3DForge Exteriors

That is cool, was feeling like doing a nice winter snowy demo scene

 

No, it was just a joke. We're all eagerly waiting for this update, so it feels like it's taking a long while.

Cobus keeps adding more awesome stuff to each update, so you know it's going to be mind blowing once you get your hands on it.

So of course we're not waiting an unreasonable amount of time (unlike, say TWoW), but oh man is the wait ever killing me.

 

I'm waiting for him to finish this update so he can then get to work on more standalone packages that we can support him with by giving him some of our cash He can't keep giving stuff away for free (well... he CAN, but he won't be able to live off that lol)

 

Hi,

Just some test shots for the Village Exteriors Kit Castle Update

Easy to do non-square wall designs







Cheers
Cobus

 

Good work Cobus. when you discussed earlier the inclusion of the GX capability, in what form would this take place?
You have two very extensive assets, whereas all the other GX inclusions are tiny in comparison.

@smada-luap , I've been insisting he take my cash for a long time also!

 

Hey there,
Very good question with an exciting answer

Gaia comes with a selection of pre-done, ready to spawn POI's (Points of Interest) small holdings.
These items are available to populate the spawner and have the user with a few clicks place pre-done layouts that would take hours to do, drop into their scenes and BAM, they there. I am setting the main house for instance to not conform to the terrain and other items to do so to have the best visual result.
Of course once they are placed the user can do small tweaks as they see fit.

I am with this FREE Castle update adding/releasing adding more of these pre-done POI's as examples and I think @AdamGoodrich already have or is going to do a tutorial on how to further go make your own as well.

VERY IMPORTANT:
All Future Premium BLUEPRINT package that has exteriors contents in them will include Gaia integration like this.
So if you get the BLUEPRINTS package, the BLUEPRINT designs that are included will be spawnable with Gaia and to my understanding also with the upcoming GeNa

Hope that answers your question

Cheers
Cobus

 

Ummm yep - I have been promising Cobus that tutorial - and surprised its slipped through the cracks this long as it is one of the most powerful features of Gaia imho.

Have been very busy finishing off Gena... and next week is Unite and PAX here.. so if its not this week, then it will be the week after next.

Its been fun collaborating with Cobus on the integration.. its going to be very cool.

 

Explained perfectly Cobus and Adam. I was just rewatching the tutorial on POI's yesterday now that I have a better understanding of Gaia.

Keep up the good work, you are both making it easier to create games for all of us.

 

Can anybody tell me off hand the name of the prefab for just the vertical post that is used in all of the frames in the Exterior Kit?

 

Hi,
Think this is what you referring to
Assets\3DForge\FantasyExteriors\Village & Towns\Prefabs\Base\Small parts\ToolBox

 

Thank you that's it!

 

@S4G4N one more question... what's the name of the sloped horizontal piece that runs along the top of the frame_x_top pieces? I don't see a _top equivalent of the frame_front pieces.

 

mmm... I do not fully understand what you are referring too ?
I see only vertical parts in that folder, can not recall if I gave horizontal ones, that is if I am understanding correctly

 

I haven't seen them as separate parts (there are a LOT of pieces in here), but I'm referring to the sloped horizontal beams on these pieces:



I don't see any "front" pieces for the top level that need to be sloped to accommodate the rooftops.

EDIT: Arrrgh, the image isn't showing up now. It's still there in the edit mode. I'll see if I can fix it. You can see it at: http://imgur.com/OOG7UzN

 

Hey there,

I can see what you asking for now, I don't think so.
What exactly are you looking for?, I will add them with this update
Think must just add them 1,2,3,4& 5 units long then you can make any ?

Will that suffice, good to get such small item now at end of finishing the update, then I can include them

Cheers
Cobus

 

That sounds good. If you really wanted to, you could make "side" modules to correspond with the "front" frame modules, but I can easily build them myself.

Thanks!

 

Hey everyone,

Go grab GeNa, the latest package from @AdamGoodrich , the creator of Gaia

It is on a -50% , 7 day launch special
Even at $50, I would gladly buy it for the time alone it is going to save me.

Congrats @AdamGoodrich !!!

 

A bit lacking on Documentation or videos. Would be nice to understand how this is different than what's included with Gaia.

 

Hi,

@AdamGoodrich flew of to Unite Aus and was tight for time that is what the vids are not up yet.
As with Gaia, you can expect to see just the best when it comes to ease of use and tutorials
It has a very comprehensive 63 page .pdf document included with the package.

It is very different in the range of functions that it has.
It is done to be used with whatever Terrain creation tools you are using to carve your game-world with.
It does work very well with Gaia, but will work as good with World Creator, TC2 and anything else that spits out Unity Terrain or even works perfect for mesh.
It is not just a terrain tool.
You can plant/paint grass onto the roofs of houses, add ivy to pillars or up the side of a castle wall
Very useful mask by colour spawning, like splatmaps
So have the pathways in your village drawn in one colour, then add varying thickness lines on the edges of the paths in another colour.

Then with GeNa to that last edge line add small rocks, one or two grass types and other small environmental placable prefabs and when you spawn that in the spot where you control and want you village with whatever brush-size, it will place all that with the randomness and settings that you chose and paint that one go with neat consistency

With the size by Alpha map, you can say where the river edge is edit the alpha so that the plants that spawn on the edge of the river becasue there is water spawn large Cats Tails or whatever grass you added to that mask.

