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

I think this one sums up the core concepts need to understanding how buildings are put together. Hopefully this will speed people along in developing custom models for the game! Learn how colors are applied to materials in the latest episode of SimCity Guide to Custom Creations:

*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.

Sounds cool, keep it up!

Remember back in July when this Maxis Questionare was released regarding future SimCity content? The most obvious of the items in question that were eventually brought to the game are the "SuperScrapers" in the SOT Expansion as well as European buildings. But one of the options that really caught my eye is the proposal for a "SimCity Exchange": "Download millions of creations to plug into your city from the SimCity Exchange. Build your own content using the same tools as Maxis, then upload your creations for millions to use. Buildings, Vehicles, Lots, Cities, Regionn Maps and more are available" Though this hasn't made it as a feature, it proves that Maxis doesn't consider it out of the question to supply us with some of their in-house custom creation tools. Attached is an image of one of the tools Maxis uses to apply materials to buildings. I wrote this on the Guild wall, but i thought it worth posting in this thread as well regarding this same toppic: In considering the amount of content in the game, how smoothly it works now (more or less like it should) and finally how addictive it is -- especially when you first begin to play; I'd say the game stands a chance to have at least few new waves of discovery. Like I said, the launch was shrouded in darkness. But whenever I show someone a cool clip or screenshot from the game who hasn't seen it before, they're usually pretty blown away. Then again, there is that "New" factor that plays a roll in people's interest and the ability of the game to "go viral" again. Cities of Tomorrow tried to regain this momentum, but it probably should have been COT + Offline Mode to help quiet down the trolls. Because with the release of COT you havesome loud voices still begging for Offline, Bigger Maps, and bug fixes. The journalists seem to love tossing these naysayers into the mix of the release. So the message sent to potential buyers is, "Cool new expansion, but buyer beware, this game is still kind of broken" which to me says, "Don't buy". With the release of Offline and bigger maps more or less accepted as impossible, there isn't anything left to complain about. What *is* left standing is a pretty damn fun game. So IMO, SimCity could use another type of re-launch. Either a new Expansion Set or the SimCity Exchange. At the end of the Offline blog announcement Meghan McDowell said, "Maxis has a long history of supporting Mods and we continue to be Mod friendly to this day. Take a look at our past if you want an idea of how we intend to manage our community of Modders for this SimCity." In the past, an in-house developer *wrote* the BAT tool used for SimCity 4 mods. And then recently Guillaume Pierre wrote a great blog post about some of the gameplay mods he has made. This post seemed to really encourage gamers to dive in and try to make their own gameplay mods. Well, what about design mods? Cristian St. Aubyn posted on Jan 30 some tips on making buildings, saying at the end, "Next time, I will tell you more about the building shader we use." However there hasn't been a "next time" follow up post. So what is he up to? Additionally, I asked Graphics Engineer Ryan Ingram about his opinion on the release of the in-house Maya tools based on how Maxis has developed tools for the community in the past and he said "I can't really comment on these questions, sorry!". Though he didn't confirm the Exchange, he didn't deny it either. Evidence of the possible SimCity Exchange "re-boot": 1. Meghan commenting on the same commitment from Maxis to mods as in the past 2. Guillaume posting on the blog about his custom mods 3. Cristian promising more custom building tips, then falling silent (maybe at work on a larger write up to follow the Exchange release?) 4. Ryan not being able to comment either way Of course none of these facts prove anything. But its fun to consider! I do think the potential of this new "Create Anything" angle to the game may be what could help SimCity get a boost of positive momentum in terms of sale. I don't know really, its all speculation.

Its nice to know that you recognize it as a Maya interface. The Materials are more a set of "sprite sheets" (check out my video tutorial for an overview). The Maya tool writes what portions of the Material Sets are assigned to each part of the mesh into the Material Info Texture. The interface you see in the picture seems to be the one that designers use to pick materials from a material set and get some visual feedback for how the model should look in the game. But the model is not exported with these materials applied. The mesh exists independent in the game and its material set is shared between multiple models of the same building style. SimCity reads the Material Info Texture then retrieves the appropriate material set and assigns designer assigned materials to the building. Oppie's tool in 3DS Max attempt to allow you to apply a material set to a building with this visual interface. You manually go in and crop out a portion of one of the material set images assign a color from the color palette --using uv mapping to try to tile the material you have selected across a potion of your model -- but it kind of sucks and is a lot more clunky that what appears to be going on in that Maya interface. Its not WYSIWYG like a design interface should be. Would be great to have someone that knows Maya scripting be able to work this out.

