Ocram's Buildings UPDATE: Midwestern Apartment Complex released

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I have become more familiar in 3Ds Max and even gained enough expertise in it over the past few months that I think my skill level is approaching a point where I think I am good enough to start making mods for Cities: Skylines. I started practicing in 3DsMax to make brick rowhouses for the game Banished but since I am more interested in Cities: Skylines now and my buildings were practice so I can mod C:S, I decided to start a new project of making buildings just for Cities: Skylines.

 

I whipped this building up over the course of 4-7 hours today. It would have taken only 1 or 2 hours had I not made a ton of mistakes that required me to start from the beginning.

It will normally grow on a 4 tile wide x 3 tile deep lot with the ability to grow on a 4x4 lot with a backyard.

FYI, I plan on making a ColorMask for the outer 2 rowhouses so it could have more variety (bright red, pink, tan, and whitewashed).

 

Please give me feedback to help me improve the quality of my creations.

 

 

Thank you!

 

--Ocram

  Edited March 17, 2018 by OcramsRzr  
updated title for new release

[wallacet 336]

It looks good for a start! I would recommend working on the texture around the roof "rim", if that makes sense. It looks blurry or stretched. But it shows promise!

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I'd be curious to see your uvmap. The borders of the roof have been mapped viewed from the top and that's why the textures are stretched there.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I gave the stairs, back porch, and the borders of my roof the same material as the top of the roof with the same settings except a higher blur. I since rendered the textures to a single 2048x2048 png and fixed the windows, doors, and walls around them. My next step is to fix the borders of my roof, possibly give it a stone texture.

 

Thank you for the feedback!

 

--Ocram

[Cool_Z 1,547]

2048 is huge for a building that size... I think you're building thinking of materials instead of directly thinking about the uvmap. That's why your materials look a bit repetitive.

 

might not be easy but you should look the other way around.

 

First buy the whole thing, then see how to apply textures to it.

[wallacet 336]

I remember back when I did models for SC4, I relied heavily on cgtextures for all my textures...is that still a viable source or is there a better one now?

[Cool_Z 1,547]

I remember back when I did models for SC4, I relied heavily on cgtextures for all my textures...is that still a viable source or is there a better one now?

 

I just google what I need and most of the time I find it quite easily.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I did a Google image search for the doors and windows but everything else was from CGtextures.

--Ocram

[Feindbold 1,190]

I did a Google image search for the doors and windows but everything else was from CGtextures.

--Ocram

Cg textures is nice for materials, like floors or roofes or something, but there is an much easier way to get nice looking facades for buildings. Google streetview! Here is an example of one of my textures maps, allmost entirely from streetview ( modified with photoshop of course):

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I managed to put the building into the game. I need to tweak the textures (and colormask) a bit more but at least now I know how to do things!

 

 

 

 

By the way, does anyone know if anyone has made a particle emitter appropriate for house or apartment chimneys? The small smokestack is too dark and the steam one is too big and thick.

 

--Ocram

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I made a model designed to be on a 40 meter by 40 meter lot for Cities XL and tested it in Cities: Skylines and found out that if you do not provide a ColorMask map, the recolor function tints the whole building. The building is also under-scaled because it is supposed to go on a 5x3 or 5x4 lot (and is downscaled to fit on a 4x3 lot). The other problem is that I cannot use it for Cities XL because the texture is too big (1024x1024 instead of 1024x512). Live and learn.

 

--Ocram

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=423668365

 

EDIT: I managed to fix everything correctly.

 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=424140737

 

5x3 because it is a college, not an apartment (in the code)

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Bump!

 

I just found out my issue preventing me from importing my exported FBX into the Asset Editor. When I selected the whole scene, there were 2 objects. I lifted the main object (my rowhouses) and deleted everything below. I then exported the FBX with the meters turned into decimeters. In the Asset Editor, I made my building a high school (5 tiles wide by 4 tiles deep). It even has a thumbnail! Now I want your opinions, should I make this into a high school, college, or growable zoned building (Tier 1 dense residential)? The last option requires me to scale the building down to 4:5 ratio (which means I increase the size of the shrunken model from 50x to 40x), which might not be a bad thing.

