Trouble with textures on imported models (Blender)

[ReticentDaikaiju 26]

I am getting started trying to learn how to import models into the CIties Skylines asset editor, but I'm having a bit of trouble getting the textures to display properly. I have been following the tutorial here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ShfdBv-mF4

 

As a test, I tried uploading a simple box with a brick texture (512x512pixel jpg image) which I made using Blender:

 

 

 

As instructed in the tutorial I exported the file in .fbx format using the specified settings:

 

 

and then placed it (brickbox.fbx) and the associated texture file (brick_d.jpg) in the imports folder:

 

 

However, when I load the model in the importer, the box texture does not display properly:

 

If anyone has any idea what I could be doing wrong I'd appreciate the help. Thanks!

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Your texture should be named brickbox_d.jpg

[ReticentDaikaiju 26]

Thanks a lot! Figured it was probably something simple like that. Can't wait to start making some actual building models.

[Olooriel 0]

Hi! I'm also completely new to this, and I have a slightly different problem... I have made a pretty basic house with a diffuse texture in Blender, just to test how everything works before I try anything more involved. The model file is named testhouse.fbx, and the texture file is named testhouse_d.jpg. When I select the model to import it, the texture shows up correctly:

 

But when I move on to the asset editor, it looks like this:

 

It's probably something really basic that I don't know as a beginner, but I have no idea where to start... is there a specific layout for the UV map that I have to use, or a specific size/resolution?

[Budelbert Calypso 0]

Hey, I had the same problem but added one by posting it in the wrong forum:

The author of this post knew the answer: the resolution needs to be by powers of 2: 128x128 or upwards. Enjoy.

 

As I am new to modelling too, I have another beginner's problem now. Using the diffuse texture only works,

but not to satisfaction for me. If anyone can suggest a good overview about the different texture-types and

how to use them, a Link would be welcomed to learn for myself.

 

Cheers

[CityOfTokyo 3]

Hi! I'm also completely new to this, and I have a slightly different problem... I have made a pretty basic house with a diffuse texture in Blender, just to test how everything works before I try anything more involved. The model file is named testhouse.fbx, and the texture file is named testhouse_d.jpg. When I select the model to import it, the texture shows up correctly:

 

But when I move on to the asset editor, it looks like this:

 

It's probably something really basic that I don't know as a beginner, but I have no idea where to start... is there a specific layout for the UV map that I have to use, or a specific size/resolution?

 

You should use PNG format.

[Olooriel 0]

@Budelbert Calypso

Powers of 2 was indeed the problem, thank you very much!

 

@CityOfTokyo

I did start with .png actually, then tried different formats when that didn't work... both appear to be accepted formats, and I didn't care about the image quality in this one, as it was just a first test run.

 

I started texturing a more complex model and ran into problems trying to figure out the UV map. Does anyone know any good tutorials on doing this stuff in Blender? I find it hard to figure out which face is which, and even when I do, some of them are stretched, so I can't just apply a brick texture evenly in Photoshop... but I also don't know how much it has been stretched, or how to tell it to _not_ stretch an important face, if that is possible?

[SimBa1911 3]

Try the Sure UVW script for Blender, it's a huge time-saver. Then, once you've set up your materials and textures, bake it into one UV Map. Here are a couple of videos on how to do both:

 

Sure UVW

Blender Texture Map Baking

 

I used this method on my latest building, Swiss Chalet, and it saved tons of time.

 

Good luck!

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Try the Sure UVW script for Blender, it's a huge time-saver. Then, once you've set up your materials and textures, bake it into one UV Map. Here are a couple of videos on how to do both:

 

Sure UVW

Blender Texture Map Baking

 

I used this method on my latest building, Swiss Chalet, and it saved tons of time.

 

Good luck!

Thanks so much for this!

[SimBa1911 3]

@Mr_Maison No problem! My UVs used to be handmade and I'd manually map the faces to it. Then I found the UVW script and it was like an epiphany - wow, this is how I should have been doing it all along!.

[Olooriel 0]

Thank you, this looks like exactly what I was hoping would exist somewhere!

