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Exurbanite

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About Exurbanite

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  1. Exurbanite changed their profile photo
  2. Just thought I should make a little status report. I took a short break from asset creation to recharge and deal with upcoming IRL stuff. I'm getting back into it with a little redux project: False Lucidity's Americana houses. These houses are among my favorites on the workshop since I love making old American towns, but they have some major issues..namely the fact that they have no custom LODs and that they are grossly overscaled. Basically I'm doing a lot of mesh cleaning, rescaling, limited texture replacement, and general optimization; I figure that I can reduce the diffuse map sizes alone by at least 50%. I also plan to make two or three variants of each house (different colors and mirrored versions). What is nice is that he has provided Google Drive files of the original asset resources...there are even a couple houses that haven't been released yet. Below is the neatest one IMO. I'm also thinking of making some detached garages to match paint schemes. Lastly, I've been working on a mindmap just to flesh out ideas and let those curious to know what I'm up to.
  3. @Lost_Gecko Thanks for the tip, I'll edit the guide to include this when I can. I want to prevent putting out faulty information. @boformer Interesting...so to bake the LOD normal map would I just choose "Normals" instead of "Textures" from the Bake Mode menu?
  4. Just released a guide on making custom LODs using Blender texture baking. Hope you can gain something useful from it.
  5. Thanks @Avanya, that little trick works perfectly. I used a value of 48 in gimp, outlined the letters in the diffuse, and padded them by a few pixels and I get no noticeable degradation at distances. It even stays visible beyond most other props. There is a tiny bit of black outline around the letters at a distance until the LOD kicks in but I think I can iron that out by lightening up the diffuse background color.
  6. I've started to dip into with my apartments project, and I came up with a fun and simple prop idea for customizing buildings: 2D kitsch lettering. If you're unfamiliar, here's a photostream that illustrates the concept. Alpha mapping seems the obvious way to go with these, so I cooked up a test example: I've been using Ronyx's Bauhaus sign props as a reference (I'm not totally sure they're alpha mapped...if I am mistaken please correct me). However, when I compare the two I notice mine deteriorates in quality fairly quickly when zooming away. Including a LOD doesn't do much to increase quality aside from preventing from it disappearing entirely. (**Bauhaus sign is scaled up in pic) Since I am also planning to use alphas for stair/balcony railing and decorative lattices, I would very much like some help on how to nail down the proper method that would give me results similar to Ronyx's. Otherwise I feel that my attempt at them is woefully inadequate and a waste of time.
  7. @Mr_Maison I'm glad you enjoy them. I myself probably won't have the opportunity to use them in-game for a while due to my massive backlog of models to be textured.
  8. The release took a bit longer than expected, but the Realty Signs Prop Pack is now on the workshop. Choose from a variety of 16 signs to spruce up vacant lots, buildings, and construction sites. I made sure that it works great with the Prop Scale mod, too.
  9. Ok, I've settled on the support posts version. If everything goes as planned the pack should be released either later today or tomorrow.
  10. In the process of making more low-commercial assets, I've recently gotten into a sign-making binge. I've made a bunch of old car dealership and liquor store signs, but for the moment I'm focusing on a variety of "for sale" signs that I plan to release in a few days. I thought this would be useful prop pack since there's essentially none of these on the workshop despite their prevalence in the real world. Since most of the signs will share the same model, I still have one last reservation over whether or not to include angled support posts like so: or without... Personally I like the more realistic look of the support-post variant but others may prefer functionality of the simple 3 posts so they can make double-sided or v-shaped signs. I'd like some input over which version to release.
  11. More Project Updates: For the next few weeks I'm focusing on releasing some more storefronts and grungy commercial assets before I dive into working on the train station and the apartment series. Regarding the station, I've lucked out and found archives of the original blueprints, so that will save me a ton of guesswork and time. The apartments will be in a few broad varieties: 1) Early 20th-century bungalow apartments (Spanish colonial/mission/adobe revival), 2) postwar dingbats, and 3) 80's/90's duplexes. Some of the bungalows and duplexes can be made into modular assets which I think many players will appreciate. I think I will omit most of the landscaping (save empty planters/retaining walls) since we have plenty of stuff on the workshop to do that in game. Finally, a request: if anybody is willing, I would like if they would help me make a few custom A/C props and garages.
  12. Same here, it's among my favorite modernist styles. Personally I've never seen a streamline train station before happening upon that one... it's a real crying shame that it's been replaced by this monstrosity:
  13. While I was searching for some reference pics of commercial streamline architecture, I stumbled across this specimen: I have been thinking about doing a train station for a while now, but was put off by the necessity of having to model the platforms. However, this station only features plain raised concrete, so I think this should minimize creation time and frustration. This would make the station highly customizable -- a simple concrete platform would allow decals, planters, lamps, etc. I am also thinking of leaving the top sign portion empty so users can place various rail company/line signboard props themselves.
  14. Some Updates: Well, in the process of making the surf shop I figured out why my textures sometimes warp around edges. It's the "snap to pixel" option in Blender's uv mapping system that causes the problem, specifically, when I initially unwrap an element and drag it to the appropriate texture...the vertices are sometimes moved a pixel or two out of place. The solution I found was to simply untick this option when moving a newly unwrapped element into place over its corresponding texture, then finally reticking the box when it was set. Hopefully this helps others who may have had the same issues. Additionally, I'm announcing my foray into a new residential asset series. For the time being, I plan to keep working on more small commercial buildings...I have a pack of generic storefronts that just needs texturing. Anyways, I want to start a collection of low rise mid-century styled apartments that are commonly found throughout suburban Southern California, Vegas, and Phoenix. They're not the prettiest buildings you've ever seen (downright ugly, actually), but they are fantastic fillers and seem simple enough to model and texture. Here's what I'm referring to: Dingbats https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dingbat_(building) Motor Court/Motel-esque Apartments If you want to help me with this large project by contributing texture and reference resources (pictures, building names, plan layouts, decoration ideas, etc.), feel free to do so. I know there's demand from the community for assets of this type, so I highly encourage creator and user input. Thanks.
  15. The Surf Shop has been released: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1115633050.
  16. Ah, nice, looking forward to their release. I just wanted basic land props, I don't mind if you can't get the floating versions to work properly.
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