Ryno's Assets

[Ryno917 102]

I'm just learning 3DS and I thought C:S modding would be a good way to teach myself the program because it gives me a defined 'goal' and a yardstick with which to measure my progress. I'll be posting updates, WIPs and asking questions in here.

First up is a small residential building. It's based on this: http://jinkazamah.deviantart.com/art/office-building-205907994

First shot is a raw 3DS viewport screencap, second image is in the asset editor. The main thing I need help with right now is getting the windows to not look so washed out. The asset editor shot is with a specular of only 15%. There's not really any reflection on the windows anymore, but they're still really washed out. Any tips to keep a darker glass while still getting stronger reflections?

[Koesj 659]

To me it it looks like you've got four windowed specular elements: clear or frosted glass floors, and clear or frosted dividers. I think the 'darker' windows actually aren't; what with the variable lighting in that nighttime render. 

So, my take: a dividing grid on top of the actual windows (couple of cms distance), with alpha mapped holes for the windows, zero spec vertical lines (2px?), and 5-10% spec floor dividers in two colors - glass and frosted. Then the windows can be either nearly full spec plain ones (which only look dark in the pic) and maybe two thirds spec lighter ones for the frosting.

These are all ballpark estimates mind you, I'm not near my computer and can't test it out myself. My advice would give you some opportunities to work with detailed nightlights like Zed does though.

[Feindbold 1,190]

Looking really really nice so far, the game lacks modern w2w buildings. I would scale it a bit, so its 16m wide and 100% w2w though. Also thems like there is a colorlayer active (whole building is very red).

Looking forward for more stuff.

[Ryno917 102]

1 hour ago, Feindbold said:

Looking really really nice so far, the game lacks modern w2w buildings. I would scale it a bit, so its 16m wide and 100% w2w though. Also thems like there is a colorlayer active (whole building is very red).

Looking forward for more stuff.

Thanks! I've just recently begun having a scale issue which was not present before. The 3d model is exactly 16m wide. It used to import properly, but then I made a change to the model and saved it out as a new file, and ever since then it imports incorrectly (it actually imports just smaller than one tile, the image shows it scaled to 200% when imported into the editor).

As far as I can tell, my units and scene settings in 3DS are the same as they always were (and it's set up as per Shroomblaze's recommendations in his Asset 101 guide). I can't for the life of me figure out why it no longer imports properly. It is definitely intended to be a pure W2W though, for sure, and I'll get that sorted before I release it.

I'll look into the colour issue. I'll doublecheck the diffuse map to make sure there's no red hue to it, and I'm 90% sure I had turned off the colour options in the asset editor as I don't intend for the building to have colour variations (this time).

3 hours ago, Koesj said:

To me it it looks like you've got four windowed specular elements: clear or frosted glass floors, and clear or frosted dividers. I think the 'darker' windows actually aren't; what with the variable lighting in that nighttime render. 

So, my take: a dividing grid on top of the actual windows (couple of cms distance), with alpha mapped holes for the windows, zero spec vertical lines (2px?), and 5-10% spec floor dividers in two colors - glass and frosted. Then the windows can be either nearly full spec plain ones (which only look dark in the pic) and maybe two thirds spec lighter ones for the frosting.

These are all ballpark estimates mind you, I'm not near my computer and can't test it out myself. My advice would give you some opportunities to work with detailed nightlights like Zed does though.

So do you mean that the 'floors' are on the same mesh as the window frame in your suggestion? I tried to just show them through colour on the window mesh - since it is technically behind the glass anyways. Currently the frame is on a separate mesh a couple cm above the window panes, but I could move the 'floors' to that mesh as well - but then I'll run into that ugly specular issue. I like the idea of generating the pattern in the windows by manipulating the spec map. Hadn't thought of that. I'll play with a few things and report back.

As for the nightlights, I believe the original design is that the entire floor is one room (well, at least the main part, balconies may come off a seperate room) so I currently have been taking that approach with my nightlights (which I'm not showing yet as they need a lot of work). The UV mapping on this model is not very good - almost all of it is mapped in full, not making use of repeating textures. That was a conscious choice because of the window pattern and full-floor rooms to be lit at night. The textures are currently 2048 because of that, unfortunately. I'm sure there's a more effective way I could have UVd it, but it's my first rodeo - I will improve on this.

Another 'issue' I'm having is that of visual scale - the ceilings are high on each floor, and I'm getting concerned that it's making the building just look out of scale. Any thoughts on that?

