Ploefke's blender struggles and assets

[Ploefke 53]

Ploefke's assets:

Dutch farming pack: 

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=770903482

prop converts:

Slurry tank: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=756817486

Small tractor: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=756783721

Small tractor with color variations : https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=773151306

Old topic:

Spoiler

 

This vacation, I tried to teach myself to model assets for Cities:Skylines. Thanks to this platform, and all the tutorials that are here, I actually made a very crappy Dutch barn. Now, I came acros some failures, despite the fact that I think I did everything correctly. My model gets very big, and gets stretched out. To illustrate this, I've made some screenshots. In Blender, the model seems all right, but in the asset editor, the model becomes distorted. 

My question is the following: Is there anybody that hs experienced this, or somebody that knows what is the cause of this?

thanks in advance!

 

Pictures: 

[Tim The Terrible 586]

Welcome to the club of self-teaching asset creators!

I'm not sure what the problem is, but I suggest you apply scale using Ctrl+A in Blender. It's the only thing I can think of right now as I've never had this problem.

Good luck with further progress and keep up updated, it looks really good already!  

 

EDIT: could be export-settings too, but I haven't figuered them out myself either XD Maybe someone else can elaborate?

[Avanya 2,605]

Welcome!

I haven't experience this myself, but Tim could very well be right in it being the export settings acting up. I've got a screenshot of the settings that might help.

 

And keep at it! It gets easier with time as you get used to blender. 

[Ploefke 53]

Well, your tips kinda worked. It looks like the Blender model again. The problem is, the model is really tiny right now. Should I just use the scale number in the asset editor to fix this?

[Tim The Terrible 586]

1 minute ago, Ploefke said:

Should I just use the scale number in the asset editor to fix this?

Yes, that's what I ususally do

 

[Ploefke 53]

I'm happy to tell here that the asset is there! It is a traditional dutch barn. Tomorrow i'll make a better one. In the future, I want to make so called Kop-Hals-Romp farm. These consist of a house, connecting part, and a barn, as seen in the last picture. I used other assets for that, btw.

 

[Lost Gecko 481]

Welcome! The learning curve is quite steep at the beginning (especially when you have litterally no experience in modelling like me) but once you've imported an asset sucessfully into the game the hardest is done and the rest is just getting better at it! I also sometimes face scaling issues but it varies, the best is of course to have the correct size from the start but when the scale is off I also change it in the editor...

I'm always interested in european low denstiy/rural buildings, so this looks promising!

If you feel like keeping on modelling stuff, don't hesitate to create a topic (or update this one) with your stuff, it is a good way to ask questions, collect feedback and and show your project in a single place! But of course it's up to you...

[Ploefke 53]

So I uploaded my updated barn to the workshop, although it is clearly not ready yet. It is still much brighter than the blender version, and I don't really know why. Anyway, I made a new door and new windows for the barn, and added cornerpieces on the roof. The result is visible over here.

I also made a prop version of Archie Cuntinghams small tractor, just to explore mod tools. The result is visible here. I still don't know how those color variations work. If I tried to add these, the windows and the tires get the same color immediately.  

[boformer 3,169]

1 hour ago, Ploefke said:

So I uploaded my updated barn to the workshop, although it is clearly not ready yet. It is still much brighter than the blender version, and I don't really know why. Anyway, I made a new door and new windows for the barn, and added cornerpieces on the roof. The result is visible over here.

I also made a prop version of Archie Cuntinghams small tractor, just to explore mod tools. The result is visible here. I still don't know how those color variations work. If I tried to add these, the windows and the tires get the same color immediately.  

The asset uses multiple textures. One of them is the color (c) map that controls which parts of the mesh are affected by color variations. It can't be extracted directly with mod tools because it is merged with the alpha and illumination map (ACI map).

You can extract it with GIMP or Photoshop.

[pauliaxz 195]

If you want to avoid brighter textures in game comparing to what you see in modelling software, open your texture and create a new layer, set it to Multiply blending mode, fill with 128,128,128 gray and then flatten to one png texture.

Of course if you don't like the result you can have brighter or darker colors to fill.

I haven't found another way to avoid that asset editor overbrighting the texture.

[Ploefke 53]

Update: Made this quick house last weekend. It is a bit better than the previous building. Really based upon some old houses in the north of the Netherlands. Next challenge for me is to make a new barn. The old one will be removed from the workshop as soon as possible.

[Lost Gecko 481]

Nice! If the size of the new barn is the same it would be nice if you updated your asset instead of removing it and publish a new one. That way people who are already subscribed don't see it disappear from their city and don't risk to miss the new one  But otherwise it's not a big deal, of course it's up to you!

[Ploefke 53]

Just a sneak peak to the next building. I'm still struggling with the uv's, as you can see at the weird roof tiles. This barn is maybe a bit old-school, because thatched roofs are hard to find these days. Maybe I make a corrugated roof too (With those asbest pieces). For now, this barn really fits with my small house. I'll upload it tomorrow after some tweaking.

