European House Add-on (EHA) by Gn_Leugim

[namspopof]

Very good for Euro city style. 

[art128]

Amazing!

Just not sure a door is necessary to access the roof on such a small structure.

[gn_leugim]

thank you

Arthur: well how would you install those antennas and vents and repair lost tiles on the roof?

[MandelSoft]

This reminds me of one of the Maxis buildings

[noahclem]

Great looking corner apartments    I hope you do a dark night render 

[gn_leugim]

This reminds me of one of the Maxis buildings

that's the point ^^

Great looking corner apartments    I hope you do a dark night render 

I wouldn't mind to, but I guess I can't =\

[whatevermind]

I saw your massive upload of these, and look forward to using them.  Also, I love your names - they do a great job of keeping with the Maxis tongue-in-cheek naming traditions.  Particularly the "Lousy Apartments", that's a classic. 

[gn_leugim]

I saw your massive upload of these, and look forward to using them.  Also, I love your names - they do a great job of keeping with the Maxis tongue-in-cheek naming traditions.  Particularly the "Lousy Apartments", that's a classic. 

I really wanted to keep those amusing name from maxis My intent is to make new buildings is such way you won't notice they are there and look like they were installed with SC4

Glad you like them

[gn_leugim]

ok, back to the BAT

IT's ALIVE!!!



But like Frankenstein, it has something wrong. that's the second render I do, and while it is rendereing I can see no issues, but on game, see those dark spots pointed out by the arrows? well, they are not consistent. if I rotate the camera, that place will be good and other (usualy the right side of the building at the moment we are facing it) will have this spots of currupted texture.

anyone has any idea what is it? and how to fix it? thanks

[Delecto]

You can try to enlarge a little bit the LOD, this is a problem that appears a few times without valid reason.

Hope this help. 

[jmyers2043]

Nice roof. Is the building hanging off the right side of the lot? Are you using gmax?

[gn_leugim]

So, after reading a lot, taking many advices and trying them all, I can assume it is a graphic board issue. unfortunately, out of 4 computers tested, only one had the model correctly shown up, not a good statistic eheh =\

So, I went after what Mntoes did, changing the textures and figure out which pixels are troublesome. First texture to test was the roof texture, which had his hue/color changed. and the issue is almost gone, and is barely noticeable.



so, what you think? I will make other variation in textures, let's hope it will not show this too.

And once again, thank you everyone! who helped out

[art128]

I like this version better than the previous one!

[gn_leugim]

Art128: Thanks mate, this version will be included in the pack

So, based on the experience of Mntoes, I made new textures, namely the walls and roof:



maybe too radical change no? ^^ and this would make version number three ^^

anyway, as you can see, the issue remains, so it has to be from other textures. I'll be exploring that

[whatevermind]

Regarding your texture problem - my first thought was that you might have two overlapping objects sharing the same points in space.  The two objects could also be slightly offset so that one has only a very thin covering over the other (for example if you modeled the roof form and the shingles as two different objects - the shingle object would be really thin relative to the roof form below it).  Anyway, when this happens, it can produce odd visual effects similar to what you're showing, and usually only at certain zooms or rotations, because it can't figure out which object to display.

That's mostly from experience in other programs, and might not be relevant, but it's what popped into my head when I saw the pictures.

[jmyers2043]

... the issue remains ...

I've seen this before but not as noticeable. I re-rendered, no change. I redid the UV map, no change. Then I redid the texture, no change. I recall that the gmax preview was OK. It happened on export. So I redesigned the roof. The roof, an extruded line, became a box. Presto!

- Jim

[FrankU]

I like the models a lot.
The brick texture is great! 

[gn_leugim]

Thank you all for your input, tips and acknowledgements

Well, I have good news! I crack it! at least in this particular model.



As you can see it is all looking good now So, what did I do?

Well, Following the lead of Mntoes' window frame which caused the problem on his bat, I exported a third model, which has the red roof, the first on the picture, modded it, and plop it in a city, next to the others, as you can see in the pic. This way, I only would need to render (the model was on the root plugin folder, so everytime I exported on gmax, it was replaced) then enter game and load the city to check the model.

I first made different types of renders, draft, low, medium and high quality renders and with and without lights. From this nothing, the issue was still there.

Then I started to remove groups of items from the model and render. first rood details, then the balconies railings and then the pottery and voilá! the model was allright. So I reloaded everything but the pottery, render, and that was not all ok. then I took both railings and pottery and it was ok again. You may think, good, is not only one item conflicting, are 2, but, that is actually a good thing, because having 2 items, I can check them for what they have in common and test if that is the cause.

Soon I end up finding out the criminals: Opacity Maps. Both add them. and once removed, the models would show up properly!!

So, I found what was messing up things, but still I was wondering, why? was there a way to solve this issue without turning the opacity maps off? after all I have been using them for ages with no visible issues. So I wonder, is it an issue for the board dealing with non opaque item on game? To test this I rendered again with opacity map on, and used Cogeo'e Model Tweaker to set the 3ds models' opacity maps on, within the sc4model file and tested in game. no good result. Then I also tried to check if having any non opaque item was displayed in game against the background would take effect, so I modelled the model again in order to assure that every pottery item would have a solid background, in the model it self. nothing too.

I don't know how graphic boards really work, way out of my league, but, in this particular case, it seem it has issues to deal with the end result of semi-transparent items. But, for what I saw on other threads, this is not always the case, so the issue may be harder to solve. Anyway, I hope this post may give light to anyone who will have this issue one day, in how to make a troubleshooting and find the solution

[gn_leugim]

double post ftw 

So, lately I've been seeing real life buildings to base mine on. these usually are Portuguese, so, in order to avoid droping the project into a Portuguese House Add-on, I took a trip to France     on google streets... :uhm:

after searching for a long time, I found a good building in Nantes (here)

So, hands to work, and yes, I took 2 floors down, to match the scale



I may revisit the textures, namely the roof ones, but so far, not bad ein? the maxis building is there for reference on scale ^^

[art128]

Looking great, Amigo! I like the textures actually.