Potentially Useful Building Graphics

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Zephyris
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Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by Zephyris »

So...

One thing I have been working on on and off over the last few weeks is a complete set of building textures/models. There are (so far) 9 good, 3 bad and one special building textures and normal/bump maps and a set of very low poly buildings (around 20 tris) UV unwrapped in a way which allows the use of any texture on any building. This is therefore combinatorially beautiful; with 20 textures and 40 models you could have 800 unique buildings, though a half timber skyscraper would look interesting. These have all been made in blender.

Would these be of use? I have attached one example texture (one image is the diffuse texture (including short distance ambient occlusion) and one image is the normal/bump map, RGB encode the normals (blender convention) and alpha encodes the bump) and an example render.
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Building_Old_Brick4NP_BNor.png
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Building_Old_Brick4NP_DTex.png
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BuildingDisplayDNE.png
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Zephyris
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by Zephyris »

And this inspired me to make some low poly carriage models... 3 variants per 512x512 texture, ~30tris per carriage. These require transparent textures to look decent...
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CarriageEg.png
CarriageEg.png (132.88 KiB) Viewed 25544 times
CarriageEg_noAA.png
CarriageEg_noAA.png (115.25 KiB) Viewed 25547 times
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Zephyris
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by Zephyris »

It really is very quiet in here, I'll just keep spamming...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NfmTn1YGnOo
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by tsjook »

Really great, especially the trains!

The buildings still look too boxy though, like they're folded out of paper. A little more depth would probably solve some problems. Or maybe somewhat less sharp 'folds'? Downsize is that this will 'cost' many polygons.

Nice demonstation of texture use including bump map and tranparency use. Inspirational for me as I still need to learn all these things. :wink:
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by Zephyris »

Smoothing the corners would be hard... Besides that the reason the buildings look artificial isn't sharp corners, it is a general lack of "personal" detail and interaction with the environment around it... The lighting I used is also very unusual, I havn't worked out how to get a good real time ambient occlusion-like effect (ie. giving a face a base brightness independent of illumination.).

Anyways, with no further ado please enjoy the attached, an interactive view of a new version of some train and truck textures, use WASD and the mouse to navigate, though you will need an up-to date graphics card and blender to run it...
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UnifiedVehiclesDEMO.zip
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by lonwolf89 »

these will come in handy yummy yumm! :D
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by Zhall »

I dont know if you guys need it or not, (lol) but here is my WIP goods factory.
Im using 3Ds max 9.

Im more on the new side of modeling :wink: This is really my first UVW mapped structure, (only half of it has been mapped so far)

So I have a few questions...

Do you want animations for buildings?

Should the skin for the model all be one image, or can it be seperate images?

Should co-planar faces be removed, as welll as faces on the bottom of the model?

Yep.

Currently 436 polys.
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Factory
Factory
Factoryrender_01.png (191.12 KiB) Viewed 25088 times
Factory working
Factory working
Factory-work.gif (35.31 KiB) Viewed 25088 times
Last edited by Zhall on 11 Oct 2009 20:11, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by ohlidalp »

Sapphire united wrote:I dont know if you guys need it or not...
We do need it and I like it. :wink:

As for your questions
1] Animations are welcome, but I'm not sure OGRE engine can import animations done in 3dMax. You need to read it's docs to find out.
2] The textures can be separate images, no problem.
3] Any faces which can't be seen or don't affect the model's geometry should be removed. But, it's no big deal if you leave them in place.

Keep up the good work.

~An00biS
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by lonwolf89 »

There are 2 types of animations in ogre: bone and transform.
So far the only working type exported from 3dsmax is bone animations in .skeleton files that can be loaded in Ogre fast.
The transform animations: manually create the animation using time checkpoints (code-wise).
the animations need to be hardcoded as far as translation-rotation-scaling animations (no bones involved).
And from that .gif if you want to import it in Ogre, either:
1. create bones to animate it (keeps 1 mesh but bones are rather used for other purposes than buildings)
2. create the moving part as a separate mesh, and request someone to create the animation in code, or even you can do it (i can provide the code sample but the coordinates and scale and rotations needs to be tweaked).
2] The textures can be separate images, no problem.
indeed. but less files means less loading time. Especially if you use a variety of texture maps.
3] Any faces which can't be seen or don't affect the model's geometry should be removed. But, it's no big deal if you leave them in place.
Hence we don;t have occlusion algorithms (yet), meshes should be optimized as far as polygon-complexity. However, buildings should have a base (foundation like) rather than not have anything at all underneath. It's not set yet.
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by Zhall »

Progress.

Up to 907 faces somehow... :?:

Using a few skins, Most are low res.. 128x128=64kb or 64x64=16kb

So is the type of base you where thinking of? Could be placed on uneven terrain, and the ramps could settle the difference without the model floating..

Any tips on lowering my poly count? (im removing faces that face downward)

How about the containers? Should they be multiple colors or team color?

Thx.
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factoryrender_03.png
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Re: Potentially Useful Building Graphics

Post by lonwolf89 »

yep, looks better now and can be placed anywhere.
About the poly count, i think it's a little bit much. Post a screenshot with it in wireframe mode so i can see the vertices and edges, i can;t really tell from the textured form. Try to remove anything that isn't visible and reduce the polygons on planar faces.

we would need models that try to respect 2 rules: as low poly as possible, and modeled at a 1 3dsmax unit : 1 meter scale. The other things about them can be settled after :)

And don't stick to 1 model only, keep on rolling :wink: so far the project doesn't have 3d models to use for factories, cities, etc, so we are in dire need of them :)

About containers color, factories aren't owned by players, only stations are, so the economic buildings are "neutral". Use whatever colors that fit best with the factory design.
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