Bach2Baroque's Stuff (New Release 29/04/2018)

[Bach2Baroque 168]

Hi, started learning how to do basic 3dmodelling & custom assets for skylines about a week ago, so i'm bound to face problems.

My issue now is that I made a tiny 2 x 1 building but the editor will always auto expand it to 2x4 regardless of what size i choose. I could scale my model bigger to fit a 3x2 lot but that would be too big compared to the IRL version. I really want to stay within the 2x1 size. If someone could help/explain to me what i'm doing wrong i'd really appreciate it.

Spoiler

 

[Badi_Dea 476]

The pivot point of your model is probably off. Which 3d application are you using?

[Bach2Baroque 168]

Blender. Uh how do I know if my pivot point is off? Actually, where do i locate my pivot point.

[Badi_Dea 476]

Never used Blender, but this looks like it'll help

 

Keep in mind that the pivot should be at the middle bottom of the model. If it's in the geometric center your asset will be half way underground.

Since your asset tries to import as a 2x4 your asset is probably off centered by 1u or 8m

Good luck, maybe one of the Blender pros can be more helpful

[Bach2Baroque 168]

Hmm then it's definitely not a pivot position issue because my model is dead center. Also the fact that my other 3x4 building imported just fine.

I guess it has something to do with the templates when importing via asset editor, there aren't actually any 2x1 vanilla assets as far as I know. I'm currently using a 1x2 lv1 low density commercial, and seems to be the only template that doesn't crash my game.

[Lost Gecko 481]

I think everything is fine, all assets can expand to 4 tiles depth in-game so the extra tiles are just there to place the props you would want to appear in the backyard if there is enough room. If you just zone a 2x1 plot, only your building will appear It's strange though that the concrete tiling seems to be off by half a tile, maybe you placed it when the plot was 2x3 or something...?

[Darf 1,439]

It looks alright, it just expands the backyard, although your dimensions look a bit off.

[Bach2Baroque 168]

4 hours ago, Lost_gecko said:

I think everything is fine, all assets can expand to 4 tiles depth in-game so the extra tiles are just there to place the props you would want to appear in the backyard if there is enough room. If you just zone a 2x1 plot, only your building will appear It's strange though that the concrete tiling seems to be off by half a tile, maybe you placed it when the plot was 2x3 or something...?

4 hours ago, Darf said:

It looks alright, it just expands the backyard, although your dimensions look a bit off.

You're both right, it does become a 2x1 lot in-game. Thanks!  This building is based on a small store in Japan. Now that you mentioned it, dimensions does look off. After comparing the streetview I think I might have to scale it to fit a 3x2 lot instead.

Anyway now that's done, I've got a another problem - any idea what causes these 'tearing' effect on my lightbox texture? (Second Picture)

[Ronyx69 2,413]

Looks like z fighting, is that sign sharing the exact same plane as the wall of the building? It needs to be outwards a bit so they don't overlap.

[Bach2Baroque 168]

Yep that was it. It's fixed now, thank you very much. It's kinda weird though my window/door planes are more inward than the makita sign.

[Matthias King 348]

I saw this hit the workshop, but in the description is says it's a 2x2. Could you not work out the 2x1 problem?

[maksim2014 17]

2X1, 1X2 the corner will be better

[Bach2Baroque 168]

2x1 works just fine, but I decided I wanted to place props on the facade so I had to expand it to 2x2, otherwise the props will not show. I know, it kinda throws off the whole dense japanese city vibe but I just had to have that plant prop & recycle bin in front.

Will work on my model dimensions in the future so I could fit props without messing up lot size.

[Matthias King 348]

Having Prop Anarchy on while in the asset editor may help you get around it. The props still have to be within the cells, but you can have them right up to the edge. I haven't checked the building out in-game yet, but you might give that a shot.

[Bach2Baroque 168]

On 10/5/2016 at 1:16 PM, Matthias King said:

Having Prop Anarchy on while in the asset editor may help you get around it. The props still have to be within the cells, but you can have them right up to the edge. I haven't checked the building out in-game yet, but you might give that a shot.

Tried that, It kinda worked but the prop placement is not permanent, like a 50/50 chance it'll show up. I think I'll settle for 2x2.

-

Anyhow. I am currently working on a new building. This time I think my model scaling/dimensions seem to have improved, and getting a better understanding of texture maps. It's a trial & error process, mostly errors, but as long as I have some motivation I can make it work. There's one big problem I'm having now though..... Does anyone have any idea how do I reduce my Tri-count? My current one has over 10,000, I suspect it has something to do with my window panels. I tried to remove as much as possible but no matter what I remove the tri count barely goes down. Um. Help?

[GC_Vos 714]

Nice office building!

