ScreaminAbdabs

Hello, I am baffled. I have a large oil area in my city made up from the Industries DLC. On the oil overview window it is making C30K which breaks down as- -640 import +2,440 Petroleum +33,600 Plastics - upkeep 4,696 profit of 30,663 I understand this. However on the budget screen I get - Oil Income 2,400 expenses 6,104 Profit -3,704 I don't understand this! I don't have any zoned oil, just the DLC - so why are these so different? How can I make a profit of over 30k and a loss of around 3k from the same thing? What happened to that 30k profit? Anyone any ideas?

Hello again, Well having fiddled around with this I am still stuck. Here are 2 screenshots to show the issue. Oil industry first. It looks like all my industries DLC areas have this behaviour. I believe that the costs of the storage tanks in the oil area are not taken into account in the industry area budget as these can be placed anywhere, however these costs are fixed as are the costs for the various collectors and processors in the area. So the only variable is how much each of these collectors and processors produce - and since this fluctuates the profit in the industry zone will fluctuate(?). If I'm correct then it makes sense that the profit in each of the industries DLC zones will rise and fall. The main budget screen makes no sense though. Why are the oil expenses 6k+? Where has that extra 2k come from? Its not the storage as that's accounted for in the factories and warehouse expenses at the bottom. Where's the 30k+ profit vanished to? The budget screen is only showing 2.4k Something is also odd with the oil ind. acquisition calculation. 48 barrels of oil are being collected/imported and 48 barrels are being used to make plastic. However an additional 12 barrels are being used to make petrol. Could this be due to a warehouse making up the deficit?

Hello, I have got into a mess with my current city and really need a 6 track station (3 platforms). What I actually need (aside from better planning) is a 6 track 2 monorail 2 metro mega-hub, but I'd settle for a 6 track station. I cannot find one in the workshop - but have found a post showing one on this site (https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/68962-elevated-multi-track-station-with-integrated-bus-hub/) - except it has a bus hub which is the one thing I don't need. Sadly I don't really have the time to produce a model myself - not that good at Blender . Soo... Is there anyway to stick station assets together in the editor so that the sub building does not moan about not being connected to a road? I found a good 2 track station on the steam workshop and tried to add it the the standard train/metro/monorail hub. This works and the sims change tracks but the sub building has that 'I'm not connected to a road icon' on it. Is there a way to kill a buildings road connection? Many thanks

Hi, I have hit an odd issue in my current city. I am currently in a retirement wave so have a lot of jobs available. According to CSL more graphs I have - 42,310 jobs available and 42,947 in work out of a population of 83,428 with an unemployment of 4%. However I have a high industrial and commercial demand and almost no residential demand at all. The population is: Children - 3% Teens - 15% Young Adults 24% Adults 31% Seniors - 24% With a birth rate of 302 per week and a death rate of 262 per week. So far I have 1 abandoned building and the specialist industrial and commercial areas are not crying out for workers. However if I build more industry/commercial zones then they are build on and then moan that they don't have enough workers. If I zone more residential it just sits there with no buildings at all! I think that commercial and industrial demand are somehow linked to each other as well as employment but have no idea how and am very confused as how I have ended up with a city in this state. I have 2 mods, CLS More graphs as mentioned and the one that allows you to build a crossing anywhere, but I don't think either of these would affect the game in this way? Any idea how I move on from this? I need to somehow stimulate residential demand, but zoning more industrial and commercial does not seem to work and I have over 40k jobs anyway. Help?

Hi, I have been fiddling with roads in the asset editor. However so far all I have had any success with is turning 2 way into 1 way roads, so make a 4 lane 1 way road for example. To start with I'd like to make a road where the tram tracks run down the outside of the road, rather than the inside, this sounds simple, but I cannot figure how you move the models around. So I define a lane, its position etc but the road's model does not update with the expected texture. There does not appear to be any link to the lanes and nodes just baffle me. Do you need to have access to raw models - say from Blender - or can you use the assets from the game? I just cannot get things to work right now. Can someone post a link to a suitable tutorial? Many thanks.

