one-way street signs are going one way but all the stop signs are going the other. How would anyone see the signs when they are facing away from them on the one-way street? This seems very odd to me.
Pic as an example. Made me laugh a bit... but this is going to take a LOT of fixing. And to make matters worse, all the traffic signals seem to assume left-side driving and they cannot be rotated to account for right-side driving on the main street (they are at the wrong angle).
I'm not sure what to do about this now... unless I try to make my own traffic lights (not really something I want to do). I don't see how to fix the ones that come with the package in an easy way.
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Comments
Stonemason is from New Zealand
yes not sure what to do as reversing the image reverses the signs
as an Australian I never thought about it much like my UK and Japanese counterparts probably would not either but can see how American and European users could find it fiddly :lol:
maybe an alternative add on pose product could be suggested to Stonemason
...I didn't notice the issue with one of the large overhead road sign arrays until I finished a scene (that took some time to render). I also found couldn't flip the sign array around either as when I rotated it on the Y c\xis it still faced the wrong way as it went across the entire street. (see below).
I tried a trick I learned to change a car from left to right hand drive by setting the scale to -100% and rotating it on the individual axes until it sat on the road properly. Unfortunately, in doing the same with the sign bridge, all the lettering turns out backwards as well.
The main thing I am struggling with more than the street lights is that all the signs and other background items are grouped into large chunks of props, and I have not been able to ungroup them. If I could, I could just rotate or move the stop signs. But as it is, it looks like I am going to have to delete every light, sign, and many of the other small props (wastepaper baskets, etc) and then re-add them all back in one by one, which will be very tedious.
I was just hoping that there might be a faster way to do it. But I guess not. :/
Oooh... scaling by -100% is not something that occurred to me. Wonder if that would work with the props (but I bet I won't get that lucky).
I would think reversing the sign lettering would not be too bad. Can't you just open the original jpeg and flip it in GIMP or PS? That's what I may try to do if I can get this to work. I will test and report back.
...that actually sounds like more work than removing then replacing the signs in the correct US orientation as you'd have to go into each texture file for each sign along the street. The only ones that will not work with are the sign bridges as again they span the entire street, not just one set of lanes. To fix those you'd have to do a bit of kitbashing and manual retexturing.
After seeing the results in the above scene, I now just cannibalise other city street sets I have for signs and manually place them I also have full sets of both Euro and US signs I picked up on ShareCG for free.
Oh. No, I did not mean to change ALL the signs. I just meant that big bridge sign you are talking about. I flipped them in photoshop in 18 minutes. And most of that was finding the Highway Gothic font to tweak the speed limit and then realizing I can't do that without messing with it too much (on a US city street, the speed limit should NOT be 50 MPH, lol).
Actually most of those signs are not really correct. A city street indicating route 495 would probably say "entrance" not "exit" (you exit highways, not main city streets, usually, although there are occasional exceptions). And I'm not sure what the "one way" sign is supposed to be indicating... but at least they are oriented correctly now. If I want to change what they say, that will be a lot more work... but I might do it. I tend to be a stickler for details like this.
...I'll have to mess with that in Gimp.
I'd at least definitely change that speed limit sign to something like 25 or the ground floor of the building at the end of the street would become a parking garage in a hurry. You could probably change the "Last Exit" sign to something like a city name or two. That's relatively common.
In the US I-495 is the Capitol Beltway that circles Dee Cee so you could just have it read "Capitol Beltway".
As I have palm trees in my scene, I'd have to redo all the signage on the bridge (including the interstate number) to reflect somewhere in either Southern California, Arizona, Southern Florida, or Honolulu.
Yeah honestly at this point it's probably more trouble than it's worth. For instance the speed limit sign does not have a white base but has some sort of texture behind it. But since it is a jpg you can't just easily replace the texture. I mean, I suppose I could replace the whole entire sign, making my own off-white, slightly battered-looking texture and all that, but now we are getting into a sufficient amount of work that I'm not sure why I am using the model in the first place. I could have just made my own in Blender or something. The point of getting US2 and using he pre-loads is supposed to be to save me work, not make more work for me. ;)
At this point, I'm not sure what to do. All the signs and traffic lights are wrong, and fixing them is going to take a lot of tedious work. I love the blocks and buildings and other details, but if the signs are wrong and it's going to take hours and hours to fix it, I may just see if I can find another city I can use right out of the box. There are a couple on some of the other sites that look promising (although none, honestly, look quite as good as US2).
set your render in NZ?
