My coloring projects and generally how I have noticed color works with the transportation/ cars at moment

[gothic0023 18]

So for those who following along with what I am doing, I thought I would make a place were I can write down what projects I have taken up. Some these things probably have already been done, but I really wanted to show off my art work in some form because I do recoloring. I am not really hot with coding, but I can paint until my eyeballs fall out. Since we do not know much about coloring buildings at this point, I have been working on transportation tonight. I am working on what I call my Sim bus, for the large deport. At moment it is black and green, and I am in the process of adding more tone colors in so that it looks nice when the sun hits the bus. Right now as far as coloring the transportation it seems that for the most part the color you pick is how it will turn out. You just have to be able to figure out what each part of the vehicle is. So you pretty much have to add the tone colors in to the spots accordingly unless you want everything to look like one flat paint job. I added an attachment people can see of how far I have come along with this bus. I am not sure when I will be putting it up on the exchange, and because it is the big shuttle station. I may try the idea of getting multiple colors of this design out. Though at moment just doing this green one has taken a good chunk of time and it is still not fully colored. For the moderators I hope you don't mind me making this topic. If it is a problem let me know and I will pull the posting. 

 

[dcbenji 22]

In regards to coloring buildings:

 

Building colors are assigned using a 512x16 color palette image. The palette has a bunch of colors in it, different colors on each pixel. However, for each material SimCity samples the palette as a 2x2 block. There are 256 columns of these "blocks" and 7 rows of blocks in a  color palette. A single block has 3 colors in it (the right two pixels of the block are the same color -- this has do with with efficiency in the way SimCity samples the palette)

 

Also assigned to each building is a Color Control Map. Each material within the color control map has an area assigned RED, GREEN, or BLUE. These colors are "placeholders" for colors from the color palette. A single material in the Color Control Map is assigned a column from the color palette and SimCity picks a row. In the color palette, the color of the pixel in upper left quadrant of a block is assigned to the RED portion of the material, the color of the lower left of a block is assigned to the green portion of the material, and the color from either of two right identical pixels of a block is assigned to the blue portion of the material.

 

Some columns just repeat the exact same blocks all the way down the 7 rows, meaning that that particular building style's colors stay the same. Other palettes have colums where the blocks going down are varied in color. The materials assigned to these columsn will change in color as the buildings are repeated and SimCity iterates down the column.

 

I'm releasing an overview video of the color palette soon, but hopefully this helps. To see what a color palette looks like you can open a building's RW4 in SimCity Pak, select "materials" and export the materials for 3DS Max using the button provided. There will be 4 assets exported. Two of them look like the palette I described, but only one of these is 512x16 pixels and this is the Color palette associated with that particular building. Its really small and you have to zoom way in in photoshop to look at all the different colors, but starting all the way in the uppler left try to "see" the pixels as 2x2 blocks because that is how SimCity samples the palette.

 

The materials of a building themselves define the textures that are assigned colors, so to learn about the materials check out my videos:

[gothic0023 18]

Thanks Benji for more information, and explaining how the color are picked through the game. I also remember from you videos about the layering of the R,G,B placeholders. I also looked over your other comments about just importing in a pre-made object and why that will not work. Which was my attempt at trying to convince myself I was maybe over thinking the building materials. Thank you for the guidance to were the color palate is and how to find what you are talking about with this row of colors that looks like in some cases notebook paper from far away. Before I could not figure out how to get file in a way that I could see it close up, so most of the time in Simcitypak it just looked like a blue/green line.Though through your help I can see how the pixiles are lined up better, and kind of how the colors repeat and so forth in the game. I am still looking very forward to what your next video is going to be about as far as the colors, I did catch the materials and it made sense to me in how the the textures are. I am just a little chicken at moment to play around with the textures to develop something different. I can not wait until Simcitypak gets more development, so that we can start looking at buildings and not just cars. 

[gothic0023 18]

So tonight I made a second re-color of the example of the green bus, to see if I can get it to multi-color change in the terminal. At moment no luck, just me banging my head against a wall. Right it seems that either coding and my lack of knowledge in that area is stopping me, or I am missing some simple element that I will groan about later on. I know at current moment I can do individual packages to have those opened up, I am just not sure about multiple packages yet. Though I kind of know how they work in theory, just making me crazy right now that half my buses are custom and the other half are the original bus.    Though some pointer notes for those that are re-coloring single instances of things, I have never went past the paint brush size of 1-3. Thicker lines show up better, however you have to watch those lines around the windows or it makes the windows look a little funny. I have also learned in the art of recoloring it seems bold semi bright colors show up nicely and are quick to see, versus toned down colors. Hence I can see my neon green bus a mile away, were with say a tank bus that may not have the same effect. 

[gothic0023 18]

I had to find some humor in this since I really have not a frackin clue what I am doing. I some how made my model bus's disappear. That's right I have ghost bus's all I see is headlights. So I guess back to the drawing board, however I believe I am getting closer to what I am trying to achieve....maybe.

[gothic0023 18]

So I have come to figure out to do multiple bus colors, I believe at moment takes some coding magic that I do not possess. So with that I am just going to continue to work on the re-colors and at least on my side all objects will one color or  design. Once I get a look I really like, I'll put my first project up to share and then continue to advance my recoloring projects from there. I really wanted to do multiple colors though coming from the station, but for now I am happy just to be able to change anything.

[gothic0023 18]

So tonight I put on the exchange the first re-color for the bus, that I have been working on. I just pray to god it works for people and things go fairly smoothly. Now I am going to go play sim city for a while, see if I can finally achieve a city making it over year 5.