Hi BP, Sorry its taken so long to reply - real life got in the way in a big way - I have Blender experience and have put together some assets ( a 2 track metro station and a quiet mono-rail - though I am having problems with the rotor shader on that one), but have not done any roads so there is a lot I need to know like... How do Blender or other units correspond to in game road widths? Is it 1:1 or am I going to have the same scaling 'fun' you get when you import a building? How long do you need to make a 3d model for a road in the game, obviously it has to be long enough for the game to be able to tile the texture but how long is long enough? Similarly how wide do you need to make a model? It looks like each type of lane is modelled in some cases where in others the whole road is (bridges and the like). Some roads - like the bus lane ones - look like the bus lane texture is part of the road, same with tram tracks(?). However could I model just some tram tracks and then overlay them onto an existing road in the same way as you overlay the tram wire supports and wires? I think I have worked out how the various nodes, lanes etc work in the asset ed so one of the 1st things I want to do is put a monorail underground. I can create the necessary lanes etc in the asset editor, but the in game tunnel entrance is too low for the monorail to fit, so I'll need to build a new one and then some-how connect this to the road node. Thing is I have no idea how to do the latter. Finally... having been baffled by the above I am utterly stumped on how you add different types to a road. How do you add a slope, bridge, etc to a road, or remove one you don't need in the asset ed? In short I really need a guide on how to do this, but the ones I have found just go on about how to build junctions etc, not brand new roads. Any help you can give would be hugely appreciated.

Hi, I am sure this must have been asked thousands of times, except I cant find a quick answer. There are tantalising mentions of using 'the cim model' which I guess is this one? https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/resource-max-obj-file-of-male-cim-to-get-better-sense-of-scale-when-modeling.874872/ however this is for 3Dmax and I'm using Blender (and having never used Max don't know if the units match). My problem is that the replacement monorail station building I am working on is 1.37metres high in blender, and gets imported into city skylines at 12* scale sometimes, but sometimes this causes an array out of range (or something similar) error and I have to go up to 14 times. I have no idea why I get this error, nor why changing the scale fixes it, but its driving me nuts. My .fbx export scale is 1. If it imports ok at 12 times then the pedestrian routes all line up as do the platforms (which is nice) but they don't at 14 times, and the monorail platforms are the wrong height. I'm wondering if this array error is due to me getting the scale just wrong so city skylines cannot do 'something' and maybe if I knew the actual height of a cim I could work backwards and fix this issue. Then again I could just be wrong. In addition the station has stairs and I want to add a handrail onto these, but I'm stumped as to how high to make it as I cannot figure out how tall a cim is. If I do some simple maths my building is 16.44m (at 12*) or 19.18m tall (and wrong at 14 times). Can someone point me at a simple solution? Massive thanks in advance. (Oh if anyone's interested the Metro I have been working on is now testing in some saves of mine, so far it looks good).

Hi, Huge thanks for the pointer to the Ruler, it might just enable my stupid brain to understand scaling, at present its still a black art. For example - I scaled my model 12 times in Blender so that its now 41 metres long in Blender. However when I import it into the game I still need to scale it 12 times. Wouldn't that make a building 67 metres long? I've attached the .blend and the .fbx in case anyone would like to figure out what I'm doing wrong. I've almost given up trying to figure it out. CS wants to import at 12 times so that's what I'll do. I am however having problems running the rotors script. I have attached a screen print of the debug window, its complaining that there are already local variables called shader and asset defined. I installed mod tools by subscribing via Steam, starting CS, activating mod tools in the content editor, closing CS and the restarting CS. This is the script I tried to copy and past in. //building var shader = Shader.Find("Custom/Vehicles/Vehicle/Rotors"); var asset = ToolsModifierControl.toolController.m_editPrefabInfo as BuildingInfo; if(asset.m_material != null) asset.m_material.shader = shader; if(asset.m_lodMaterial != null) asset.m_lodMaterial.shader = shader; //prop var shader = Shader.Find("Custom/Vehicles/Vehicle/Rotors"); var asset = ToolsModifierControl.toolController.m_editPrefabInfo as PropInfo; if(asset.m_material != null) asset.m_material.shader = shader; if(asset.m_lodMaterial != null) asset.m_lodMaterial.shader = shader; Its just the standard Rotors script, I haven't changed anything. There are errors when mod tools starts up and I have attached these in the second screen print. Anyone any ideas what I've done wrong? monorail.blend monorail10.fbx