[Koesj 659]

Last things first, those windows look around 1m wide with 2x50cm for the side walls and 4m for the entrance stairs/balconies, right? If so, the windows might be a tad too high since office floors are typically around 4m tall. This might be a problem with the reference design since the render shows very little vertical space inbetween for hvac, piping, electrical, fire suppression, etc. an easy way out might be to work with 4x1m windows including 1m tall horizontal bands, but that'd mean abandoning the look of the original reference.

Second, I'd indeed recommend trying out to a 'grid' of vertical and horizontal facade elements as a mesh on top of the window panes. You can probably get away with very low spec all across this part of the texture map, bumping out those vertical trusses, and not worry about artifacting because of different specular levels close by on the same piece of geometry.

The latter issue points to having a full grid frame on top of your window panes anyway, per Zed's advice. I'm not sure if 2 or 4 px of horizontal border between the alternating reflectivity of your windows, masked by the non-alpha parts, is enough though. Then again, 2048 is really big, what's the resolution like across a single pane?

Here's a suggestion - if it isn't the exact solution you've already used - either for this building or for your next project: those 7.5x11 plus 3.5x6 panes can probably be mapped on top of a couple of vertical texture strips of 16 windows each. 128p per window, 32p per meter, enough detail to work with. With some overlapping UVs, five, or maybe even four strips (2048p high, 36x5p wide = 180p wide, tons of room to do other things) should be enough since there's bound to be some patterns in the glazing/frosting (actually, it looks like double glazing) to be found.

Check out my last couple of posts in my thread to see what I mean, I'm saddened that I can't show exactly what I mean.

[Ryno917 102]

I'm assuming the reference design eschewed the realities of HVAC and other details for the sake of concept - but in my head I'm justifying it by calling it a loft style condo with exposed ducting hanging from the ceiling and conduit mounted to the concrete. It's enough to give it a pass for me, at least  I'm an Industrial Designer by trade in real life, and I typically fall on the more technical side of things, so I do notice when something isn't right 'for the sake of concept' as well. Anything I design will have more attention paid to being proper in this regard.

IIRC I made each story 4m tall, but I need to double check - I did revise my heights at one point because it was getting away from the original proportions of the building, so I had to wiggle a few things to meet the requirements of the game (grid size), original concept and plausible real-world dimensions.

RE: You're point "Second..." are you suggesting that the window framing be on a separate mesh 'above' the glass proper? That's the way I currently have it set up - though I should probably beef up the thickness of it a bit because at anything other than a close angle it disappears. Plus the normal map would probably perform better with it a bit thicker. A single window pane on the 2048 texture is 27x109 pixels (not including the black framing, just the window pane itself). Like I said, the UV mapping is seriously sub-optimal. I should probably redo it all, to be perfectly honest, but at this point I'd rather turn to a 'virgin' project where I can concentrate on just not repeating those same mistakes from the beginning. When I started this building I didn't really plan my UV out, and I kept all of it in the same scale - were I to do it again, I'd make more use of repeating/tiling elements and make less important features smaller on the UV to give me more room for the important details where it makes sense to do so.

Your final suggestion was my original idea/intent, but I abandoned it because of the pattern is actually non-repeating. I thought about doing it with overlapping UVs and just making the pattern (lighter) windows as a separate mesh, but that would eliminate variation and full-floor illumination for the night lighting. I have another building in the works right now, though, which will definitely make overlapping UVs a possibility, and I have some ideas already of how to maximize the texture space used. It's going to be a lot better in that regard - I'm just having some trouble finding good references for it, so I've taken a few liberties in a couple areas.

[Ryno917 102]

Busy times lately with the holidays, but I've made a bit of progress on my second project. Main model is finished, just working on the textures now, and then I'll work on the LOD. Anyone recognize it?

 

 

[ethansprang 41]

Every American "Edge City" from 1972-1985?

[Matthias King 348]

Looking good so far. I think I'm going to like these when they're released. I'm looking forward to them.

[Ryno917 102]

Small update on the second building - all that's left is to make the illumination maps, place props and that should cover it.

 

It's the International Secret Intelligence Service building from the TV show Archer. The super yellow of the default game ruins the colouring of it quite a bit. Is there any way to change that while still having mods disabled? My asset editor doesn't load unless I have mods disabled so I can't run colour correction.

 

[Ryno917 102]

Thanks!

And for the last question before release (I think) what's the best way to get pictures of a growable building? Since I rebuilt my PC I don't even have a city anymore, and even then I'd need to wait for it to grow in my city. Any tips from the pros to expedite the process of getting good in-situ screenshots?

