Ami's Berlin: Assets (L.A. westside map released)

[Judazzz 1,936]

3 minutes ago, Epic Lurker said:

I don't think you can add noise by saving. If your photoshop document does not have noise, and you save it as .png, it will also not have noise.

Saving/exporting an image in a loss-less format like .png shouldn't add compression artefacts to images. If you save/export in a lossy format such as .jpg, compression artefacts are pretty much unavoidable, even when saving at 100% quality.

[Ronyx69 2,413]

1 hour ago, Judazzz said:

Saving/exporting an image in a loss-less format like .png shouldn't add compression artefacts to images. If you save/export in a lossy format such as .jpg, compression artefacts are pretty much unavoidable, even when saving at 100% quality.

There is a way...

If you have a 16 bit per channel image, where the color isn't actually 192/255 but a tiny bit brighter/darker,
(and by tiny i mean less than a 1/255 difference because a 16bpc image has 65536 values instead of 256)
and then you save it as an 8bpc (still a lossless png) image, dithering will likely be applied, so if it's a bit brighter than 192/255 - the image will be noisy between 192 and 193
which is exactly what I tried right know in PS.

This is probably irrelevant though. I doubt that the game is sensitive enough to notice this enough to visibly light up the building because of this noise.

I think the textures which are in the game (compressed) become noisy, because ACI combines alpha, color variation and illumination in one texture, and it looks all screwed up.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ok, thx for this important information. Perhaps my bits-per-channel were different on the save than on the actual image format. I dunno, but that grain got in there somehow and it totally screwed me up. When you are working, what bits-per-channel settings do you use for .png's?

[Ronyx69 2,413]

Almost always everything is done in 8bpc which is the default. You probably won't run into higher bit depth stuff working with C:S.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ok, thanks. This has been a brutal week with a steep learning curve and a lot of wasted time... but I feel like I'm almost there. Next is to pick some nice lighting patterns.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

It's up! 

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=874124305

 

All of the sourcefiles 46.6 MB (blender, photoshop, exported .png maps): https://www.coh2.org/file/13764/handel.rar

[barcasam7 185]

For your first proper building this is impressive! Nice work. 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Thanks. Quick question, can I control the color of the lights from the illumination map, or is that based on something else? Sometimes they seem to be yellow and sometimes they seem to be blue.

[Avanya 2,605]

Afaik there's no way to control the color of the light sadly  

[Ronyx69 2,413]

3 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Thanks. Quick question, can I control the color of the lights from the illumination map, or is that based on something else? Sometimes they seem to be yellow and sometimes they seem to be blue.

2 hours ago, Avanya said:

Afaik there's no way to control the color of the light sadly  

You can't control them for a specific asset.

The color of the window illuminations is based on the light palette texture of your map theme.
For each building, a pixel from the light palette is sampled, and that color is used for the entire building.

 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ok, good to know (bummer tho).

 

Many have requested that I make it a RICO Office building. How do I do that?

[Avanya 2,605]

1 hour ago, Ronyx69 said:

You can't control them for a specific asset.

The color of the window illuminations is based on the light palette texture of your map theme.
For each building, a pixel from the light palette is sampled, and that color is used for the entire building.

 

Aha! So that's what that texture does. I'll have to experiment with those as I'm not a huge fan of the very blue one  Ty for the info!  

[Darf 1,439]

Tell them they are lazy shits and they can do it themselves in the settingsmenu.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I actually laughed out loud.

[barcasam7 185]

Changing the building into RICO is very easy. It's basically an XML file placed in a folder with the building. You can edit it with notepad or any text editor. You can find the guide here - https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=628080291

 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

After finishing the building, I went to go visit it and take some pics (yeah backwards order, I know). Here is a nice shot from the plaza in front of the Reichstag:

In the bottom left of this pic, you may notice a crazy street lamp. It's the Selux Ritorno, and there are hundreds of them that dot the new streets by the Bundestag and mark the Earth's East-West longitudinal axis. 

I think I'm gonna try to do one of these next.

