World Building [RELEASED] CScape - advanced building generator

Congrats! And only $45, great price for an impressive asset.

 

As the time has come, and we are in final release and somewhat definitive shape of CScape (in reality, not a final - as there are many new ideas for this asset, and I will continue to work on it as hard as I can) I'm about to make series of videos on how to use all new and old features.
I would like an opinion from users on what tutorials do you prefer and in what order? I have some ideas for main tutorials that should be done:
1) Using a new Creative (slanted streets) workflow in CScape.
2) Using a CScape toolset for creating skins
3) Optimizing for mobile (VR and non VR).
I'm also thinking about doing some live streams/webinars.. But I don't know how many of you might be interested in this and what platform would you prefer for streaming, Youtube or Facebook?

 

I would think YouTube would be the way to go, then they can be saved with the rest of your videos, but I don't really care. FB would work for me too.

1. Optimization
2. Toolset

 

Cscape toolset tutorial over youtube.

One thing is that the new cscape comes with too many folders, maybe you could simplify that for the next update.

 

I suspect close to 100% of the user base will need to know about using the CScape toolset for creating skins.

 

Me no use facebook, please go youtube for streamin...

1. Optimization

2. Skins ...including street

 

Hello gang,

There is just NO way this is not embarrassing, so to avoid Oliver having to answer this question again I thought I'd post my f'up here.

I was getting an error when attempting to compile the textures, via the "Bake Textures" button on the CScapeToolset scene (line 80 in CSMaterialTools) This is because I didn't read the readme (Gettting_Started_With_CDK.txt) and download and install the extra asset file: https://www.dropbox.com/s/8desklhixvtvr6g/CScapeToolsetSources.unitypackage?dl=0

Thing is, Oliver was even nice enough to credit me in that readme and yet I still forgot. SO embarrassing.

Oliver, Thanks, and sorry. Everything works fine now that I read and followed the directions.

 

thanks for posting this, because without it I was gonna f up too.

 

Hi Oliver, I just updated to the latest Cscape. First I deleted old folders then installed new version (im using 2018.3/latest beta) and now my cities are all dark. Any ideas what has gone wrong?

 

Talk about ask and you shall receive... I found the answer straight away, I simply added the Default CScape City Colors

Much appreciated Oliver.

 

I would personally be interested in an upgrade workflow type of video. For example, how to get shop canopies to show when you upgrade.

Also being able to add your own shop signs would be good. At present I plan to create a hundred or so and manually add them to the shops when they are done, and I get around to it.

Also being able to style a city to use all brick facades, all stone facades, all concrete facades etc.

Also if you have two or more cities how to use a different texture for one than the other. As an example I have a factory area and a city area. I want my city area clean material but the factory I want dirty?

Also I have seen a few house prefabs but not sure if the "creating an housing estate" you spoke of earlier and demonstrated is doable or whether that would be a new asset al together?

Many thanks. Oh also, I havent really looked to see if any of the above are currently doable as I have other things happening but will do eventually. Thanks Oliver

 

I am making a game that will have 3 CScape cities: Manhattan style (lots of very tall glass buildings), a more residential area with lots of brick buildings, and an industrial area (lots of concrete, few windows) I am working on the process to handle this, and once I have it down I will post a step by step here.

It seems as simple as creating the window designs in the Toolkit, then going into your scene, selecting the city and insuring that there is a specific material for each city type, selecting that material in the City's script and then creating the textures. (yea, that's a little vague atm, sorry)

 

It sound like you're doing what I will be doing in few weeks so any workflow processes would be appreciated. I havent gone that deep into city creation as I placed my city just to get my roads up and running/.edited etc, I have now gone back to the beginning. ie. terrain/basic optomization level1 >>> roads more optimization >>>city and buildings then placable objects. Il keep my eye out for your post. Cheers

 

@olix4242 So i like the idea of shop signs...but how can i get more control on were exactly they are placed? due to placement kinda being random...its been more tough gettn everything were i want.

 

Hawk, I should have a step-by-step within the next 7 days, likely sooner. I'm waiting for an update to another asset so I SHOULD have some time to test this process

 

Thanks James, much appreciated. Id like to see a pic when your done if you wanna post one. No problem either way.

 

it is a very good question...
but Cscape is a powerfull tool, only imagination is the limit

 

Well you can't get a controll where they are exactly placed. Almost like in a real world ;P
Just kidding - but if you about to make a hundred or so shop signs, lets speak: you could sell them on assetstore as separate pack for CScape, and I will give you all support that is needed.