[boformer 3,169]

Use Building Themes. Create a theme that just contains the building, and filler buildings for lower levels.

then use the Force Levelup mod and Super Demand from the workshop.

[Ryno917 102]

Beauty. Thanks Bo! I should have the building uploaded tomorrow.

[Matthias King 348]

Looks good. I'm looking forward to it. What happened with that first building?

[boformer 3,169]

You could add a normal map to emphasize the window borders and material structures of your building.

[Ryno917 102]

10 hours ago, Matthias King said:

Looks good. I'm looking forward to it. What happened with that first building?

I need to solve my scale issues on import - still haven't gotten it sorted. Once I'm done with that, I'll package it up and upload.

4 hours ago, boformer said:

You could add a normal map to emphasize the window borders and material structures of your building.

Are you referring to the black areas between windows on the second building? They are actually physically 'raised' from the glass, but just not high enough to be noticeable it seems. I'll increase the offset to make them more pronounced. There is a normal map for the surface but at this angle of light it's not picked up well.

[Ryno917 102]

Took a few screenshots of the building today thanks to Bo's tips. I see today that I'm getting an error, though. Any idea what's going on there? There is a full compliment of LOD files (and the LOD appears in the asset editor when zooming out).

[boformer 3,169]

1 hour ago, Ryno917 said:

Took a few screenshots of the building today thanks to Bo's tips. I see today that I'm getting an error, though. Any idea what's going on there? There is a full compliment of LOD files (and the LOD appears in the asset editor when zooming out).

 

That's a texture related error. Looks like it searches for a LOD alpha/color/illumination map (aci).

[Ryno917 102]

All the maps are there, except for the colour map. Do I need to throw a dummy texture in there?

Do all of the maps need to be the same size? My LOD alpha map is just a small solid white square to reduce file size, whereas the rest of the LOD maps are 256.

[boformer 3,169]

1 hour ago, Ryno917 said:

Do all of the maps need to be the same size? My LOD alpha map is just a small solid white square to reduce file size, whereas the rest of the LOD maps are 256.

Yes.

Btw, 256 is too much, 64 or smaller would be appropriate.

If you alpha map is 100% white, just remove the texture.

[Ryno917 102]

OK, so if I'm understanding correctly, all maps for a detail level must be the same size, but you do not need to have the same maps for each detail level? (So, deleting the alpha map from my LOD is fine, but having it at a different size is not).

I'll make that change and test to verify. I was thinking last night, though, that I want to remake my LOD model anyways. It's not nearly as low poly as it should be and that's because I Wanted to cut corners and use the same diffuse texture. I'll remake the LOD and make a new texture for it and then I'll upload. Maybe today or tomorrow, depending on some other things I need to get finished.

 

Thanks for all the help!

[Mr_Maison 2,426]

If your UVs on the LOD can support the same texture, it would be a time saver. You can always resize the lod texture map as long as it keeps the same aspect ratio. Most times I find myself making new lod textures though. But just letting you know there's nothing wrong with using the same map...as long as a LOD map is not 1024 or 2048 in size.

[Ryno917 102]

Nah, my main diffuse texture is pretty cut up into different elements, so for the LOD to use the same UV layout I had to have the polycount far higher than it should be. I checked the tri count with the mesh tools in C:S yesterday and it was 609 - way too heavy for what is ultimately a simple building. So I'm rebuilding it right now and I'll bake a texture for it from the main model instead. It's 29 quads now. Much better.

All in all, this has been quite a good learning experience. I just wish I was picking up the program quicker - I learned Solidworks and was functional with it in 6 hours, so this is more than a little demoralizing for me!

[Ryno917 102]

Alright, released! Nightlights look pants in these shots - I grabbed it after most of them had turned out. I need to grab a new image for that, and upload more images to the workshop (it's hanging right now while trying to upload more images). I may go back and tweak them anyways, though - and I need to downsize the LOD maps, as I forgot to do that before uploading.

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=595243745

Thanks for all the help and encouragement, everyone!

[Ryno917 102]

Spent a couple hours this afternoon working these up. Loosely based on the light pylons at the LAX airport.

 

 

Need to tweak the colour options to reduce the oversaturation and make the uneven illumination more apparent. Barring any other comments/suggestions, they're pretty much ready for release. Currently they're just props, meant to place with the More Beautification mod.

[Ryno917 102]

Tweaked, and released!



Illuminated Pylon Lights

Requires the More Beautification mod if you want to place in-game.

As an aside, I'd be very greatful if someone could plop a few down in their city and get a few in-situ pictures for me. I don't have any cities to get some better shots in yet!