Koesj's Building Woes: Dingbats!

[Matthias King 348]

Looks like a good building. I'm looking forward to when you work out the LOD and add it to the workshop.

[Koesj 659]

Okay... modeling in Max: awesome! Thank you AJ! But, what's going on with the texturing on this piece of geometry here?

 

 

They're 5x5m tiles UV-mapped on a single 160x160pix square of texture WITH a couple of pixels of padding on all sides. All other materials except for diffuse are OFF, and I'm getting this streaking not only here or in C:S exclusively but in both at the same time  

No smoothing group shenanigans going on, texture has been solidified- ie no alpha channel problems - but I don't think that matters in C:S or does it? Even if I fill up this part of the diffuse with 50% gray the same thing happens, as does changing the UV shell position on the diffuse.

 

WTH?

[Koesj 659]

No takers wrt my mipmapping/interpolation problem? It's preventing me from going forward with this asset. 

 

e: sod it, I'll fix it by applying ~geometry~

[Matthias King 348]

I wish I could help, but I don't know anything. It looks like a cool building though. I hope you can figure it out.

[GC_Vos 714]

3ds viewport is not the most reliable when it comes to showing textures. Have you tried clicking the +, configure, enable viewport clipping, then adjust the sliders? (Don't know if that's the problem, it just changes aliasing / draw distance and doesn't affect textures)

[Koesj 659]

Nahh it was a persistent issue in-game as well. I'm pretty much resorting to patching it over with polys, but while this turned out to be great for the tower, the base is a different story at the moment.

[Koesj 659]

I'll quit my nagging and just show what I'm working on since I'm about 90% done anyway  

Citigroup Center in LA, or, a slightly shorter and simplified version of it:

I've 'fixed'the mipmapping issue by applying strips or columns of geometry on top of the seams. Works great for the vertical elements on the shaft, but not so great with those dividers for the green granite base. 

Nightlights are a work in progress, I'll add some elements in front of the lighter areas to simulate some depth and tweak the gradient. Still, not too bad for window strips that're only 20pix high.

Behold! A super easy texture map for the metal curtain walls and opaque windows make for more space for my roof elements. I've been finicking around with alphas a lot for this tower, resulting in both a rail for the window-washing gantry (probably not going to include it since it'll look out of place in this game) and some 'netting' around the helipad. 

I really like the smoothing on the vertical columns by the way, a very welcome boon of having to spend 841 tris to get around the seaming issue. 

I've even spent some time on doing things on the street level. The balcony is a bit too big for any vanilla C:S props, but the plaza area looks nice enough with the trees and tiles.

By the way, I'm currently running with normal maps with the green channel inverted since it seems to give better results, but wasn't it supposed to be the red one that had to be inverted?

 

Anyway, it wouldn't be one of mine if it didn't look all jagged up to hell at a native 1080p resolution, even from this medium distance  

I'm probably good to go for release pretty soon, since the luster of constantly working on this thing is starting to wear off.

 

e: Oh, umm, stats. 2959 tris right now; 1024x1024 texture; asset size comes in at a cool 3031KB at the moment. I hope I can keep the LOD to under 200 tris with 256x2.

[Koesj 659]

Mate I was happy enough with a smoothing group on the facade elements and roughly the same diffuse color as the metal wall 

So you're saying that reducing the contrast on... the color map changes the way the game samples the shadows of the geometry??

I'll see what I can do wrt the facade materials. However, they're only somewhat oversized curtain wall elements; currently with a decent amount of specular and a solid color map and that's probably what they're end up with anyway. Are you sure you're not talking about stuff that's more applicable to stone or mason-work buildings? 

 

 

Dunno about my scene file being anything other than squeaky clean...  

[Koesj 659]

Unlike the real building I've got columns, or at least something approaching the dimensions of load-bearing elements like you'd see in something like the late and lamented WTC. Here they're masking faults, in real life we're only talking about facade elements on the curtain wall paneling itself. 

Geometrically mine are not columns though but (half, or three-quarter) diamonds, so I gather it'd be a choice between  the current smoothing group(s) and maybe playing around with changing the normals? 

Great tip with the colorization based on the shading, I'll see what I can do! 

 

e: I think I'm seeing a little bit less jaggies, but in the looks department I'm not so sure about the loss in contrast between the vertical and horizontal elements of the tower. Since I've got the columns anyway I might as well try to make them work on an architectural level.

[Matthias King 348]

That building looks fantastic. I'm anxious to see it on the workshop. Don't get discouraged.

