Avanya's buildings (Update 7/1: Cargo rail stations released)

[Avanya 2,605]

Ty guys. ^^ I get what you mean with the wheels. It would have to be pretty precise to not leave gaps. Might give it a try. The wheels account for about 300 tris, the grab 200 and hydraulics about 200, so that's definately where the most of it is. There's some faces I could prob remove like underneath, since they won't be seen. Hoping to get under 1000 if possible, but it is also fairly big - takes up about 1x2 squares.  

[Ryno917 102]

Gaps are easy to eliminate if your alpha mask for the side of the wheel makes it slightly larger than the 'tread' circumference

[Avanya 2,605]

Damn real life getting in the way of my modelling!   It's been busy and my material handler is taking longer than I expected (So much prettier than the texture I did for the excavators!!). It's getting there though, so I figured I'd share a pic. It's at 1081 tris and I've decided to leave it there (if anyting I might add a few more to round off the body some more). It's pretty big so I feel like the tris is ok. The diffuse texture is done (I think - I might find a mistake or improve stuff  ), alpha needs a bit of work (for the railing) and then it needs a normal map. Then a LOD and I can get back to my recycling buildings  

P.S. I can't wait to get a chance to redo the texture for the excavators - they can look so much better!

[Avanya 2,605]

Today was very productive for me and I finished my material handler. You can find it here.

It ended up at 1105 tris with a 102 LOD. Hoping to release my recycling facilities soon - just gotta finish the last off.  

 

[Cool_Z 1,547]

Cute little beasts

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

That's awesome! Now the dumps makes sense.

[Matthias King 348]

Very nice. I always look forward to your releases.

[Avanya 2,605]

I changed the size a bit. Seeing it next to more than just piles of trash made me realise it was too big. It's still a large machine, but it doesn't look silly next to other vehicles and buildings.  Plus I made a rotated version because variation  

My iron recycling facility is done (no pics though as I haven't given it props yet). Now to do wood and then I'll release them all.

[Avanya 2,605]

I just released my modular recycling facilities! Very happy with how they came out. Might add a truck later, but for new they're done. I didn't want to wait any longer as I had started using them in my cities  

Here's a little pic of a large setup of them. I'll probably add some more of them together later on - my testing city isn't that pretty or well layed out for good screenshots.  

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Great job! I love them now but I'd love them even more if they produced refined resources (at least metal, paper, and plastic ones) with ploppable RICO.

[Ryno917 102]

Awesome stuff!

[Avanya 2,605]

2 hours ago, OcramsRzr said:

Great job! I love them now but I'd love them even more if they produced refined resources (at least metal, paper, and plastic ones) with ploppable RICO.

No worries, I'll still look into that. I just wanted to get them released and then take my time to understand RICO.  

[Matthias King 348]

These look awesome! I'm on the workshop subbing them now. My only complaint is that frontloader prop is about three times bigger than it needs to be in terms of file size.

Also, is there an ideal layout for placing these down?

[Avanya 2,605]

The frontloader prop isn't my creation, so nothing I can do about that.   Not sure there's an ideal setup really. I like putting them in an L - that gives a good chance to clump them together, which I like  

[Matthias King 348]

I got them placed in my city in what I think is a good layout. I like them a lot!

[Vals Loeder 27]

Well done! I like these a lot and am sure I will use them in every city I build.

[Avanya 2,605]

Just a quick update today. I uploaded a bunch of extracted props - the container stacks from the cargo train station as well as single containers, the tanks and the shack from the cargoyard.

[Matthias King 348]

Thank you for those props!

[Avanya 2,605]

I'm currently working on updating my excavators with some better textures. In the process I wanted to fix some shading and see if I could lower the tris even more. In the end I decided to remake it from scratch (had some faces that didn't want to shade right). I'm not done yet, but I wanted to share my progress, because the old and the new are at the same tris now (713). The one in the foreground is the new one. It seems to have more detail even though they're the same tris count. Still hoping to get the new one a bit lower if possible.

[Ocram's Razr 964]

Impressive! You might be able to decrease triangle count in the wheels and use normal and alpha maps.

[Avanya 2,605]

For sure - If I don't have the tracks go in on the side like that I can cut a lot of tris. I won't be able to achieve the same effect though with normal maps. I'll prob do a test with and without, compare the difference and decide if it's worth the extra tris or not.

Update: A quick normal map test with 557 tris. The tracks are just a flat surface with the normal map and give the effect I was looking for. The final tris will prob end up around here.

[boformer 3,169]

500 tris is ok. Just don't forget to add a LOD with less than 100 tris.

[Simulanten 681]

Normal maps are great - a thing I still have to discover (so far I was only fighting with _i and _s maps).

I really appreciate those accurate low poly props in a reasonable scale!

[Avanya 2,605]

56 minutes ago, boformer said:

500 tris is ok. Just don't forget to add a LOD with less than 100 tris.

Don't worry - I almost always do (unless the auto one is ok). The old LOD is 91, but I'll see if I can improve/lower it.

[Avanya 2,605]

So I've played around with sub-building enabler and RICO today to some success. I have successfully had the aluminium MRF have an ore processing sub-building, which then exported ore. But ore processing buildings need raw materials, which goes for this too, and the garbage doesn't supply that (it would in the real world ofc, but not in Skylines). Turning it into an ore extractor could maybe work, but if I remember correctly those still need to be on ground with ore in it (which would be a silly requirement for a recycling building). 

I'd love to get some feedback on this. Would you prefer them as they are now or with an industrial subbuilding that produces goods, but needs raw materials delivered? The extractor option (if it could work without ore in the ground and district specialisation) would only make sense for some of them anyway (aluminium, iron, maybe plastic and paper too).

[boformer 3,169]

I'm sure @AJ3D could create an AI that produces these goods.

[Avanya 2,605]

That sounds really cool.   Would be awesome to have warehouses actually store goods as well. I'll keep an eye out and see what you guys come up with

[Ryno917 102]

That all sounds amazing

[Avanya 2,605]

I've got a little preview of the next updated asset of mine you'll see. The original was a weird mix of different types of tanks and didn't really work. I pretty much scrapped it and made a new one roughly the same size. The stairs in front of the new one are a prop and will appear randomly (in real life they are moveable), so not all tanks will have them. I also gace it a color map (the rust/dirty areas), so there's a bit more variation. I will ofc made the 2 tank deep version of it too and it still has the connecting pipes at the back.

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

You add such good detail assets with great textures.