Foundation Texture Problem

[JulianMIA 1,476]

Wondering whether anyone has come across a similar or same problem with the way textures are being displayed on lot foundations.  I spent quite a bit of time making a bunch of new textures to serve as walls by applying them to lot foundations, even color-correcting them to comp for the 'purple' effect of the slopes/shadows.

When I apply a texture, any texture, to a foundation and align the lot to say the X axis, it displays fine.  However the lot's Y axis shows the texture duplicated as many times as the length of the lot - so if a lot is 5 squares wide and 1 deep the it will scrunch 5 squares worth of the texture into the 1 deep side.

Worse is that when you try to align the lot to the Y axis it stretches it out - it displays only 1 square worth of the texture stretched over whatever the width of the lot is.

The pictures demonstrate.  Pic 1, displayed on the Y axis - the first picture shows the correct texture on the end (1 square) side of the lot, the width side of the lot, the part I really want to display, stretches a single square over the whole width (pic 2).  The third pic shows the difference in how a texture is displayed on a 1x1 lot (correctly) v. the one behind it which bunchs 4x the texture into a single square.  Fourth pic shows how the concrete wall texture displays properly on a lot that is 16 or 18 squares long when the lot is aligned to the X axis.  The last pic shows how a lot foundation texture gets stretched.  I have had to use a very plain concrete on these walls because of the stretching.  The concrete on top of the lot and the foundation wall is the same but you can see the different in how it is displayed.  Although on top of the lot it is laid out 1 square at a time whereas the foundation is just picked in the lot editor.

This happens only on the foundation, never on retaining walls - at least for me.

I realize I could make single lots but this would mean many more lots have to be created AND the seams that show up ruin the whole effect.

I am not that knowledgeable on the most technical aspects of lots but I have tinkered with everything I can think of and have not been able to figure it out.

Can anyone help?!?

Thanks.

 

 

[CorinaMarie 29,690]

While I have no clue how to help with this, I can whisk it over to the modders section where the gurus hang out.

[JulianMIA 1,476]

15 minutes ago, CorinaMarie said:

While I have no clue how to help with this, I can whisk it over to the modders section where the gurus hang out.

Thanks! I was not sure of the correct place to post that...

[CorinaMarie 29,690]

5 minutes ago, JulianMIA said:

Thanks! I was not sure of the correct place to post that...

You're welcome. It's just a couple mouse clicks for staff to move them around so no worries. (And even I might've put it in the wrong place. The experts here will make the final call for placement if needed.)

[rsc204 21,821]

First off, I really love what you are attempting to do here, the effect really lends a uniformity which I strive to achieve myself.

I've no direct experience with Retaining Walls, but I do seem to recall others having similar issues. It may just be that the game only wants 1x1 tile retaining walls and isn't setup to tile the texture. That may be something you can work around, but I have a feeling that might take us into the 3D modelling realm.

[JulianMIA 1,476]

Thanks for the compliment!  The ability to create the walls through foundation and retaining wall settings was one of the things that really got me back into working in SC4 to do design - the original goal was to create the look and feel of trains e.g. the Eurostar as they pass through Stratford International on their way to/from London and the channel tunnel.  Not sure that I really achieved that but it has yielded other things I really like.

Anyway, @rsc204 I am sending you the foundations, retaining walls, and one of the lots for you to check out as you suggested.  

Just to reclarify - this does not happen on "retaining walls" (as applied through the lot editor), it is only "foundations" that are effected - something I just feel is super strange and why I wanted to send you not only the lot but my foundation and walls files that include the required exemplars.  Retaining walls work fine on both X and Y axis applications.

The attached pic shows the same lot with the same texture, although configured as a retaining wall, applied accordingly and you see the difference in the results. 

[JulianMIA 1,476]

I've had a long running problem with lot foundation textures being stretched incorrectly when lots were placed in a certain direction.  To keep it simple I'll say that when the lot is placed east-west, the foundation texture always displays properly, but if the same lot (or almost any lot) is placed north-south, the lot foundation texture will take the single tile's worth of texture and stretch it for however many tiles is the size of the lot.  

I've included pics that demonstrate:  Pic 1 just shows properly working lots, because they are placed east-west, the lower 'wall' is something I use a lot of, I call them 'liner' or 'framing' walls.  The shorter upper wall is actually the lot foundation of the buildings, all are lot foundations, 3 different lots, 3 different buildings, all placed EAST-WEST and they work fine.  Pic 2 shows another of these liner walls, a lot again placed east-west and it displays the lot foundation texture correctly.  Pic 3 is the same lot but placed north-south and you can see that the lot foundation texture is stretched out - I don't remember the tile-length of the lot but it is probably about 8 tiles - and you can see the texture being stretched somewhere about 8.  This problem essentially ruins the use of any of the liner/framing lots I like to use - a real bummer.