Or in the valleys of mountains spawn larger trees.
Your imagination is the limit when thinking or ways to leverage this toolset

And this is spawning of ANY prefab, not just nature related, onto terrain or other mesh

Cheers
Cobus

 

You should probably post this in the GeNa forum thread also.

 

Thanks, done
I posted because all my Village Exteriors Kit stuff can be spawned with GeNa as well and be very good looking POI's

 

Does that mean the Castles update are close to release?

 

Now that is a very clever and very logical deduction with a big Yes

 

Yay.
Jumped at getting GeNa because of you guys.

 

I avoided this forum for months just to keep that upgrade out of my mind and when I come here to see the progress you get me to buy another of Adam's packages. I'm not sure if its good or bad timing lol. Can't wait for that castle update looks great!

 

Hey there,

All the major stuff done, just adding last missing items.
Should be live in less then 1 week

Cheers
Cobus

 

"Just adding the last missing items" that you've thought of... You've not put it our hands yet; we can probably think of a ton more XD

 

Oh, believe me, I know that is coming ...

 

Mwahahaha

 

Not getting any help in the other forums, but the author of 3DForge and his followers are all knowledgeable about meshes and textures, I hope no one minds me asking what could be causing the white dots on this prefab I'm trying to use?

 

Looks like the specular value on the material is set too high

 

Is it there at runtime too?

 

OK, put one of 3DForge fences in the scene, perfect, no white dots. Switched the material on the other fence to use the same as the 3DForge fence, no white dots.
Here is what the material looked like on the other fence:


Guess older materials like this may not always work.

 

His materials might have pixels just up to the exact edge of the mesh on the UV layout, I add a fair bit of extra colour/pixels around edges to help with the bleed.
If it is bleed, it normally becomes worse the further you are from the item

 

Thank you, this one incident taught me a lot.

 

Could even be a nasty normal map

Rule of thumb. A reliable seller saves a ton of grief. There's one around here somewhere.

 

Hi Cobus, just purchased both the Village exteriors and Village interiors assets, as well as GeNa. Looking forward to exploring the vast collections. Great looking assets, well done

 

Hi @PatTanner

I see it is your first Forum post, I would like to welcome you.
I always keep an eye here but the community itself is extremely helpful, so if you have any questions or need advice, please fell free to post or ask.

Also, come show some of your creations.

Thanks for the support of 3DForge assets.
You just in time, for the Exteriors Kit is about to receive a very much anticipated and cool FREE Update
The Castles and City Walls Update.

*Please don't forget to STAR rate any of your Asset Store purchases

Cheers
Cobus

 

If you need a temporary fix, you can disable mipmapping. As Cobus said, the texture matches exactly the UVs of the mesh. However, that'd only be at full resolution. When the texture gets downsampled by the engine, the pixels don't always match exactly anymore, which is why it's good to have some extra space around your UVs on your textures.

Go to the import settings and change the texture type to 'Advanced', and then hit the checkbox to disable mipmaps. This isn't always a 100% fix, but it should help if you have to use the asset.

 

Thank you MrArcher. I tried opening the FBX in Maya, had to use Autodesk to update it because apparently it was too old a version, but your method sounds better.

However, like someone posted above, it pays to know who your getting your assets from. I just don't get why its a "staff pick"?

 

The textures prefixed "fe_vil" should be safe to remove, right? Only the ones with "fe_village" that are actually being used with the models? Trying to save some space ; )

 

I dont see a problem, it will still be linked to the material and that is the only thing it does

 

Hey everyone,
Lasts sceenshots before the FREE Update release
Very tall and long modular bridges and cool gatehouses, metal gates, some chain items
The houses was placed there to show scale as well as the other Exteriors Kit props.






Cheers
Cobus

 

I really love what you can achieve with the products of Cobus.
I created Displacement Maps (Heightmaps) for all the floors of the interior kid to use POM Effects and played a little bit with the Normal, Occlusion and Specular Maps. The result is really impressive.

Only sad thing is that the Wall Textures are also working as prop textures so you can't add heightmaps to them. If walls would just have similar full texture like the floors you can imagine how awsome POM effect would look on walls...

Anyway here some screenshots so you see what I am talking about. Take a closer look to the floor. (Pretty dark I know )



The last caste exterior screenshots are totally awesome. Specially the entrance bridge door.

Cheers
Ronny

 

Hey @RonnyDance

Thanks for coming to show the test results. Glad you like 3DForge packages so much.
I think these bridges and bridge towers with entrances will ad a very nice Medieval touch to a castle scene, imagine nice reflective water and a small harbor type area close to it, small boats can sail/row underneath.

Wait until you see the new Standalone package after this Castles FREE Update

Cheers
Cobus

 

@S4G4N - Wow, those bridges and towers look absolutely fantastic! I cannot wait to get my hands on this update...

@RonnyDance - that looks spectacular!

 

What i mean is that some of them are just example textures right? and some are more "core" textures?

 

No, I am confused now
Please help me understand better by explains more

 

Renaming texture files shouldn't pose a problem as unity should be keeping track of used asset's and update any links in materials etc automatically

 

Ok, time to get super clear then : )
The textures prefixed "fe_vil" seems to mostly be ground textures and some wooden textures. The ones with "fe_village" seems to be "core" textures used with the actual buildings like roofs and stuff since they are atlased. Is it safe to remove the "fe_vil" without affecting the buildings/props in the package? Im mostly concerned about the wooden ones.