Hi, Oh I thought I'd get z fighting if I just copied and flipped, but thinking about this I guess not as the normals are inverted(?). What about z fighting with the rotors glass and the glazing bars? The glass has to be one mesh and the bars have to be another. If I just copy, won't I get a z-fight unless one's slightly larger as the game will be trying to render the glass and the bars at the same point(?). The scaling drove me nuts while I was trying to get things to line up. I've probably been doing this wrong - I'm still learning after all -but I built my station and placed it in the asset ed with props etc collected from the in game monorail. This showed me how high I needed to make my station so the platforms lined up with the tracks, (couldn't find this info) but also stated that it needed to be scaled to say 10*. I'd then rescale my station but when I put it back in the asset ed the import would say, ahh I need to scale this to 6*. If I did then the station was too small, so I'd try again at the original 10* only to find that it was too large but 9* was too small - and you cannot do 9.5. So Id rescale in Blender try again and the import would say ahh 7*, I'd ignore this and it would still be wrong so I'd rescale again and ... you can see where this is going. It took far too long to get the platforms to match the rails. I guess the monorail is the only asset where this is an issue? Maybe the ports? But these depend on the height of the coast to a greater extent. There a few monorail stations already on the Workshop so there must be an easier way to do this.

Hi @Clus, Many thanks for the help. Your 4 has me going eugh... I think this means that I need 2 glass domes, 1 for the inside, one for the outside, 2 domes for the glazing bars (again inside and outside)... I'm beginning to see why no-one has done this yet... The tri count is just spiralling here. I had hoped that the Rotor shader would work a bit like the _a (alpha) texture but more intelligently - so convert the channel to translucency. I'm guessing its not possible in CS, it may be that I'll just put out a Monorail with the standard reflective windows - it would be great to do a fully transparent one, but the count would be 2768 just for the domes or just over 5.6k for the full build. Unfortunately using Blender set to Metres hasn't helped with the scaling issue as it appears everything has a different scale in game. Small houses are one scale, larger buildings a different one. Monorails are just odd, (about 41.5 metres long?) skyscrapers are a much smaller scale. I have a feeling that lining everything up is going to be very hard. Thing is that triangles count... Is it too big for a 'common' building?

Many thanks both, Also thanks for the offer @Clus I tend not to PM as I hope that anyone answering my pitiful pleas for help can also help others who will not need to make them. The initial link that @Ronyx69 posted has got me a bit confused on UV mapping though. It says in one section ' You are allowed to UV map outside the 0-1 area (main tile), so you can tile the entire texture multiple times on a single face. ' But in the LOD section ' The UV mapping must be within the 0-1 area (main tile) of the UV map, no tiling is allowed. ....' However I am not sure what the 0-1 area of a UV is. I've attached a screenshot of Blender showing my v alpha uv map, could someone tell me where this 0.1 area is? Also thanks for the video link, though its somewhat quick for my addled mind to take in. Apologies if these are obvious questions that are answered in it. My Monorail has 2 skins for the dome, it -I think - needs this as the normals have to face outwards for the external faces, but inwards for the internal ones otherwise they are invisible. Blender allows for 2 sided faces, but I am not sure about .fbx files, or CS. As a result I have an outside dome and an inside dome (one of the reasons the tris are so large - 2 domes for the price of 2 domes). The video states that the Rotors shader renders in reverse so far objects appear closer than they should. I have a feeling this will make my building look v odd as if its trying to turn itself inside out. The vid states that you need sub buildings to fix this. However... I have had huge problems with scaling up until now, just getting the mesh to be a size so that when its imported the platforms are the right height has been a real pain. The asset editor seems to pick a random scale based on some unknown dimension. How can I make sure that the two domes I need will be the same scale as the main building? Or... Can I use double sided faces in CS without hammering performance and so that the inside and outside of the dome are visible with one set of faces? Will people wanting to use my asset have to subscribe to the sub buildings as well, or would these get pulled in automatically? 2. How do I run the script? I've downloaded it but where do I need to put it so that I can access it in the Asset editor, and how do I access it once its there? Looking at the script it appears to be searching for something in Custom/Vehicles/Vehicle/Rotors, where is this, and what,if anything, do I need to place there? 3. What if anything do I need to do to my mesh, UV etc so that the Rotors shader knows what bits to affect? The Video mentions vertex painting, which is something I have not done at all. Can I just provide a png of the areas I want to be translucent? The Vid shows just an .fbx being imported. Sorry for sooo many questions, however at present I remain Yours Truly , confused,N10. (with apologies to Mr Davis and Mr Holland).

