BoldlyBuilding's Assets (Update & Harold Washington Library)

[Prosper Merime 128]

As it's complicated. Maybe write to CO.

[boldlybuilding 873]

It's just about done...

[boldlybuilding 873]

It is finished! Get it here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=626845833

Final model stats:

- Main tris - 37,938 (I know) 
- Main textures - 2048x2048 
- LOD tris - 1,584 
- LOD textures - 1024x1024

In the end, I decided to make the rows of windows and their crowns entirely 2D. The crowns still cut into the stonework, because they need to be separate as they use different parts of the texture. However, the model was fast approaching 42-43,000 tris, and I was unable to import it, just wouldn't work. So I deleted all the antenna details, which dropped it a few thousand tris, and it imported. So, I went back and made the windows 2D and kept the antenna details. That dropped the building to nearly 38,000 tris, and it imported without issue.

Now for the obligatory screenshots:

[Matthias King 348]

Twenty-two megs is too big for me, I have too many assets already, but damned if this building doesn't look amazing. You've outdone yourself with the detail work. It's extremely impressive to say the least.

Excellent work. I know the many Manhattan-builders will be ecstatic.

[Ryno917 102]

Stunning work!

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

This is the most tri count expensive building I ever subbed to. I had to get it though

[Judazzz 1,936]

I'd be more than willing to overlook the file size for such a fantastic building, but unfortunately it's way too big to scale with the rest of my town (mostly 1:1.5 and 1:1.6).

[boldlybuilding 873]

I decided to take a break from the SC3KU buildings to do a quick map and map theme, the result was...

Clear Lake! The terrain is based on the area around Kelseyville and Finley, California, on the south side of Clear Lake. In the areas off the build-able part of the map are Soda Bay and Lakeport, with Mount Konocti off to one side. I altered the terrain a bit by adding a branched river, larger reservoir, and a mostly flat area to build on for the starting point.

However, the most important part of this map is the farmland. I've always been dissatisfied with the inability to make big farms, and the way everything has to stop at the city borders. So, I made most of the build-able area farmland, which extends outside the borders at some points so that even when you build to the edge, it'll kind of look like the city goes further.

You can get the map here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=631860292

And the map theme here:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=631496112

But you'll also NEED the unlimited trees mod, or half the trees won't show up:

https://steamcommunity.com/workshop/filedetails/?id=455403039

Now for pictures:

[boformer 3,169]

The cliff texture looks fabulous. I'm just not sure about the farmland color offset...

[boldlybuilding 873]

1 hour ago, boformer said:

The cliff texture looks fabulous. I'm just not sure about the farmland color offset...

It was difficult trying to change those colors. The textures wouldn't appear the way I thought they would. And the fertile land color didn't seem to change when I tried changing it. On top of that, the test map they provide in the editor isn't good for seeing some of the effects of things. I wonder if it's possible to replace it with a better map.

[wallacet 336]

I do like that cliff texture though....how does one change that in the map editor?

[boldlybuilding 873]

36 minutes ago, wallacet said:

I do like that cliff texture though....how does one change that in the map editor?

Go to the Theme Editor, it's new with the latest update. You can change the grass, sand, gravel, ore, oil, water, road, and other textures, and a bunch of other stuff, and save it as your own theme. For cliffs, I put in a new cliff diffuse and normal.

Then when you make a new map, or possibly load an existing one, select the new theme for it.

[boldlybuilding 873]

I know I said I was going to veer away from real, big buildings for a while, but I'm a bit tired again of SC3K stuff at the moment, and need to get back to some other stuff (non CS related) soon-ish, but there's one building I wanted to do, even before the Empire State Building, and I still want to do it because there's no satisfactory version on the workshop. It's something I'd put my usual insanely-detailed spin on. And it's special to me, since it's only an hour from me and visible from my town's beach. It is...

...well, you can guess what it is. (It's NOT me though!)

[Judazzz 1,936]

My guess: the Willis Sears Tower.

[boldlybuilding 873]

I've been trying to work out a solution for the plaza at the base, and I think I got it.

Being the immovable bastion of including every unnecessary detail I can because accuracy, I'll be including the Skydeck entrance and plaza to the south, covered entrance to the east, and atrium to the west. The Skydeck and plaza will need to be a separate lot, so this will be another sub-building deal.

In real life, the tower sits on a bit of a hill. The street goes down a bit and the plazas go up as they go east. The game model, though ,presumes flat ground, so I had to do what I did with the WTC and keep the side that would normally be at street level raised and add some stairs and a ramp. Everything else will be accurate.

By the way, this asset will be called Willis Tower, and the names on the model will say Willis Tower, because that's what the name is. Facts are facts, people, no matter how annoying

Anyway, here's what I have so far:

[Judazzz 1,936]

I was just messing with the name, but imo. the only building in the world that truly deserves that name is Nakatomi Plaza in LA   (maybe something for Koesj's Fat Midrise collection *hint hint wink nudge*)

[boldlybuilding 873]

I was trying to figure out the best way to divide up the facades, and I settled on this:

I'm going to divide it not in long vertical strips, but by floor. Three main reasons:

It'll better allow me to add variation to the facade.