[Olooriel 0]

Try the Sure UVW script for Blender, it's a huge time-saver. Then, once you've set up your materials and textures, bake it into one UV Map. Here are a couple of videos on how to do both:

 

Sure UVW

Blender Texture Map Baking

 

I used this method on my latest building, Swiss Chalet, and it saved tons of time.

 

Good luck!

 

I'm still stuck on this, I guess I'm just too stupid for Blender *sigh*. I managed to dig up that script, and following the first video leaves me with my model looking pretty much the way I want it to, which is something like this:

 

 

But I still don't have this as one UV map, it's still all a bunch of materials. If I try to UV unwrap the model now, I lose all of the arranging and scaling I've done with that script before. And if I don't, textures will go on top of one another, so it can't bake. What am I missing? It's frustrating to see my desired result like this and yet not be able to get to it. And I don't even understand the process well enough to put my problem into words without feeling like my mother when she hit the wrong button in ms word and "everything is gone" *hidesinshame*

[SimBa1911 3]

 

Try the Sure UVW script for Blender, it's a huge time-saver. Then, once you've set up your materials and textures, bake it into one UV Map. Here are a couple of videos on how to do both:

 

Sure UVW

Blender Texture Map Baking

 

I used this method on my latest building, Swiss Chalet, and it saved tons of time.

 

Good luck!

 

I'm still stuck on this, I guess I'm just too stupid for Blender *sigh*. I managed to dig up that script, and following the first video leaves me with my model looking pretty much the way I want it to, which is something like this:

 

 

But I still don't have this as one UV map, it's still all a bunch of materials. If I try to UV unwrap the model now, I lose all of the arranging and scaling I've done with that script before. And if I don't, textures will go on top of one another, so it can't bake. What am I missing? It's frustrating to see my desired result like this and yet not be able to get to it. And I don't even understand the process well enough to put my problem into words without feeling like my mother when she hit the wrong button in ms word and "everything is gone" *hidesinshame*

 

 

Watch the second video I linked to above. In it, the individual materials are baked into a single UV texture. That UV texture is used to create the diffuse, specular, normal and alpha that will be imported into CSKY.

 

Essentially, you create a 2nd, blank, UV map, project the faces onto it (using lightmap or smart unwrap) then bake the material textures to it and save. Once you're happy with the resulting image, you can add a new material that's linked to the texture map you just created. Delete the old UV map, all the other materials, set your rotation and scale, then export to FBX.

 

It sounds like a lot of work, but once you've watched the second video it should all make sense. I did my latest building this way and it's saved me a lot of time.

 

One tip: save a copy of the blender file just before you start this process because once you've deleted the original UV map and other materials, you're stuck with what you have.

 

Good luck!

[Drosovila 86]

Try the Sure UVW script for Blender, it's a huge time-saver. Then, once you've set up your materials and textures, bake it into one UV Map. Here are a couple of videos on how to do both:

 

Sure UVW

Blender Texture Map Baking

 

I used this method on my latest building, Swiss Chalet, and it saved tons of time.

 

Good luck!

 

I'm still stuck on this, I guess I'm just too stupid for Blender *sigh*. I managed to dig up that script, and following the first video leaves me with my model looking pretty much the way I want it to, which is something like this:

 

 

But I still don't have this as one UV map, it's still all a bunch of materials. If I try to UV unwrap the model now, I lose all of the arranging and scaling I've done with that script before. And if I don't, textures will go on top of one another, so it can't bake. What am I missing? It's frustrating to see my desired result like this and yet not be able to get to it. And I don't even understand the process well enough to put my problem into words without feeling like my mother when she hit the wrong button in ms word and "everything is gone" *hidesinshame*

 

Watch the second video I linked to above. In it, the individual materials are baked into a single UV texture. That UV texture is used to create the diffuse, specular, normal and alpha that will be imported into CSKY.

 

Essentially, you create a 2nd, blank, UV map, project the faces onto it (using lightmap or smart unwrap) then bake the material textures to it and save. Once you're happy with the resulting image, you can add a new material that's linked to the texture map you just created. Delete the old UV map, all the other materials, set your rotation and scale, then export to FBX.