For your tris count, you will want to try and decrease the amount of edges. It means you will need more texture space, but with a uniform building like this that shouldn't be too big of an issue. All around your windows you could probably merge 70-80% of your triangles into bigger sheets.

[squirrelarmyuk 100]

If you look at most uploaded building assets, especially for skyscrapers, the windows aren't actually modelled but done with textures instead. If you had a small number of large windows it will be worth recessing them but for a building this side you're better off with a flat surface to mount the texture too. I think you could use a bump map to add the illusion of recessed windows but that's beyond my basic skills. (I've only been modelling for the game for about the same time as you)

[Darf 1,439]

Basically what GC_Vos says. Take a look at one of my buildings at sketchfab for an example: https://sketchfab.com/models/24d473a60f294f4e99cae6aba6da8314. You can enable wireframe/disable texturing in the options menu in the corner.

[Bach2Baroque 168]

@GC_Vos Well... I managed to get it below 8k tri count.... Actually I'm not even sure if I merged them correctly to be honest, some of the faces do not want to merge for some reason. Clearly I have no idea what i'm doing. I think I may go with @squirrelarmyuk 's suggestion instead.

@Darf Holy crap your work is amazingly detailed. But I'm still getting very high tri counts though. Ever thought of making some Japanese mid-rises? Pretty sure you'll do a better job replicating some of the buildings than me. The workshop really needs more high dense commercial stuff.

Btw that's what the other sides look like. No idea why it merged into a file drawer instead.

[Bolduck91 54]

Great building ! For you tris count : Is every windows a unique face ? Because looking at @Darf meshe, it seems that he combines many windows in one plane since they are recess in the facade. A bit like so : 

[GC_Vos 714]

This looks much better! If you still have a high tris count, you probably have a lot of ngons (polygons with more than 4 vertices, basically still a whole lot of triangles). That's definitely the case for those file drawer ones.

I'm not familiar with Blender but if there's an option in there to collapse and triangulate, this will show the actual triangles. They might also show up in your unwrap. If you want I can have a quick look at your model to see if there's anything major...

[Matthias King 348]

I hope you can get this new building worked out, it looks nice.

As for your other one, if you get a prop right on the edge it might not show up. It has to still have more than half of it still inside the cell. I had that happen to me at first. As long as you keep them from being more outside than inside, you'll be fine riding the edge line. Just go right up to it but not over it.

[Bach2Baroque 168]

@GC_Vos Yes I would appreciate that if you(or anyone else) would have a quick look at my model. Here's the link. I think you'll probably find lots of 'major' stuff too.

@Matthias King I find that if the plantbox is just hovering slightly above ground it stays there. The lightbox sign is trickier though, I might make my own flat prop sign instead. Will update back to a 2x1 after i'm done with my current building.

[GC_Vos 714]

I can't open blender files, could you upload your fbx/obj instead?

[Bach2Baroque 168]

Whoops, sure. Here's an .fbx

[GC_Vos 714]

Thanks! Your problem is definitely ngons / bad subdivisions. Once converted to a mesh, you can see there's hundreds of individual triangles for areas which should be single polygons.

Your best bet is to create completely new polygons, attached to none of the existing elements. They can be instances/copies too for easy texturing. Move those into place, then all the way in the end after texturing and collapsing weld your vertices.

On a sidenote what's happened here is very common when you're only just getting into 3d, once you understand why it happens you can quickly learn to avoid that stuff.

[Bach2Baroque 168]

Unattached polygons? Collapsing weld my vertices? I'm just a simple vegetable farmer

Ok so basically make a single big block instead of making them out of a bunch of smaller blocks, then duplicating them & apply some fancy paint before gluing everything together. I think I'm starting to get a better sense of it. I really appreciate the help and i'll do my best to make this work!

[GC_Vos 714]

LOL no problem, I'm just wording it the way it's called in 3ds max, I'm unsure if Blender has the exact same names for those 'buttons'. You're right though, you'll wanna use separate parts until you get the whole thing. If you make everything out of one big box, you end up with a lot of extra triangles you don't need, because things are all glued together from the start.

[Bach2Baroque 168]

Welp, I decided to redo all the window elements and simplify it by using flat plane duplicates instead, which If i'm not mistaken is the common method for most buildings in the workshop. I had to pay more attention to my textures but I'm quite satisfied with the results. The important thing is at least now my tri-count is less than 1600, Huzzah!
 Next i'm working on what to add on the roof because the IRL roof access is very ugly to me. It's 2am and I think I had enough 3d modelling for the day. Here's an image dump of my WIP so far: (I personally love the entrance door with the blue/green/white decal)

[Alexgru88 19]

Wow, it looks very good!