dcbenji

I know you're still figuring things out and experimenting, but as you start to draw some solid conclusions can you consolidate what you have learned in a concise list so that I can incorporate it into part of the SimCity Guide To Custom Creations videos? I asked Ryan about the "special" 8th row. If I can figure that out and also highlight the discoveries you have made discovered I think that would be helpful information to everyone so they don't have to read this entire thread to get caught up.

Well I've shared just about everything I can think of that I've learned. So we're learning together now! I wouldn't try to rush to get a palette released. For what its worth, I think you should make sure it really adds value to the buildings and is a beautiful new creative option

Boy you are really going to town with this! " started to ponder what happen if you blend the boxes of colors if you would get blended color houses." You can blend between the pixels within a block of the palette by using the color control map (or so I'm told anyway). Most of the time the color control maps have areas of pure Red, Green, or Blue. But if there were a "purple" area (like we have talked about before) that material would be assigned a mixed value of the R & B pixels of the palette block. "Since well 1pt on my tools is equal to a pixel and you cannot take the paint tools below that as far as I know. " I'm not sure how to use the program you are using. If you are trying to lower the Opacity of the pixels -- the way they are in the unaltered palettes--the way I go about it is: 1. Delete the pixels that you want to change, from say the Red quadrants down a column 2. Create a new layer 3. In this new blank and transparent layer, add your new color to the pixel areas where you deleted them 4. Change the opacity of the new *layer* 5. Repeat steps 1-4 for the next set of pixels (say the "green" pixels going down the same column) 6. When finished, export the file as PNG. The program should merge the layers. Just make sure you delete the pixels you are trying to replace on the original layer each time, otherwise the opacities will merge and you won't get the transparency that you are trying to set. "So now in theory sim city should pick up this wooden wall in the game. " I'm not sure if this will work. For this experiment, first make sure you put your replacement wood texture you are trying to use in the Color Control Map *not* the other maps. For the portions of the Normal Map and the Shader Map I would simply fill the area with all pink and all green (same colors as are in the background colors of those maps). The reason for this is that the data in these maps is generated by taking a 3D wood element for example, and rendering its shadows and depth. By you placing your wood texture into those maps you are telling the game to render those depth and shadow effects based on the way the wood image looks which won't work at all (and will give you some really fraked up results). Second, in order to use your Color Control Map as an "identity" (i.e. what you see in the Conrol Map is what you get on your building) you need to put 100% Red, Green, and Blue into there respective areas in all the columns of the color palette (or at least the ones you have identified for the building you are working with). You may also need to match the opacity values that are in the original palettes that I mentioned, I'm not sure. Also, I just thought about this today: to help remove the variables during experimentation what about playing with the color palettes for a landmark? Since there is only 1 landmark you should get direct feedback without having to hunt through different buildings. I'm not sure if the landmarks share a palette or they each have their own. Would be interesting to see. You won't get to experiment with the RCI randomization, but you should get some clarity on whether or not you need to keep loading new cities to see if the houses are being "stubborn" or your new textures aren't being loaded properly. -benji

Thanks, the only step I can think of that I am missing is that I do not include the OBJ file in my export/import. However, if my zip file doesn't contain the OBJ file I'd assume SimCity would just go ahead and use the OBJ file that is already in the game. In reality, all of these assets don't actually exists "together", it is SimCityPak that consolidates them for easier access. Anyway, everything else I was doing exactly as you say from the beginning, but perhaps exporting the OBJ as well makes a difference. Thanks for going into such detail, Ill probably mess with this some more tomorrow. -benji

*Export all materials form simcitypak *export all those sim materials into a specific file that you create for your projects, this would include your modified .PNG color pallete. *compress the file a second file should show up with a second file on your screen. *Take the second file and put it in your sims city data folder, do not take the steps to unzip the package. I forgot to mention unzipping I believe is only something you do online when you are recieving a file from another computer source. *Set the file were you said along side the other unzipped mods you may have * open up a new sim city game, (basically make sure you are not running sim city while transfering this stuff) and you should see your new stuff well if your sims are not picky.( you may possibly have to make a new tester region to see results) *The other thing though I am not sure if this has much to do with anything but the second folder that you add to your simcity data folder. My "house" file or whatever the file name is that you choosen, has in my cases always ended up at the top above all the other origional sim data stuff, just the same as what would happen if you put a new zip mod file in. **let me know if this works for you if not, I'll try to show screen shots of how I am doing this. Since I do not know how to work with youTube videos. It appears I am doing everything correctly. Are you doing any special compression on the files? Just a standard .zip file correct? I tried changing ALL the palette colors to purple, but the W2D1 houses all stayed the same. Yes, a couple of screenshots would be helpful. thanks for your help, I'll trouble shoot tomorrow. -benji