 

Anyway, enough talking, time to show off my creation!

 

 

 

 

 

So, what do you think?

 

--Ocram

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I'm redoing the blocks of rowhouses, remaking individual rowhouses (and will group them together for Cities: Skylines), and creating Spanish colonial buildings. I will share my progress when I have started putting them into the game.

 

This album shows my progression with oldest first and newest last.

http://m.imgur.com/a/GXEqI

 

Here is my latest render using 8 in-progress textures and 18 materials:

 I recently found out about a way to generate an optimum diffuse texture using a special plugin for 3DS Max so I will start using that after my midterm exams.

[merc187 46]

On ‎4‎/‎3‎/‎2015 at 10:18 AM, Feindbold said:

 

Cg textures is nice for materials, like floors or roofes or something, but there is an much easier way to get nice looking facades for buildings. Google streetview! Here is an example of one of my textures maps, allmost entirely from streetview ( modified with photoshop of course):

 

How do you get the textures so crisp from Streeview images Feindbold?  I've always wondered what the work flow process is behind that.  I think I remember seeing a post on the forum a while back where you go through the basics (a lot of photoshopping, copying layers, pasting, clone tool etc) but after trying my hand I still don't know how you get these images so crisp and get such good contrast on shadows without a ton of pixilation and distortion...Amazing work you do btw - love it all.

[boformer 3,169]

On 16.2.2016 at 8:21 PM, OcramsRzr said:

 

I would make the bricks at least 40% smaller. Also, add some grunge to your walls. Right now it looks too monotone.

[Koesj 659]

I don't think he's quite done yet, a lot of these threads show WIP pictures...

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I removed the windows for further optimization and freedom. The building will come in a brick variety and a cement variety (as shown below with placeholder materials generated by 3DS Max). The white windows and white outer doors (different shapes) and grey bricks will be recolorable (one remaining white, others being pastel) as will the other version's cement (neutral colors for the cement).

 

Down the line, I will make a custom theme (I might release the theme this weekend, making it my first workshop asset). Imagine the following:

Base terrain of blue-green moss, fertile lush (slightly yellow) green moss, dark grey cliffs, pink sand, dark red ore deposits, desaturated dark purple petroleum deposits, light purple (sky blue with slight pink tint) daytime sky, dark red-purple nighttime sky, Polyphemus for the moon, bigger & brighter sun, slightly darker night with aurora borealis, exotic trees (palms, giant tree ferns, giant horsetails, black bamboo with dark (slightly blue) green leaves, red bamboo with yellow-green leaves, giant club mosses, exotic spruce/pines), plays well with futuristic building themes (such as achromatic, Quad's, East Asian, Las Vegas, technicolor, industrial cyberpunk)

That will be my theme. I will eventually make towering skyscrapers (clad in a thin layer of granite cement) inspired by Hugh Ferris, Harvey Wiley Corbet, and Fritz Lang with (red) neon signs (inspired by Broadway) and orange indoor (window) lights for True traditionalists/purists, angular (slightly sloping as it goes up, like a modest frustum) grey skyscrapers with futuristic yellow lights for Prime transhumanists/cyborgs/techno-supremists, organic green "living" buildings for Evolved Prometheans (heavily spliced)/harmonists adapted to the planet, monumental bronze (gilded or patina) Greco-Roman buildings for First splicers (for health and beauty)/Ascendents, buildings inspired by the Duval Empire (and Apple) for Master futurists/Nobles, and bizarre violet buildings with magenta lighting for Elder voracious Rampants.

 

To prove I'm no one-trick pony

Spoiler

Babel Tower, inspired by Hugh Ferris

 

256x64 m base, 860 m tip, plan on making it a unique building with offices, shops, and a subway station

 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Sorry for double posting but I need some help.

How do you suggest I texture these? They are currently monochrome models.

