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

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Would anybody like to collaborate with me or mentor me on making this building?

It's the Internationales Handelszentrum in Berlin, near Friedrichstrasse. It's one of the only skyscrapers (93.5 meters) in all of downtown Berlin, so it's very important to the skyline from many views. It also has an interesting story as it is a DDR-era building. I chose it for my third creation because it's practically a cube, so it should be pretty easy. I want to do a really good job on the texturing, particularly the illumination map.

 

I use Blender and Photoshop. If anyone would like to collaborate, please let me know!

 

[Avanya 2,605]

I'd totally recommend you have a look here - Zed is really good at those skyscrapers with low poly and texture and still really detailed and nice illumination. That post gives a really good look into how you can split up large window areas to get good variation without a ton of tris or giant textures. He's also the one behind the guide to detail illumination maps. Also with the lights don't worry too much about the details - I have a tendency to do that, but it doesn't actually matter much when turned into illumination.

Another tip I can give for this is to not make the white areas white on your texture - the game is so overly bright you can prob easily take the brightness down by 50%. I see lots of buildings on the workshop (and even the default ones), which have a nice detailed white texture, but it's so bright it hurts the eyes and you can't actually see the details.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Thanks Avanya. I read that thread and guide. I've got the basic model ready, scaled to 93.5 meters. I'm happy to have done it in 137 triangles.

Next, I want to do the glass entrance porch and the 6 or so stairs that lead to the entrance. I'm a bit intimidated by this part and any tips would be appreciated.

I think it will sit on a plot that is wider than 4 in-game sectors. Are there things I need to think about, doing a building that will be need a bigger-than-4x4 plot?

 

There's also parking at the front that I have no idea how to do yet.  I hope that it's just easily added in the Asset Editor afterwards?

[Feindbold 1,190]

Oh great (and looking great), allways liked that one, one of the very few good examples of GDR-era architecture if you ask me

I would use google earth, turn of 3dlayer and go back in time to 9/2014, this footage is good enough to do some measurements, even the stairs are visible:

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Glad you like this choice! I feel it's essential to Berlin. This is where I stand so far:

The stairs and entrance area is the first thing that I've built truly from scratch in Blender, so I'm happy about that. I'm scared to start texturing.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Worked on the diffuse texture last night. Was super excited to just plop it in the game to see how it looks. Geeked out on the asset-editor decorations (lights, antennae, etc). But what made my day this morning, was waking up to find that the official Cities Skylines twitter retweeted my pic to their 28k followers. Sweet!

 

Any tips for how I should make the windows look more in line with the game design style? I think they stick out now and look a bit "too real."

Next up: spec, illumination, and normal maps. I think the illumination map will be alot of fun with the fancy random system, but I'm worried about the normal map, as I've never done one before. I plan to use the online thing that Roxy recommends in his texturing video. Oh and ofc I still gotta do an LOD.

[Lost Gecko 481]

1 hour ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Any tips for how I should make the windows look more in line with the game design style? I think they stick out now and look a bit "too real."

Doing that pretty much means taking away the realism and lowering the quality of your asset. I really wouldn't recommend it because right now it looks pretty awesome!

[Avanya 2,605]

I agree with Lost_gecko! The windows look great and I suggest you keep them

[Darf 1,439]

I would make the brighter windows a bit darker, but not much. Still looks great. You will see the specular better against a darker background.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ok thx for the tips.

In which order do you generally make these maps? I know I want to do a spec, illumination, and normal map for this.

Another question: is it possible to retain all of the prop work that I did in the asset editor for this? Or do I basically have to do it all over again once I've completely finished the building?

[wasaki 11]

When you load your asset to edit it just tick that and it should load all the props for it

 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

That's grrrrrrrrrrrrrreat news. Thank you! I never noticed that before.

[Judazzz 1,936]

Stunning work mate, and those windows look positively amazing! Easily some of the best, most detailed and varied ones I've seen so far! 

[Kaschperl 92]

I have to agree with the others, the building looks beautiful even though it has a relatively simple shape! May I ask what the tri count is on this?

