PaulJChris

For a while now, whenever i get the urge to create some buildings for City skylines , I usually start with enthusiasm and then wane when I remember how much work each one takes. I have been furloughed from work so have some free time. I wanted to create a tool that can help to create building assets more quickly , deal with the texture /UV process more intuitively and allow the quick creation of wealth level variants for the same building running of the same texture map, or quickly create variations of the same building to fill all the 12 different lot size permutations also while running from the same texture map. Previously using 3DSmax to model I have been learning Houdini to try to apply its considerable workflow optimizations from working procedurally to City Skylines asset building creation. So far I have a working beta tool that will: 1/ Allow you to draw any desired size or shaped building footprint 2/ Set the number of floors and height of each floor 3/ Divide each segment of wall for each floor into as many or few modules as required 4/ Automatically create a realistic pitched roof model for any size of building or switch to a flat roof At the moment this allows you to quickly create an un-textured 3d building model and export it in OBJ format as well as quickly creating variations. Due to the procedural nature of Houdini , any of these steps can be changed throughout the process, so if you say go back to step one and change the shape of the building , all the rest of the following steps will change immediately to reflect your changes. The further development will be to: 1/ Add an interface to allow the user to import custom sub meshes copying them to each coloured segment preserving their uvs and texture if provided. Each segment of the same colour is the same size and will have exactly packed UVs. You will either be able to provide sub modules that precisely fit the footprint you have drawn or the tool will dynamically re-scale your modules to fit the template you have produced. Think mix and match from difference building models, take the door module from one building ,add a window module from another etc . I have lots of old models that could be broken up into submodels and quickly turned into something new with this. 2/ auto Fuse duplicated points to optimize for low poly demands of Skylines 2/ Auto resolve the UV packing of all the supplied modules and allow the user control over the UV size weighting to the results can be seen in real time. The user can then judge the texel density (texture quality)/ detail trade off much more quickly. Houdini absolutely excels at this because of its procedural nature. Anyone interested in testing this early beta to provide some feedback and influence the ongoing development , especially any asset creators out there please let me know here in this thread and I will send you the Houdini file to test. You do not need to be an expert in Houdini to load this tool and play around with a few sliders. Houdini apprentice edition is a free download from SideFX website :https://www.sidefx.com/buy/#houdini0 Once installed you will need to add the game dev LABS toolset from within the application which this tool makes use of , short step by step video on how exactly how to do this here :

I thought I would start a thread to showcase this imaginary full 18 layout I built for my city. I know there are some great golf assets out there and some really cool looking courses so post them here. I will start by sharing my effort: Take a virtual tour by hole by following the spoilers below: Hole 1

Small UK style light industrial town I started working on ....

Hi ladies and gents. I am a reasonably experienced asset maker with around 100 models built for Cities XXL. Sadly the game is no longer supported , the player base has dwindled and what is achievable by modding in that game appears to have reached its limits. I bought Skylines upon release but neglected to note the system requirements ( 64bit only) so could not play it for nearly a year until upgrading to a decent modern PC which I now have. I suppose I am looking for a new home. I have several hundred hours experience in 3dsmax and have recently gravitated towards Substance Painter and Substance Designer for texturing as the system is faster and more intuitive for me and enables the creation of all the required maps in one go rather than making them individually in PS which I used to do. I have some limited programming experience but am not up to speed with C# . I am however motivated to learn enough to be productive on the modding side as I can see great potential for Skylines in the years ahead. About 6 weeks ago I revisited Skylines and also reviewed what has been achieved by the modding community since release. Simply amazing. Also the quality of the user made assets appears to be rising continually. This has inspired me to seriously re- engage with the game. I have out around 90 hours play so far and have grown cities to 100K so I have reasonable grasp of the game dynamics but am not an expert. I got fed up with vanilla after about 30K and started introducing mods, mainly the gameplay ones such Move It, Road anarchy , Find it, RICO etc . I am now at the stage where I want to move more towards realism as my instincts are more in the City painter camp hence my interest in making assets. I have studied most of the tutorials on asset creation and have learned a lot, I have also read through a number of prominent modders threads on here noting their progression from their first attempts to the amazing stuff more recently created. I recognize a few names on here from Xlnation . I wonder if I could start by importing some of my CitiesXXL assets into Skylines?. Anyone else done this and can pass on any knowledge/tips before I start would be appreciated. Is it worth the effort or is it better to start from scratch? I obviously already have all the 3DSmax files and textures , it would seem that the Cities XXL lod 4 can be re -used as it carries the same target spec ( ie less than 100 triangles). Then a case of choosing which of the 3 other Lods to use for the main model. Then striping out the bases of the XXL models as not required in C:S . Then redoing the nightlighting to comply with the C:S standard. Will mostly need to be RICO stuff i think, most of my existing models do not have a multiple of 8M footprint, some are at the CXL standard of 40m x 40m (5 x 5 in skylines language). You can review my back catalogue here http://xlnation.city/resources/authors/pauljchris.19/ to see if there are any models in there that people would like to see in Cities Skylines and I will attempt some conversion work before I move on to making fresh stuff. Please bear in mind that some of my earliest work is of lesser quality, I like to think I improved a bit with practice over time. Thanks for reading . I hope to be able to get up to speed with C:S and to be in a position to contribute something decent for the community fairly soon. Regards PJC

Variant terrace of 8 model now added to the workshop with no front gardens and some rendered facades to give a bit of variety and help to create that narrow street ambiance typical of Victorian era built streets in the UK. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1288535953

Terrace of 6 Victorian Houses now uploaded to the Steam workshop. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1286838119

That's a good idea , I will probably go with that. Most of the props I plan to use are also in the UK houses by MacWelshman so people who like this sort of stuff will probably already be subscribed to most of them. Would it be worthwhile to chop off 1 tile of the back gardens to make them 5 x 4 ( still Rico only) to match the depth of growable 4 x4s , or will a 5 x 5 be ok , particularly if I import the other 5 model sets in the series at thi size? If I do make a smaller growable versions , do I still have to make L1, L2 , L3 , L4 , L5 identical copies of the same house to keep them in place as they level up or do people just use the level suppression mods? 4 duplicated models for the higher levels , although not too hard to make , does seem like a terrible waste of game resources to me.

