merc187

@mistyskye - Did you hit CTRL+A and apply transforms for rotation & scale? When you alter the mesh or geometry of your model, it messes with how Blender knows what to export and by hitting CTRL+A you are "resetting" that or telling Blender where the model positioning is after you made edits. Whenever I forgot to do this step my mesh in game gets all whacked out and out of proportion.

That's part of it. I didn't want to have to utilize other programs, plugins, and software to do something Blender had already inclusive in it's program. Blender was scary for the first week or two but once you learn where everything is and how to navigate, the rest came a lot easier and I didn't have to worry about exporting to another program or use a handful of other tools that I could do in 1 software. I found a lot of elements confusing in Sketchup, especially how it exported things, without doing a lot of extra research on "making it work". I just opted to learn Blender and after a week or so I felt way more comforable with it.

I'm sure this was an attempt at reaching for the "Minecraft" and sandbox building game crowds on consoles, just not sure how successful it will be. I'm sure they'll sell copies but I just dont see the appeal in the console gaming crowd that I do in the PC gaming crowd for these genres. I can see a group of players out there enjoying this type of game on XBox but I can't find it at all as well done as it would have been on the PC version. It makes me think this is why they've kept the limitations on the simulation etc. Perhaps - and I speak from complete ignorance about how to make games at any professional level - it was to borrow some of the elements in the PC game to port over to the console side. By increasing the simulation elements, such as the traffic AI, that would have needed to be reworked for the console plans. Who knows in that regard, but I do think that this was a mis-step rather focusing on the core group of PC gamers who play simulation & city building games like this and who will eventually be the bread and butter gamers that carry the title. I remember as a teenager playing one of the first strategy/building games on console, Dune for Sega Genesis. Looking back at how cumbersome and simplistic it was I have mixed feelings on how well this will do. I hope that once this is released, CO/PDX will revisit the core game and improve upon the simulation and game design. If not the AI and other hardwired elements of the game, through new elements that enhance the game play. Transport & traffic content have been mentioned in other forums but I really desire to see an increase in the way the user handles his city. There is just no real challenges or interesting micro-managing capability for economics & logistics of your city or elsewhere outside of transit/network design.

When the game came out a while back and I realized that modding in this game meant I could create models to put into the game I eagerly wanted to learn how to 3D model. I researched the software available and found SketchUp and Blender as the 2 free ones that were commonly used. I started using SketchUp due to having a Google account etc. I quickly found it was very inadequate and too simplistic for modeling game assets. I quickly moved on to Blender and spent the next 6 months poking around, torturously slow, until I could figure out how to navigate the software and make some simplistic models. I have learned a lot since then but still, Blender or another program like 3DS is the way to go.

Hey all - did anyone notice that several types of trees and nature assets have wonky normals? I noticed this issue at least on a few trees/bushes as well as some of the grass assets that I've made in the past although I fixed them already. Now they have the same issue again. I remember 6-7 months ago going into the assets to fix a vertex normal issue and it seems for whatever reason the issue has reappeared, but I'm also lightly noticing it on several other types of assets as well. Does anyone else see this problem? Could it have been any changes to the game that might have messed with once working and normal looking assets? Has anyone else noticed any weird normals issues going on with some of the plant life in game?

I'm noticing (at least in my game) all the trees that are defaulted in the game to an asset, park, or building seems to flicker. The ones that come with the maps and are plopped by a user in game do not. The short term fix - at cost to the GPU resources - is to bump up the tree LOD distance in BP's Adaptive Prop Visibliity mod and adjust it to your usual zoom level in game so that the trees don't flicker. I tried removing ROTR and although it did stop the flickering for me, I use too many nature assets that utilize that feature to not use it. So I've opted to bump up the LOD distances for trees in the APV mod. But you're right - I've seen varying issues and mod lists that have the same problem in the community and it's a mystery exactly why this is happening for the specific instances it does happen for various users (at least to me).

Sorry for jumping in but @Sparks44 - why not simply scale the current geometry/vertices you have in the current triangle so it expands in space? That requires no extra vertices.

