Need help with a metro station custom 3D model

[Azarath 1]

Hello everyone!

My first post here.
I'm in the need of some assistance.

I'm making a metro/subway entrance based of the ones seen in Fukuoka, Japan (where I currently live and study).
This is also my first attempt modding Cities Skylines, the second game I've ever modded.
I'm using Blender.

So what's the problem?
After reading and watching tutorial after tutorial I finally managed to get my model into the game, diffuse and illumination textures working.
However, the stairwell leading down gets cut by the ground. The ground clips into the model.



I took a look at the vanilla metro entrance model and it has stairs leading down without the ground clips into it

I've tried a couple of different methods to solve the problem but none has succeeded. 
I've tried to create a platform like the vanilla entrance, didn't work. I've tried to change the position of the origin point into different places, didn't work.

I found a "cheat" solution and that is placing a black plane in front of the stairs so it looks like the stairs are leading into darkness. But only one or two steps are visible.
It looks quite bad to be honest.

I also have a little problem getting the scale and orientation correct. Every time I load the model into the asset editor, I have to rotate the model 3 times before it stands up correctly.
The model is very very tiny however, so I must scale it to 32 which gives a somewhat good result in game.

Any help on this matter would be greatly appreciated. Thank you

[boformer 3,169]

The trick: You can paint the ground with a transparent "clip" ground texture. It can be found in the same menu as concrete, gravel...
 

That's also the reason why the vanilla station uses a ground plate. You will see.

[Badi_Dea 476]

heh heh, and don't forget to tell him about your fence shader script on github, unless you don't want any textures to work under the ground level.

[Azarath 1]

8 hours ago, boformer said:

The trick: You can paint the ground with a transparent "clip" ground texture. It can be found in the same menu as concrete, gravel...
 

That's also the reason why the vanilla station uses a ground plate. You will see.

I appreciate the quick reply.

I tried what you suggested but unfortunately everything turns into a blue void.
Both in asset editor and in game.






I tried to make the platform wider and larger. I've tried to put the origin point at the entrance, at the first step, at the last step, at the bottom of the platform, at the top of the entrance. I've tried without a platform completely. Nothing works.
The platform has weird clipping effects and I still get a blue void even though the origin point is beneath.

It feels like I'm heading in the right direction though becasue now almost the entire staircase and the tunnel is visible as it should be.
The base of the entrance and the blue void needs to be fixed.

What am I doing wrong? What am I missing here?










 

[boformer 3,169]

Are your normals facing the right way?

Also, make sure that your ground plate has a size of 16x16m.

Another thing: Before you export from Blender, select your mesh and press Ctrl + A to apply rotation and scale to the model.

[Azarath 1]

I changed the scale of the platform to 16x16m as instructed and I got a much better result. Thank you. I've taken notes for future projects.
I managed to get the bottom of the entrance visible. However, I found out  the textures of the floor were missing so I went back in Blender, added the texture the floor, exported it again and now I have this weird blue void again.

I've spent 4 hours trying all kinds of different combinations. 
Changing the thickness of the platform, placing the origin point at the top, middle and the bottom of the platform.
Removing a couple of stairs and rising the floor.
I've even put the tunnel above ground level but the blue void still clips it.
Every time I make a change I apply scale and rotation and check the normals. Everything checks out as far as I can tell but nope, it will not work.

 

[boformer 3,169]

Flip the normal of the face. Also make sure that everything is merged into a single Mesh, and triangulated.

[OwiHH 240]

You may unintentional imported a alphamap texture?

[Azarath 1]

I got it work!! After many hours of frustration, experimenting, loading up Blender and the asset editor over and over again I finally got it work.
And I have all of you to thank for that. I'm most grateful. Truth be told, I was very close to give up.

So what was the problem? Inverted normals. Flipped a few normals here and there and voilá, the blue void is gone and everything is where it's supposed to be.
It's amazing how such a small thing could cause so much trouble. 

Thanks again. I really appreciate it!