After a small break from CS modding due to RL commitments, I have found the motivation to get back into the saddle. First thing was to fix all the procedural objects I have made for the game. Since the last update to the Procedural objects mod, all my assets were no longer selectable by the player in game so became useless overnight! The joy of dealing with a modable game and these are only static assets. My sympathy to those who actually code mods and have them break by official updates. So I spent 2 days re - authoring all the procedural assets and updating them so they now work. While doing so I found the UK terraced houses models I did for CXL requested by Sparks earlier in the thread, these were my first ever publically released 3 models mods back in the day so a bit nostalgic for me so I thought I would bring these into the game and update them while doing so. First images after porting model in Skylines. Still some work to do, being CXL models they are 5 X 5 so would have to be RICO unless I chop them to a terrace of 4 and make them growable. Also need to work on the back fences, is it still ok to use a lot of props from the workshop to embellish them? Any ideas for this design appreciated , after this I have 4 other different Victorian terraces to import at similar 5 x 5 footprint.

Was trying to detail my golf course with hole number boards but did not want to make 18 copies of the same thing just with a different number so I quickly made this pack of procedural numbers and letters to enable procedural numeric or alphabetic detailing. Uploaded to the workshop just in case anyone else can make some use of them. They can potentially be used in a wide variety of situations (custom road and runway markings, platform numbers, helicopter pads , Hollywood type hillside signs etc, etc) if you are into adding extra details and have a bit of patience. The linear letters can also be stretched out infinitely as an alternative to the Prop Line tool where for example one stretched out letter "I" could replace numerous individual line decal assets to save performance. Procedural objects are ignored by the game engine in terms of counting towards the total count which is quite handy if you are close to the limit. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1139717359

Driving range now published to the workshop http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1139070561

I am having fun trying to build a full golf course with my newly published creator but I missed my driving range from CXL because it was modelled at 1-1 scale as opposed to the scaled back vanilla range so with some fiddling about with sub buildings I managed to bring it into skylines. Can be useful as part of a golf course complex as in these screen shots but I also thought it might be useful as a standalone leisure facility in a more urban setting.

The golf course creator is released to the workshop http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1134520715

Pack I think is done. In the end I made a par 3 , par 4 and par 5 straight hole template and 2 procedural bunkers (5 models in all but still very light at 4MB total download. This is my first attempt at a realistic par (long hole) 460m par 5 and it turned out ok I think. The best part of this set apart from it lightness of resource is the fact that it can handle changes in elevation which makes for more realistic layouts iMHO having played a bit of golf in my younger days. This hole took about 20 mins to make starting from a dead straight procedural asset template. Things like green shape and tee box size and position can also be adjusted while in the game. The bunkers are dropped in over the top , they can also have their shape and size altered.

Decided to take a break from CXL importing and make something new for a change . I wanted a golf course so I downloaded the existing one from the workshop which is very good indeed but weighs in at 45MB. This prototype procedural golf hole can be made in to any shape , lengthened , shortened , curved , whatever shape hole you want basically and comes in a 600k. Still need to refine the textures but this is a working prototype so good progress so far.

The old city walls set are now uploaded to the workshop ( 6 asset pack ) . The procedural asset mod really allows these to work, they didn't really take off in CXL because of problems with placement, I hope they fare better in Skylines world. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1128258543

Next up the medieval city walls loosely based on those at Avignon in France as requested earlier in the thread. First import turned out not so bad. 4 procedural props in this set , wall section, gate house, square tower, round tower all designed to be placed together for maximum flexibility of layout. It actually looks better than it does in Cities XL due to the better lighting system in Skylines.

One last one added ( saving the best til last) to the workshop today. Another old stone rail bridge which can also carry roads. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1127120167

4 procedural prop bridges (3 stone and 1 rail) now released to the workshop. http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126712070 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126717533 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126716539 http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1126719231

Thanks for your positive comment. With regard to the width of the bridges , the whole point is that they are all made as procedural objects so the width can be adjusted by the player dynamically while in game to take any type of road or rail road in the game from a pedestrian path up to a highway. This adds a lot of versatility to the models at the expense of being a little bit more fiddly to place as the procedural objects mod interface takes a little bit of practise to get used to.

latest bridge here - I hope to release them over the weekend at some point

I wont release another version to the workshop with just a slightly lighter texture but I am happy to upload my original source diffuse map from the CXL model here and you can then adjust it to your hearts content in PS or similar. Then unpack the asset, replace the diffuse map remembering to keep the file name the same as the original , then resave a local copy of the asset for your personal use just as Darf has done. Alternatively I am ok with Darf sharing his adapted diffuse version with you if he is happy to do so.

Release candidate:

Thank you so much Avanya and Darf for your help. The template I was using had a red variation which I was fighting against - doh . Now I know this easy to adjust properly in PS to this result which i am much happier with

good result there and very nice picture , I see what you mean about being too dark, perhaps I went a bit too far on that model , I will bear this in mind for future although I think that is just a touch light but its personal taste at the end of the day.

ah good idea thanks , I had not thought to check that