[dcbenji 22]

And here is the latest:

 

Learn how colors are applied to materials in the latest episode of SimCity Guide to Custom Creations:

 

[gothic0023 18]

This was an awesome video and grats on getting a semi building into the game. This is defiantly hope that we can now fully start putting sets together for when simcitypak gets to that point. Thank you for keeping me updated with the videos. Along with this at least all the materials including the ones I could not fully make out, make sense now. 

[gothic0023 18]

So my next project since i know I can do cars. I am going to attempt re-color the already existing buildings. Hopefully the color tray will take to what colors I choose. So I will inform on how that goes, I think it is feasible to recolor existing buildings. Though to truly make our own buildings are still going to take some time. I think just for a small success for the community at moment would be to see that even the already made models transformed a little bit.  I will keep information up about how this idea goes, and what I discover. The draw back though will be if color tray will not take to new colors added to it. I know that with the vehicles paint shop program colors will take to the Raw. files as if you were painting a picture.So if the color tray will take to same way then their will be success. Since my real main goal as I pointed out before was to start to understand re-color buildings. I still have to give a big thanks to DCBenji for the videos that have come out that I have been watching.

[gothic0023 18]

So for an update because this idea of mine is semi still haunting me. It looks like at moment to fully import a totally new 3d creation would take some work, and I do not understand how to import obj. myself through simpack into the game, more or less make it a package. Though it seems as for the color palate that can be exported as a package and recolor a house no problem, much like I did with the cars except that I can not fully pick at this moment how to say detail doors or windows that the game would end up doing that, since the color tray is in blocks.Though I could very well learn something new and one row is dedicated to a different color of detailing for these things. So what I can see at this moment is all of one house type looking the same on my end or maybe a few limited color variations until I understand how to fully put into a package product a new obj,materials,texture page together. Though honestly I could at moment be over thinking what the obj file does, and how it is imported or exported. Though I do see that you can import a obj file straight into the game, just I would rather have a package obj file instead of straight import. Mainly because if I mess up the obj file it it is not forever stuck on my game, though that could simply be that I need to save the original struct or and import a new building, then if it messes up I can always import in the old structure and problem solved. On a side note these are all theories I have gather I have not tried to implement any of this yet, and I am for sure not saying this is how to manipulate the color trays or materials page.

[gothic0023 18]

So I am excited through using Benji's videos I was able to show color changing of buildings. I picked out some loud colors to place in the palette so that I could recognize them quickly in game. I feel this is the first step to better things. Along with this I have to say that I still have no real control with the palette as far as where or what the colors would do, it was only testing the fact that the colors would show up using a basic paint program. The next thing I have to say is that this is still going to be labor intensive because of color coding and I have to go one strand at a time, to see where the changes are happening at. Much like in Benjis video since I am not fully remodeling everything, I have not set the materials and palette in a way that I would know. So I am just constantly seeing what the game does and where things happen. I was as well way over complicating the obj unzip issue, and now I have that figured out. So if we can ever get it so  that through obj files we can create and in the material files find a way to wrap the creation around our made models in a way it will fit. I think we will have new buildings, however I do not know much about 3d creation, just a speculation of what would have to be done. 

 

Anyways moving along in my excitement : 

I don't know if the thumbnail will let you guys see, but basically first row I did in hot pink, second black, third hot blue, and fourth black. Now not knowing where exactly on the houses the colors would end up, I did find a small instance of where I believe my color changing came through. Which would be this dark blue and hot blue lined small house. So from this trial at moment, I learned were I placed my all hot blue line, had something to do with the boarders of the house and the interior possible. So to make each part stand out. I am going to have to almost go in and re-color that string/ plate on the right. Which then i maybe able as pointed out from the videos control that the house colors come in maybe a set of 3 or 5 colors in the game. The reason for that and not one single color which I may still try, is that I believe people still want variations on the buildings. Plus to reprogram for one building, you could only have unfortunately one package filed, so unless your banking on the other houses looking different you would only get the one look if the colors are blocked out. 

 

*So I hope this gives some lifted spirts to at least recoloring being done. Since at one point myself I thought this was almost impossible, if we could not find or figure out the codes. Once again thx to Benji for figuring out this house puzzle with the help of Maxis I am sure. I will continue to tinker around until I get something suitable for the exchange. Though at moment as posted in another post, I have to deal with home and school stuff first. Then I will be able to tinker around more. I just had to share my excitement in this one building find.

 

 

[gothic0023 18]

day 2 of testing with already premade designs, using manipulation of color palette or tray. This is my results from messing with it for the last 5 hours that I have been up. Which may help others figure out this color code. 

 

the first image below is the house design material placement, which would be attached to the color tray. The color tray that I have presented next to it is colors that I have plugged into the program. What I have noticed is the following as my sims built their houses, now keep in mind I was not only looking at the colors for a specific model, but the equivalent models that could possible be attached to the same file. 

 

1. it seems that row one I would see the colors present randomly for the red and blue colors. So sometimes I would have a pink house with green doors and sometimes a yellow how with green doors, on occasions I would even see an orange house with green doors. With this row one as well defined what colors the walls would come out.  So I am starting to believe that the rows are deisgnated going up and down like a bar code. Though it still sticks in line with the idea that red, though what I am seeing is that red and green does not seem to match the blue row which would be row 2. That blue is desinated its own color plate same as r& g. Though this again is just in theory. 

 

2. With the materials page in mind from figuring these colors it seemed as the sim houses were built that it would just randomly pick if it was going to be a red wall, blue wall, green wall, which by wall I am assuming are the huge blue square and red square blocks. Which in that random picking would generate a random color assigned from row 1. 