 

It sounds like a lot of work, but once you've watched the second video it should all make sense. I did my latest building this way and it's saved me a lot of time.

 

One tip: save a copy of the blender file just before you start this process because once you've deleted the original UV map and other materials, you're stuck with what you have.

 

Good luck!

I used this method too, yes it's fast, yes it seems easy, but it only produces average results at best. If you have two walls made out of the identical material and smart UV project it, you'll have duplicates and essentially half the resolution. It also produces quite bad aliasing, and downsampling blurs out stuff. Now I've cjanged to manually unwrapping my models and stacking all the parts made out of the same material.Then I export it to photoshop to texture it. In the album below I used my textures made in photoshop, UV unwrapped the model using Smart UV project and baked it to a texture with the same resolution. The difference is huge, even though there's still a lot of space left on the manual unwrap.

https://imgur.com/a/ZEqsl

[merc187 46]

Hey Drosovillas, thanks for taking the time to share your process.  I'm also new at learning everything about model importation to games like and I just wanted to clarify something with you, I know you have high quality assets and have been producing some great work so you may have good perspective on what the results are in both methods.

I'm following this thread and noticed you said you export UV Layouts to Photoshop and texture them there.  Were you stating that baking textures from Blender (or other baker programs) produces lower quality results than that method?  There are times in my practice that I would love to just simple import a bunch of textures to materials via images to my modeling program and bake out the textures right there.  Things like maybe a brick base or something that might already be a small detail piece of the asset/model.

 

Thus far I've been getting better at learning how to UV Map properly so that my islands are more organized and ready for the UV texturing phases but I'm still trying to workout my work flow.  For instance on a more advanced model (trying to dabble with vehicles right now) would it even be advisable and more time effecient to map out small sections of a model to multtiple uv maps?  There are times where I'd love to put a decal, a sign or something on one side of my model that shares an underlying texture but not the other side (if that makes any sense, since most of the time I'm arraging mirrored uv's to stack on top of each other)?

 

Do you ever use multiple UV maps for an asset that while you are modeling might consist of multiple objects?  I know at the end of the line everything turns into one mesh, but if you had a very complicated mesh/model that would be beneficial to UV Map in separate parts is there any advantages to using multiple UV maps?  In my thought process at the moment I can't see any other way to do this outside of just not mirroring UV shells and sacrificing space on the texture space.

 

Thanks for any tips and sorry if I'm not making any sense.

[Shelltoe 15]

idk if i got your idea but you are fine to use seperated meshes / maps while modeling. 

all seperated meshes and maps should use only one material though so uvs are in the right place.

you can even use instances of your (sub)meshes (eg you can create one dormer of your roof and copy it all over the place).

just make sure everything creates a clean hull (eg no coplanar faces) when merged.

you shouldn't have problems merging everything in the end. 

[Drosovila 86]

Hey Drosovillas, thanks for taking the time to share your process.  I'm also new at learning everything about model importation to games like and I just wanted to clarify something with you, I know you have high quality assets and have been producing some great work so you may have good perspective on what the results are in both methods.

I'm following this thread and noticed you said you export UV Layouts to Photoshop and texture them there.  Were you stating that baking textures from Blender (or other baker programs) produces lower quality results than that method?  There are times in my practice that I would love to just simple import a bunch of textures to materials via images to my modeling program and bake out the textures right there.  Things like maybe a brick base or something that might already be a small detail piece of the asset/model.

 

Thus far I've been getting better at learning how to UV Map properly so that my islands are more organized and ready for the UV texturing phases but I'm still trying to workout my work flow.  For instance on a more advanced model (trying to dabble with vehicles right now) would it even be advisable and more time effecient to map out small sections of a model to multtiple uv maps?  There are times where I'd love to put a decal, a sign or something on one side of my model that shares an underlying texture but not the other side (if that makes any sense, since most of the time I'm arraging mirrored uv's to stack on top of each other)?