Hi again, Well I couldn't solve that Array subscript error at all, then it became permanent, in other words changing the scale while importing didn't fix it (whatever it actually is) so I had to throw a lot of work away and go back to a much earlier mesh. On the plus side I had learnt quite a bit about blender putting the failed idea together so it wasn't that much of a problem and here is a very alpha model in game... However as you can see I am trying to make a glass dome and there are no semi transparent textures in game, leas I don't think they are? The alpha is a 1 bit deal on or off. I had hoped that giving the 'glass' a high specular would work, but it looks like the alpha overrides everything. I keep tripping over posts mentioning the Rotor shader, but so far haven't been able to locate one telling me how to use this. I have found posts saying that if you use it then internal lights don't show though the building's glass. Then I found this one - <Scroll to the end of the post> which has a car park that looks like it solves this issue. Thing is being new to this modding game I really don't understand the explanation as to how its been done. Could someone point me at a simple tutorial on the Rotor shader and a simple explanation as to how the trick with the carpark might of been achieved? Oh one final thought, if I do use the Rotor shader will my asset require anyone using my monorail station to have it as well, or are the textures baked at the import stage? Many thanks as always. (Model is over 4000 tris, ugh, so the lod is going to have to be a good one...)

Hi, I am having problems exporting my 1st model from Blender 2.79b into city skylines. I have followed various you tube tutorials and have prepared the model as follows. UV unwrapped. Created a basic texture and saved as building_d (model is building.fbx) Have set the model origin to the base of the object Have set transform, Rotation and Scale with Location,Rotation and Scale all ticked. On fbx export I have 2 options FBX 7.4 binary and FBX 6.1 Ascii, I select FBX 7.4 binary. In main I have selected objects ticked and a scale of 800, apply scale is all local, forward is -Z forward and up is Y up. However, in all the videos I have seen the Apply transform is ticked and just says 'Apply Transform' in 2.79b it is marked !Experimental! Apply Transform ... In Geometry I have Apply Modifiers and Use Modifiers Render Setting ticked, smoothing is set to Normals Only, loose edges is unticked as is tangent space. In armatures both only deform bones and add leaf bones are unticked. Primary Bone is Y axis, Secondary is X axis and Armature is Null. For Animation I have all options ticked and have no idea if this is needed or not. My problem is that when I try and import the model into the Asset Editor in City Skylines I can see the file, but when I click on it there is no picture and I cannot import. Clearly I have goofed somewhere, but I do not know where. The UV map has separate non-overlapping islands. The model is made up of quads and triangles only and had 225 tris (a bit over the recommendation, prob due to its curved roof). If I can get this thing into the game I will be adding a simplified lod. I have uploaded the .blend file. Have I goofed in the model, can City skylines accept quads or do all faces have to be triangles? The videos make no mention of this. Have I goofed on the export? Or is there an issue with the fact that 2.79b has marked the Apply Transform as !Experimental! Hope someone can suggest, thanks in advance building.blend

