Ryno917

OK, so if I'm understanding correctly, all maps for a detail level must be the same size, but you do not need to have the same maps for each detail level? (So, deleting the alpha map from my LOD is fine, but having it at a different size is not). I'll make that change and test to verify. I was thinking last night, though, that I want to remake my LOD model anyways. It's not nearly as low poly as it should be and that's because I Wanted to cut corners and use the same diffuse texture. I'll remake the LOD and make a new texture for it and then I'll upload. Maybe today or tomorrow, depending on some other things I need to get finished. Thanks for all the help!

All the maps are there, except for the colour map. Do I need to throw a dummy texture in there? Do all of the maps need to be the same size? My LOD alpha map is just a small solid white square to reduce file size, whereas the rest of the LOD maps are 256.

Took a few screenshots of the building today thanks to Bo's tips. I see today that I'm getting an error, though. Any idea what's going on there? There is a full compliment of LOD files (and the LOD appears in the asset editor when zooming out).

I need to solve my scale issues on import - still haven't gotten it sorted. Once I'm done with that, I'll package it up and upload. Are you referring to the black areas between windows on the second building? They are actually physically 'raised' from the glass, but just not high enough to be noticeable it seems. I'll increase the offset to make them more pronounced. There is a normal map for the surface but at this angle of light it's not picked up well.

Beauty. Thanks Bo! I should have the building uploaded tomorrow.

Thanks! And for the last question before release (I think) what's the best way to get pictures of a growable building? Since I rebuilt my PC I don't even have a city anymore, and even then I'd need to wait for it to grow in my city. Any tips from the pros to expedite the process of getting good in-situ screenshots?

Small update on the second building - all that's left is to make the illumination maps, place props and that should cover it. It's the International Secret Intelligence Service building from the TV show Archer. The super yellow of the default game ruins the colouring of it quite a bit. Is there any way to change that while still having mods disabled? My asset editor doesn't load unless I have mods disabled so I can't run colour correction.

Question on the parks with 0 visitors thing - do they still give the 'park effect' or are they 100% aesthetic?

Oh yes. Yes yes yes yes yes. This is awesome.

Well damn. That's what I get for spending more time browsing assets and the like than actually playing. Thanks!

Looks pretty nice for a 'broken' city! What's the big building in the bottom of the first image? Looks like a nice library or theatre of some sort.

10 Pounds? Absolutely. For recommendations, check out Shroomblaze's collections on the Steam Workshop - he's gathered a lot of high quality addons and mods that you will likely find intriguing/useful.

Busy times lately with the holidays, but I've made a bit of progress on my second project. Main model is finished, just working on the textures now, and then I'll work on the LOD. Anyone recognize it?

Damn, sorry to hear that. My power supply went a few months back and took my MB and CPU with it - luckily my brand new GTX970 wasn't affected. Wound up spending $1100 on new parts so the rebuild became a substantial upgrade over my old machine - silver linings, and all that.

I like your modular idea - sounds very cool! I guess the plan is to have a certain connector/detail in the same spot on every lot so that when they grow next to each other, the details line up and make it look like one large structure? Very cool idea. Anxious to see what you come up with!

I'm assuming the reference design eschewed the realities of HVAC and other details for the sake of concept - but in my head I'm justifying it by calling it a loft style condo with exposed ducting hanging from the ceiling and conduit mounted to the concrete. It's enough to give it a pass for me, at least I'm an Industrial Designer by trade in real life, and I typically fall on the more technical side of things, so I do notice when something isn't right 'for the sake of concept' as well. Anything I design will have more attention paid to being proper in this regard. IIRC I made each story 4m tall, but I need to double check - I did revise my heights at one point because it was getting away from the original proportions of the building, so I had to wiggle a few things to meet the requirements of the game (grid size), original concept and plausible real-world dimensions. RE: You're point "Second..." are you suggesting that the window framing be on a separate mesh 'above' the glass proper? That's the way I currently have it set up - though I should probably beef up the thickness of it a bit because at anything other than a close angle it disappears. Plus the normal map would probably perform better with it a bit thicker. A single window pane on the 2048 texture is 27x109 pixels (not including the black framing, just the window pane itself). Like I said, the UV mapping is seriously sub-optimal. I should probably redo it all, to be perfectly honest, but at this point I'd rather turn to a 'virgin' project where I can concentrate on just not repeating those same mistakes from the beginning. When I started this building I didn't really plan my UV out, and I kept all of it in the same scale - were I to do it again, I'd make more use of repeating/tiling elements and make less important features smaller on the UV to give me more room for the important details where it makes sense to do so. Your final suggestion was my original idea/intent, but I abandoned it because of the pattern is actually non-repeating. I thought about doing it with overlapping UVs and just making the pattern (lighter) windows as a separate mesh, but that would eliminate variation and full-floor illumination for the night lighting. I have another building in the works right now, though, which will definitely make overlapping UVs a possibility, and I have some ideas already of how to maximize the texture space used. It's going to be a lot better in that regard - I'm just having some trouble finding good references for it, so I've taken a few liberties in a couple areas.