 

Here is a new small tutorial on some of the new features. Sorry for a slow pace speak - I really wasn't prepared on doing this one.

 

Another 'tutorial' on using new 'Organize Buildings" optimization feature.

 

Thanks Oliver, I already built my city but it will be great to use those techniques for others later. Oh and rather slow speak than terrible electronic music with no guidance as to where the mouse is. Cheers

 

Oliver,

Thanks for the videos. (hint: make a script so there is less wandering about, fewer "ummmm" and awkward pauses.)

Couple of questions:

• Optimizations. Since I will be moving the buildings because I use Easy Roads (need for curved streets) what determines how the buildings are grouped? Is it per District? Per block?
• District designs. This is something that is VERY interesting to me. The asset page mentions designs such as Sci-Fi, and I would be HAPPY to pay for these designs. What is the status of that?

 

Hawk,

After watching the two videos Oliver posted I am pausing for a day to see if the design of Districts can fulfill our needs of multiple styles within a city. It will only take me one day to test and write out the documentation for multiple styles with multiple cities if that is what we need, but if the Districts will do the job, then even better performance (yay)

 

Hello, i was looking into that function wave collapse, and i think it cool insanely awesome with your procedural building.
https://selfsame.itch.io/unitywfc

how hard would it be to implement something like that in Cscape?

cheeers

 

Yaaaaay. lol absolutely.

 

Well, to get ahead of things (as I do) I wrote up the process for creating multiple materials for multiple cities within a single scene/game.

This is ONLY a starting point and I need to test this process further. I am posting this so that others can review and comment

1. Within the folder; \Assets\Cscape\BuildingMaterials there is a material "MegaCity1" Create a copy of this material for each city that you are creating. CTRL+D, then rename the new materials to the city names. (ie: My game will have 3 cities: "Manhattan", "Industrial-Town", "Park-Ave Riches")
2. Open the scene "CScapeToolkit" (found in \Assets\Cscape)
3. Create the window tile designs. Note: For my cities I created the Park Ave style first as it will be lots of brick and is similarly styled as the default Tiles are already set. Next I will create the Manhattan style, as it removes excess items and creates more glass like buildings. Lastly the Industrial-Town as it has fewer windows, etc. At each iteration I am mostly removing objects from the Tiles, this saves me time. Think through your designs to insure the least amount of redundant work)
4. Once you have all 40 tiles the way you like, press the "Bake Textures" button. Note: you will have to go through each process of Window Tiles and Material Creation for each city ONE AT A TIME.
5. When that completes it's process open up your game's scene.
   
6. Select the first City that you wish to create the material
7. Find the "CS Material Tools" script attached to that city
8. Expand out the "compiler option" and near the bottom you will find the "Buildings Material" setting. Select the material that you created for this city in Step 1.
9. Press the "Compile all textures" button.
10. Tada! You now have a material with the Window Tiles set the way you want.

Note: If you want different textures for Interior, Shop Signs, etc for each city, make sure to affect those changes before you compile on Step 8. These textures can be found in: \Assets\CScapeCDK\Resources\CScapeToolkit

Also IMPORTANT: make a backup of these files BEFORE you make changes. Keep a copy of all files for each city; ie: Default, Manhattan, Park-Ave, Industrial. I just keep a copy of the entire "CScapeToolkit" folder in case I need to make changes and recompile.

 

WOW, thanks James. Il have a go at this pretty soon. Thanks again, much appreciated.

Ah brick wall at step 3. Is there a video tutorial to say what all those 40 tile/things are and and how to go about editing them?

 

Oliver has yet to make a video about editing the Tiles. Although the base idea is very simple. Open the CScapeToolkit scene and select the CScapeBaker object, and as Oliver mentions in the readme, lock the Inspector panel (it'll make your life MUCH easier) From there you only have 3 buttons: Previous Tile, Next Tile, and Bake Textures. Press the Prev/Next buttons until you are on Tile01, the select the objects, add, move, delete until you get what you want. Make sure you can see the GAME window and the SCENE window. The game window shows you what that tile will look like.

Oliver has done a nice job of making this part of the process rather easy.

 

Thank You James, I appreciate your efforts and the info. You solved some issues I had there by your explanation.

