Voeille

Back to the past.

Your pictures actually made me try the ambient occlusion mod, and it improves the looks a lot. And doesn’t even lag much on my ageing laptop.

Here you go. Incidentally, it’s interesting how much is possible in this game, your shots from Waiheke are totally different to mine and it’s the same map!

This thread will include everything I create and share for CS, either in progress or already finished. I’m slow so I won’t add much often, but every now and then I’m tempted to enhance the game and add a little to the community Now I’m making an enhanced temperate theme that is supposed to look lush, designed for maps full of forests and eco cities with lots of nature beauty instead of dirty factories. It’s basically finished, but it’s never bad to ask for some feedback before releasing. I changed all textures and normals except for moon, gravel, and pavement, and tried to make them as little repetitive as possible, and balance a nice look between zoomed in and zoomed out views. Ruined is supposed to look like dirt, not like sand or dry ground. I changed alpha of ruined in a way that stops it from appearing under cliff (I never liked it). Field is fine, so I left it very noticeable, just changed the colour. I hope my alphas make a natural and smooth transitions between textures. Oil and ore areas are basically unnoticeable when zoomed out. It’s on purpose, because the vanilla “stains” don’t look good in my opinion, and there is the resource view that lets us see the exact resource placement. When zoomed in, there’s a little difference in the grass look. The textures are mash-ups, edits, and blends of The Sims 2 (and 3 with respect to grass) textures (I create content for TS2 and I often use original textures from that game to make mine), and a few free ones found online. I’ll post necessary credits in the description in the workshop. They either were seamless originally or I made them seamless, so there isn’t any tiling noticeable. The scale of tiling (adjustable in the theme editor) was the hardest to balance for the cliff texture. Large tiles look pretty good from distance, but very blurred when zoomed in. Small tiles look good when zoomed in, but make the texture very repetitive when zoomed out. I went for something in between, so it looks alright in both views, but I’m not perfectly content with it. It’d be best with a huge texture, but that’s not reasonable (and I don’t have any), so it’ll probably have to stay like that. It’s just my opinion, but the default temperate sand is terrible – not only does it glow orange/yellow, but has strange and repetitive alpha. I know the previews aren’t very good, but I’ll make nicer and more descriptive ones for the actual release

Thank you! It took longer than I expected and I encountered some issues, but I finally finished my newest tree Workshop Page

Hi! I’m a beginner in CS modding (I’ve only made a few random things such as maps or added trees to a road, you can take a look here if you want, but I don’t expect anyone to be impressed ), I want to slowly learn 3D modelling and I’d like to start with importing ferns I made for a different game (The Sims 2). I have experience at texturing (however for all I’ve seen so far I’ll have to do more than just the main texture and normal map) as that is the main thing I did for TS2 in the past, but I haven’t done much modelling so I’m still in the beginning stage. Is there any tutorial that would explain step by step how to import a model from Blender to the game? For texturing I found this (I haven’t read it yet, only looked briefly and it looks like the right tutorial for that), but the only thing about importing a model from Blender is this, but it just tells me that it’s unavailable (I guess I can’t view it in my country). My most preferred form would be a classic tutorial, not a video, but anything that will open for me will be fine. Also, do I need to do anything special to make my plants move with wind like the vanilla plants, or does it just happen automatically? If you’re curious about the ferns, here they are:

OK I fixed it, it turns out that the colour mask needs to be reverted – white means that the area is left untouched, black means it should change colour. It’s counter-intuitive and I’m fairly sure I read somewhere it’s the opposite, but it works now! The performance question still persists.

I finished my new tree, but I have a problem with colour variations. I’ve noticed that vanilla trees and most workshop trees have varying brightness and I saw a setting for it in the asset editor, but it doesn’t work for me. I set minimum to 0.1 and left maximum at 1 to test it out (so it should go from basically black to the original colour), but it always shows the original brightness. It’s the same without changing any settings. I have a colour mask that contains only black and white (the leaf part is white and trunk is black as I don’t want it to change), however not having it doesn’t change anything. Every file is properly named. Is it possible that there’s a mod that breaks it? It doesn’t look bad now, but it’d be much better if the brightness were random. Size variation works fine. I’ve also noticed that it puts more strain on performance than other trees for no obvious reason. I have two versions, one with 2586 tris and the other with 1086, both with 1024x1024 textures, and while I can understand that the high poly one is heavy for my graphic card, I don’t really get that the lower poly one lags too. I have workshop trees that have the same texture size and much more than 1000 polys and they cause less lag. Did I do something wrong somehow?

