Re-skinning existing Building models

[sgdleeuw 8]

I know that modelling new buildings for Simcity 2013 is a time-intensive activity, but what about re-skinning current building models?

 

The reason im asking is that i've recently started a tourist/casino city with lots of commercial space for Hotels. The medium/high wealth hotels look quite nice and realistic, but the low wealth-high density hotels are just UGLY... The main cause is that all of them have the same brown-brickstone walls. I would love some variation on this (other colour pallets, plaster- or concrete walls, etc.).

 

I remember that in one of the official game updates they kind of did the same thing with the RCI buildings (no new models, but colour and height variations on existing models). 

 

If anyone has more information on re-skinning/re-colouring building models, and how to do this:

 

i would love to hear from you!

[gothic0023 18]

The only thing that I know is that it is probably the same as when we re-skin the car models and so for, except that you would have to do that raw. file that looks like the say the hotels that you are looking for which is little painful. Though if you look for the models then the texture file, you could probably take your paint shop pro, or photo shop reanimate it and package it up like they do with the car file. Though do not quote me on this because unfortunately my moding had to stop a little because paintshop pro as far as I know will not let me open up a DDS file, though I am looking into other ways myself to help the community such as making new decals or something with the files that I am able to open up. I have even been tinkering with some of the color changes in the prop files, just to try and see what it does in game so I can start to understand what I am tinkering with.

[gothic0023 18]

So tonight I finally got a small success unlike what I wrote before, Thanks to Oppie and the paint.net free program I can finally open and modify colors at least such as the illustration shown in their tutorial. So I will be tinkering around with buildings it looks like, because my real Interest when this whole moding thing came up was in Skins and textures and what I can do with color. So tonight is a small victory and If I figure out the whole texture deal on modding buildings I will inform in on this post, so that can help people out but as well give you some more information to go off of Sg. 

[gothic0023 18]

all right after scanning around the forums a bit, there are a few post already up on what building textures are and how to dabble with the color. It even looks like a few people have tried, just nothing up on the exchange yet. From what I am seeing at moment, buildings are more complex and are going to take a much greater time to mod because of the different elements and pieces. I would recommend SG if you are really wanting to get into the building thing, to look at some of the post you may have to scroll back a few though to find them.  I wish you luck, and I believe we will see more buildings and remodels here in the future. Just right now it seems that everyone is trying to get back into the groove again.

[gothic0023 18]

I am finding tonight while looking at how to re-skin houses, and using all the tools suggest by Oppie that it is apparent maxis was not looking for moders to be a part of their work. However since they opend up modding and we have these wonderful tools, It seems at moment to re skin a building you need to almost remake the building using a modeling kit such as blender. Which I have no idea how to use, but I have time to tinker. So right now I am exploring all the things I can do with it, and it seems if I ever figure out the layers of skinning and so forth this simple first house I am trying to skin maybe the start of something beautiful. Though at moment I am getting dizzy from all the twirling around of the 3d /2d images. So overall at moment it seems like that I would be taking the  model image and remaking it with color using blender and importing it into the file location of the old model. Though this is just in theory, I really have no clue what I am doing but some how I feel like I am headed in the right direction. Though if I am not...some expert modders are more then welcome to give me a hand in figuring this out or tell me at least if my theory is bad.

[gothic0023 18]

So tonight I hit my wall as far as trying to re-skin buildings versus just making a building. As it seems at this point my road block is with the texture files, and that adding them on to a building would be alright. However it seems from all information gathered you would have to use Maxis files to create the mesh design/ wall. Which is suggested in Benji's videos. From what I can tell at moment we can not truly pick the color of the building because the colors are generated from Maxis program. (this is only what I have gathered)  Though as suggested at moment you could probably mess with the lighting files to get a different look. I have tried a little bit but yet to develop something that I can truly notice through the files. So to say the least until more information is let go about the files, I can not go much farther then importing a building and tinkering around with the images Maxis has already produced. So here it maybe possible to add different windows from their other files and combine them to make the image. Though at this moment I see it much easier to just build a building, color it add the art work on and import in place of another building file. Kind of in the same way that Oppie's McDonald replaces one of our buildings. 

 

*So basically until our packaging system gets a little more advanced I feel like I am stuck as far as re-skinning of buildings. Though Oppie's packaging system has done wonders in me discovering new possibilities  such as the idea of altering the lighting files to get a different effect possibly. 

* I will still continue to tinker around with this idea of re-skinning buildings but without a fully clear path of how to change building colors and so forth, it is pretty much at a halt.Since for myself it is really about changing the look with colors, how get certain texture prints on to the wall such as brick and still end up with the orange color.

* I need to as well mention though I have come to these conclusions, I still have many things to learn about Oppies package program and about blender. So there maybe something I am missing about how to apply texture to meshes.

* I will continue to keep watching for new advancements with the packaging system, and if I happen to stumble upon anything new I will put up something about it. Just right now for winging it I got pretty far, however still so much unkown to me that i just can not take this project much father than the basics.