It'll allow me to have better-looking night lights. The Empire State Building suffered from quite severe vertical repetition of the windows. Here, I can vary things by floor and possibly make the lights more realistic.

And It'll allow more control over floor heights, as floor heights vary in some places.

It doesn't cost too terribly much tri-wise. The main structure is up to about 3,500 tris at the moment. Nearly 5k with the base stuff. I certainly don't expect another ESB. I hope. What's here already accounts for most of the building details.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Great stuff as usual! I hope your impressive skills will bring you success.

 

I wanted to make a supertall sandstone version of the Empire State Building (inspired by envelope sketches by Hugh Ferris and Civiliation Beyond Earth). I wanted the windows, dome, and metal details to come in silver, gold, emerald, and ruby; I wanted to have some of the Art Deco elements of the Empire State Building and Bullocks Wilshire; I wanted it to look good; however, I didn't do a very good job and I have to focus on my studies in undergraduate Chemical Engineering.

[Koesj 659]

I can't plop your ESB because, like other people said on the Workshop, it's greying out both itself and the High Interest Tower  

Now normally I'd go through all kinds of hoops to fix this for a city, but I just wanted to see how my own asset stacks up against your skills, and the game's already a $%&^! to load.

 

e: why do we have a swearing filter 

[boldlybuilding 873]

Are you playing a game with everything unlocked, or is the unlocker mod broken, or playing without such a mod?

[Koesj 659]

Woops, sorry for the late reply. I play with everything unlocked.

[boldlybuilding 873]

I decided against the transparent window thing, so instead I just redid the texture a bit and divided those floors up horizontally, too. It quintupled the tri count, but I don't care anymore. If it doesn't really matter how many tris it has, than I'll go with the way that gives me the most ability to vary the windows and lights while saving space on the texture, and not use the transparency thing. So far it's around 17k tris for the whole thing.

[boldlybuilding 873]

I really hate buildings with antennas.

[boldlybuilding 873]

One might note the size of the textures for this, and the space the windows take up. Why 2048 when it could be lower? Why this many windows when it could be fewer rows o nthe texture? 512 would be impossible, literally. 1024 would not look great. Here's part of the normal at 2048:

Here's a comparison between 1024 and 2048:

The left side is 1024, the right side is 2048. Given it's a big building as well, 2048 is, well... Lemongrab explained that already.

And for the windows...

The windows take up a relatively large space because I need more than just the regular windows. I need different variations of frames to accurately represent the building; ventilation panels for machine floors, large open windows for upper machine floors, windows near the top, observatory window frames, base windows and vents, 3 horizontal rows of regular windows for variation there, and so on. I *could* just stick the same type of window across the whole building, but that wouldn't be accurate. Gotta be accurate. That's just the way I am. I get a physical itch if it isn't.

Here's how the different types of windows are accounted for, plus three across for sufficient variation in texture and lights:

Now there may still be better ways of doing it, and if I'm someone who just isn't bothered by leaving out details, it would be much better for sure. But I'm stubborn and probably actually genuinely OCD, so... yeah.

[Avanya 2,605]

Might be worth remembering that you can do 512x1024 or 1024x2048 too - just need to keep the layout in mind when doing UVs. And it might give you the extra space needed (remember going from 1024x1024 to 2048x2048 isn't double the pixels, but 4 times). I totally get wanting to keep as much detail as possible, but the difference on your two comparison shots wouldn't be visible in Skylines (maybe just a bit with some of the zoom mods, but I think you'd have to be looking for it). This is worth keeping in mind as you might spend a lot of time on details, that won't even be visible in the game.   I find myself getting carried away with some tiny details at times, then realise I can't even see it in the game.  

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Question is also... how many times will someone zoom that close...

[boldlybuilding 873]

I don't think the 1024x2048 thing would work here. I still have a lot to add to the texture. All that would do is cut down the space I have to work with.

And even if most wouldn't zoom that close, it still doesn't look very good.

Plus I still say it's a HUGE building. Taller even than the WTC and big enough to require sub-buildings. And it'll be 1:1. A lot of people don't like that. It probably won't be used in many cities. So I see 2048 as acceptable. If I were making a tiny house and it was 2048, then you could say I'm making quite a big mistake  But who knows, maybe I'll change my mind and drop it down. Depends. I likely won't though.

[boformer 3,169]

The normals you made are just not pixel-optimized for that texture size. I think 1024 looks ok.

[boldlybuilding 873]

Just now, boformer said:

The normals you made are just not pixel-optimized for that texture size. I think 1024 looks ok.

I don't think so. If I scaled the normals down, yeah, but I baked a set of normals at 1024 just to make sure they were optimized for that size. This is what it looks like:

[Koesj 659]

Did you try painting them yourself?