So I tried to examine lot settings, messed around with FoundationSideTexture(Size) in the lot and building exemplars, even experimented with the foundation texture exemplar itself - nothing worked.  Interesting note is that the same lot and same texture when placed in a situation that produces a retaining wall instead of a lot foundation works properly on north-south (and east-west also) - retaining walls are unaffected with this issue, only the lot foundation of most lots when placed north-south have this problem.  And I tried like 50 lots and they all do the same thing when placed north-south.

Then by accident I was plopping a 3x3 park lot, the NDEX Konietzko Fountain park, and realized that it was on a north-south axis and yet the lot foundation displayed correctly.  So I started studying this lot.  Pic 4 shows the 3x3 lot with it's original lot foundation which I think is just the maxis default on the right, then on the left I applied a different texture which I had been having the stretching problem with - but it displayed correctly and did not stretch.

So I thought I could just adapt that lot.  What I found however was that when that particular building was changed out for another building the stretching problem returned and so after further study I realize that it seems to be the building having a dimension large enough to need 3 tiles that resulted in a lot foundation texture being displayed north-south properly (again it always works fine east-west anyway with any lot and any building).  So then I tried changing the dimensions of the little blank non-descript park building that I had been using on these liner/framing lots (used because it does not appear or take up space) but that did not work.  Then I tried changing the NDEX lot from a 3x3 to a 4x3 and altering the building length to require 4 tiles.  But that did not work either, it still stretched.

Pics 5 and 6 show the behavior.  Pic 5 - the original lot modified to a 6x3:  the lot foundation texture is stretched only x 2 because it is allowing it to be displayed properly for the original 3 but then stretched so that the 3 tiles' worth now cover 6 tiles - this despite my having changed the building length to 88m which would require a lot length of 6 tiles to accomodate.  Pic 6 - the NDEX building swapped out for the blank park building but also with a dimension of 88m length needing 6 tiles.  But now the lot foundation texture is stretched x 6 instead of x 2.

So somehow this NDEX Koneitzko Fountain building is allowing a north-south axis lot foundation texture to be displayed properly for 3 tiles.  But not for more.  I don't know what else to try, I do not know enough about the relationship between the building, the model file, or whatever else might be connected to this problem.

My goal is to understand how to have a blank building that can be shortened and lengthened and what all the settings are that when set properly, will allow lot foundations on my liner/framing lots (and in fact any lot) to display correctly when placed north-south.

Another interesting thing:  if you have a lot placed east-west, say it's 3x1 the 3 being east-west, you get another aspect of the north-south problem.  If the foundation side ends up being seen then you can see that the game is not stretching the texture but rather is doubling (or tripling or quadrupling etc) up the 1 tile that is north-south.  Pic 7 shows this.  If you look at the wall behind the right-most tunnel portal you'll see it's the same texture as the long walls from Pic 1 - but because it is the north-south side of the lot, it's a 3x1 lot I think, and instead of stretching it, it actually takes 3 tiles worth of the normal texture and compresses it to display within one tile.  So the north-south just has strange ways of displaying lot foundation textures which east-west foundations do not have.

Hoping someone much more knowledgeable about buildings might be able to help figure this out

[rsc204 21,821]

@JulianMIA So I think we first discussed this issue in like 2018, sorry I couldn't respond when you last brought it up.

Anyhow, I can't be sure it will help, but I have found a few alternative properties that are very similar to those used in a Foundation Exemplar.

Specifically the two highlighted, seems to give an alternative option for Top Textures, which presumably is another Axis from Side Textures? Not sure if you want a second set of textures for it, I just copy/pasted the properties to make a screenshot. Anyhow, when I came across this I immediately thought of your problem, at least it's somewhere to start poking around.

[JulianMIA 1,476]

11 hours ago, rsc204 said:

@JulianMIA So I think we first discussed this issue in like 2018, sorry I couldn't respond when you last brought it up.

Anyhow, I can't be sure it will help, but I have found a few alternative properties that are very similar to those used in a Foundation Exemplar.

Specifically the two highlighted, seems to give an alternative option for Top Textures, which presumably is another Axis from Side Textures? Not sure if you want a second set of textures for it, I just copy/pasted the properties to make a screenshot. Anyhow, when I came across this I immediately thought of your problem, at least it's somewhere to start poking around.

Hey @rsc204, thanks for the note.  I will definitely see what happens with this, I feel like I may have tried or possibly just seen it and ignored it - because it said TOP instead of SIDE.  Thinking that my problem resolved around one side or the other side but not the top.  I just started back to sc4 again and the problem still exists so thanks for this, I'll give it a try!

[Lab Rat 14]

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