Creating Buildings in SimCity 3000 Building Architect

[Railwaymodeler]

Not sure if it has been asked before, but I am curious.

If I were to draw buildings in SimCity 3000's Building Architect, is it possible at all to use them as a graphic in the game?

I have long wanted to draw early buildings (As in early 19th century) for the game, as I sometimes start as early as the late 1700s.

What do I need to know?

I have tried drawing my own, but I am not much good at it.

[FooBar]

If you can get the building on your screen, it is in theory possible to get it in the game. In the worst case you can just printscreen it and go from there in a graphics editing program.

Trickiest thing will be size. If Building Architect uses a different size for buildings than TTD, you either lose detail or need to do a lot of manual touching-up.

[Railwaymodeler]

FooBar,

I was thinking at minimum to just create the building structure with no detailing, and print screen them into Paint.net.

I can paint the buildings, but creating the structure is harder, and SC3K's editor may make it easier to at least create that.

Of course, if there is an export feature, that makes it easier!

I am also thinking of doing some detailing in SC3K BA, and editing it into palate safe colors if needed.

[Emperor Jake]

Hey, this is potentially not a bad idea! I will give it a try sometime...

THe problem is, however, the buildings might look quite out of place in TTD, even after having been exported to the correct palette.

[Circeus]

SC3 stuff is too detailed and would probably be very hard to convert to a satisfying TT result. I recommend trying the Urban Renewal Kit of SC2000, if you can get your hands on it. There have been some interesting results in converting stuff between TT and SC2000.

[Purno]

SC2000 was pixel art, wasn't it? SC3000 was generated from 3D models, wasn't it?

If SC2000 is indeed pixel art as I seem to remember, what's the use of drawing SC2000 buildings to be converted later, rather than just drawing TT buildings right from the start?

[SAC]

Using buildings made with BAPlus will indeed look out of place when using them with TTDLX, thus requires some work to make them fit. I have loads of custom buildings made with BAPlus, and so far I've only converted a few of them to fit TTDLX.

As for SCURK I have chosen to use some of the artwork as models for my own custom buildings. Drawing from scratch but following the original guidelines from which they were drawn. SCURK-buildings are smaller than TTDLX equivalent, so it's not possible to convert them directly to TTDLX.

With this said it's still a very good idea to use BAPlus and SCURK art as a source of ideas to create custom buildings for TTDLX. I have a couple running in my own TTDLX-game for instance...

[Circeus]

If SC2000 is indeed pixel art as I seem to remember, what's the use of drawing SC2000 buildings to be converted later, rather than just drawing TT buildings right from the start?

I did not mean draw in SCURK so much as "start from SC200 models", though there are scant few SC2000 sites still around these days.

[SAC]

Is it at all possible to use SC3KU/WE-buildings in TTDLX? That's the question initially asked in this thread, and I thought I should give an example;

In the shot below I've taken some skyscrapers from SC3KU/WE and put them in my game to show whether or not they can be used at all - in a personal game of course...
For a number of reason it's a not a good idea to just lift them right into a TTDLX game as it's first and foremost a height issue. Buildings this tall needs to be shortened and in a proper way. Second of all, colours needs adjustment, and it's a bit time consuming to get it all right. And while some after some work sort of blend in, others aren't really suitable for TTDLX at all.

It should be noted that I've done some larger work on some of them. All have been given a completely new custom ground base, while roof details have been another thing to work on further.

Well, you'll be the judges...

...oh, and it's downtown Olympia of course...

[slaca]

awesome

[FooBar]

I think they're a bit noisy compared to your other graphics, but other than that they fit in very well.

[kamnet]

Amazing how SAC can make them fit right in to her INFRA project.

[SAC]

I think they're a bit noisy compared to your other graphics, but other than that they fit in very well.

Yes they are, but that comes with the territory...

None of these buildings will obviously be released in any form, other than in this example to show whether or not it's possible to make use of SC3KU/WE buildings in a TTDLX-game. Still, it was a fun experiment, and released or not, these buildings will remain in my personal game...

[Railwaymodeler]

So I am gathering that SC3K's building architect is not very suitable for TT graphics.

I did just have another thought though: With it being generally agreed that SC3KBA has more detail than TT can make use of, would it be of any use for the extra zoom and high res graphics I have seen for OTTD?