As long as you are creating everything yourself, you should be fine.

Thanks! I've just recently begun having a scale issue which was not present before. The 3d model is exactly 16m wide. It used to import properly, but then I made a change to the model and saved it out as a new file, and ever since then it imports incorrectly (it actually imports just smaller than one tile, the image shows it scaled to 200% when imported into the editor). As far as I can tell, my units and scene settings in 3DS are the same as they always were (and it's set up as per Shroomblaze's recommendations in his Asset 101 guide). I can't for the life of me figure out why it no longer imports properly. It is definitely intended to be a pure W2W though, for sure, and I'll get that sorted before I release it. I'll look into the colour issue. I'll doublecheck the diffuse map to make sure there's no red hue to it, and I'm 90% sure I had turned off the colour options in the asset editor as I don't intend for the building to have colour variations (this time). So do you mean that the 'floors' are on the same mesh as the window frame in your suggestion? I tried to just show them through colour on the window mesh - since it is technically behind the glass anyways. Currently the frame is on a separate mesh a couple cm above the window panes, but I could move the 'floors' to that mesh as well - but then I'll run into that ugly specular issue. I like the idea of generating the pattern in the windows by manipulating the spec map. Hadn't thought of that. I'll play with a few things and report back. As for the nightlights, I believe the original design is that the entire floor is one room (well, at least the main part, balconies may come off a seperate room) so I currently have been taking that approach with my nightlights (which I'm not showing yet as they need a lot of work). The UV mapping on this model is not very good - almost all of it is mapped in full, not making use of repeating textures. That was a conscious choice because of the window pattern and full-floor rooms to be lit at night. The textures are currently 2048 because of that, unfortunately. I'm sure there's a more effective way I could have UVd it, but it's my first rodeo - I will improve on this. Another 'issue' I'm having is that of visual scale - the ceilings are high on each floor, and I'm getting concerned that it's making the building just look out of scale. Any thoughts on that?

Rights are a massive grey area, and 10 different lawyers will give you 10 different answers. When it comes to something like this (recreating an asset for free as a free mod for a videogame) generally speaking you'll be in the clear. The worst that will happen is that someone representing Disney will demand you take it down (and that's very rare).. But even then, it's a grey area. Copyright only covers the expression of an idea, not the idea itself. Most recreations (especially fan art) would be considered a unique expression of the same idea.

Thanks! I'll make a new thread for my works where we can discuss this further - to keep from clogging up this resource thread

It's actually black - not a colour, just really dark. But with a specular it's all washed out and light. Looks terrible.

Great stuff in here, thanks for compiling it all together! One thing I'm struggling with right now... any tips on coloured windows? The building I'm working on has a pattern in its windows, where some are lighter and some darker, but with a specular it gets so bleached out that it just looks terrible in game. I've gone as low as 15% and it's still bleached out, but there's almost no reflections.

So I've finally started learning 3DS, and I'm trying to make a building for C:S. I've done the model (for now using the main model as LOD as well - it's only some 300 polys) and the textures, exported as FBX, but the asset editor just simply crashes immediately when I click on the FBX to import. - I've tried FBX 2013 and 2014, binary - I'm running 3DS 2014 - all 'tags' on images files and lod are lowercase - units in 3DS are set up as per Shroomblaze's tutorial - pivot is rotated so Y is up - FBX export settings left at their defaults (don't know what most of it is) - UV information is all positive coords - Textures are 8bit I do not have a colour mask or alpha mask texture as they will not be used - do I need a dummy texture to get it to load? I've gone through all the tutorials I can find and I can't find any reason (yet) why the editor crashes when trying to import the .FBX. Any thoughts/ideas?

My first steps with 3DS and C:S modding. Lots to improve on, but we all need to start somewhere. Based on this: http://jinkazamah.deviantart.com/art/office-building-205907994

Just ran it with the launch commands '--noWorkshop' and '--disableMods' and it loads just fine. Sigh. Kicking myself that I didn't just try that earlier. That's like game troubleshooting 101 right there. Alright, well, at least I know I did the rest of it right! Need to heavily tweak my specular map and then play around with a few things (and find my notes on my dimensions for the floors so I can set them properly!). Thanks for the help!