 

[Giovanni E 155]

yea, inverted normals can cause a lot of havoc on models. i learned something intresting though. thanks to boformer now i finally got an idea on how to make sunken structures/buildings with a floor below ground level. 

[boformer 3,169]

8 hours ago, Azarath said:

So what was the problem? Inverted normals. Flipped a few normals here and there and voilá, the blue void is gone and everything is where it's supposed to be.
It's amazing how such a small thing could cause so much trouble. 

Thanks again. I really appreciate it!

You can display the direction of the normals in Blender.

[Azarath 1]

2 hours ago, boformer said:

You can display the direction of the normals in Blender.

I know I can display normals in Blender but thanks for mentioning it anyway since it's important information.
It's just that I've almost never done any modding for a game before. I made some lightsaber hilts for Jedi Outcast and Academy a few years back but that's the only modding I've done.

For the past five years using Blender, everything I've done has been rendered in Blender itself. The facing of the normals has never really been of any concern to me.
So when I exported it to Cities Skylines, it didn't occur to me the normals could be the cause of the problem. I've taken notes of this for any future modding projects.
Truth be told, I didn't triangulate the model either until you mentioned it. But the model seemed to work fine in game even though it wasn't triangulated.

[Tim The Terrible 586]

56 minutes ago, Azarath said:

Truth be told, I didn't triangulate the model either until you mentioned it. But the model seemed to work fine in game even though it wasn't triangulated.

I never triangulated my models either, maybe @boformer can tell us why we should?

[boformer 3,169]

23 minutes ago, Tim The Terrible said:

I never triangulated my models either, maybe @boformer can tell us why we should?

The exporter triangulates the model for you. Sometimes it makes sense to do it manually, especially when you are making organic structures (more uv mapping control).

[OwiHH 240]

21 hours ago, Azarath said:

I got it work!! After many hours of frustration, experimenting, loading up Blender and the asset editor over and over again I finally got it work.
And I have all of you to thank for that. I'm most grateful. Truth be told, I was very close to give up.

So what was the problem? Inverted normals. Flipped a few normals here and there and voilá, the blue void is gone and everything is where it's supposed to be.
It's amazing how such a small thing could cause so much trouble. 

Thanks again. I really appreciate it!

 

you can find flipped face within blender pretty easy if you turn on the direction

editmode - Properties panel (toggled with the N key in the 3D View).

 

 

 

[Ronyx69 2,413]

10 hours ago, boformer said:

The exporter triangulates the model for you. Sometimes it makes sense to do it manually, especially when you are making organic structures (more uv mapping control).

I can add my tip for 3ds Max users out there regarding this:

In the editable poly mode you can press "turn" or if you want more control - "edit triangulation" and draw the triangles of the polygons how you want, without actually making the whole mesh triangulated, so you keep your polygons as they were while modeling, but you can control the triangulation of them.

This is not only useful for fine tuning UV mapping, but also making sure the smoothing looks how you want for rounded shapes.

You can also right click an object, go to its properties and disable "show edges only" to see the triangulation all the time.

[Ploefke 53]

15 hours ago, Azarath said:

Truth be told, I didn't triangulate the model either until you mentioned it. But the model seemed to work fine in game even though it wasn't triangulated.

I never did this too. Never had any problems with it.

[Acc3ssViolation 81]

6 hours ago, OwiHH said:

you can find flipped face within blender pretty easy if you turn on the direction

editmode - Properties panel (toggled with the N key in the 3D View).

 

 

 

Alternatively, enable backface culling in the shading menu (same panel):

That will make the faces only visible from their facing direction, just like in game.

[Giovanni E 155]

1 hour ago, Ploefke said:

I never did this too. Never had any problems with it.

usually, with self made models it isnt that much of a problem, unless you're making use of splines or inverted the normals urself. when doing a conversion from whatever source you wish its possible some or a lot of the normals would be inverted.

[OwiHH 240]

also helpfull: recalculate the normals from the 'Shading/UVs' tab of the tool shelf, or you can do it by a short cut by Ctrl+N

Sure it only works proper on simple objects.