I see where are coming from. However the "flat blocks" do have textures. A material set is made up of Specular Map, Depth Map, Normal Map & Ambient Occlusion in addition to reflection properties, custom environment mapping, and light emission -- all of which give the materials detail other than simply the color that is assigned from the palette. For example, A wall made of wood planks has little grooves where the slats come together defined by the normal map & a metal roof has long shingles that recess into the mesh using the relief mapping technique. What's cool is that the color is independent of the textures so you can apply the materials within a Material Set to different parts of buildings and get variation amongst models of the same type in addition to the variation between models of different types just by using the color palette effectively. A material Set can contain Multiple windows and doors which can be used on some models and not used on others. It's done for efficiency, but the creative options within the "constraints" are plentiful and exist within a pretty sweet rendering engine so the houses and buildings end up looking awesome IMO. Although if this is a SC4 vs SC13 discussion I'm not interested. Its a different aesthetic altogether. If you don't dig it you don't dig it.

I'm still not doing something right when exporting and trying to import my color palette. Do you have to also zip up the OBJ file with the rest of the Material Set assets and color palette? Here's what I'm doing: 1. Export materials from SimCityPak 2. Modify the PNG file (the palette) 3. Zip up the modified palette with the rest of the material images into a .zip file called "PALETTEADJUST" 4. Drop this .zip file into the SimCity Data folder along side the package files that are in there What am i doing wrong? -benji

Got it, thanks! A little confusing but I figured it out. I can confirm that all of the colors in the unmodified color palette are at least partially transparent. The opacity values seem to be the same in every block: Upper Left (red tint): 82% opacity Lower left (green tint): 77% opacity Upper Right & Lower right (blue tint): 97% opacity The pixels in all of the blocks of the 8th row are: Upper Left: 4% opacity, green Lower Left: 5% opacity, green Right two pixels: 2%, green All of the quadrants of the "special" 8th row blocks are assigned 100% green (255), 0 Red, 0 Blue. It is the alpha/opacity of these pixels that determines the "special" effects. The opacity and tint values are not the same in the 8th row of every palette however. Take a look at a section from this palette (I can't remember where this palette came from): Here there are some darker pixels in the "blue" quadrants of the special effect blocks. These pixels are still assigned 100% green, but their opacity values are much higher (81% for the two on the left, 71% for the one on the right). Next step is to figure out what special effect is assigned to which quadrant.

How I have done this is that i used simpack to open the files up , then I have taken the folder that i have put all these files the obj, materials pages, and color pallete into. Then I compressed the file, I take that compressed file and put it into my game data folder like you do other mods. I do not import this file back into simcitypack. The reason I do not import it back is because sim city pack has not given us way to do this with the color pallete as far as I can tell. So basically I am rewritting over the program making my own folder and mod. I pretty much stop using simpak after I opened up the files I wanted and exported them to a specific folder, the rest is up to compressing and zip. btw I have to laugh a bit that above picture in neon green and blues are killing my little eyeballs. "I use SimPak to open the files up" What "files", all you need is the .PNG file which is the palette. Do you export all the materials? When you compress them to a zip folder, do you just drop this zip folder into the SimCity Data folder? I thought it had to be in a .package file to work?

I think I know what happened. Take a look at this image. This is the color palette after being converted to .BMP. Remember that the .BMP file doesn't carry an alpha channel as the .PNG fire does, so during conversion all the alpha was filled with white. Column 1 is all blue because it is the column I was experimenting with, similar to your experiments -- trying to see where this color is being applied. Now look closely at the 8th row. You'll different shades of a very faint green. Normally the 8th row appears black or transparent because these colors are so faint here, but here with white behind them you can see a hint of color. Remember that the 8th row defines special properties: reflectance, emissiveness, and environment mapping. When these pixels got filled with all white it pushed these values up to 100%. So in the crazy image with the green houses and super bright windows I think either the reflection of the windows is turned up super high or they are emitting tons of light from their interior maps. I'm not sure what "emissivness" means if it is not tied in to the light emitted by the interior maps. I tried making the 8th row 100% black, but I got the exact same result. Which tells me that perhaps it is the transparency assigned to the pixels within the 8th row blocks that determines the amount of each "special" property, along with perhaps some color tinting. Not sure what the "green" tinting in the 8th row is exactly, though as you can see a lot of the buildings turned super bright green!

