Sobern's buildings

[Sobern 30]

Models uploaded so far : 

NA Medium density housing - 01 

NA Medium density housing - 02

 

 

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OLD

Hey guys first post here and first model for C:S !

 

I have a bit of experience with 3D modeling (followed some tutorials on DT,  made a few models, and a made map on Source ) but i'm pretty much a beginner

I just finished my first model for C:S, took some time (~7 days), got confused a few times but i'm pretty comfortable now and next ones will go much faster. 

 

I based it off the kind of houses you find around Toronto ( THIS house in particular). 

Heres the model on sketchfab and the model in the workshop you'll find it in parks plazza (don't know if I'll leave it up its just a test for now).  

890 tris for the building and front yard thingy, no LOD yet,  textures(  D N A I S ) are 1024x1024,

32 tris for the 8m fence, 4 tri LOD, and 128x128 textures (which are temporary until I do a better one).

 

For a few questions : 

I'm really unsure about how my normal maps turned out and have spent way more time than i'd like to admit fiddling with it, inverting re-verting, and getting more confused, would be appreciated if someone could go over it (the windows in particular look off  ) : normals diffuse 

I also have some windows where the illumination will just be a white line PIC how do I fix that ? My textures seem fine to me illumination spec

For the tris would it be fine to delete polys such as under the window trim and the ceiling of the porch ? I know some people like walking around the city in FPS view just as other people don't care so i'm not quite sure if I should leave them or not.

I unwraped the uvs so that there is nothing overlapping for AO but I doubt i'll be able to do that with other more complex buildings. What is you guys stance on AO ? Important ? or is it fine just to let it aside ?

Finally whats your prefered format for saving textures ? Right now its all PNGs. 

Edit : And the scale, does it seem fine ? PIC

 

I'll probably make more of theses houses and maybe make a Torontonian collection if all goes well. THIS  is what I expect a neighboorhood of theses will look like (containers = garages).  Makes good practice! 

 

 

[Lost Gecko 481]

Congratulation from another beginner! As such I'm not the best for answering  your questions but your asset really does looks great! I guess you could delete it and publish a growable one with a good thumbnail! I've only just looked at your sketchfab so it isn't a full inspection but the normals seem fine except for the windows (as you said). It's probably because the normals aren't flat (I have never made any window but I guess you have to make it all the same colour). No experience with illumination either.

For the polys I have personally deleted such geometry but I really don't think that's necessary given the already low poly count, I might not do it anymore in the future for simple assets (even more so that I do like FPS views).

What is the whole thing with AO (ambient occlusion?) all about(learning everyday)?

Up to now I have been using jpg for a lower file size and I am happy with the quality but again, my assets are very basic, it would probably be more noticeable with an asset such as yours, png is always a safe bet.

... And the scale seems fine to me

Just one little note: of course it's just up to personal taste and and it might just be the effect you want but the game makes textures very bright, I wouldn't be afraid to darken things like the rooftop a bit. But that's just me.

I look forward to your future creations, keep up the good work!

[Judazzz 1,936]

Hey Sobern, welcome to Simtropolis  
I can't really help you with the modelling stuff, but I just wanted to say that I love your first asset (haven't seen it in-game, but from the looks of it the scale is fine, and the detailing really good, colorful yet grimy)! It's such a common type of building in both Canada and the US, but unfortunately the Workshop doesn't feature that many similar buildings, so I'm really glad to see you're trying to fill that gap! Looking forward to see what else you have in store for us!

One tip/suggestion: perhaps you could consider adding color variations: that would add a bit more visible diversity to a single asset (just a small handful of assets with color variations can result in a visually very diverse neighborhood).

[Sobern 30]

Thanks guys!

 

The normals in the windows aren't flat yes, i'll have to try out things.

As for AO its basically light projected on your model which then create shadows on the diffuse take a look at this diffuse with AO. It looks much better than the diffuse without AO but the problem is you can't have overlaping uvs or else the shadows will overlapp resulting in uglyness.

As for the colors I want dirty, gritty, SC 4 ish stuff, I'll have to experiment as I make more houses. I'm not a fan of vanilla C:S colors.

For color variations i'll include that in all the next buildings, I really want to avoid repetition. However it seems that it can only be 1 color that changes per variation though... which is a bit limiting.    

I won't release it officially yet on the workshop, i'll wait until i've planned a few other buildings and assets so that i'm sure its more or less final and won't have to make heavy changes or update 10000 times.

[Lost Gecko 481]

This AO thing is very interesting! I prefer to let the game shadow the asset though, I find it fine and it allows to overlap UVs so that I can make textures more crisp/decrease texture size. Different approach!

It's true that the colour variation system isn't the most convenient but I think it can still make a surprising difference... can't wait to see it even better-looking! But you can really be satisfied with your first CS asset!