[pauliaxz 195]

You can always split your roof for example in 4 parts. So you could fill whole texture (that you used for whole roof) to each of 4 parts independently. In other words have repeated texture.

[Ploefke 53]

Well, I finished my barn. Combined with my house, it makes a perfect Frisian Rump-Neck farmhouse. I think i'll try normal and specular mapping, which I haven't done before. It will take some time before we see this barn on the workshop. 

Now on to something even more ambitious. As you can see, the farm in the north of the netherlands are composited between a livingpart and a farming part. I choose to make seperate assets for this. Because of this, there are multiple combinations to make farms. I've drawn out al the frisian farms, and made a plan. After making the current assets better, I will work on the scheme as seen below. This means that I'll make 6 houses, 7 barns, and 2 "neckpieces". Photos of the barn I want to make can be found here.

 

[pauliaxz 195]

Nice, you could try using Sub-Buildings Enabler together with RICO and have both ploppable buildings at once.

[Lost Gecko 481]

The specular and normal maps are really worth the extra work, you'll see! And awesome project! There aren't many european farming assets on the Workshop. I've also thought about a way to make combined residential/farming assets because where I live old farms where all the buildings are placed around an enclosed yard are very common. RICO would be great for that, but that's another thing to mess around with... So it's just there on my looong to-do list

[Ploefke 53]

Well, I hoped I had finished the asset by now, but the mapping isn't really working. Before I decided I would make Normal, illuminating, and specular map I used pain.net. Because I couldn't use paint.net for normal mapping, I've downloaded GIMP. First problem I had was that I've installed it in Dutch, and couldn't find any options due the poor translation of the dutch version. Despite the fact that I've deinstalled it, it still doesn't switch to english. The next problem was that I couldn't instal the normal mapping addon. 

I tried to make a Illumination map, and a specular map, but as seen below, this didn't had the right results. Anybody that has any idea whhat could be the cause of this failing window?

[GC_Vos 714]

Cool, nice to see more Dutchie assets!

Did you make the neutral parts of your illumination map 192 grey and the windows any value between 128 and 255?

For normals gimp isn't the greatest, you could try for example crazybump or http://cpetry.github.io/NormalMap-Online/

Just make sure you invert the red channel because CSL has flipped the left and right direction.

[pauliaxz 195]

You can download Normal map plugin for paint.net from here

But the thing is that texture should be rotated 180 degree or flipped vertically (can't remember) before doing normal map.

EDIT: I see GC_Vos already mentioned that

[Ploefke 53]

Update: Released the barn, after adding a small lod, and a normal map(Thanks to pauliaxz). Asset can be found HERE. The illumination map and specular maps don't really work, and I couldn't find out why. I guess light isn't really important for barns. 

[Ploefke 53]

Small spoiler for new house

[Ploefke 53]

Update: New house is released. Can be found HERE.

 

Spoiler

 

The house is based upon this farm.

I also editted a factory hall made bij @Avanya, to cover some ugly buildings like the Eden Gardens. I use it to place it over the Eden Gardens with Road Anarchy. I am in doubt if I should make a kind of a wharf from it and should upload it. Is that even legal?

[Avanya 2,605]

I don't mind you using an edited version of my stuff yourself, but if it's something you want to upload to the workshop, I'd like to have a closer look at it. On one hand  it's to minimize the amount of almost identical stuff on the workshop (like 10 of the same building with slightly different stats). On the other hand it's because - well, as Kliekie so perfectly said it a while back, these models are kinda my little "babies".  If they're to be made into something else it's important to me it's done properly (textures perfectly seamless, tris count in a good spot and so on) and that I have some control over it.

If you're looking to make something with a similar look, then by all means go ahead! Most (if not all) of the textures used are from textures.com and I'll gladly share how I achieved the different effects. And feel free to look at my models and textures to see how I do stuff - I found it very useful in the beginning to see how others did fx. UV maps.

[Ploefke 53]

@Avanya Well, I decided that I'll keep it for myself for the time being. It is not a really great model, I just added some extra layers of steel. The textures are overlapping, and the lod is bad, some I'll wait till I have the time and the skills to make it a somewhat better building.

In other news, blender refused to export a model I've editted. I am not really sure what the problem is. Could anyone help me out?

[Ploefke 53]

Two small updates:

First, I made Color variations for the small tractor of Archie cuntingham, to understand how Color mapping works: 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=773151306

Second update: I started with a new, smaller barn, meant for young cattle. 

[Ploefke 53]

Well, I uploaded my smaller barn. Enjoy!

[Ploefke 53]

Something that I'm making right now. Really felt the workshop missed those shitty barns. Should I add this many props of is this overdone?

[Acc3ssViolation 81]

Some excellent shitty barns right there! Though the amount props might be a bit too much imo. Maybe remove the stack of crates and the trash next to it?

[Giovanni E 155]

oh those thrashy barns are great. deffinitly coming into my city. and yea, i agree with acc3ssviolation. that would make it just perfect !