Bixel's Hong Kong Residential CitiesXL Re-Creations.

[bixel 1,224]

Something will be happening soon... (When my coputer gets fixed.)

[ILL Tonkso 1,239]

You wont be the only one

We could be the first CXL BAT team :\

[bixel 1,224]

Maybe we should join forces for this? A new team...

CCC Team (Custom City Creators) Team

CCXL Team (Custom CitiesXL) Team

UK/HK Team (kinda obvious...)

NEXT Team (the Next generation Team)

NDEXHK Team (don't try to pronounce)...

I think we kinda need to get rid of the BAT monikor... since it no longer really means anything

[Evillions 552]

Well I'm surprised what you have here Bixel. I wish I had 3dsmax and a good modeler as you. But that will never happen for me alas.

[Cockatoo 2,257]

I'm officially excited now. The prospect of making totally 3D custom content... it blows my mind. Pity is that we're gonna have to start from scratch with out collection of HK buildings as most of our current models are far to complex.

CCXL has a nice ring to it.

Btw, for Dirk, I think this forum should be called CXL Custom Content, not CXL Creating Buildings??

[Shingure 56]

I would say CCXL would be a nice umbrella name.

But then you could have the HK Team , NDEX Team. Basically keep the names but establish them under the CCXL Banner.

[tankmank 853]

I can't wait for this and i'm glad that we may have HK buildings in CitiesXL

[bixel 1,224]

Well my main computer is down! Motherboard broke. But I've been hankering to get creative and I am using an older - slower computer to try and get some stuff done. I decided to use one of Hong Kong's Residential Towers as a test bed on the process of getting a model textured, and exported properly for Cities XL.

Basically I modelled a rough draft of the building in detail mode - (not terribly high detail since this is a test). This type of modelling is super brute force method of just making blocks texturing them and moving on. After the bits and modularized parts of the main tower was completed and textured - I went about creating some textures straight off the building parts itself. To do this I simply rendered from the viewports - cut and paste in photoshop and made a texture. I sued scanline - advanced lighting, and a single skylight since I wanted the shadows to be pretty ambient.

After I had made textures for each module part of the building I slowly began constructing the tower from meshes and apply my new rendered textured when possible. The result is a significantly lower poly model - texture to make it look decently high detailed.

its not the best - the textures were made in a bit of a hurry - so it does look a little boring and cartoony. However my main goal seems to have worked - I got "baked" in style shadows on the parts of the building, some decent geometry - and from a moderate distance it looks like we have a lot of detail. - But most of that is fake - its just a flat texture.

for instance here - at closer inspection - you can see where the AC Units are really quite flat.. there is still some geometry here and some nifty extrusions. I made this Tower almost exactly like the real one >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_Horizons

However even after all my mesh editing to get the face (poly) count down. I am still waaay over budget. The original detailed model is in the realm of 320,000 polys. This particular model is just 8000. Yet in this render here - we can see my problem...

I was desperately trying to maintain the Tower's detail as much as possible. A little too much it looks like. You can see where some improvements can be made - and the realization I made is. We are just going to have to balance very carefully our desired realism vs. the practicality of the model. I am going to have to adjust parts of this to make it yet even more flatter - hopefully with some better texture tricks it will still look decent. However many of those extruded ledge you see here must be removed.

Keep in mind this is only a test, I am still learning on the best way to get these buildings textured nicely, we are also missing our spec, and normal maps as well. The windows are going to be particularly tricky, my plan is to make this exture map alpha channeled, all these white windows will be completely transparent. I will have a 2nd Mesh - directly behind the frames that will have a large detailed texture to be used as the windows/glass and the nightlighting. So basically the finished product should be 5 textures (Main Diffuse, Main Spec, Main Normal, Windows, and NightWindows) and 2 meshes (the Building, the Windows).

[Cockatoo 2,257]

Bixel that is seriously impressive. You've got a couple of really good ideas there and you're the first person on ST to seriously try your hand at creating content for XL.

I think we'll all be watching to see where you go with this.

[CZAR ALEKSANDER 0]

his work is great and very good look at it would be great to have his building in one of my cities  for Cities Xl

keep up the great work

[SimFox 803]

So what is a poly budget?

Also have you noticed that CitiesXL also uses LODs at farther zooms?

[bixel 1,224]

poly budget was conveyed to me at 6000, but this could change... I have a feeling it might get reduced - initially I set for myself a poly budget of 2000 and I barely scraped by on a earlier test tower. Skyscrapers are by far the easiest to do - their simple boxes make hardly a dent in the budget... its the details and the floor structure of the residentials that really push it.

[Mathew_MC 0]

Impressive work Bixel

I should be able to provide all of you more details and specs for custom content relatively soon. I'm looking forward to see more.

[beebs 129]

That looks amazing, bixel!

Mathew_MC: What will be the tool of choice for custom buildings? Something similar to Gmax, I'm assuming?