[Darf 1,439]

Hey Sobern,

Looks great already. For normal maps invert y, when you are making one. Normal maps typically don't have that much effect ingame, except when the sun stands horizontally on the texture. If you wan the normal map to have more of an effect, you will need to put a bit off specular on parts of your texture. I typically wouldn't make any holes in your structure to cut tris, but you can always save a few tris here and there.

My only concern with your asset would be that it's a bit on the heavy side texturewise. 1024x512 should be plenty for an asset this size.

There's an AO mod for C:S, but shadows and dirt are always a way to make an asset look more realistic. To reduce the amount of tiling you can flip uv maps.

For the windows, use an inner glow in photoshop, with normal modifier and the color 192,192,192. This will get rid of lines.

Jpg files are fine, but you will need to save in higher quality. Also cut out windows on your normal map and fill them with one color. Otherwise you will get quite a bit of artifacts.

[Feindbold 1,190]

Very nice, I like it a lot!

I wouldn´t delete any outside facing areas, even though it might not be visible 99%. I would also advice you to not spend any time on fiddeling with your textures to make them less heavy. Filesize in skylines only depends on the raw resolution of the texture, so as Darf pointed out, save them allways in the highest quality possible.

For diffuse maps, I tend to turn down saturation and brightness about 20-to 40%.

Even though a meter in the real world should fit a meter in skylines, I tend to upscale my buildings a bit, so they about 110%-120% of the actual building. But no scaling at all should be fine too.

[Kaschperl 92]

I agree with all the other posters, that's a very nice building indeed!

The scale seems totally fine to me. As for AO, I thought about doing that too in the beginning, but then I realized that it might look out of place between all the buildings that don't feature a diffuse map with AO. Moreover, as you said, you won't be able to include AO for larger buildings.

One thing I always do in order to save tris is to have seperate window frames that aren't actually cut into the wall but seperate objects that are just "hung up" on the wall like a painting. That way the window pane isn't exactly where the wall is (but you can place it very closely to the actual wall), however you don't need to cut the wall into a thousand pieces so the walls always consist of just 2 triangles. I don't think there's much of a visible difference as long as you don't want the window to sit way back in your wall. Hope this helps!

[Sobern 30]

An update ! 

 

I've been working on my second building, its not finished yet. I only have the diffuse map which I still have to tweak the colors and make all the other maps. 

840 tris

1024x512 D 

( The black & white left bricks are going to use color variations)

I've based if off the buildings in this street.

I'll probably finished it by sunday. I will also come back to my first model & change a few things in the textures (which I managed to reduce to 512x512 ) and then i'll upload both of them on the workshop.

One problem I have is the texture guetting all "splotchy"with colors PIC  but it seems to be C:S causing that since everything looks fine in the diffuse PIC ... Anybody else have that problem or can check the diffuse ?

Second problem is this white line I get when looking at the side from afar PIC its also noticeable ingame. I've checked the UV overlaps and padding but haven't found any problems.

[Darf 1,439]

The diffuse getting all blurred is a C:S thing. You should also notice a line between blurred diffuse and sharper when you zoom out. It's mostly though in the editor, I hardly notice it ingame. Great job on the diffuse sizes!

Your second problem is probably due a hard edge, the only solution I've found is to get your uv map a bit of the edge of the image.

[HipHop01 21]

yeeesss, my building dreams are coming true. Lol, these buildings are really looking great!

https://goo.gl/maps/uUxhEjFffT82 A lot of Queens has similar buildings to what you do.

[Sobern 30]

Happy to make your dream buildings!  @HipHop01

 

I've uploaded the two first buildings, still have some minor beautification things to do but the base is there and probably won't change.

One thing i'm unsure about are the fences (if I should put them on by default or let the players fiddle around in game... I'm thinking about uploading another version of the houses without fences ). 

NA Medium density housing - 01 

NA Medium density housing - 02 and SKETCHFAB (Quite disapointed with the color variation, doesn't make much difference... And for the seam problem I haven't found a solution.) 

Need make the names more appealing, suggestions are welcome.

 

I've also begun to work on my third building, here is a sneak peak : 

Its a single house based off theses ones.  Not sure if this is going to turn out good or not, we'll see.

 

Will be away for the next few days but I hope to finish this one very fast.

 

[Avanya 2,605]

Looks good! I'd suggest having the fence be part of the building - some people avoid buildings with a handful of props and having the houses without the fence wouldn't look that great. So at least for your future buildings, I'd suggest integrating fences into the building itself.

As for names I'm no help at all - All my stuff have very boring names.  

[Sobern 30]

My thinking too @Avanya the fence comes "integrated" as modular props that I place in the asset editor if that what you mean. I would love to merge it with the model itself but I have not much space on the UV and also it creates that ugly ruining texture...

I'll upload a second empty version later on for players who love detailing the sh*t out of their cities. 

[Judazzz 1,936]

Lovely assets, Sobern! I've already used your first (now removed?) building a lot in my city, and it's such a cute little house. Same for the new one, can't wait to see it appear!
As far as names are concerned, why not name them after the road that contains the real life version (like Claremont St. Residence), or the architectural style ("Toronto Brick Terrace")?