 

3. Though it seemd more times then not the game wanted to go with row 1 and red and green wall types for colors. So it seems row two was the flare for a different color added into walls once in a while, which would be what I considered the blue walls. 

 

4. As for the color rows going up and down of 3-6 I am still not sure exactly what specific spots those manipulated, at moment it could have been anything from a wall such as I saw more white buildings, to something that I did not notice like say a fence. 

 

Things that did not work: 

 

1. I tried an all black color tray to see if I would end up with all black house. This does not happen some reason black is desinated as something else and so the computer will start to select from the origional game pallete even though their is copy that is written over the program. 

 

2. You can not color an all pink tray as well and end up with say an all pink house, I am not sure why this is. The only theory I can come up is that the program does not recognize completely huge blocks of colors. 

 

conclusion at moment: 

 

I can see why colors that match are needed together, or else you get some really funky house built because of the randomness of selection. Along with this I have yet to figure out what these other bars control, which would be all that line in black up to green. I am not sure if that is a way for the game to have even more selection at moment, or if they control a different property that I am not aware of at moment. Though I am suspecting that it is for more color variations. Since I saw more white houses pop up along with the green. this could be because I have more white filling in the lines then I do of the other colors, along with pink. Though I am still really guessing. The other thing that I am trying to figure out is if these bars repeat themselves along the path or if each bar is just designated to a different part of the materials map. Though i am venturing to think it has to repeat somewhere because it is just a ton of colors versus how much map their is. So as being I can see how all one house color can happen, though I am not sure using this type of rewritting files that we can control those colors as much as we want to. Even if we were to make a color tray of our own, the computer game would still randomly pull colors. So I am wondering if it is more likely that we will learn what colors blend together to create certain city looks, versus trying to control every color and put it in a specific location. This kind I could see working if we have more advance tools and it is more like painting where what you see is what you get. Using this color tray you do not always end up getting what you see.   Anyways I need to start my day, but this was the work I did today with the game, and colors. 

[dcbenji 22]

1. When you say "row one". Think about each material being assigned to a column, not a row. A material gets assigned a column, then SimCity picks a 2x2 block from one of the 7 rows of that column each time a building spawns. If every 2x2 block within column 1 contains the same 3 colors, then that material will get the same  3 colors every time that particular building model spawns. If every block contains different colors, then that material will receive different colors with each new spawn of that building.

 

2. Instead of "materials page" try to call the image you have attached (with the pure Red, Green, and Blue areas) the "Color Control Map"(or Color map) as there are multiple materials within a Material Set, each which have different names (Normal Map, Color Map & Shader Map).

 

Anyway, While SimCity randomly picks colors from the color palette by iterating through the 2x2 rows of an assigned column, it does not randomly assign a material from the material set. Materials from the material set (walls, doors, windows etc) are manually assigned by the artist by cropping out a portion of the material set and assigning it to a section of the model. This data is written to the Material Info Texture.

 

This means that for a particular model, the walls will always receive the same wall material (lets say a wood material) and it is only the wood material's color (applied by the color palette) that will change on each spawning of a particular model. Take a look at the Shader Map or Normal Map that was exported along side your Color Map to get an idea of what materials these "huge blue square and red blocks" are actually coloring. You'll probably see detail in these other maps that look like metal or wood or other textures.

 

Its easier to see this if you spawn a bunch of shotgun shacks and compare duplicate models. They will all have the same windows and doors, but will recieve different colors. Remember the RGB portions of a material in the Color Map are referring to quadrants of a block within an assigned column of the palette. Artists assign a column, SimCity picks a row of that column. For the 2x2 block that is finally chosen R=Upper left, G=Lower Left, B= Upper right & Lower right pixels.

 

If you're trying to find what colors in the palette are assigned to what materials on the building, you should be comparing the colors of the materials of duplicate versions of the same building.

 

For example, compare the colors of the windows on the side of two different colored versions of the same shotgun shack. The windows on these duplicate models were assigned a different block of the same column. So try to find a column in the palette that has 2 blocks with the colors that you see on two sets of windows. Once you find the column, you'll know the color block options for that window material on that particular model.

 

 However, the same window material on a different model shotgun shack may be assigned a different column of the palette. So within each spawn of the same model, the windows change color using the same set of blocks (from the same palette column). The same windows on a different model could be colored using a different set of blocks from a different column ( if a different column was in fact assigned, it could be the case that for every model the artist decided to color the windows using the same column of the palette).

 

Let me know if this is helpful

 

-benji

[gothic0023 18]

1. When you say "row one". Think about each material being assigned to a column, not a row. A material gets assigned a column, then SimCity picks a 2x2 block from one of the 7 rows of that column each time a building spawns. If every 2x2 block within column 1 contains the same 3 colors, then that material will get the same  3 colors every time that particular building model spawns. If every block contains different colors, then that material will receive different colors with each new spawn of that building.

 

2. Instead of "materials page" try to call the image you have attached (with the pure Red, Green, and Blue areas) the "Color Control Map"(or Color map) as there are multiple materials within a Material Set, each which have different names (Normal Map, Color Map & Shader Map).

 

Anyway, While SimCity randomly picks colors from the color palette by iterating through the 2x2 rows of an assigned column, it does not randomly assign a material from the material set. Materials from the material set (walls, doors, windows etc) are manually assigned by the artist by cropping out a portion of the material set and assigning it to a section of the model. This data is written to the Material Info Texture.