[Evillions 552]

Well all or most CXL buildings are made in 3dsmax like the video showed. So you pretty much have to buy or own 3dsmax to create buildings and such.

[SimFox 803]

That would be good to know... also the size of the textures.

[bixel 1,224]

Thanks, Mathew_MC. I gave my self a footprint for a texture diffuse map of 1024x1024. Most of the newer games, UT3, Crysis, etc.. use these texture sizes. So far I have only filled up about 60% of that map, so I may be able to increase the resolution on some of the texture mapping as I progress. I will start work on the base and roof soon - which I suspect will take up the rest of it.

I am hoping MC uses some sort of shared props between buildings.. I've noticed trees and other objects are shared across this collection of lots, if so I could devote some extra time on creating AC and Roof props that can be instanced from the same model, that way the game engine is only loading the model once and then instancing it during game play.. this will be able to prevent higher poly count (on a specific building) and any extra texture loading - which is the most essential factor. The memory allocated to textures is still in my mind impressively low in most graphic hardware (you would be astounded what little memory they allocated for this in a ps3). So because of this if the roof props and AC units details are separate from the building - this means that the texture those parts are using is only loaded once.

[dasilva 3]

Hi guys,

We should come back to you in the coming weeks with at least a document for you to start playing with building creation for Cities XL

You should find in it all the technical details.

As far as I know, we only have an exporter for 3dsmax right now but our developers made the export/import process so that it uses an XML based intermediary state. This means that if a developer may want to create an exporter for another 3d modeling software, he should be able to do so.

We'll have to go deeper into this later.

Cheers,

Philippe

[Ocram's Razr 964]

That is an excellent building! Hopefully MC's document will include recommended polygon limits. What 3D modeling program do you use? Many people use Blender because it is free. Do you have something better?

[bixel 1,224]

Blender is a great way to go. I use 3ds max right now - I may use Blender and or Maya in the future depending on the project. Sorry I haven't much progress on this of late - my computer is still broke and I have been busy with stuff. But I will start a portfolio/blog website soon. It will have most (80%) of my simcity 4 work documented, work I did for UT3 and other games. Plus articles and tutorials.

[kellydale2003 2,276]

WHAT!?

Why wasn't I notified about this! So how does this work? Have you cracked open the Cities XL files to see what our file name extension(s) are?

This is really great! Pioneers of the Cities XL age!

[morriswalters 16]

Perhaps it's to early for this, but if MC comes through, some tapered lots with park textures and trees and shrub of the perimeter to act as cammo on those really tough sloping lots would be nice.  TIA.

[bixel 1,224]

OK I am back!

new Motherboard, new vid card, and everything is working. Now I can get back my projects, working on some buildings, working on CitiesXL, and my portfolio.

Celebration Time!!!

[DazzaDazza 29]

what program are you using there bixel

[naftixe 131]

As always, nice rendering!

[Craig-Abcvs 1,595]

Originally posted by: dasilva

Hi guys,

We should come back to you in the coming weeks with at least a document for you to start playing with building creation for Cities XL

You should find in it all the technical details.

As far as I know, we only have an exporter for 3dsmax right now but our developers made the export/import process so that it uses an XML based intermediary state. This means that if a developer may want to create an exporter for another 3d modeling software, he should be able to do so.

We'll have to go deeper into this later.

Cheers,

Philippe

quote>

Hey Philippe...   your few weeks is up.  

We have a eager bunch of custom content creators here just itching to make stuff for this game...

What's the story here MC?

[IntoxiNation 0]

Very nice job. I actually work in Maya but also have 3DS Max available. I'm waiting on the documentation for modding so I can start playing. I thought I saw something in the demo download about it, but I can't find anything on the full dvd version.

[Evillions 552]

Like is the custom content going to be free for all of use like an exchange of some sort? Or we got to give you the files and what-not, personally it should be like this:

PO people: Gets all content since you can go to people's cities and it might be invisible due the fact they haven't downloaded that building. -----> No need for an exchange

SP people: Gets to download any choice of custom content due to the fact no-one is going to your cities. ------> Exchange needed

---------

Just give us the modeling tools like something like SC4's BAT tool and an exporter / importer tool and we can create more models faster than the people who has 3dsmax and we're all set!

[bixel 1,224]

well Im behind MCs decision. If the model is not up to spec - then it shouldn't be used until it gets improved and then matches the professional work. Once the model is approved it could be automatically added to the content when the player logs in. Modding wise - I think there should be an option for the player to make a mod file of the building if he/she wants to use it differently - meaning the model doesnt change but the way the building is used can be different for the solo player. Perhaps a Lot - Exchange could be created... Only files that tell how the building is used can be uploaded.

[herenthere 0]

Jeesh....bixel...how can you have all this time on your hands...i wish i could be just like you!

I never knew that CXL would allow custom plugins like SC4...crap now this is making me rethink not getting the Limited Edition...although the lack of mass transit is still bothering me