 

Do you ever use multiple UV maps for an asset that while you are modeling might consist of multiple objects?  I know at the end of the line everything turns into one mesh, but if you had a very complicated mesh/model that would be beneficial to UV Map in separate parts is there any advantages to using multiple UV maps?  In my thought process at the moment I can't see any other way to do this outside of just not mirroring UV shells and sacrificing space on the texture space.

 

Thanks for any tips and sorry if I'm not making any sense.

Firt off, I use blender and don't know what you use, so some stuff may be different. But I think I understood most of it. And I'm alse relatively new to creaing game assets, so don't take my word on everything I write.

 

When UV unwrapping I like to think with materials, and think how it would be done in real life.(Like when modelling, I think about how things are constructed and make them seperately instead of one waterthight mesh). For simple decalls, like signs, you could make a new face in front of the wall and give it a alpha texture, which should give it a nice 3D effect too. When using stacked shells It's really about finding the balance between resolution and repetition. For sksycrapers for example repeating the facade makes sense. because everything is the same and very geometric, so resolution is important, but for more organic stuff or grunge a bit of blurryness may be better than having the same texture repeat over and over again.

 

About multiple UV's, I usually map everything into one UV map from the very beginning, because thats how I export it afterwards.

 

When I finished modelling the base mesh, I export the object as a .obj file into photoshop, assign a diffuse texture, create a UV grid overlay and go to town with the texturing. One of the biggest advantages of photoshop vs blender materials is, that if I for example want a door in a wall, I don't have to subdivide it, apply a door material to the new face, and then unwrapp it for the door texture, but Instead just use a door texture and drag it where ever I want. When I have a rough mockup, I often save the texture, adjust some UV stuff in blender, add details, back to photoshop etc, till I'm happy with the result. Then I create the specularity texture(mostly using contrast/brightness and thresholds or just manually painting stuff like windows) and normal maps for which I use a gimp plugin. But I relly need to buy a crazybump license soon :/

[Olooriel 0]

 

 

 

Try the Sure UVW script for Blender, it's a huge time-saver. Then, once you've set up your materials and textures, bake it into one UV Map. Here are a couple of videos on how to do both:

 

Sure UVW

Blender Texture Map Baking

 

I used this method on my latest building, Swiss Chalet, and it saved tons of time.

 

Good luck!

 

I'm still stuck on this, I guess I'm just too stupid for Blender *sigh*. I managed to dig up that script, and following the first video leaves me with my model looking pretty much the way I want it to, which is something like this:

 

 

But I still don't have this as one UV map, it's still all a bunch of materials. If I try to UV unwrap the model now, I lose all of the arranging and scaling I've done with that script before. And if I don't, textures will go on top of one another, so it can't bake. What am I missing? It's frustrating to see my desired result like this and yet not be able to get to it. And I don't even understand the process well enough to put my problem into words without feeling like my mother when she hit the wrong button in ms word and "everything is gone" *hidesinshame*  

Watch the second video I linked to above. In it, the individual materials are baked into a single UV texture. That UV texture is used to create the diffuse, specular, normal and alpha that will be imported into CSKY.

 

Essentially, you create a 2nd, blank, UV map, project the faces onto it (using lightmap or smart unwrap) then bake the material textures to it and save. Once you're happy with the resulting image, you can add a new material that's linked to the texture map you just created. Delete the old UV map, all the other materials, set your rotation and scale, then export to FBX.

 

It sounds like a lot of work, but once you've watched the second video it should all make sense. I did my latest building this way and it's saved me a lot of time.

 

One tip: save a copy of the blender file just before you start this process because once you've deleted the original UV map and other materials, you're stuck with what you have.

 

Good luck!