Spoiler

The central tower (on an 8x8 lot, will be the LOD) has 202 Triangles, 109 Vertices, with the dollar and some details near the ground floor expect around 400-500 triangles.
With ploppable RICO, this will function as an office with the capacity of 6 4x4 T3 growable offices, 1 T3 1x1 dense commercial, a subway stop, and a landmark (tourist attraction and land value boost)

The 8x8  buildings (pink-tan) have 286 triangles and 171 vertices. It will have the capacity of 2 4x4 growable T3 offices and 2 4x4 growable T2 offices

The bigger 8x10 (I made them overlap with the model for the tower because they will change shape when adjacent to it) buildings have 289 triangles and 173 vertices. They will function as an office with the capacity of 3 4x4 T3 growable offices and 2 4x4 T2 growable offices, 1 T3 2x2 dense commercial, and a subway stop.

 

Same buildings (plus one I didn't previously render) from another angle

[boformer 3,169]

1 hour ago, AJ3D said:

In regards to your question you posted on Steam...

You can make any size footprint with SBE. Make your mesh as you normally would. When its time to import, make your main lot as big as you can, and allow the mesh to overhang the lot. Make a few separate blank lots, and use Sub-Buildings Enabler to tie them all together. They will appear in game as one giant lot.

https://gist.github.com/boformer/cb50a1a8f4ba89f91d09

Actually the recommended way of doing it is to split up the mesh into multiple parts. That way you can re-use parts of it and save loading times. Also, overhanging meshes might suffer from rendering problems.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I have made 5 models, all of which will be their own Ploppable RICO buildings. 

I still need help with textures but I tweaked my models a bit so that the tower with the $ is shorter and the building inspired by the same inspiration of the Empire State Building has no $

The tallest model was made by combining the base block with the tower and allowed me to reduce triangle and vertex counts.

It will be an office with the capacity of 12 4x4 T3 growable offices and 4 4x4 T2 growable offices,  with shops functioning like 1 4x4 T3 dense commercial, and 1 subway stop, with a landmark effect. However, I'm no good with making textures so I will need help. I want this 8x24 tile building to look like a supertall Dark Deco (dark & ominous Art Deco) Empire State Building. The version with the dollar sign will be grey but I will make a more ornate, and less foreboding version in brown without the dollar sign. That is if I manage to texture it. When I make my first City Journal for Cities: Skylines, I want my city to look like a cross between Gotham (Batman) and Metropolis (Fritz Lang) in space (Civilization: Beyond Earth, Purity).

[Darf 1,439]

Those need a lot more detail before you can start off adding textures. Also to make them look realistic you should get rid of the diagonal walls. I've not seen any Art deco buildings, which have those. Usually diagonal surfaces means roofs or windowed roofs. Start by looking at a couple of buildings for inspiration and than copy their elements. Also, I think the thing modders hate most is texturing and uv mapping (atleast I do). You probably won't get much help in that regard.

[Koesj 659]

To me texturing can be frustrating but also a great puzzle! So let me give you an example a high-res texture on a geometrically straightforward building whose artistic side I kinda botched (my 2Pru asset):

 

 

The shaft only really uses 3 distinct spaces on my 512x1024 texture map, all of them tiling vertically and using a 32 pixels per meter resolution. 1. Windows, 2. Central Core/Atriums, and 3. Pillars. If you break up the facade of your model into these kinds of vertical strips, you can then pull the UVs outside the 0.1 space like so: 

 

Boom. High texture resolution, no-hassle modeling (just array the vertical tiles as instances across your wallspace, unwrap once, then collapse and weld) and no deep thinking about AO baking or nightlight variations (both aren't going to work out within these texture spaces).

Plus, like I said, artistically I did zero fancy things with these maps. I had the real building to serve as inspiration but didn't know much about drawing in Photoshop. Some variation in grayscale and a blanket noise filter across the stone tiles, some blurring; that's it, done.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

OK, so I changed the model so I can tile the window/wall texture every 5 storeys. I also created LOD models. What do you think?

 

I want the tall (which I will shorten for Cities: Skylines but keep full-sized for Cities XXL) Imperial City Tower (its interesting geometry is due to it being science fiction) to be clad in simulated granite with a slight brick red tint, have gold windows, and have (yellow) spotlights and (red) neon. I found some textures but I'm not sure if my idea would look good. I honestly, don't know what to use for the W2W office but I assume it should be grey granite. I also made LOD models for those 2 buildings (the other buildings are variations upon the ones in this picture.

