Kra's creations

[Kaschperl 92]

Hello people of Simtropolis!

I opened this topic to present my first 3D creations for CSL and to see what you think about them. I'm slowly starting to get the hang of it and want to learn how to get better and perhaps quicker in asset creation. My Simtropolis name isn't the same name as my Steam account name which is KraIstGerecht (visit my Workshop here!).

Most of the things I'll show off here use creations from other people (mostly props, but this also includes all the knowledge collected by the community). I want to thank those people for their work and making things like this possible!

I also want to say that I'm very grateful for any tips and tricks you may have for me and others, so don't keep them to yourself!

 

My first assets are four Level 1 residential and commercial ones. I made them to get some more realistic buildings in my cities and a little more variety, although I hope to be able to make a whole pack of buildings with a matching style. All the building I made so far are pretty generic North America-styled. Some of them may also bear similarites to buildings you may already know from Sim City 4 because I loosely base them on SC4's style:

I think a normal map for the roofs would be a good thing to have (at leat for the residential buildings). I don't walt to too go crazy with the tricount, which is between 500 and 1000 for each building. Each building also has a custom LOD; colour variations are only used for subtle changes of wall and roof colours.

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I didn't want to release these to the workshop yet before I got some feedback and knew what to improve. Do you think the level of detail is okay for this type of building? Other than performance reasons I also don't want to spend too much time on one asset to be able to create many different buildings, which I think is feasible for simple buildings like the one above.

I also created some cars at the very beginnig which I think came out pretty good for my first tries which I might show off later. Another building I really want to bring to CSL in the future is the elementary school from SC4, because elementary school assets are still very rare on the Steam workshop.

I hope you like what I showed so far, and as I said, feedback is more than welcome!

[Matthias King 348]

These look interesting. I'm anxious to see them finished.

[Judazzz 1,936]

Oh wow, they look really cute!
Those screens are a bit dark, so it's hard to imagine the textures/colors during daytime, but they look very promising (details seem a-plenty: don't know how much work it is, but perhaps you could create some slight variations, like with a small skylight or with a small tool shed attached, for more diversity).
They seem perfect companions to DethKwok's low density assets (with which I created entire districts), so I'm most definitely going to sub!

[Kaschperl 92]

Thanks you two!

@Judazzz You're right about the pictures' darkness, I should have waited for daytime I wasn't patient enough and my time shifting mod was disabled because I forgot to turn it on... yeah, my game's a big mess right now, but it's getting better slowly!

The variations you mentioned woudn't be hard to implement I think. I also thought about making level 1 residential buildings look a bit more run-down, maybe a little overgrown or even with a few graffitis here and there. They would then get a L2 counterpart that looks like those I showed here. What bugs me about the vanilla L1 buildings is that they could easily pass for upper middle class homes in many cases, which makes at least 2 of the 5 wealth levels obsolete.

[Matthias King 348]

Yes to graffiti!

Something I've really wanted to see someone put out is a series of props of graffiti that can be applied to any wall, similar to some of the 'billboards' in the game, like the old and worn Kruger graphic. Some simple graffiti graphics that could be applied to any wall would be awesome and would add a whole new dimension, allowing you to make virtually any building look more ghetto.

[Avanya 2,605]

Lovely little houses and sounds like you've got them nicely optimized too  I agree with the others - the level of detail seems good. If you do a normal map, remember to invert the red channel - otherwise the shadows won't be like they're supposed to. Would love to see them in daylight too.

Oh, and welcome! Always good to see more modellers join  

[gfvsims 169]

Welcome! I love these houses - they are exactly the style I prefer to use in my cities. And I would also really love a new elementary school.

EDIT: I just clicked on the link to your Steam profile - you're the creator of the Roads United: North America mod? I absolutely love that mod. Thanks so much for sharing it!

  Edited July 14, 2016 by gfv1974  

[Kaschperl 92]

Glad you like my houses, that certainly encourages me to make some more soon! here is the much anticipated daylight shot of my quarter

They got a normal map for the roofs and walls and I fixed a minor issue with the LODs. I think they're ready for a workshop release now! I'll let you know when I uploaded them.

[Kaschperl 92]

I made a Steam collection with all the residential buildings I've completed so far.

Check it out here!

I think 1024x1024 texture maps for these small buildings is too big, that's something worth optimizing at some point. I also hope to be able to minimize the file sizes by doing so, each building is between 2 and 3 MBs now.

I hope you'll have fun, and tell me if you spot any problems!

[Darf 1,439]

They look great, but like you said, you should be able to do them in 512x20124 or 512x512 even.

[Kaschperl 92]

Hello there again! Even though I don't have much free time to work on my buildings, I just want to post a little update here. I've been able to add a few new buildings and improve the lighting on the old ones. They're all under 1000 tris and use a maximum texture size of 512x or 128x for the lods. Here are some screenshots of a poor residential district. It still looks way too posh in my opinion:

The trees and bushes are also selfmade. All the buildings have detailed night lighting. If you have any ideas on how to make the L1 buildings more run-down, I'd like to hear them!

