Tune's Nuclear Assets: Chernobyl Restoration

[Naamtune 58]

Hi guys,

I am new here, but have been a long time lurker to the forum since SimCity 4. I'm slowly getting back in to game modding community after a long 10 years hiatus. 

Fascinated by real life industrial & office settings, and a bit upset with how only small number of industrial buildings in Steam workshop that fit my criteria for my city without looking out of place, I decided to try to make my own assets based on as much real life information as possible, and I want to share them with the community.

My first two assets I completed were simple nuclear waste storage props, and were great learning opportunities for me to get re-familiarized with Maya and the new workflow with help from my real life buddy. Hoping to push out more contents and find more advanced techniques along the way as I tackle each asset.

What is my current project?

Modular nuclear power plant assets! These include:

• Containment units (variations will exist)
• Auxiliary building
• Diesel Backup building
• Turbine structure
• Cooling towers (forced drafts & low profiles)
• Fuel Loading Building
• Spent Fuel Interim Storage
• More storage tanks 
• Spent fuel storage systems (horizontal & vertical storage systems)
• Administrative buildings
• Nuclear reprocessing buildings

etc.

I think it will be a challenge, but it'll be a fun challenge at the least to tackle this long-term project. 

Released Assets

[Prop]Nuclear Waste Storage Vertical Dry Cask - TN Americas' NUHOMS HSM-H/HS

[Prop]Nuclear Waste Storage Horizontal Storage System - TN Americas' HSM-H/HS

 

 

Work-In-Progress Assets

• [JPN] Takahama-3 [PWR]
• [JPN] Ikata-1 [PWR]
• [JPN] Ōi-1  [PWR]
• [USA] Oyster Creek  [BWR]
• [USA] Fitzpatrick  [BWR]
• [USA] Zion  [PWR]
• [CHN] Fangjiashan  [PWR]
• [CHN] Qinshan [PWR]
• [RUS] Chernobyl [LWR] 
• [RUS] Balakovo [PWR]
• [LTU] Ignalina [LWR]

[Elektrix 42]

Wow, this looks very nice so far! Do you have plans to make each of the modules functional for energy, or only for decoration?

Definitely excited about this regardless. 

[Naamtune 58]

5 hours ago, Elektrix said:

Wow, this looks very nice so far! Do you have plans to make each of the modules functional for energy, or only for decoration?

Definitely excited about this regardless. 

Thank you! My initial plan is to make them functional, but it's still to be determined.  

[barcasam7 185]

Sounds incredible! I agree with you there is a very limited variety of industrial buildings most of it is warehouses. I look forward to see how this progresses. 

[Naamtune 58]

So far I've been spending a lot of time understanding what to not do and what to do to be able to successfully import a bare-bone textured buildings in to the game, and was able to finally get the aux bldg and turbine hall imported. As I'm learning I'm documenting all these findings with hope future beginners will find them useful.

However in addition to the import issues, I'm still trying to figure out how the ingame scaling work. The buildings are created to scale in Maya, and imported in to game, slightly scaled down a bit. Are there documentations that can shed more light on the ingame scaling system? If I were to choose a building template (for example, vanilla NPP) for my imported building, does my imported building inherit the scale size directly from the NPP template?  Pics below for reference. 

[Darf 1,439]

Scale is dependant on your fbx export settings. I'm assuming the fbx exporter is the same as 3ds max. I usually use 100 on standard settings.

[Naamtune 58]

Been pretty busy with work, college, and attending events for photoshoot, but I finally got the time over the weekend to do pick away at this project.

As I'm working on the project  I'm slowly getting used to unwrapping UVmap. I reconstructed the vessel unit since it had a few glaring deformities that were bugging me. The object also has a bit of complex uvmap, but I was able to do it. You can also see another variation of containment vessel in the back. 

I wasn't happy with how the turbine hall uvmap came out so I decided to scrap it and redo it over after I'm done with the vessel unit.

Trying to keep the buildings minimal as possible for players to decorate with props. 

[Naamtune 58]

What a busy Sunday! The Oyster Creek and Takahama-3 containment building are mostly done with just them needing some minor adjustments. Turbine buildings are completed and I finished a few smaller concrete structures. I had just began working on Ikata-1 and Ohi-1 unit. The last four more containment designs will be worked on this weekend.

There will be total of eight containment designs:
[JPN] Takahama-3 [PWR]
[JPN] Ikata-1 [PWR]
[JPN] Ōi-1  [PWR]
[USA] Oyster Creek  [BWR]
[USA] Fitzpatrick  [BWR]
[USA] Zion  [PWR]
[CHN] Fangjiashan  [PWR]
[RUS] Kursk  [LWR] 

Once all the containment buildings are built I can begin focusing more on industrial and office structures + props for NPP.

[barcasam7 185]

This is shaping up to great ant so much variety already!

