Learning asset creation - American House

[barcasam7 185]

Hello all,

I have decided to try my hand at modding assets. I have great gratitude to all the modders who have put their own time in to creating the game it is today. As I now have plenty time after finishing university I thought it was the perfect opportunity to challenge myself and add to the great content this game has. I will firstly be attempting at asset creating, I am not adverse to programming either. My full-time job is a web developer and in university I used #C with ASP.NET for websites so I enjoy programming. However, I first want to take a stab at asset creation. Here is my first asset it's Churchill Place in London. My aim is to create assets from California and Australia as they are places that I love. But I first chose London as I like this skyscraper. Please see the photo below:

Questions:

I understand there is LOD needed which has to have low level of tri's. Do I copy the first version and try to reduce the level of tri's?

Here is my diffuse mapping:

How would I go about making a map for night lights?

Lastly, how do I export this to file for cities skylines? It might sound stupid...but I have no clue!

All feedback is appreciated!

[Matthias King 348]

California! There aren't enough Cali-style buildings, so I'll be watching out for those.

Are you planning to do real-life recreations like this London building, or will you be doing some 'in the style of' buildings too? I'd prefer the latter, personally, but you do whatever you like. I wish you luck. There are several talented creators on here who I'm sure can offer you good advice.

[barcasam7 185]

3 hours ago, Matthias King said:

California! There aren't enough Cali-style buildings, so I'll be watching out for those.

Are you planning to do real-life recreations like this London building, or will you be doing some 'in the style of' buildings too? I'd prefer the latter, personally, but you do whatever you like. I wish you luck. There are several talented creators on here who I'm sure can offer you good advice.

Cheers mate, I will be doing real-life creations as I like being able to create assets which have real-life counterparts. As it means I can judge the quality from the existing building in real-life. Yes, I agree about California! I have particular interest in San Diego and Los Angeles as I loved visiting them. 

[Matthias King 348]

The city I'm working on is heavily inspired by SD and LA, though I'm not trying to recreate either of them. I'm just going for that SoCal aesthetic more than an actual recreation. If you decide to make some original buildings, I'd love to see them. Until then, good luck with the real-life buildings, though I must say, I'm not the biggest fan of textures captured off Google Maps. To me, they always seem to come out blurry and not so great looking compared to purpose-made textures. Take that for whatever it's worth. I'm anxious to see how your first building turns out.

[squirrelarmyuk 100]

35 minutes ago, Matthias King said:

The city I'm working on is heavily inspired by SD and LA, though I'm not trying to recreate either of them. I'm just going for that SoCal aesthetic more than an actual recreation. If you decide to make some original buildings, I'd love to see them. Until then, good luck with the real-life buildings, though I must say, I'm not the biggest fan of textures captured off Google Maps. To me, they always seem to come out blurry and not so great looking compared to purpose-made textures. Take that for whatever it's worth. I'm anxious to see how your first building turns out.

I agree there, some details like windows can be taken from the 3D warehouse textures but better to have a new texture for most of the building however @Feindbold has managed to create some great texture maps using google street view and photoshop. 

[barcasam7 185]

1 hour ago, squirrelarmyuk said:

I agree there, some details like windows can be taken from the 3D warehouse textures but better to have a new texture for most of the building however @Feindbold has managed to create some great texture maps using google street view and photoshop. 

Thank you, I will be mindful of that when creating assets. I do believe it's paramount to have a good texture otherwise it can damage the quality of the asset. 

[Alexgru88 19]

13 hours ago, barcasam7 said:

How would I go about making a map for night lights?

Very nice guide

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681420742

Cheers!

[GC_Vos 714]

I would highly recommend straightening your tiles before moving to the illumination maps and lod. Having it tilted like that will not look good in the end. You'll also want to try and remove any obvious shadows. Try something like this...

[barcasam7 185]

6 hours ago, GC_Vos said:

I would highly recommend straightening your tiles before moving to the illumination maps and lod. Having it tilted like that will not look good in the end. You'll also want to try and remove any obvious shadows. Try something like this...

Thank you very much for the advice. Can you please explain how you did this? I'm assuming photoshop?

[GC_Vos 714]

I'm using Gimp myself. There should be a perspective warp or crop tool.

It depends on what program you're using...

Keep in mind this will only work well with straight lines. If the original has a bit of a fish eye perspective common with photographs, it'll be a lot more hard to align.

[barcasam7 185]

Thank you GC_Vos, I'll have a look into this on photoshop. I have encountered a problem. I have exported the model and diffuse map. Haven't created a LOD yet or illumination map just to familarise myself with the Cities Skylines Asset editor. For some reason I can see my file in the import folder, but it doesn't load the model? Does anyone know why this is? Is it due to scaling or presets? Oh, and I'm using 3DS max 2017. 

[Darf 1,439]

Did you export the scene or the model?

[barcasam7 185]

Which one should I have exported? Please the image below:

Am I meant to export LOD1 or the model?

 

[Darf 1,439]

Ehr, well I see you got multiple meshes. You will not need render to texture. You can save your texture directly from photoshop. Select you model and just use export selected in the 3ds menu.