...one thing you can do to save a little time in positioning is by using the copy/paste function. Just copy the existing sign, load a new one, then paste that to the one you copied. Once in position you can delete the original.
If you have any other urban sets that have street signs, you can just use those as well like I do.
Yeah I went in and fixed them a little. The 495 sign now says "To 495" which seems more correct. The arrow pointing left (when reversed) now says "Next Left". Speed Limit is now 35. I went with flat backgrounds rather than trying to grunge them up, because I am not going to be showing them close-up enough in the scene to matter.
Not sure what to do about the "Exit 25" thing unless I make it 0% opacity and just get rid of it. On a city street there is no reason for an exit # and the sign is not really placed or sized right for anything else I can think of.
I was able to use the -100% scale trick to reverse the two traffic lights so they are more correct for the U.S.
But that still means I'm going to have to spend a huge amount of time on props -- I'm pretty much going to have to ditch the entire pre-load other than the buildings and re-decorate it, since almost all the props are grouped irreversibly with traffic lights and street signs.
sigh
...I looked around to see if someone did a fix for the signs & props, but all I came cross was a set of Carrara shaders for US2..
There really aren't any other well detailed and affordable "big city" sets I've seen. While nicely detailed, the Movie Sets blocks, over on Rendo are more small townish. The Free Dystopia Blocks are more sci fi and require a lot of surface/shader tweaking to use in Daz as they have older Poser shaders. Other than that for big city urban sets, all I can find are a few on the Pro sites that are very expensive.and most of those are for apps like 3DS.
....but all the road signage is US format. NZ's as similar to the UK's.
Not sure whether this would work as I haven't loaded the set to check it. Could you just construct your scene as a mirror of what you want (using the -100% scaling trick on the cars) then flip the render horizontally in an image editor when it's done?
That's probably way too simple.
EDIT: Actually, scratch that. Flipping it would put the signs back in the wrong places. Stupid idea.
Oh, well. Sounds to me as if some enterprising Kit Basher needs to create an "Urban Sprawl 2 US" add-on.
...I'm just going to delete the sign bridge from the scene as it is more bother than it is worth. Also it would kind of malke little sense being that close to a dead end "T" intersection. That is one of the nice features of Stonemason's sets, is that you can remove or add things as you see fit. for your scene
As I have US oriented traffic signals and signs from other sets as well as a nice freebie collection, I will just use those. Most other street props like call boxes, newspaper boxes and rubbish bins, etc, are rather generic.
I do not own this set, so I can not try it out, but here is a couple of suggestions that might help.
1) You could create a Null primitive, set it as the parent of all the props, and then set its x size to -100%. This way the entire model is inverted, which may be easier than moving around individual props.
2) Naturally this would mean all the text is backwards, but you can flip text around easier than using Photoshop/Gimp. Just open the surfaces tab, go to the tiling section and then set the "Horizontal Tiles" setting to -1. You might find that the new texture does not line up properly after this, but you can fix this using the horizonal and vertical offsets to get the texture back where you want. You only have to fix the textures where text can be seen in the scene you are rendering.
This is just some crazy idea I came up with by the way, feel free to point out the undoubtable large flaws in the idea!
EDIT: for 1) both x and z sizes need to be -100
Setting two scale factors to -100% is the same as rotating 180 degrees about the other axis.
True, then I guess you need to set size to -100, and flip the model 180% in Y to get it the right way up
..however all the lettering, not just that on the traffic signs) would be reversed. That would be a huge amount of work considering all the business signs on many of the buildings.
Simpler to move or replace the few that don't work.
I have come to the same conclusion.
The Movie Sets look the most promising on Rendo, but my main concern is those sets make that city look a little run-down, and my story is set in a nice shiny small city, not a run down one. I may try a couple of the sets and just see what I can do with tweaking them (textures and such).
But you are right, US2 is the best in terms of the trade-offs it makes between size, detail, and render efficiency.