Many thanks for this Mntoes. The halo was my somewhat dire attempt to get the light from the Metro sign to spread over the front of the building, as a lit sign would in RL. Thing is, doesn't work. So I have ditched that idea and the front sign is now recessed like the two side ones. Here it is in game. I see that in your version you have a front yard(?) so that the building does not sit directly on the street, could you point out where this is in the asset ed, or have you just given it more room (in other words my building is 1 by 2 squares, have you imported on a 2 by 4 grid?). It still needs work. The front Metro sign has an odd line down the middle from the illumination map and all the signs stay lit during the day, not a massive issue and I prefer this to having them go randomly off at night. I got stumped on how to make the signs props as hemeac suggested, and found this tutorial - https://community.simtropolis.com/forums/topic/66550-tutorial-creating-applying-custom-props/ but hit the scaling issue that's mentioned. I just could not figure out how big to make them in blender so that they worked in the game. Anyone any ideas? Before this goes onto the workshop I'd like a though test session to make sure I haven't goofed and the costs, etc are sensible. Is there a way of posting an asset here for testing only? Finally while testing this asset I have ended up with multiple copies in the game, could someone tell me where to look so I can delete the dud ones? Many thanks for all the advice and help.

Sure, hope it helps ! metro7d.fbx

Hi hemeac, Many thanks for this, any idea how the devs pulled of the main line multi platform train station in the game? This has window reflections and in game lights up at night ! Though for some reason I cannot get it to light up in the asset editor You can see I have had some success getting a glow effect on the metro signs on the sides..... But not on the front where the halo is just horrible and I haven't a clue why this is. The marble lights correctly as does the roof.

Hi (again) OK I've just figured out what I did wrong, I loaded an image and then unwrapped. Turns out if you do this odd things happen. I found (after a lot of hunting around) how to delete the UV and by unwrapping *and then* loading the image I didn't get the problem of it looking like I had 2 UV maps when I only had one! So I now have a building in the asset editor - see image. However I am having issues with the lighting. My windows in the doors are not lighting at all, they have a spec of 255, so they reflect and a illum of 120, which I thought meant that they would be lit all the time but there must be some kind of conflict? I've been using this guide - Guide to lighting on Steam forums The diffuse for the windows is a flat grey (r,g,b 64,64,64). I have also been trying to get the metro signs to light up. Here the Illum is 120, a specular of if 0 (black) They don't look bad but I wanted them to spread their light onto the surrounding walls and this is not working at all. I have tried this for the windows, but the effect is just horrible. Does anyone know where I have gone wrong with my windows and can anyone suggest a way to simulate a light glow effect? Thanks in advance.

Hi, That's what I suspected hemeac, however its always good to check. I've now thrown out the metal sign and, with doors added have a building of 376 tris, much more manageable. The metro sign will be textures with illumination in them, however I have hit an odd problem. I have somehow ended up with 2 UV unwraps. One covers most of the building, but the other appears to be just the doors and sign above them. The strange thing is that all the surfaces appear on both unwraps, but textures are only being picked from one or other depending on the surface. There is only 1 object in the scene and everything is either part of the same mesh (like the door sign) or a separate mesh but part of the same object (the doors). I've uploaded the .blend. If you click on a door or sign above it you get 1 uv, if you click on any other part of the build you get another. CS cannot have 2 colour maps so does anyone know what I have done to get this and how I can merge the two maps or delete them and remap? <Edit> Sorry forgot to say, if I look in mesh data then it only shows 1 UV unwrap! </edit> metro7d.blend

Hi, Many thanks for the replies. I am not sure but having an extruded metal sign might have been been kicked into the long grass, even when I use decimate on a fairly square simple font, say Arial, I have around 600 tris after decimate, cleaning and manual tidying (removing inside faces etc). My main building is just over 400 tris due to the circular depressions and curved roof, and while I could get this down a bit adding the signs gives around 1800 (total) for a fairly simple building which I have to add the doors to - prob pushing it into the 2100 area. Do folk think this is an OK count for such a simple building? I have yet to build the lod, but since this will have a flat/ simple curved roof with no overhang and no circles I expect it to be less than 20 tris, prob less than 10. Oh quick question, can city skylines handle non-connected faces? That is a face that passes over over vertexes without joining them? You can see that I have wrapped the roof quads around the back of the building. If I replace this back with a single quad, I'll save quite a few tris, but would cs be happy? See second pic.