[barcasam7 185]

21 hours ago, Darf said:

Ehr, well I see you got multiple meshes. You will not need render to texture. You can save your texture directly from photoshop. Select you model and just use export selected in the 3ds menu.

Thank you telling me about the rendered textures! I have tried exporting from the model, but it crashes when I click on it in the Asset Editor. Does anyone else have any suggestions. See my FBX file attached if anyone wants to have a look and see if they experience the same. problem. 

churchillplace.FBX

[GC_Vos 714]

The problem is you have a bunch of different element including cameras inside your fbx. The game cannot handle all that stuff. As Darf said you have to collapse and export just the selected main model. Not everything in your scene.

[Giovanni E 155]

you need to merge all different meshes into one, and remove anything that is not mesh related such as unrendered splines and camera's. the game only accepts one mesh element in the FBX anything more than that will not be rendered in game because the game's engine does not work that way.

[Cleavus 0]

Hi mate, I had the same issue, you need to make sure you only have one scene layer - go  Tools > Scene explorer > Make sure you only showing Layer (Like Layer0_001) any others you MUST delete to have a clean model. Then the model will show up in the asset editor,. Also you have to enter the Asset editor with no Mods activating as some may conflict. There is a command line in the Steam settings, or someone will know what it is and put that in your shortcut link. I have 2 desktop icons, one for the standard game and one for Steam no mods for when I go into the Asset Editor, otherwise the Editor crashes the game. Good luck

[Darf 1,439]

4 hours ago, Giovanni E said:

you need to merge all different meshes into one, and remove anything that is not mesh related such as unrendered splines and camera's. the game only accepts one mesh element in the FBX anything more than that will not be rendered in game because the game's engine does not work that way.

 

40 minutes ago, Cleavus said:

Hi mate, I had the same issue, you need to make sure you only have one scene layer - go  Tools > Scene explorer > Make sure you only showing Layer (Like Layer0_001) any others you MUST delete to have a clean model. Then the model will show up in the asset editor,. Also you have to enter the Asset editor with no Mods activating as some may conflict. There is a command line in the Steam settings, or someone will know what it is and put that in your shortcut link. I have 2 desktop icons, one for the standard game and one for Steam no mods for when I go into the Asset Editor, otherwise the Editor crashes the game. Good luck

No need for that. You can just attach different meshes with the attach all option. Than use select the mesh you want to export and use the option export selected in 3ds max.

[barcasam7 185]

Thanks guys! So progress has been made, sort of. It's not crashing anymore when loading up the asset editor, however when I click this it doesn't show me the model?

[boformer 3,169]

3 hours ago, barcasam7 said:

Thanks guys! So progress has been made, sort of. It's not crashing anymore when loading up the asset editor, however when I click this it doesn't show me the model?

Merged everything into one mesh? Applied all transformations? Fbx scale set to 100?

[barcasam7 185]

6 hours ago, boformer said:

Merged everything into one mesh? Applied all transformations? Fbx scale set to 100?

I have only one mesh now. How would I apply all transformations and set scale to 100? Again, thank you for everyone's help it's greatly appreciated!

[boformer 3,169]

53 minutes ago, barcasam7 said:

I have only one mesh now. How would I apply all transformations and set scale to 100? Again, thank you for everyone's help it's greatly appreciated!

No idea. I'm a Blender User.

[Giovanni E 155]

58 minutes ago, barcasam7 said:

I have only one mesh now. How would I apply all transformations and set scale to 100? Again, thank you for everyone's help it's greatly appreciated!

did you remove all materials materials from the mesh ?

[Ronyx69 2,413]

3 hours ago, barcasam7 said:

I have only one mesh now. How would I apply all transformations and set scale to 100? Again, thank you for everyone's help it's greatly appreciated!

Here's an image I found online of what you have to do:

First one is on the right, you need to go to the utility tab and reset xform, then go to the modifiers and collapse all.

The scale should be reset, also make sure the pivot point is where you need it - probably in the bottom center.

[barcasam7 185]

After long frustration of trying everything, I decided to use a different model. This time I have decided to with the Bank West Tower in Perth Australia. Australia has some of the best architecture right now going. It actually works in the asset editor. Textures need to be finalised.

[Cool_Z 1,547]

On 17/10/2016 at 0:21 PM, Alexgru88 said:

Very nice guide

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=681420742

Cheers!

Well... it might be a bit too much to ask for a beginner

[barcasam7 185]

I definitely want to try that Cool_Z. Does anyone know on 3DS max how you make a texture repeat itself? As this building is quite tall the texture gets distorted and I wanted to it tile the texture like repeat itself. 

[GC_Vos 714]

Open the UV editor, press CTRL+O and enable Tile Bitmap. You can also select the number of tiles. Just make sure your LOD does not tile, lod textures have to stay within 0,1.

[Ronyx69 2,413]

1 hour ago, GC_Vos said:

Open the UV editor, press CTRL+O and enable Tile Bitmap. You can also select the number of tiles. Just make sure your LOD does not tile, lod textures have to stay within 0,1.

 

Wait, textures can be tiled in C:S and it actually works? I had no idea.