[Koesj 659]

Done: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=607981950

For the moment at least  

[Matthias King 348]

That looks awesome. I'm looking forward to finding a spot in my downtown for it.

[Koesj 659]

Still got some time off so I'm back testing stuff out; might lead to a new filler building:

[Koesj 659]

Anyone interested in having these kinds of buildings modeled wall-to-wall?

because I've got tons of texturespace left for a plaza, though those can be on either side of its longer axis...

[Matthias King 348]

I would. I like those kinds of office buildings. You see them in cities all the time. They're not traffic-stopping icons, but every major city downtown area has their fair share. Having them work w2w would allow for creating a larger office building, or just using it individually, at the player's discretion.

Also, I put down your ChirpiBank building in my downtown area. I had to rearrange a bit to make it work, but it was worth it. It's an awesome building, and the file size is shockingly small, as usual. Excellent work!

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

Yes! More fillers please

Great work! I especially like what you did with the ChirpyBank windows. You're calming my anxiety of not finding truly quality buildings for my commercial areas. Too many buildings look good on the workshop screenshots until seen in game. Yours deliver. And more thanks for doing ground level work on these (so many towers with little to no entrance/exits work). I spend a lot of time at first person view and like to see ground level detail. Those smaller filler buildings are more than welcome. Another thing I like is your scales are not super tall like many do so we get reasonable height transitions of the skylines. Keep up the good work

[Koesj 659]

Aww shucks guys, it's the middle of the night and now I want to get out of bed and fire up the 'ol computer again 

[Matthias King 348]

1 hour ago, Mr_Maison said:

I spend a lot of time at first person view and like to see ground level detail.

Same here. I spend as much or more time in first person viewing what different neighborhoods and areas look like from the cims perspective as I do from the top down. Top down isn't a good way to judge, in my opinion. The 'Google Maps' viewpoint is fine, but people (cims) don't live through that perspective. I always try to keep that in mind.

[Judazzz 1,936]

I read about all the issues you apparently keep running into Koesj, but yesterday I plopped your Banhammer Bank and Chirpigroup Center just to see what they look like (my city's downtown area is still in the planning phase), and holy smokes they look absolutely amazing, very realistic! Hard to imagine you managed to squeeze so much awesomeness in less than 4MB!

btw: any chance you could team up with AJ3D to make your assets Ploppable RICO-compatible? That way they don't just look stunning, they'll also actually function as offices.

[Simulanten 681]

YES!

These faceless office chunks excite me more than every landmark skyscraper, snowflakes and jumping clowns together... Take a look at any city - it's full of those.

Very happy to see you taking care of this totally underrated business of asset creation!

[Koesj 659]

Gotta say I feel like I'm having some success in adding depth to my building through playing around with diffuse map elements on the windows themselves (basicalliy the zed68 approach ):

However, using the blinds as a full mask on the illumination map is definitely NOT cutting it at native res:

Gotta think of something else for the nightlights!

 

e: here's a peek at the diffusemap on those windows...

[Matthias King 348]

I wish I could get you to build two projects I have in my mind, but can't do because I can't do modeling.

[Koesj 659]

Just tell me what they are and I'll take it into consideration!

Will be a lot busier with other things from next week onwards though...

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

I miss Zed. I hope he comes back.  Hey ZED! If you're lurking just at least give us one of your party smileys

I need to learn that night lighting technique myself. It makes such a difference.

[Koesj 659]

Final thought of the day: doubling up this building cost like three minutes, and the only substantial changes should be in the roofs. I'm looking forward to releasing the same building in 10 floor increments 

 

Asset sizes: 2.9/3.3MB

[Matthias King 348]

Nice. That looks pretty awesome.

The buildings I'd like aren't real-life buildings. They're from inside my own head, so I don't know how easy they would be to reproduce.

[Koesj 659]

Quick question: how would you guys like to place 6x4 buildings like these? I don't want to clutter up the workshop with rotated versions of the same asset.

Right now I've got it set up to face the road at the shorter side, which seems to work out pretty well since my own city's downtown blocks are 8x12.

[Matthias King 348]

That's a good question. I think either way probably works with this particular building, given how plain and symmetrical it is. But I can't see the entryway in those pictures so I can't be sure. What do you think?

[Koesj 659]

Decided on the long side facing the road after thinking it over and asking MrMaison!

Released it: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=609813534

[wallacet 336]

Looks good dude! Can't wait to fire up the ol' machine and see it in my city!