Many thanks for all the help, Yes the.png was missing and adding it back fixed the fact that the building was importing white. I'm almost there now. The last 2 things I want to do is add an extruded metal sign saying metro onto the sides of the building in an indented circle (see attached). I have added the circle and although this has pushed the tris count up, its not horrendous. Adding the text though has increased the count into the thousands. That's no good for the game and no player would thank me for doing so even when I add a simplified lod. I could I guess make the sign a flat with a transparent texture on it and the metro word in a colour, but this would be flat and look odd on rotation. Anyone any idea how I can cut the triangles count for text and still get a reasonable result? I have heard of a decimate modifier, but cannot find it in the Blender ui -and don't know if this would solve the problem. The other issue I am having is lighting this thing for night. I want the door, the 2 circles and a sign above the door to be lit. I guess I need to give them an illumination texture (the _i file), is this just a grey scale mask? If so am I correct in assuming white 255 or whatever, is full illumination and 0 is none? What would folk suggest as a good value for a not overly bright fluorescent light? One final question do these illuminated textures affect those around them, in other words does the light spread, or do they just look like they glow?

Ahhh I think I might of found my mistake mntoes, does the texture have to have the .png/.jpg extention? I removed it so mine only has building_d - no extension as that is what was suggested in one of the videos I saw, but of course they could have had windows set so that it hides the dot3's

Many thanks for the replies and links. The building is coming into City Skylines white Avanya, not sure quite what that shows.

Hi, Me again (the confused OP). Very useful tip on overlapping UVs thanks. Right now I am having two problems. The first is that my texture is not going into the game, the UV is unmapped and it is saved as model_name_d however I am wondering what format this file has to be (tiff, jpg, png etc). I thought .png would work, but its not going into the game. Is there any info on this? I'm also struggling to figure out the different types of texture map. My building will have a copper roof, copper being a metal is somewhat shiny - but not overly so (see the 'Copper Box' in London, UK), I have no idea how to get this into a texture. How would I shade a file so that the result is a semi shiny surface?? Equally I want the walls to be a rough-ish concrete, so will need a bump map but cannot remember what the _thingy is. I don't think its _b (?). I stumbled over a link to a Pardox page on this but for the life of me cannot find the thing now. I'm also having a stupid problem using Blender, which is I cannot figure out how to align the x/y or z centre of one object to the corresponding centre of another. I want to add a sign above the door, which will be an extruded rectangle. The easiest way I can figure on doing this is to produce a plain, size it and then join the two surfaces. Problem is I cannot work out how to centre the plain. Any help appreciated as always.

Thank you! That was the problem all along. I had assumed that these were not 'objects' , well I was wrong. I was also wrong about my buildings dimensions. Width wise its not bad, but its far too short. Can someone tell me/point me at where I can find the sizes of various items in City Skylines in Blender units? Better still is there a .blend file of a person available so I can check door heights etc.

Hmm This is odd. Having realized that I posted the wrong file (really sorry about that) , but seeing that mntoes could import it I tried to do so with that file, result? It fails. Sadly ticking Tangent space has no effect. This suggests that I have something wrong with the export parameters rather than the building itself. I can import that half building .fbx back into blender, but cannot import it into City Skylines. I have attached my fbx for the half building. Can someone try and import it into City Skylines? If it works for you then I really am stuck. Maybe I'm doing something wrong when I try and import into City Skylines? I Start the asset ed, select new, select monument, select a monument - such as the observatory - this gives me the files to import and the click the required file, building2.fbx in this case. This causes loading to appear v briefly in the right window but nothing else. building2.fbx