It appears as if SimCityPak will only except a .BMP file when I try to import my modified PNG palette. So, in photoshop, i converted my modified palette to .BMP and look what happened to the buildings (see attached image). Pretty crazy! This must be due to the compression. Also, when I open the .PNG in photo shop I notice that all of the colors in the palette are semi-transparent. Perhaps this has something to do with the "blending" algorithm. So how have you been importing your modified PNGs?

Also, can you please tell me how you are going about replacing the game palette with your modified version? How do you import the modified palette back into SimCityPak?

"going along with the idea that colors only affect the mesh used" Yes, the color palette only effects the unique models that it is assigned to. It is possible that the same color palettes could be assigned to a different building style (W2D3 for example), but I do not think this is the case. "there was no lavender that I could find" As the lighting effects the shade of the colors throughout the day, you'd probably do better to pick colors that are completely different rather than the 3 different shades of pink you've got going on. That makes it really hard to tell if your experiments are working. If you're going for a pink house, maybe check out "Adobe Kuler" and pick a color scheme there that goes with pink but that has colors that are a little more different from each other. Just a thought anyway. "The first image has no satellite dish instead an antenna, which in some ways is still same design but with the extra feature in my head seems to say this is a different type of mesh." If the mesh is identical except for the satellite dish, I would say that the satellite dish is a "prop" or extra facade element that is assigned to the building either randomly or via some other parameter. Perhaps similar to how futurized buildings get different futurized element attachments between buildings of the same model. -benji

Great discoveries! I would bet that house doesn't use every column of the palette. The other columns are probably reserved for other W2D1 buildings, so you probably don't have much farther to go before you know whAt column each material on that particular house gets assigned. -benji

Really impressed with your experiments. For me this stuff was just true "in theory", but its really cool to see what I learned about the color palette actually being tested. "Though still no matter what blue it came out if followed the trend of blue walls and a white trim" It sounds like you've identified the column that the walls and trim are getting their colors from. If you want to control the color of these materials. simply make every block in this column have the same 3 colors in the same quadrants of each block. "I will rotate the white and blue in the nest grouping under column 1" What is the "nest grouping"... a block? In each column there are 7 blocks. There are 4 pixels in each block. Each pixel within a block is a usually different color, except for the right 2 pixels - which are and should always be the same color. " the trim still maintained to stay white" Sounds like you've got to narrow down what color on the color control map defines the trim color. Don't forget that the right two pixels BOTH define the blue portion of the material on the color control map. Because of the way the game samples the palette, sometimes it will get the blue color from the upper right and sometimes it will get it from the lower right. So to be sure you are consistent you've got to put the same color in BOTH quadrants. In your checkerboard, you've got blue in the upper right and white in the lower right. If the trim is in fact assigned from a blue on the color control map, this would explain the alternating trim color you are getting. Or, like you said, if every block in the column isn't the same then that building may have spawned using a different (unmodified) block. Though I noticed that you just blacked out all the other blocks, which is probably a good way of doing these tests (although I'm not completely sure how exactly the game engine treats the "black" pixels. I'm guessing it just ignores them?) " I can only imagine at moment with the way we have to do this of what it would take to alter a whole city" I totally agree, it doesn't make much sense from a design perspective to go around to different buildings trying to guess which column every material gets assigned. Its way easier to start with an untextured building and assign the columns & materials yourself. If only we had some working tools "once again I will be continuing with my checker pattern. " Like i said, to get consistent results you need your experiments to include the SAME color in the two right pixels of a block. Each block can have different colors if you're experimenting with variation or whatever but the two right pixels within a block should be the same color or you will get color alteration that will confuse you. "Such as my yellow house becoming more of a mustard yellow, than a sun yellow. " I think this may have to do with the pre-processing that Ryan mentioned and how you are limited to somewhat "darker" colors. "however it would only one model design out of how many in sim city" If it is any encouragement, In SimCityPak I counted about 13 total models of shotgun shacks. So its not like there is an unwieldy amount, but its still very annoying from a design standpoint if you are attempting a re-color on all of them.