I plan to use GCVos' "Single Reflection Light" as a template. I'm not quite sure what will happen when I try to import the new asset. I've copied the "Reflective Light Single.crp" as well as the "LightPropsDefinition.xml" into my ...AppData\Local\Colossal Order\Cities_Skylines\Addons\Assets folder (since I have to run the Asset Editor in -noWorkshop mode). I have no idea if it will use the xml file from that forlder, or if it needs to. 

[boformer 3,169]

Lightpropdef.xml is depcrecated.

Just use the new method of adding lights with modtools.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ok. But in this case I would like the prop to be connected to roads via Network Skins. Do I just change the class to Roads in ModTools as you describe in the original thread?

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Almost there!

..just gotta sort out that rotation. And I might have to cheat to do the reflection...

 

I used the GCVos template, plopped in the script, and it just worked! 

// --- FIRST LIGHT EFFECT ---

// Used light effect
var lightEffect1 = EffectCollection.FindEffect("Street Light Large Road") as LightEffect;

// Final position in prop
Vector3 pos1 = new Vector3(0f,3.91f,0f); 
// this would be at the center of the prop, 3.91m above ground

// Final direction in prop
Vector3 dir1 = new Vector3(0f,1f,0f);
// this would be facing up

var propEffect1 = new PropInfo.Effect {m_effect = lightEffect1, m_position = pos1, m_direction = dir1 };

// Apply effects to prop
(GameObject.Find("Tool Controller").GetComponent<ToolController>().m_editPrefabInfo as PropInfo).m_effects = new PropInfo.Effect[]{ propEffect1 };
(GameObject.Find("Tool Controller").GetComponent<ToolController>().m_editPrefabInfo as PropInfo).m_hasEffects = true;

 

[accapulco 132]

Well, that was fast. Nice job. Is it possible to make that green glowing one on the far right? Why is that one even green?

 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I have no idea why that one was green! It looked like a bug, as it was the only green one. But I think that means they are powered by RBG LEDs, and I wouldn't be surprised if they could do some fancy stuff by animating the row in different colors. I've just never seen them do it.

Hmmmm..... so these things are supposed to kinda "simulate moonlight." In my first test, using "Street Light Large Road" pointing upwards, the light is very dim... but maybe that's ok? GCVos used Airport Light effects for his reflex lights, but I find that to be just too much, and you can't even see the moon shape because it gets buried in light. 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Since they are meant to be tightly spaced (there is one every 10m around the Bundestag), I think I will leave them dim.

What do you guys think about the brightness?

[schokoladeneis 1 193]

It was probably an old bulb. Sometimes older ones get a green or magenta tint.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

3 minutes ago, schokoladeneis 1 said:

It was probably an old bulb. Sometimes older ones get a green or magenta tint.

Hmmm could be! I guess they are not LEDs. They are "metal halide" lamps...

HIT-CE 150W/830 G12 Metal halide lamps

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I'm getting these weird black artifacts when looking at the lights in the distance. Does anybody recognize what's going on here? It happens consistently.

[odrzutowiec 5]

I don't know what it is, but I get the same black rectangles in far view with a bus (Newroutemaster by AleX_BY). It shows only on a part of the bus in far view. Maybe it's a LOD issue? 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Yeah I'm failing to solve this issue. I fixed all the normals and futzed with the textures but it is still doing it. Currently it has no LOD model (the lamps by GCVos don't have LOD models). Should I make one?

 

Maybe it has something to do with the specular map? It seems to happen right by where the light is, which is textured differently than everything else and has a spec map.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

When I disable depth-of-field (or use "legacy"), the black spots/flickering artifacts go away. With "normal" or "high" they come back and they look terrible.

It also doesn't happen when I use the first-person camera mod.

 

Right now I don't know if it's something I did wrong, or if it's one of my mods. I'm at a loss for things to try now.

[Darf 1,439]

How does the autogenerated lod look from up close? Boformer's mod lod toggler is really usefull for that.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

I didn't even know that the game autogenerates LODs for models that don't have one. Is that true for all props across the board?

 

I'll have a look. I just added a custom LOD so maybe that will fix it, trying now.

 

edit: Thank the CIMGOD, that solved it.  Amazing how one little stupid bug can suck up 4 hours of your time.