[Matthias King 348]

These look nice. Are some of them new? Do you have a link to the workshop page?

[gfvsims 169]

Maybe try for a "peeling paint" look on the houses? That would definitely make them look more run-down.

[kingleno 197]

looks good, add some props if you want them to look less posh 

[Judazzz 1,936]

Peeling paint certainly would do the trick, just as more grunge on the walls and roofing material (stains, moss, cracks). Maybe enclosing the front yards with crappy wooden fences can also add to the visuals, as do a few props here and there (trash, kid's toys, low-quality lawn furniture, grease-stained sofa's - I mean, Deplorable Dave needs a place to sip his low-grade beer   - oh, that reminds me: empty beer cans decal props)

Once again gorgeous little houses, btw. - can't wait to treat my lower class to these new digs!

[kingleno 197]

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=767071899&searchtext=tire+props

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=722043706&searchtext=residential+props

Some props I made specifically for lower income assets. 

[Kaschperl 92]

Thanks for the ideas everyone! I'll definitely have to make some of the props you suggested.

11 hours ago, Matthias King said:

These look nice. Are some of them new? Do you have a link to the workshop page?

I haven't put any of the new ones on the workshop yet, neither have I updated the existing ones. I'm actually planning to get just a little more variation going in order to release a complete low density L1 pack. I don't want to have them in a workshop collection but rather one single item to subscribe to to keep the mess at bay I hope that's possible. My plan for the long run will be to move on to the next levels and zones afterwards so in the end it (hopefully) becomes a complete growable replacement pack. That will take some time though because I'm lacking free time right now :c

@kingleno I absolutely love that mattress in the front yard Some stolen shopping carts will add to the ghetto charme too I think.

@Judazzz Those are some great ideas! I didn't even think about making grungy-looking ground decals. Don't know why because I planned to make some mown lawn decals for the higher levels anyway, and I've also made those footpaths and driveways already, so that's pretty logical. I'll take that into account!

[Matthias King 348]

I'm all for some ghetto houses. I wish you luck.

[Badi_Dea 476]

Anything that grunges this game up is much appreciated! they look quite good so far

10 hours ago, Kaschperl said:

I planned to make some mown lawn decals for the higher levels anyway

Please do! I was thinking the exact same thing, they would be immensely useful

[Kaschperl 92]

Hey there!

I just fiddled with road textures again and I made a little prototype of what I haven't really seen yet in CSL, which is a simple intersection of 4-lane Avenues with (mostly) proper turning lane markings:

It's currently possible to do this with NExt. However when Network Skins gets its new features it will help out a lot with things like this!

This is meant to become part of the Roads United: North America Variety Pack which I'm planning to get done in the coming weeks by the way. It's just going to be a bunch of textures which users can put in their RU: NA Plus folder to replace the standard ones. It's mainly supposed to give people their asphalt highways back which many people miss from the old RU: NA pack.

I've tried everything trying to fix the issue with the highway APR maps having no effect, but I just can't get it to work. I assume it's some stupid thing like wrong file or directory names. Sadly the creator of Roads United Core+ doesn't reply to my messages and hasn't released the source code, so if anyone around here has ANY clue on how to sort that problem out I'd really appreciate that!

[Ronyx69 2,413]

3 minutes ago, Kaschperl said:

I've tried everything trying to fix the issue with the highway apr maps having no effect, but I just can't get it to work. I assume it's some stupid thing like wrong file or directory names. Sadly the creator of Roads United Core+ doesn't answer my messages and didn't release the source code, so if anyone around here  has ANY clue on how to sort that problem out I'd really appreciate that!

Could be wrong file name, since they are such a mess.
Download ILSpy and open the roads united .dll, and browse around to find what file names it expects.

[Kaschperl 92]

Thanks so much @Ronyx69, that was exactly the program I needed in this case. I got it to work! The APR maps go in the main mod folder for whatever reason. It seems indeed like Core+ isn't much less of a mess than the old Core mod, it's just a lot more spread out Now I'll be able to fix some of the issued I had with my pack.

[Kaschperl 92]

Well, I've just been working at some fixes for the North America Pack, thankfully almost all of my mods already work again after the update. So, while screwing with node textures, I noticed this on the NExt 2L Highway:

Has this always been possible? I've never seen that behaviour before the update. Doesn't even look that bad on the orthogonal intersections, and the Y-junction looks a bit crumpled, but much smoother than one would expect. I find this pretty interesting (as long as nobody tells me that it's always been that way :P)

On a side note, I like all the small improvements that the free update brought. I didn't expect it to be very useful or necessary, but especially the improvements in the sound department (Doppler effect!) convinced me otherwise.

[Ronyx69 2,413]

Some roads have better node UV than others, for example the dirt and tiny alley roads have good node UV.

It's still unusable I would say.

It's better to create decals for this stuff.

[Kaschperl 92]

Ah, well, that makes sense. I wouldn't use them in-game anyway, I was just curious because I'd never seen this.