I have gotten the traffic lights fixed up too, again using the -100% trick and then reversing the signage. The main thing I dread is going in and replacing them all, because all the props are part of a single combined object. If Stoney just had not done that, I could just delete individual signs and replace. Instead I am going to have to replace every trash can, every mail box, etc. Ugh.
The Movie Sets may look run down because they are based on the design of the 50's era and not modern. I have always admired the look and craftsmanship of the Movie Sets packages, but have no use for that era . I would love to see them do a modern city version also, that I would buy.
Right, but my webcomic is set in 2016, not 1956... so that is the problem with them. Plus they are 'spensive if you get them all.
The Movie Sets may look run down because they are based on the design of the 50's era and not modern. I have always admired the look and craftsmanship of the Movie Sets packages, but have no use for that era . I would love to see them do a modern city version also, that I would buy.
...they do work well with US2 if you want an older neighboruhood as part of the scene. Every city will have it's older sections. I always mix and match elements from different urban sets.
Depending on how much you can spend, you might try looking at Powerage's Powertown on Renderosity. I don't have it-- it is a bit pricey, and whenever it goes on sale it turns out there's other stuff that I need more -- but it looks like it could fit the bill otherwise.
EDIT: Um ... well, maybe never mind. I forgot that Powerage is French, so Powertown has some of the same issues as Urban Sprawl 2. I don't know if all of the signs and whatnot are separate props or can be handled separately.
...they do work well with US2 if you want an older neighboruhood as part of the scene. Every city will have it's older sections. I always mix and match elements from different urban sets.
Do the Moviesets from Rendo work in DS? I have thought about buying them, but they say Poser only.
...it just mentions "Not Tested in Daz Studio".
The sets should load and you may have to do bit of adjustment in the surfaces tab (ambient and/or specular channels).
I personlly don't have any of them but just offered the suggestion as I have been able to mix US 2 with other urban and neighbourhood sets.
According to the comments in one of the sets, I don't remember which, the commenter claimed that no only do they work in DAZ but they render faster in DAZ than in Poser. But I can't speak for whether that's true or not.
I haven't seen PowerTown but Polygon City looks vaguely promising and is not that expensive. I might try it.
It's frustrating though.. US2 is really what I want. The first scene even calls for the characters to pass an alley and there is one that is perfect right there in US2...
Take a look at Whitemagus over at Rendo. He has several sets for commercial buildings and high rises. His newest Park Ave sets are excellent.
Yeah, I have seen those. They look nice but not really what I was going for with my Virginia city. They are nice and clean looking, but also seem like a much bigger city than I am going for. The other issue is, I'd have to replace all the palm trees... Virginia is too far north for that.
Edit: I am currently working on trying to Americanize US2. I am also going to clean up the signage. For example, it is not correct to have both Stop signs AND traffic lights protecting an intersection. It is one or the other. Yet in US2, the major intersection has both. Also, "one way" signs are not posted on every single traffic light, so I am going to get rid of most of those as well.
So far, I have replaced everything in the median. Now I am working on one of the side streets. My guess is this will be many dozens of hours of work. When I am done, I will probably wonder why I just didn't freaking take to Blender or something and just create my own damn city. But oh well.
In the mean time if I find one somewhere else that can suit as an American city, I might just toss US2, painful though that will be. The idea of tediously going in and replacing every SINGLE sign (there are tons of them) is just ugh. But right now it looks like the only choice short of "do the whole thing myself from scratch."
EDIT 2: BTW... if you look at Whitemagus's Park Avenue V, he has traffic pattern mistakes too... in the corners, he has arrows for traffic from one direction pointing INTO the oncoming traffic from the other direction. Don't the people who make these sets and props drive? LOL.
Actually I have seen intersections with both stop signs and traffic lights. Sometimes the power goes out, and they flip open the stopsigns to turn it into a 4-way stop (for those who don't realize you should just do that anyway), then after the power goes on nobody bothers folding them back up for a while.
A new stoplight also popped up at an intersection previously occupied by only stopsigns on two sides, those stayed around for a while as well.
So perhaps you could pretend it's just one of those cases to lessen your work load?