 

Questions: What textures should I use for the shorter building? Would my idea for the tall building look good?

[Koesj 659]

Why not start out with some simple, hand-drawn, solid-color texturing? Lay out a workable UV atlas on top of solid color blocks/strips the smallest texture map you can imagine (512? 1024?) and iterate from there!

Also, some iteration tips: make a GIMP/PS file with a couple of layer groups (diffuse and specular at the minimum, normals as soon as possible, lights and aloha when needed) so you can change visibility with one click for super-fast CTRL+ALT+SHIFT+S saving action.

Save your mapfiles directly in the C:S import folder and link the 3ds materials from there as well, a quick look in the asset editor wih the -noworkshop toggle is just an .fbx export away! Find out what colors and settings do and don't work in-engine since brightness and saturation can be way off.

Use your image editor 'main' file as the diffuse material in Max! Upon every save, you'll get an instant texture update from the active layer(s). Don't like the brightness even in Max of the whole asset? Select all, change brightness, save, check immediately.

We can theorize all night long about what might and might not work, just build build build on a basic level and if it's not to your liking, make simple but sweeping changes! Then come back to the thread and see people post things like "no, the old stuff was better" (happens to me all the time). But you'll only get to that point through reflecting upon your iterations!

I know this is all mega-familiar stuff but just stick to the basics for the moment, it's a large project you've got there.

Phew, hope that was reinforcement of the positive kind 

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I shortened the Imperial City Tower to have proportions more in tune with the Empire State Building (which is subject to the same exact zoning regulations this tower is supposed to be) so the first height limit (covering the entire block) is 10 m, the landing on the main tower is 360 meters, the ceiling of the highest occupied floor is at 500 meters, and the tip of the spire is 645 m. I also reduced the triangle count of the LOD slightly and started with texturing.

Screenshot in 3DS Max:

 

Render:

Spoiler

Thanks for the tips @Koesj you and Henka gave me some useful info! The windows of first few floors will be grey (instead of gold) and I might add some Art Deco architectural details like those seen in Bullocks Wilshire (only in bronze/red brass instead of patina copper). One version will have a Civilization Beyond Earth purity flag over the front, upper buttress.

Spoiler

Battle Suits

High Resolution Logo

 

Update: I gave the high resolution building a domed roof (sphere --> hemisphere --> stretch --> move top vertex up 100 m or so), removed the placeholder materials, and created a proper texture (1024x1024 diffuse and specular). I've already wasted too much time away from my university studies so I won't go farther than one render with the current diffuse until I'm finally caught up or ahead in my Chemical Engineering major.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

The skyscraper is on pause for a couple more weeks. I made a map and uploaded it to the workshop in order to test things without worrying about resources.

I started using Mod Tools to alter default (vanilla + DLC) buildings. The first project is Anne Queen's Decling Apartments (or A. Queen's Tenement). I don't have time to fix the textures so I gave it to Boformer to work on when he implements medium density, after he finishes his studies this semester because I don't want to distract myself from my studies this semester.

I imagine 4 middle class families, 8 working poor families, or 26 students would live here.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

What possessed me to do this instead of homework is beyond me.

[Koesj 659]

So what does your diffuse map look like eh?  

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Well. I've spent way too much time on this darn thing.

Here is the render that looks better because I used the full-sized UV map:

 

 

Here is the last render for a long time:

My Surface Pro 3 doesn't like the Asset Editor so someone else will have to finish this project.

Here is the WIP diffuse:

Here is the diffuse I used after realizing I don't want to deal with the ground level:

Here is the diffuse after thinking it a smart idea to allow the gold to be swapped out:

 

Imperial Tower.zip

[Ocram's Razr 964]

I'm going to make a whole new model and tweak the current one for different purposes. I decided to look at my source of inspiration (CivBE Purity and the works of Hugh Ferris) again and drew paper sketches. I will eventually make 5 Skyscrapers and a few mid rises and some barely high rise buildings.

 

UPDATE: Here are my building models so far:

Here is a render of Avaricio Inc. HQ (early stage of applying textures) next to Imperial City Tower without the color-mask applied:

Spoiler