I used this method too, yes it's fast, yes it seems easy, but it only produces average results at best. If you have two walls made out of the identical material and smart UV project it, you'll have duplicates and essentially half the resolution. It also produces quite bad aliasing, and downsampling blurs out stuff. Now I've cjanged to manually unwrapping my models and stacking all the parts made out of the same material.Then I export it to photoshop to texture it. In the album below I used my textures made in photoshop, UV unwrapped the model using Smart UV project and baked it to a texture with the same resolution. The difference is huge, even though there's still a lot of space left on the manual unwrap.

https://imgur.com/a/ZEqsl

 

 

At this stage, it's a major step ahead that I actually managed to get a single UV texture of this building made at all, it only took me about a month... - I can worry about the quality later. I have no idea how to manually unwrap it better than the smart UV does it automatically - until now, I have done a smart UV project, saved the layout and then painted the texture on that in Photoshop, and if I ever get even an average result with that process, it's a minor miracle.

 

So I'm glad to have found a process that works at all, I have managed to get the building done with a diffuse texture, normal map and specular map, and it looks decent I think, so thanks for the tips everyone!

 

I have a question about the low poly though, the model I made works well enough, but the texture changes colour quite noticably, is there a way to avoid this? I tried both the automatically baked one that the game creates (which looks ok apart from being dark and oversaturated) and making my own, which looks worse overall, but has exactly the same issues with oversaturation and dark values, even though the textures I used are exactly the same as the high poly version (and even desaturating it further shows no effect whatsoever). The colour variation overlays also seem to not affect the low poly?

 

This is what my model currently looks like in the zoom steps before and after switching to the low poly, with no (white) colour overlay (this being the automatic low poly texture):

[Shelltoe 15]

The color might change cause you don't have a colormap?

if you don't want to use a colormap create a black texture for it.

 

atm there are some LOD-bugs.

if you want to provide a custom lod, you'll have to provide _all_ texture map for your custom lod too (_d, _s, _c, _n)

[Olooriel 0]

The color might change cause you don't have a colormap?

if you don't want to use a colormap create a black texture for it.

 

atm there are some LOD-bugs.

if you want to provide a custom lod, you'll have to provide _all_ texture map for your custom lod too (_d, _s, _c, _n)

I doubt that's the problem with the colour change on the lod texture, since the colourmap didn't affect that one anyway, but it definitely made it easier to adjust the high poly the way I want it. Without the white overlay it is slightly darker, but still nowhere near as dark as the lod, and it did not change the saturation...

 

I now ended up with a little fully reflective crystal building without changing anything about the lod, so that's definitely weird... unfortunately I can't really get away with no lod on this one, I got a jumble of jagged faces pointing skyward instead of the roof side with the little chimney... I guess I have to paint a diffuse texture for the lod after all then... the rest of the textures shouldn't be an issue, c and s can be full black anyway, tiny reflective windows wouldn't be too noticeable on that zoom level...

[Shelltoe 15]

i'm not to sure what you are talking about.

colormaps are used for colorvariations which are broken for most templates since initial release.

which "white overlay"?

 

well you'll figure it out... here are two links regarding the new bugs in 1.1 (including Dev response)

 

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/custom-lod-help-tips.857325/

https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/extra-polys-being-added-to-model-in-the-asset-editor-only-since-patch.856771/#post-19354868

[Olooriel 0]

I meant that I had set all the colour variations to white, and that _did_ make the whole model brighter than my original texture (as you'd expect it would), and while that wasn't the isse with the low poly texture, after adding a black colour mask at least the high poly looks better (should have thought of that one myself). What exactly is broken about the colour variations, they worked as I'd expect them to in all my tests so far, both with and without a colourmap?

 

Thanks for the links btw., I'll have to check them out before I end up trying to fix something that's not gonna be working atm. anyway...

[Shelltoe 15]

yeah well check eg any lower commercial level 2 + 3 to see how well they work.

they will use only one of the set color variations which renders the feature totally useless for those templates.

everythings fine for level 1 though

 

same behaviour for high lvl commericals etc ...

 

by using no or an only white colormap, color variations will be applied to the full building.

so yes you can brighten your diffuse map with eg white (as the color variation is added to the diffuse color) but thats not intended. (just brighten your diffuse map instead)

this won't produce your bug anyways.

 

if you use a custom LOD check the 1st link I posted. its broken but theres an easy workaround.