Im wondering the same thing. I remember a big thread on the simcity forums about mod support and what players wanted to see and be able to do. I just hope that their idea of mod support turns out to be more than just an "ok you can dig through the files now". It's looking more and more that modding support is exactly that: Being set free to dig through the files and try to reverse engineer them as we please. Although if you ask developers some tips on how certain things work they'll give you a tip, but it usually involves custom scripting or something more complicated. The thing about SC4 is that an in-house developer contributed to the creation of the BAT tool that is used to mod the game. That developer doesn't work for maxis anymore, so our equivelent 'tool maker' is Oppie, who doesn't have a lot of free time to do the work required to make the custom tools that we need. I really wish that the next "expansion set" is a set of modding tools for applying materials to buildings. That would be awesome. Doesn't seem to be what Maxis is up to...who knows :/

Its really encouraging to to see other people experimenting with this stuff. I responded on your post about experimenting with the color palette. -benji

1. When you say "row one". Think about each material being assigned to a column, not a row. A material gets assigned a column, then SimCity picks a 2x2 block from one of the 7 rows of that column each time a building spawns. If every 2x2 block within column 1 contains the same 3 colors, then that material will get the same 3 colors every time that particular building model spawns. If every block contains different colors, then that material will receive different colors with each new spawn of that building. 2. Instead of "materials page" try to call the image you have attached (with the pure Red, Green, and Blue areas) the "Color Control Map"(or Color map) as there are multiple materials within a Material Set, each which have different names (Normal Map, Color Map & Shader Map). Anyway, While SimCity randomly picks colors from the color palette by iterating through the 2x2 rows of an assigned column, it does not randomly assign a material from the material set. Materials from the material set (walls, doors, windows etc) are manually assigned by the artist by cropping out a portion of the material set and assigning it to a section of the model. This data is written to the Material Info Texture. This means that for a particular model, the walls will always receive the same wall material (lets say a wood material) and it is only the wood material's color (applied by the color palette) that will change on each spawning of a particular model. Take a look at the Shader Map or Normal Map that was exported along side your Color Map to get an idea of what materials these "huge blue square and red blocks" are actually coloring. You'll probably see detail in these other maps that look like metal or wood or other textures. Its easier to see this if you spawn a bunch of shotgun shacks and compare duplicate models. They will all have the same windows and doors, but will recieve different colors. Remember the RGB portions of a material in the Color Map are referring to quadrants of a block within an assigned column of the palette. Artists assign a column, SimCity picks a row of that column. For the 2x2 block that is finally chosen R=Upper left, G=Lower Left, B= Upper right & Lower right pixels. If you're trying to find what colors in the palette are assigned to what materials on the building, you should be comparing the colors of the materials of duplicate versions of the same building. For example, compare the colors of the windows on the side of two different colored versions of the same shotgun shack. The windows on these duplicate models were assigned a different block of the same column. So try to find a column in the palette that has 2 blocks with the colors that you see on two sets of windows. Once you find the column, you'll know the color block options for that window material on that particular model. However, the same window material on a different model shotgun shack may be assigned a different column of the palette. So within each spawn of the same model, the windows change color using the same set of blocks (from the same palette column). The same windows on a different model could be colored using a different set of blocks from a different column ( if a different column was in fact assigned, it could be the case that for every model the artist decided to color the windows using the same column of the palette). Let me know if this is helpful -benji

The color palettes are not hex coded strings AFAIK, they are an actual PNG image (512x16 pixels large). I show this image in the tutorial. So I'm guessing you could just change the colors of the pixels in the palette to whatever you want. Currently, the only way to get a building into the game is to have it reference pre-existing palettes and material sets. The materials and palettes don't get brought in with your model, your model carries information with it that tell SimCity what materials and palette to apply to it. But when we do figure out how to import our own assets (really when Oppie figures it out I guess), we could start with one of the palettes as a template and just color pick the pixels within each block, swapping in custom colors. Or we could just pick a pre-existing color palette and use it as-is. There are tons of color options available, maybe what sets your building apart will be the design of the materials and the mesh more than a completely custom color scheme. Also using the palettes from the game would help your buildings 'live' in the design world of SimCity while still being able to have a custom aspect to them through custom materials and modeling (whenever we're able to import custom material sets anyway). -benji I got it at moment on my other post were I am testing with one particular pallet, and I am coming up with all kinds of results. Some of them make sense while other ones do not make much sense to me. You can import custom color trays, the problem is getting our original designs to go with those trays. At moment the only reason I believe my tinker is working, is because I took an already made design from the game and the color tray that simcitypak showed me. One reason I am making videos is to try to get everyone to use the same terms. There are many assets involoved in creating custom buildings and if we're calling them different names it becomes too difficult to communicate clearly to help eachother. 1.When you say "color trays" are you refering to the Color Palettes or the Material Sets? 2.Does "our original designs" mean original models or does it mean original material sets? Thanks for clarifying, -benji

And here is the answer to your question about 'purple" from Ryan: "Yes! If you start with 50% red (128) and 50% blue (128), you’ll get an average of the “red” palette entry and the “blue” palette entry. This also works with values that total to above and below 100%, so if you are 40% red (102) and 40% blue (102), you’ll get the same color as the previous example, but darkened by 20%. You are limited to at most 200% total, so pure white (255,255,255) will get 33% of each palette entry mixed in, but only be brightened by 200%, not 300%. Single color channels *can* go over 100% during this process, to be affected by lighting, so if you had a color control (255,255,0) and the ‘red’ palette entry was (255,128,0) and the ‘green’ palette entry was (255,0,255), you’d end up with 200% red, 50% green, 100% blue before lighting. Of course this value will get capped if it’s in a bright area of the scene, which could lead to some color shifting on these bright values." -benji

For what it's worth, its my understanding that Oppie is trying to get his train station to work as a unique model. This would open the door to importing buildings without having to replace existing ones. -benji