[Naamtune 58]

Over the weekend I was able to complete the basic designs of the remaining containment units. It's the matter of giving them more defined detail so that they can start to have some more depth than just a giant concrete block/half-sphere. At the same time I'm getting the hang of the workflow in Maya. If I had more time I'd definitely focus on improving texturing skill as well, but for now I'll take a slow pace.

So here are some more pictures of the progress (Sorry, forgot to take screenshot of the Qinshan, Zion & Fangjiashan unit). For now, enjoy the Fitzpatrick-1 and Chernobyl Unit 3+4 (Kursk Unit shares the exact same design). There are accidental architectural design inaccuracies to the Cherno Unit 3+4, so I'll have to correct my errors I made, possibly re-designing it again from scratch.

Fitzpatrick-1 Unit w/ Turbine Hall

Ignalina Unit + Chernobyl Unit 3+4 + Turbine Hall

[K141 19]

I'm super impressed. I've been wanting to do something like this for a while but lack time/skills/willpower lol.

[Naamtune 58]

Imported part of Fitzpatrick buildings in to the game to get the feel of the scale. I had also imported my datacenter as well since it look generic enough to pass for industrial building.

Didn't make much progress this weekend since I've been learning how to use some new tools that'll be useful for my texturing workflow and I also had paper to write for college.

[Naamtune 58]

The Fitzpatrick NPP core modules-- containment unit and turbine hall, will be the first to be released. I was able to get the containment building textured and imported in to the game. The turbine hall will be completed today too. Once completed, I'll create custom LOD and polish up texture maps. There will be three more modules for Fitzpatrick units.

\

[Naamtune 58]

Sorry the progress has been pretty slow due to events I had to attend as photographer, projects at work, and papers to complete for school.

 

Ingame screenshot of Fitzpatrick unit (prior to Industries DLC) and the rear Fitzpatrick auxiliary structure. One more building left for Fitzpatrick, then I should be able to get them published to the workshop.

[Naamtune 58]

Back from the dead and released some assets.

 

Testing out the scaling of ChNPP unit 3+4 and turbine housing. Had to re-design the ChNPP asset from scratch since the initial ones were subpar.

[Naamtune 58]

Happy with the structure so far.

[Naamtune 58]

Slowly figuring out the asset editor, learned the sub-building feature, which is great for what I'm trying to accomplish. Ingame buildings working as intended, so time to move on to unwrapping and texturing at next opportunity.

 

[Avanya 2,605]

This looks great! I'm always happy to see more options for the grittier services! Looking forward to seeing this as it gets textures

[Naamtune 58]

I didn't realize how complex the whole facility was until I started looking at the actual layout and trying to replicate them. I also learned that photos of administration offices are difficult to come across. I went back and fixed a lot of incorrect details so the buildings look closer to their real life counterparts.

 

[Clus 24]

Awesome ! That looks great already !

[Naamtune 58]

The list of Chernobyl assets and photo album of ref photos keeps on growing. Green squares are ones with base models completed and red ones that are still to be done.

Would you guys be interest in the simplified micro-management of nuclear waste reprocessing and waste disposal system for gameplay as well?

[Naamtune 58]

Took a break to do some translation work, to collect photos, and to do some more researching. Finally got back to resuming the reconstruction of Chernobyl № 1 and № 2.

I completed the base models and completed the unwrappings. Now to repeat the same process for LOD models before moving on to the next phase of development. I have a feeling the scaling of the buildings may be out of whack so I'll have to verify that soon.

These buildings will come out to be a total of eleven assets and will make up the first part of the release. 

Construction Timeline of Chernobyl № 1 and № 2:

1. 1972 - RBMK design was chosen over the early VVER PWR design for the new Chernobyl NPP
2. 1977 - Completion of Chernobyl № 1, went online
3. 1978 - Completion of Chernobyl № 2, went online

[Naamtune 58]

1st gen reactor building textured! 

[Naamtune 58]

Nearly done texturing buildings relating to reactor #1-2. Just need to complete the sluice house and water pump station, which I hope to get done tomorrow. I'll also need to re-examine specular map for each building and adjust them accordingly. Thanks to the creators and r/CSL discord channel for helping me with my questions. 

[Naamtune 58]

Onshore water pump stations in progress. Need to do some research to find the appropriate regional industrial garage/warehouse/storage door.

 

[Naamtune 58]

Took most of the day yesterday and today troubleshooting why at least half a dozen of my assets weren't appearing in the Asset Editor and why I was getting format error.

 

Turned out I forgot to set the export for my textures from PNG 16-bit to PNG 8-bit, and I had to clear out groups from the outliner, so here's an ingame screenshot of auxiliary building that joins Unit 1 and Unit 2 from the Asset Editor.

[Naamtune 58]

A few ingame sc reenshots so fa r of the progress.

[Naamtune 58]

Progress on the turbine for Unit 3 & 4!

[boformer 3,169]

This is really cool!

[ARTFX 53]

Oh man I can't wait till you have them all done, I want to build a big nuclear power plant! Great work!