What's the tri-count on that bad boy?

Ah. So weird it only affects custom assets and not every tree on the map. Oh well. RTR is too valuable for me to get rid of. Flickering isn't that bad I guess....

......whooooooa......... This is simply amazing. How much time have I wasted loading the game, changing textures, re-importing....too much time. Going to definitely give this script a whirl. Amazing stuff Ronyx & SamSamTS - this is incredible for asset creators.

Could the tree flicker issue be associated with assets and parks and what not that utilized the probability prop changer a while back? It seems a lot of the flickering occurs when I plop a park that already has tree/prop assets on it. A new map doesn't have that going on but once I've plopped a park form the work shop that has a prop/tree - not sure which one(s) it is yet, I started to get the flickering trees.

Hey guys - I was hoping to pester some experienced Blender users or anyone with good knowledge and techniques on UV Unwrapping assets in 3D modeling programs. I haven't created assets in a long while and one thing that always bugged me was the difficulty I had in matching up textures to the UV's. I've wondered how other asset users unwrap buildings and other assets so that when applying textures these textures match up nicely with one another with minimal individual UV island manipulation by hand. I've made a lot of mediocre assets but this is a technique that I've struggled at especially with buildings that have symetrical or identical textures on the buildings themselves. Unfortunately I do not have the full images of the UV Unwrapping screen but I do have an example of an asset I did a long while ago that can maybe be a good example at what I'm talking about: I seem to have a lot of trouble when applying my diffuse texture to a model to get all the "pieces" to match up correctly. Part of me believes this is a UV Unwrapping issue in conjuction with how I model the geometry on the mesh, in that however I unwrap the geometry doesn't seem to "match" with the textures so that requires me to manipulate the UV's way too much and in some instances I can never get them perfectly aligned. I will easily be able to provide any more details on the UV unwrapping and I hope I'm making sense about this. Ideally I'd like to see or hear any advice or recommendations on how some more experienced modelers unwrap and texture your UV's so that when you actually apply them to your model things end up working out. I've been familiar with the "tiling" concept but I still get a bit confused on how to arrange a diffuse texture to maximze the advantages of this system. I assume things that can be tiled should be stretched vertically or horizontally completely across the diffuse space so that when UV's extend beyond, the same texture is displayed. I always end up running into problems with space and texel density in this fashion. When I say "texel density" I mean I end up having to stretch or scale the UV's beyond what they or the other UV's have in pixel density on the texture and they end up displaying on the model oversized or undersized depending on how I'm stretching the UV's. I also understand that this may be a lot to answer and a lot more questions can arise from how I'm actually doing this so if I can provide a video, a GIF, more images, or more explanations on what I'm trying to achieve I'm more than happy to do so. The end result is I want to make better, higher quality assets, that don't have to over compensate for my lack of UV Unwrapping skills with more geometry and crappier textures. Thanks in advance everyone!

Thank you for showing me your UV layout on this BiPin! Much appreciated. Looks like there are things that I need to plan out on my diffuse atlas, in that if I want to tile texture, I need to make sure that texture is the only texture horizontally on the texture space. I have not been doing that right I guess. Thank you as well Avanya - I do the same thing thus why I was hoping there might be more info that I was missing. Looks like it's just the "name of the game" when you UV Unwrap. I will try to plan these models/textures better to allow for a more seamless and useful configuration when modeling. Thanks for your tips guys! Anyone have any more? Please feel free to comment here! I would love to soak up more info on how you do it.

Yah it's one of those things that's somewhat difficult to get your head....unwrapped.....around (pun intended) but as I get more practice it makes more sense even when I don't seem to know everything I probably should. I feel, as a self taught modeler, that I'm missing some critical things in how my workflow ends up. I think there are other ways to do this that I'm missing that would help create better textures and UV unwraps but I was hoping to pick other people's brains in their methods to see what I may be missing. Thanks for the input either way @OcramsRzr.