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

3 hours ago, Kaschperl said:

I have to agree with the others, the building looks beautiful even though it has a relatively simple shape! May I ask what the tri count is on this?

It was crazy small before I added the entrance and stairs and stuff. At the moment, the total tris is 619, with a 1024x1024 diffuse map.

In other news, I just discovered that the model of the Fernsehturm in the workshop is ~127m too short. I had a feeling it was "a bit small," but had no idea that it was off by so much! I've notified the author and offered him my re-scaled sourcefiles. I'm not too sure what the etiquette is when you come across something like this.

[Roadman20 601]

I don't see any problem if you're optimizing things for your own build, but of course that ends when you want to share it to the rest of the world.

There is a lot of non 1:1 scale buildings, some folks are doing like 1:1.5 and some others, but an honest attempt to reach out doesn't hurt.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Couple of questions for you guys...

 

1. Do you recognize this font? I'm having trouble with this part and I think it might be easier to make my own text

2. Do you have any tips for texturing the glass on the rotating door and the windows near the door?

3. A more general question: Do I have to create the walls under z=0 that would show on uneven terrain, or does the game generate those itself?

thx in advance

[boformer 3,169]

It looks very similar to Meta Condensed or Swiss 721 Condensed:

 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Wonderful eye, thank you! 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Ok, so a few hours later, now I feel that the diffuse texture is complete.

Still wondering about this...

3 hours ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Do I have to create the walls under z=0 that would show on uneven terrain, or does the game generate those itself?

 

[TekindusT 3,809]

Great to see Berlin assets around! Keep up the nice work!

[Lee Towers 179]

Looks great! Especially for such a large low-tri building.

1 hour ago, AmiPolizeiFunk said:

Do I have to create the walls under z=0 that would show on uneven terrain, or does the game generate those itself?

The game extends everything that touches 0 below ground automatically. Just try it out

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Nice. I guess I don't have a complete grip on this "Bottom-Center-Pivot" button.... when to use it, and when not to use it?

Some asset-editor shots:

I rebuilt the grid on the white-panel surface in photoshop and finally got it to a nice place IMO.

Font-based "Internationales Handelszentrum" label now.. looking forward to giving the text some heavy normal mapping (never done it before). Posting here is always helpful... I just noticed those lines on the white panels aren't parallel. 

lights

 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Spec maps in Cities are super weird. Am I right that 100% white reflects a different image (wood floor interior) than every other value (reflection of generic buildings). How the hell do you deal with that? I haven't seen this little factiod mentioned in any of the guides that I've read.

This is diffuse and spec only (no normal, no illumination). You can kinda see the two different reflections.

[Lee Towers 179]

I wouldn't use 100% specular in your case since you already have good window textures. You're right that 100% makes them reflect everything, so your own textures are kinda lost. Try some values between 60% and 80% or so and see how that looks. For the floors, you have to play around with the different values under Material in the asset editor properties.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Wow... this "Material" thing is fantastic. I would have NEVER found that. You can tell it the exact height of your building and the height of each floor, so the little interior hardwood floor reflection thingies can be lined up perfectly. I've read so many guides and either I totally missed it, or not a single guide mentioned this stuff.

And lol at "floor count" actually meaning "total height in meters"  And I guess that if you make the total height kinda low, it fills the rest with reflections of clouds!

 

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

So errrm guys n' gals, I need your help again. I don't understand this. I'm trying to do a simple test of my illumination map with all of the windows lit up at RGB=255. I have the background of the map at RGB=192, but sometimes, the whole damn building lights up. It does it in-game, as well. Halp! What's going on?

my map:

everything lit up, even where RGB=192:

then at other times, it works as expected:

What am I doing wrong?

[Epic Lurker 108]

The background of your illumination map is not 192 everywhere, it has a tiny amount of noise on it.

[AmiPolizeiFunk 446]

Wow, you're right. I have no idea how that happened. All I can remember doing to that layer was a simple fill in Photoshop. Is there anything special about saving the .png so that you make sure that it saves the exact colors that you are using?

[Epic Lurker 108]

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.