 

This means that for a particular model, the walls will always receive the same wall material (lets say a wood material) and it is only the wood material's color (applied by the color palette) that will change on each spawning of a particular model. Take a look at the Shader Map or Normal Map that was exported along side your Color Map to get an idea of what materials these "huge blue square and red blocks" are actually coloring. You'll probably see detail in these other maps that look like metal or wood or other textures.

 

Its easier to see this if you spawn a bunch of shotgun shacks and compare duplicate models. They will all have the same windows and doors, but will recieve different colors. Remember the RGB portions of a material in the Color Map are referring to quadrants of a block within an assigned column of the palette. Artists assign a column, SimCity picks a row of that column. For the 2x2 block that is finally chosen R=Upper left, G=Lower Left, B= Upper right & Lower right pixels.

 

If you're trying to find what colors in the palette are assigned to what materials on the building, you should be comparing the colors of the materials of duplicate versions of the same building.

 

For example, compare the colors of the windows on the side of two different colored versions of the same shotgun shack. The windows on these duplicate models were assigned a different block of the same column. So try to find a column in the palette that has 2 blocks with the colors that you see on two sets of windows. Once you find the column, you'll know the color block options for that window material on that particular model.

 

 However, the same window material on a different model shotgun shack may be assigned a different column of the palette. So within each spawn of the same model, the windows change color using the same set of blocks (from the same palette column). The same windows on a different model could be colored using a different set of blocks from a different column ( if a different column was in fact assigned, it could be the case that for every model the artist decided to color the windows using the same column of the palette).

 

Let me know if this is helpful

 

-benji

Will try once again to stay with in the right terminology, thank you so much for taking time out to figure out what I was saying. i will work on using your methods and thoughts tomorrow when I try again to work with these buildings. I did though currently try to get same types of buildings to spawn as you suggested to try and figure out colors in certain columns do. Since I feel that to control colors you would have to have an idea of how they are placed. Thank you as well for straightening me out about the randomness I seeing as that it was the way the artist put the color control map on to the mesh and that it is not a computer generated thing. I will try to report here again as I try and work on learning how to manage these columns and colors for already designed materials until we can really start to import our own creations in a none major stressful way.

[gothic0023 18]

Day three Tinkering:

     

            Thanks again to Benji you are correct thinking of rows as columns helped out very much in me learning how to get some control on the house colors. I wanted to show my progress today now confirming for this type of house by adding colors in and out I can definitely identify which columns control what parts of buildings. Along with this that you are correct in that the artist depending on which column they associated say windows with would have those colors appear that are in that column. Though it seems I did find at least with this model a particular pattern to this crazy stuff. Anyways below is what I have been working on for the last few hours, it is kind of a long report but for those interested in this stuff I put as much detail in that I could possibly. Along with that are captions of what I was seeing while working on this particular color palette and color control map. ( I will continue tinkering after this to advance this color palette, and hopefully have a report about that for later tonight/ tomorrow.)

 

so first off in the vertical way of thinking of a column in this color palette, I imputed blue and white  at 100% and this was only for the first set of blocks in the color palette. This was so I could test out what I was seeing in my first tester city. What I found out  is that for the most part  here the houses of this type would be built in blue and seem to maintain a white  trim around the building. Which seems to point out that the artist for this model had picked this column for the building trim and walls.I did notice depending on the shading and where in the game the building were facing or not, that the richness of blue would vary. On all three brick houses shown below , most of them maintained a dark blue. While one house in particular came out baby blue. This is possibly be because in the texture files for brick materials that maybe the shading was not added into this version of the house or visa versa. Though still no matter what blue it came out if followed the trend of blue walls and a white trim. 

 

Then in the next testing to prove the theory of were the colors will go on this particular house design. I will rotate the white and blue in the nest grouping under column 1. In this next picture it confirms my white house suspicion,with this particular color control map and color palette. though in all oddness I did get my white house, the trim still maintained to stay white. Where in my theory the trim should have turned blue. Though what I am thinking at this moment is because their are more options to colors that the game will eventually start rotating the trim and the wall colors such as Benji had described to me what the columns sortive regulate. Though with this white house oddly at 100% color strength looks more like a peach type color, though this could be because of texturing and shadows. The other thing in this on why the white trim may not have been a blue trim is that I am checker boarding the color control pallets for this experiment.

 

I found in this checker boarding of the color pallets in column 1, that when I built my second tester town. The houses of this model stayed in the guideline of blue and white. So here I can confirm that the more times you have a single or two sets of colors in this case in the color palate that  you will start to see those colors as your building types more often with a particular building. In the second tester city I even eventually saw a white house with blue trim. This happen when I went and filled out another two blocks of the first column of the color pallet. So this told me that the program needed more options from the column 1, in order to have variations happen. Though what I am finding to be a pain is that I am only altering one design, I can only imagine at moment with the way we have to do this of what it would take to alter a whole city. (kind of a scary thought at moment) Though if we get better tools which are in progress this may not be so scary. Though unfortunately this is the only way I know how to alter a house and still keep the house structure looking good enough in  game. 

 

 

Now at 5:34 pm, I am going to attempt to mess with the second column adding colors, though I am going to pick different colors than blue & white, to see what happens. These colors once again during these testing's are 100%. If I can get this much figured out, then I may start to work with the idea of altering the variables of the colors to see how the game "Materials" handles lighter occupancy. The colors I picked out for this next part are yellow and orange. Once again I will be continuing with my checker pattern. 

 

With the second column colored in it seems that I can identify that orange in column 2 is for windows and doors. then the yellow is for another option to the game of house colors, since now I am seeing a mix match of yellow and blue houses popping up in my third tester city. However I have yet to see an orange house pop up, this could be because I do not at this point have the color orange as an option underneith the yellow in column 2.