I made a crappy tutorial series several months ago. It starts with the basics and quickly and poorly goes through how to basically create a model, create a mediocre texture, and import it in game. I go through details such as how to set your screens up, how to UV unwrap, how to texture, and how to export to Cities Skylines and import an asset in the asset editor. It's not nearly as advanced nor do I have the skills as some users have here - but maybe watching some video of the process can help you. Feel free to ask me or the community any other questions - lots of great talent and skills lurk about here and I was able to do the same thing when I started a year ago learning blender & asset creation myself. Good luck! https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgPCPy7HK4iRVuQyBuVTKXORvyxHnhyoQ

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLgPCPy7HK4iRVuQyBuVTKXORvyxHnhyoQ Here's a short and very novice tutorial I did for blender 2.74 - it's a 7 part series from start to finish at making an asset. I have only a fraction of the skills of those in this forum so please use this with a grain of salt. Hope this might help!

AMAZING @Judazz - I'm mostly excited for the wish list in integrating Dynamic Res, Ambient Occlusion and others. This is going to ship up to be an amazing mod when rolled out!

Love this CJ @boformer! I used to live in Hawaii so seeing the well thought out CJ, the names, the storyline, it's all great stuff! Following!

@MrMaison - are you using boformers script trick for these re-textures on quays?

I wouldn't even start with a building! When I first learned blender, I made cubes and crates. About 50 of them until I understood the basics. Try to make simple cubes just with textures and UV maps to get the basics of how to navigate your 3D modeling program and move onto some more advanced buildings and models. I only say that as you may get discouraged if you move to quickly and run into problems that the solutions are built off of things you may not have much experience with yet. If you use Blender, lots of tutorials on the basics online - I can link some if you want too.

This is straight up amazing. @Leto - is that your own custom texture on the quays? Wow - looks amazing. Anyway that can be shared?

I'm not sure if it's the cause of but it definitely does not help that modders don't have solid resources for knowing what does what in the game. We've all done our own testing but for the different values, templates, and existing modding properties - how does that affect the asset in game? Where are the resources from CO/PDX about this? Asset editor is a good basic overview, but I feel it's lacking not only specific emphasis but details that modders want and should have access to. If they opened up modding as wide as they have - was part of the plan to literally have us all just guess and figure it out ourselves? The Asset Editor wiki really describes the basics of what entails a C:S asset but not what makes a great one, or what properties exist for what etc. etc. I know a lot of games make you do this (trial by error methods) but in order to make quality assets as everyone's been talking about that's part of it (having solid resources and knowledge base on what does what). You guys were talking a lot about the creator's idea of what's the pre-requisities in making an asset but I think a lot of the reason people aren't putting extra effort into their models is because simply we as modders and assets creators have to figure it out and rely on forum resources and experiments done by the other people before we get any wind from the dev's on the details. I think I remember seeing Zed, GC Vos, Shroomblaze, and many others trying to create resources for modders than frankly - I believe CO/PDX should have had a bigger hand in creating or adding information for us to understand and how new modders can rely on it moving forward. Maybe not everyone browses Simtropolis and really don't know how critical LOD's are, for instance. Outside of just mentioning a LOD - in the Asset Editor Wiki - how does it emphasize the importance of a LOD? Maybe that's not what the goal or focus of the Wiki is (meaning not to educate people on the basics of 3D model theory) but I still hold to my guns in that maybe the modding community lacks a lot of "new-blood" because there isn't good methods, avenues, resources, and viable approaches for these people to get involved without spending days, weeks, and hours upon hours just trying to find out the basics.

@Wallacet - you're saying you're gonna treat us all to Monell's???!!! Deal. I hail in San Francisco & Seattle. My job splits my time between the two cities.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WWaLxFIVX1s This is probably never going to be fixed as the original - I haven't seen nlight do anything C:S related since after a couple months after launch. Here's hoping it's a conflict with another mod or someone in the future will be able to fix/create a similar mod. Such a huge & critical mod for making graphics & things look better in game.

Do you have proper texture resolution? Powers of 2 squared - like 128x128 or 512x512 or 1024x1024?