I’m working on a new tree. I created the model using poorly made textures from random images as ‘preview textures’ to see if I got the model shape right (it’s much easier to work with a texture than just white square planes). After I finished the model I started making an original hand-painted texture, and so far I have a sketch with just vague shapes and colours, no shading and no detailing at all. I decided to use it and see in the game on the model, and it actually looks quite realistic, which I didn’t expect at all considering how little detailed the painting is at the moment. So the conclusion is that textures themselves don’t need to be photo-realistic to give a realistic effect in the game. I’m of course not going to leave it like that and I’ll finish the texture properly as I want it to look nice when zoomed in too, but it’s interesting to know. I think it’s a result of these factors: I filled the leaves with multiple colours instead of just one. The texture isn’t ‘dense’, i.e. there is lots of space between leaves instead of a lot of them on top of each other. I’m sure dynamic shadows in the game have something to say. I wish I’d discovered it before I made my other plants, they would surely look better. I’m posting it here as someone else might find it useful.

Changing lighting to classic and switching LUTs actually does quite a good job at making rainy weather appear less sunny. After the rain stops I switch back and the feel is completely different.

I’m slowly redecorating the awesome Waiheke map and I’m having fun with it!

Another plant by me, this time a hibiscus bush Workshop Page

Working on a hibiscus bush I think the main mesh and texture are finished, now I need to add flowers. This mesh is made from flat planes, which made it really low poly – only 136 tris now, so I have some leeway for flower and it’ll probably still stay in the low poly range.

I made a new plant Workshop Page

I’m working on a new plant, for the first time with hand-painted textures (I was looking at google pictures though, I’m not good enough at drawing to paint everything from imagination yet). I will have to make new leaves though, I reused some I drew some time ago, but hydrangea has a different leaf shape.

I wish I could live there...

I made two new LUTs, one for winter cities, and one for other themes Workshop Page Workshop Page

Great job on the roads! I would really like if you added tree lanes to the MT roads with monorail tracks (and of course reduce noise pollution accordingly; I don’t think I need to visualise them with that tool you linked in the first post, it’s the same as the original MT roads, just with trees), as I never use non-tree roads after I reach the milestone to unlock them.

I randomly felt like working on LUTs. The vanilla settings aren’t contrasted enough in my opinion and look like permanent fog. The best LUT I’ve found in the workshop is Realistic V1.2, but it’s slightly too bright and not vibrant enough, so I decided to do something on my own I also wanted a nice kind of bluey winter LUT. Time in the game was 16:08 for temperate and 8:45 for winter. My LUT + After Dark settings: Vanilla + After Dark settings: My LUT + Daylight Classic: Vanilla + Daylight Classic: My LUT + After Dark settings: Vanilla + After Dark settings: My LUT + Daylight Classic: Vanilla + Daylight Classic:

I released the ferns I mentioned in my other thread Thanks to @Avanya for the tip about normals! Workshop Page

Thank you so much! I found that option and just the default settings fixed it. The model was made in a different 3D program as it has various useful plugins dedicated for The Sims 2. I used Blender to export FBX only and I honestly don’t have the slightest idea how that program works so to actually make a model there I would need to surround myself by tutorials I’m not experienced in modelling in general, I’ve made like 4 models only so there’s plenty to learn. Anyway, now I need to set the scale to something more reasonable and import the other fern type, but given that now I know what to do it should go fine.

Well, I fixed the rotation and brightness, but it looks like I have a problem with normal vectors. When the model is in its normal position (Y up, X forward) it’s always black. When I rotate it so it’s like X is up and -Y is forward (normals accordingly adjusted to that), it seems like lighting depends on the rotation in-game (I use the Random Tree Rotation mod). Any ideas how to fix it?

I decided to give the ferns a shot today and I found this guide. I managed to finally import my model to the game, it needs adjusting as it’s too bright, too small, and the axes are wrong, but I’m happy it loaded!