 

 

conclusion : 

1. This would be faster if I knew exactly what columns were attached to what part of the color control map.

2. having everything at 100% color I can see where things go quickly in coordination to the color control map, downfall is that you get some not so desirable colors though because of shading material map, and texture material map. Such as my yellow house becoming more of a mustard yellow, than a sun yellow. 

3. I am going to continue to work with this color palette for the next few days while reporting progress.

4. At this point I am confident that at the end of all this that I can recolor a preexisting house, however it would only one model design out of how many in sim city. Which yes I could go through those files, but as in showing here what may apply for the column in the color palette may not apply for the other buildings. So in order to advance this more at current moment, I would have to do this same kind of testing and theory guessing, while constantly toggling between sim city and my material pieces such as in this case the color palette.

[dcbenji 22]

Really impressed with your experiments. For me this stuff was just true "in theory", but its really cool to see what I learned about the color palette actually being tested. 

 

"Though still no matter what blue it came out if followed the trend of blue walls and a white trim"

 

It sounds like you've identified the column that the walls and trim are getting their colors from. If you want to control the color of these materials. simply make every block in this column have the same 3 colors in the same quadrants of each block.

 

"I will rotate the white and blue in the nest grouping under column 1"

 

What is the "nest grouping"... a block? In each column there are 7 blocks. There are 4 pixels in each block. Each pixel within a block is a usually different color, except for the right 2 pixels - which are and should always be the same color.

 

" the trim still maintained to stay white"

Sounds like you've got to narrow down what color on the color control map defines the trim color. Don't forget that the right two pixels BOTH define the blue portion of the material on the color control map. Because of the way the game samples the palette, sometimes it will get the blue color from the upper right and sometimes it will get it from the lower right. So to be sure you are consistent you've got to put the same color in BOTH quadrants. In your checkerboard, you've got blue in the upper right and white in the lower right. If the trim is in fact assigned  from  a blue on the color control map, this would explain the alternating trim color you are getting. Or, like you said, if every block in the column isn't the same then that building may have spawned using a different (unmodified) block. Though I noticed that you just blacked out all the other blocks, which is probably a good way of doing these tests (although I'm not completely sure how exactly the game engine treats the "black" pixels. I'm guessing it just ignores them?)

 

" I can only imagine at moment with the way we have to do this of what it would take to alter a whole city"

I totally agree, it doesn't make much sense from a design perspective to go around to different buildings trying to guess which column every material gets assigned. Its way easier to start with an untextured building and assign the columns & materials yourself. If only we had some working tools

 

"once again I will be continuing with my checker pattern. "

Like i said, to get consistent results you need your experiments to include the SAME color in the two right pixels of a block. Each block can have different colors if you're experimenting with variation or whatever but the two right pixels within a block should be the same color or you will get color alteration that will confuse you.

 

"Such as my yellow house becoming more of a mustard yellow, than a sun yellow. "

I think this may have to do with the pre-processing that Ryan mentioned and how you are limited to somewhat "darker" colors.

 

"however it would only one model design out of how many in sim city"

If it is any encouragement, In SimCityPak I counted about 13 total models of shotgun shacks. So its not like there is an unwieldy amount, but its still very annoying from a design standpoint if you are attempting a re-color on all of them.

[gothic0023 18]

yeah when I said grouping I meant block, I ended up having writers block at that moment on what to call it. Thank you for other clues on how to control the colors, I am trying to figure out how to get it so I can take a block and test with the 4 pixiles in that block. Instead of these big two block areas, some reason I can't find at moment how to get my coloring tools to lower to the right size, such as what I can do in my paint shop pro. I am sure there is a customization for the tools some where in paint.net, but I have yet to find them. 

 

* For the black coloring out at moment it seems to be that it just ignores whatever pixles were there unlike what I had originally thought. originally I thought it pulled up the old files if nothing was there, though now that I got control on what houses I am looking at. I can say if you block out the other sections in black, it will ignore it and only pick from the colors it can see. Though that seems to include the lime green that I did not block out, because though my combinations are pretty relevant some how now I am getting mint green designs, though the only green in my testing so far is that long green part to the right side of the color pallet.

 

* Yeah it is neat to see the buildings when they do come up and now that I can recognize them. Though from just designing and stuff I have to giggle because this has to be the worlds hardest way to figure this stuff out.

 

Thank you once again Benji and I will try to work  on this quadrant coloring, to try to gain even more control of what I have already figured out.

[gothic0023 18]

Day 4 posting Quadrant results

R,G,B = when talked about referring to the color control map but I am as well telling what colors from the color pallet area that is related to the control map. Such as the four pixels in the color pallets that are associated with this map.

4/2/2014

 

At 8:03 pm I am working on getting more control in the R, G, and B areas of the color pallet. Yesterday was a good start at some break trough’s and chatting about what might be confirmed or not about what I was doing with this particular color pallet. I decided during this time to go back to using my paint shop pro since I can open up .png file here and I have more knowledge and control over my tools. The other bright side is I can save the color pallet with this program as well, so I do not have to sit and try to transfer the program types around.

Project idea

10:37pm I added into my color Platte two different blues, on the right side in the R pixel is a dark blue. In the G pixel is a light blue. Then to the right side in the “B” pixel areas is all white. So in column one testing here now messing with breaking down the pixels a bit. I am looking for a couple of variations of blue houses, from a deep blue to light blue and again with my white trim. This small text is to see if I can control colors more effectively through breaking down these columns into what would be their correct coloring bars. While doing this I am still keeping in mind that the column is made up of four pixels, instead of looking at it as one big block. (to this I went back to using paint shop pro which I can control a bit better.)