[gfvsims 169]

They look great, Sobern! I've been hoping for some compact low-res housing like this.

[Lost Gecko 481]

In my opinion having fences as props by default might be the best thing to do as it makes the asset ready to go, which is probably what most people want. People (like me) who don't want fences just have to modify the assets in the editor, that's why I would say it's better to have them by default... But I wouldn't say no to a propless version, as I'm the kind of guy who prefers to make gardens by hand. I often find pre-placed fences annoying as they are repetitive, don't give any freedom as for the garden size and are doubled when the house next to it has them as well. thank you for thinking about that!

Oh, and your houses look great!

[Sobern 30]

Third building comming soon, took way longer than expected.  

https://sketchfab.com/models/013c9057d46e48899f3db59c9f1fe45f

 Probably going to change the roof color, the white bricks will be color changeable and I might make it into a 2x4 lot instead of 1x4 (with 512x1024 tex) reason being the houses are supposed to be tight together but due to the size of the cells in cities skylines thats impossible for 1x4 unless I make the house larger but then it looks weird.

 

Thats another problem I will to deal have with some future buildings. All the buildings I find are either between 4 - 6 m accross or 10 - 12 m across for bigger buildings,  due to the cell size in C:S, wall to wall will be hard to do. I gotta find some solution to that problem... 

I could just forget about the w2w but that would probably look weird with huge gaps inbetween the buildings since this is supposed to be medium density, I could also enlarge the buildings or make them smaller to fit the C:S cell sizes but from the tests I did, it looks really weird so thats a big no no. 

[Darf 1,439]

You could do what Feindbild did for his brooklynn theme and bundle a couple of buildings together on a 2x4 lot

[Lost Gecko 481]

I've got exactly the same problem with the size of wall-to-wall buildings! How frustrating is it that so much of the buildings I would like to make are around 6m wide... To keep this size we indeed have to make 3 buildings on a 2 tiles large lot, which makes the texture less practical... Everyone wants larger growables, but I would almost prefer smaller tile size!  Hello 4 and 12m wide buildings and roads/paths! Goodbye gigantic paths in rural places! (Not a complaint, it would push the game limitations way too far, but I'm dreaming... Maybe in C:S 2)

Oh, and your new building looks great!

[Judazzz 1,936]

Does it make such a visual difference when making those houses 8 meters wide instead of 6 meters? I realize 2 meters is quite substantial on a total with of 6 meters, but can't you get away with the extra width by adding another window? Or does that result in weird-looking/oddly proportioned houses?

Another, imo. even better option would be to create 3x4 sized assets, which would allow you to have 4 such houses with the correct dimensions in one plot (4x6 = 3 tiles) and be wall-to-wall at the same time. With color variations and perhaps a couple of small architectural ornaments as randomized props (skylight, chimney, stuff like that), you'd be able to create visually very varied rows of houses with just a small handful of assets.

[Darf 1,439]

1 hour ago, Judazzz said:

Does it make such a visual difference when making those houses 8 meters wide instead of 6 meters? I realize 2 meters is quite substantial on a total with of 6 meters, but can't you get away with the extra width by adding another window? Or does that result in weird-looking/oddly proportioned houses?

Another, imo. even better option would be to create 3x4 sized assets, which would allow you to have 4 such houses with the correct dimensions in one plot (4x6 = 3 tiles) and be wall-to-wall at the same time. With color variations and perhaps a couple of small architectural ornaments as randomized props (skylight, chimney, stuff like that), you'd be able to create visually very varied rows of houses with just a small handful of assets.

Yeah.. stretching is not an option, and adding another window might sound easy, but if the other windows are disproportionate with that window it'll look very strange. The best option is just to search for relevant buildings to plotsize.

[Lost Gecko 481]

@Judazzz In some cases you can get away with it by adding a window or expanding the walls at the end of the façade but sometimes it really doesn't work, and you have to bundle them. Terraced houses are typical, as the smallest are 4m wide, which is fine, but most are around 5-7m. 3 or 4 houses on a 2 or 3 wide plot are then needed, but it is more repetitive as you suggested, especially for old irregular buidings that I like...

Anyway, sorry for taking your topic @Sobern, I'm done!

[Sobern 30]

Taking my topic ? @Lost_gecko don't worry you're not taking away anything 

 

Stretching the buildings may not look weird to someone who has never seen this kind of architecture, but, I live in Toronto and see theses buildings every day, streching them really makes it look weird. I'm also really picky on details & accuracy which doesn't make it better, don't know if you could call that a bad thing or good thing 

I have to play around with the lot sizes more.

 

As for making random assets I have to test around, I could make randomized front decks, gotta look into what the limitation of props are*

Edit : *actually I remember experimenting and found that big props are bad beacause they despawn at a distance... oh well, on to smaller props

[K141 19]

These are fantastic! They're exactly what I've been looking for!