Results test city 1

So here I still get my blue house with white trim, from using this new way of coloring in the columns by really thinking about the R, G and B spots. At one time I thought black neutralizes all the other colors but in this picture I ended up with a pink window. 

Side notes: Now in looking really hard at column 1 I could explain this that in the white seems to be grey and white checkered boxes. There is a hint of pink and off green among the gray, so there the white is not fully white and the grey is not exactly grey. Much like I noticed on the right side of this color palate when I zoomed in that there is in fact two different shades of green within those columns. Though because there the transparency of the greens, I cannot tell for sure if it is two different shades of green or two different occupancies of green. Which could possibly still alter the shade of green that comes from those columns.

Project idea

Now at 11:07 pm I am going to look at what would be the second column in this color palate. From earlier testing this seemed to be where the wall and trim color once again came from. So in keeping with the design to see if I can get even more of these types of color houses to show.  Since just coloring in the first column only resulted in a few houses coming out this color, or even showing up in game. In the “R” pixel is I will do dark blue, “Pixel I will do light blue, and then where the “B” pixel is I will put in all white. 

Result test city2

So with my second test city out of freshly created region. I have found that the buildings will maintain to be blue, however to say if there is more or less of them. Unfortunately that cannot be defined because as we kind of went over earlier in notes there are too many other buildings that could possibly be built. So in a way this is like looking for a needle in a hay stack. Though happy to say that the pattern on these buildings still holds up in theory to my earlier testing’s. While coloring out this second column. Though I have found it odd in that even with the variations of blue, that I still end up with these really deep blue houses presented. So I am thinking that the “G” pixel as far as house walls on this type of brick building is not as dominate as the “R” pixel area. To fully test this theory I could turn the pixels around and put dark blue in the “G” pixel area of the color palate. Though I really at moment want to continue on with moving down this huge color pallet.

Project idea

Now at 11:42pm I am going to attempt to color the first technical column in column 3. Which in my earlier testing would define the windows and doors. So if this idea holds true, my blue houses will have different variations of doors that what I believe as associated with the third column. For this the colors I will pick to use “ R” I will use orange, for “G” use a light orange, for “B” I will use yellow. From breaking down this color pallet even more, I will hopefully see exactly what part of the column the yellow is used for. Since in my last experiments these columns were one solid color per block. With the yellow this time though I am going to go to semi darker yellow, since last time it came out pretty funky. 

*Side note: With this way of coloring with my tools I have had to go over the column pixel areas a few times. Some reason maybe the one talked about before, it automatically goes to a dark version of the color if you single click a color into that spot. So example a light blue may go straight to a dark blue, I had to click on it a few times to get the right shade. Even then I may still have some pixel variations of what color, because my eyes cannot define the slight color change. Where a gram program it is likely that it will pick up quickly on any color pixel variation. This could as well simply just be how my paint shop pro program works with .PNG images.

Results test city 3

In this testing most of my idea staid true, I had a blue house with yellow door and orange shutters. I seems that the majority of the houses without shutters would not present orange. So in that part of the 3 column I can say for sure that with this particular building that shutters and doors were designated to were these colors are at. Though at the same time oddly, I had one odd house of the bunch appear. That was a White house with blue shutters and a white door. Which hints to me like some have said that they used the same house model mesh, and had different artist put their spin on the same house. With that different spin of cropping the color control map, then you get stuff like this oddball house I found. 

I will update on the next columns that I am going to work on later. Which will be moving into column 4 and 5 and what effects that has on the building I am working with. The basic plan is that I am doing this not only to show results of testing so others can maybe use the information or try things out, but eventually I want to be able to construct colors to houses to give the house I am working with an original spin as much as possible. Along with this I figured it is a way as well so people can see what I am up to as far as projects. I will say I have come a long ways from when I started this project, and honestly i can say pretty much without a doubt on this particular project what column 1-3 are for.

[dcbenji 22]

Great discoveries! I would bet that house doesn't use every column of the palette. The other columns are probably reserved for other W2D1 buildings, so you probably don't have much farther to go before you know whAt column each material on that particular house gets assigned.

-benji

[gothic0023 18]

While I am getting some college class stuff done, thought I would respond back. I did some small work last night on the next columns which I will report on here in a while. Though I believe you that I will start seeing other ways artist put their mark on this mesh, because in the small moments I noticed out of what I had that some buildings would repeat constantly, though if I looked at those buildings that nothing would change in them as I went down the color pallet. Though I would keep finding these odd and end houses. So I think at moment I am almost ready to say that say blue house with white lining is a product of mesh 1 artist 1 which used say column 1-3  of the color pallet. Though I still want to make a couple more tester cities before I go as far to say that I know what a particular artist was doing at certain moment.

[gothic0023 18]

Day 4 more tinkering 

 

Project idea: Column 4  test city 1  4/3/2012 3:18pm

In order to see if I am correct now about column 4 as associated with the windows and shutters, I am going to put in the same pattern of “r”= orange “G”= Light orange and “B” =yellow. In this the theory should be that the house doors and shutters will stay with these colors, such as the yellow door and orange shutters. I will be looking around at the same time to see if anything else around the buildings end up with orange and yellow markers. That way I can note where else these colors may have been placed.

 

Result

I would venture to say from collum4 that I have now implemented the game with an option of yellow house, and yellow trim. Which again maybe that another designer had cropped the house out with the “B” pixel area. Which is why I am seeing so much yellow on yellow. Though oddly as the yellow houses maintain a darker yellow, the trim and windows are much brighter. The other reason I believe that column 4 is a new house color coming to life, is that these yellow houses were not apparent in the previous test up to this particular column.

 

Column five project: test city 2

In column five I will add in the colors “R”= Pink “G”=light pink, and “B”= Lavender. I have not gotten this far with the color pallet so it will be interesting to see what combinations happen. Along with this it should be interesting to see what really changes in this column. I am not sure at current moment if I will end up with pink and lavender lining, or pink and purple houses. 

 

Results

Going back to this crazy idea of the yellow trim, apparently yellow trim also includes most of the porches on this model. I ended up with one house that is lavender with a yellow deck. At moment it seems that were I have the lavender in column 5 is for the house walls, and the pink is for house trim. Now as showing in picture 1 the lavender house I had no pink show up on any of these houses. Though I did find a house that resembled the pink I used. Though was not same type of house, which I am wondering if these colors can affect upgrade versions of these lower houses. In theory it should not work that way I do not believe, because I am going along with the idea that colors only affect the mesh used. However with this example of the second city I am starting to question because of what I found. Though because I have not seen or opened up this particular mesh of house as in picture two. I could be that color pallet has those colors involved with it. Though I have to mention that when the sun was up it did look like my light pink and as the sun went down it started to look like my dark pink. Though oddly presented on this building there was no lavender that I could find.

Though at 3:39pm I decided to make a third tester city using the same color palate. This is because the second tester city did not want to really show me where the pink or lavender colors were going, in a way you could say my Sims were a little fussy. Though what I have found in my third tester city in result of this particular color palate. Is that this house that I was looking at before that seem consistent, that this column 5 seems to start appearing in other houses? The first image has no satellite dish instead an antenna, which in some ways is still same design but with the extra feature in my head seems to say this is a different type of mesh. The second picture is a house that is lavender that is completely a different design, it is down to the floor and only one story. The third image in this set is to show though that the walls on all all these designs though do stay lavender and are defiantly reoccurring. In this next set of pictures shows what I am starting to see. Which would mean that if this continues that I will be looking at different houses to see where colors are coming in. Though in these examples I can see that pink seems to stand for trim on these models and lavender still holds up to being wall colors. So I could say on these variation models at moment that I can say that I know what column designed these walls and lining. However because the house models are different, then what I was originally looking at it may just be a coquinidence. It could be and I am planning with this same palate to try a tester city 4 to see, that maybe I just need more houses built to see the effects of the lavender walls with pink trim in this current mesh that I have been looking over. Though with this I have to say with my original model I was looking at that I see many more lavender wall houses, however not many of them have the pink trim instead it seems to have selected white trim and doors etc. 

[dcbenji 22]

"going along with the idea that colors only affect the mesh used"

Yes, the color palette only effects the unique models that it is assigned to. It is possible that the same color palettes could be assigned to a different building style (W2D3 for example), but I do not think this is the case.

 

"there was no lavender that I could find"

As the lighting effects the shade of the colors throughout the day, you'd probably do better to pick colors that are completely different rather than the 3 different shades of pink you've got going on. That makes it really hard to tell if your experiments are working. If you're going for a pink house, maybe check out "Adobe Kuler" and pick a color scheme there that goes with pink but that has colors that are a little more different from each other. Just a thought anyway.

 

"The first image has no satellite dish instead an antenna, which in some ways is still same design but with the extra feature in my head seems to say this is a different type of mesh."

If the mesh is identical except for the satellite dish, I would say that the satellite dish is a "prop" or extra facade element that is assigned to the building either randomly or via some other parameter. Perhaps similar to how futurized buildings get different futurized element attachments between buildings of the same model.

 

-benji

[dcbenji 22]

Also, can you please tell me how you are going about replacing the game palette with your modified version? How do you import the modified palette back into SimCityPak?

[dcbenji 22]

It appears as if SimCityPak will only except a .BMP file when I try to import my modified PNG palette. So, in photoshop, i converted my modified palette to .BMP and look what happened to the buildings (see attached image). Pretty crazy! This must be due to the compression. Also, when I open the .PNG in photo shop I notice that all of the colors in the palette are semi-transparent. Perhaps this has something to do with the "blending" algorithm.

 

So how have you been importing your modified PNGs?

 

[gothic0023 18]

I have taken the lighting into consideration when looking for the colors so when I am looking for pink, honestly I am looking for all tones of pink. This is because if that column does control a particular part of a building, then no matter what color of pink their is it should show pink in the day light. As for the lavander I have seen those houses come up, but they are not trimmed exactly the way I thought. So I am not sure at moment but wondering if they are pulling the color off another part of the pallete. Though until I move along in collumns. I can not say for sure. I have also noticed if you do not do two collumns at a time, that you do not see the effects as often on houses. So maybe I need to do collumn 6 the same way as collumn 5 to see more of the effects. Which I will test here in a little bit as well. Though were I can see this a problem what I tried to stay away from which picking a pink that was to close to the white, because then you will have a good chance with all the other materials combining that you would end up with white trim. Along with this I only scout the buildings after 6am sim time because it is when I can fully see the colors for what they are. Any other time going down into night there is just to much chance of color change or variation because of the texture and shading materials that maybe applied to some of the buildings.but I am still at moment seeing many lavender houses with white trim. Only in that one case have I found the pink relevant. I am wondering if it might that artist design is not used as often as some of the other designs then again it could be that I am not giving the program enough options as far as a chance to select that color column I have set up. Though I will have my theories and conclusions up in a while. I am working on my 6th tester city with this same color pallet to see if I can find anymore houses in lavender and pink or pink and lavender. I will say though this this part of the pallets I have had to spend a much longer time scouting to try and find this stuff, Which I am wondering if it is because that particular mesh with its materials do not show up as much as say column 1 &2 buildings. Which if that is the case I could be looking for this house for a very long time. Though at moment I thought each complete house had about the same chance of getting built.

Also, can you please tell me how you are going about replacing the game palette with your modified version? How do you import the modified palette back into SimCityPak?

How I have done this is that i used simpack to open the files up , then I have taken the folder that i have put all these files the obj, materials pages, and color pallete into. Then I compressed the file, I take that compressed file and put it into my game data folder like you do other mods. I do not import this file back into simcitypack. The reason I do not import it back is because sim city pack has not given us way to do this with the color pallete as far as I can tell. So basically I am rewritting over the program making my own folder and mod. I pretty much stop using simpak after I opened up the files I wanted and exported them to a specific folder, the rest is up to compressing and zip.

btw I have to laugh a bit that above picture in neon green and blues are killing my little eyeballs.

[dcbenji 22]

I think I know what happened. Take a look at this image. This is the color palette after being converted to .BMP. Remember that the .BMP file doesn't carry an alpha channel as the .PNG fire does, so during conversion all the alpha was filled with white. Column 1 is all blue because it is the column I was experimenting with, similar to your experiments -- trying to see where this color is being applied.

 

 

 

 

Now look closely at the 8th row. You'll different shades of a very faint green. Normally the 8th row appears black or transparent because these colors are so faint here, but here with white behind them you can see a hint of color. Remember that the 8th row defines special properties: reflectance, emissiveness, and environment mapping. When these pixels got filled with all white it pushed these values up to 100%. So in the crazy image with the green houses and super bright windows I think either the reflection of the windows is turned up super high or they are emitting tons of light from their interior maps. I'm not sure what "emissivness" means if it is not tied in to the light emitted by the interior maps. 

I tried making the 8th row 100% black, but I got the exact same result. Which tells me that perhaps it is the transparency assigned to the pixels within the 8th row blocks that determines the amount of each "special" property, along with perhaps some color tinting. Not sure what the "green" tinting in the 8th row is exactly, though as you can see a lot of the buildings turned super bright green!

[gothic0023 18]

That is were your style and mine are different, my color pallete still stays in the .PNG formate, it does not get converted to .BMP through simpack above I explained in your questioning on how I am remodifying this pallete. In a way you can say I took an unconventional method, and so I am using Oppie's tools, but I am not trying to fully make the vision happen through his technical tool. Instead I made my own file to add in, which allows me to keep everything in the formate we are able to export using Oppies tool.

[dcbenji 22]

 

I have taken the lighting into consideration when looking for the colors so when I am looking for pink, honestly I am looking for all tones of pink. This is because if that column does control a particular part of a building, then no matter what color of pink their is it should show pink in the day light. As for the lavander I have seen those houses come up, but they are not trimmed exactly the way I thought. So I am not sure at moment but wondering if they are pulling the color off another part of the pallete. Though until I move along in collumns. I can not say for sure. I have also noticed if you do not do two collumns at a time, that you do not see the effects as often on houses. So maybe I need to do collumn 6 the same way as collumn 5 to see more of the effects. Which I will test here in a little bit as well. Though were I can see this a problem what I tried to stay away from which picking a pink that was to close to the white, because then you will have a good chance with all the other materials combining that you would end up with white trim. Along with this I only scout the buildings after 6am sim time because it is when I can fully see the colors for what they are. Any other time going down into night there is just to much chance of color change or variation because of the texture and shading materials that maybe applied to some of the buildings.but I am still at moment seeing many lavender houses with white trim. Only in that one case have I found the pink relevant. I am wondering if it might that artist design is not used as often as some of the other designs then again it could be that I am not giving the program enough options as far as a chance to select that color column I have set up. Though I will have my theories and conclusions up in a while. I am working on my 6th tester city with this same color pallet to see if I can find anymore houses in lavender and pink or pink and lavender. I will say though this this part of the pallets I have had to spend a much longer time scouting to try and find this stuff, Which I am wondering if it is because that particular mesh with its materials do not show up as much as say column 1 &2 buildings. Which if that is the case I could be looking for this house for a very long time. Though at moment I thought each complete house had about the same chance of getting built.

Also, can you please tell me how you are going about replacing the game palette with your modified version? How do you import the modified palette back into SimCityPak?

How I have done this is that i used simpack to open the files up , then I have taken the folder that i have put all these files the obj, materials pages, and color pallete into. Then I compressed the file, I take that compressed file and put it into my game data folder like you do other mods. I do not import this file back into simcitypack. The reason I do not import it back is because sim city pack has not given us way to do this with the color pallete as far as I can tell. So basically I am rewritting over the program making my own folder and mod. I pretty much stop using simpak after I opened up the files I wanted and exported them to a specific folder, the rest is up to compressing and zip.

btw I have to laugh a bit that above picture in neon green and blues are killing my little eyeballs.

 

 

"I use SimPak to open the files up"

 

What "files", all you need is the .PNG file which is the palette. Do you export all the materials? When you compress them to a zip folder, do you just drop this zip folder into the SimCity Data folder? I thought it had to be in a .package file to work?

[gothic0023 18]

Oh on another note thank you for pointing out those green pixiles, because on the bottom of mine were you are seeing green, I see faint colors of green and pink there among the grey and white. So you maybe correct in that is were these funky green houses are comming from, and not from the green side of the color pallete as I have been showing with my blacked out area.