However this opens up a question... When you bake the textures are they applied to all cities? What I mean is are you supposed to:
1 - Edit the windows in the toolkit. BAKE
2 - Apply that texture to the industrial area for example in your scene.
3 - Go back to edit another set of windows for glass city for example. BAKE
4 - Apply that texture to the glass city area for example in your scene.

So this begs the question... Does baking the window textures create a new texture every time. You then add that texture to the material of the city?
Sorry for this but after you explained everything very well I might add I saw a bit of a gap I needed filling so to speak.
Thanks again. Very much appreciated.

 

After following the steps exactly the process didnt work. Sorry.

First whilst baking the textures in the toolkit the Update Texture screen froze and didnt seem to finish its process. Second I opened my scene after waiting quite a long time and the Update Texture popup was still the and I had to close the project to reopen it in a usable state.
Third when I applied the Material I created in step 1 to the industrial area then compiled textures nothing happened. But there doesnt seem to be a step for adding the new baked window textures to the Industrial City Material I created in step 1?

Maybe I will try again later today. Thanks anyway, much appreciated. Oh by the way I am using latest unity beta version....

I just reopened the toolkit scene and this time the textures baked successfully but again when I try to apply the material to the city nothing happens. Even if I add the material to individual buildings. But then again the material is the same as the MegaCity material? Seems a step is missing? maybe

 

You have to change the material for each city, this is very important! The textures and baked into files that are used, the original textures are not used. So once you bake, you can make other changes

Because you are having other problems, I would make sure to fix those issues first.

Also, IMPORTANT, do this pattern in a testbed, NOT your game. To insure it doesn't f' up your game.

 

Are the baked textures automatically saved to the Material I created in step 1? Thanks James

 

Hi guys, maybe oftopic, but I have a problem. Maybe someone also had the same issue as mine.
I have problem with GFX.WaitforPresent which makes very low frame rate and high usage CPU

I disabled VSync in Unity and in Nvidia 3D manager


https://imgur.com/a/VPQZ7UF

https://imgur.com/a/ZDWUgFj

and profile still looks very bad. This is demo scene with Cscape Unity 2018.2
I checked in 2017.3 and there the situation is the same, even worse.

https://imgur.com/a/7aPSbXa

I dont have Geforce Experience

Anybody help?

 

Nope. The textures are baked into the Material at step 9.

 

I don't know if this is still valid info, but very early in the development of CScape (back on page 4 of this thread) I was using an older GPU, and I too was having difficulty with a high GFX.WaitForPresent. How I "fixed" it was to change Unity's Quality > Anisotropic Textures from "Force On" to "Per Texture."

 

What GPU you had? What GPU you have now?

I checked force on and per texture. The same situation

Should I upgrade GPU to 1070 and buy better CPU?

 

The old GPU was an ATI HD5750 with 1G vram, which is a card with nearly 10 year old tech. My newer GPU is a RX580 with 8G vram.

Since your problem isn't the same as mine, I can only suggest to keep fiddling with settings and hope that you stumble onto it. That's what I did.

 

I see. Now I use very old i5 2400 CPU, if I buy better CPU this resolve my problem?

 

I doubt the CPU has anything to do with it. It's almost certainly something on the graphics side. Possibly someone else here has an insight into the problem ...?

 

Ok so im using the Cscape tool and i got a question. So the new Cscape tool does not include actually baking out new Textures for buildings?

U still need to put them into the surface folder then press compile all textures correct?

 

Hi, I'm curious you say multiple styles, will this include compiling custom textures? Im trying to figure out how to get my textures compiled, would hịghly appreciate the help if you have done this already.

 

Each material can have it's own set of textures. What Oliver has done is make a series of images FROM the textures you supply and uses those in some magic to the shader. But yea, in Step 8 in my list you have to select a different material for each city before rendering the textures.

 

I have the same issue on 3 projects and my research leads me to long conversations about it but never a solution.

 

I have a GTX 1080 11GB card and have the same problem with Gfx.WaitForPresent. Cant find a solution at all anywhere.

 

My texture wont compile either. Im using 2018.3.0b12 beta. I am goign to try and export my city (each of) and import into a seperate project then give it another go, other than that Im not sure how to get it working.

 

Correct, however there are more texture files than just the SURFACE folder. ie: There is an INTERIOR folder, SHOPSIGNS, BLINDS, etc All of these are affected when you compile the textures into the material

 

Always try new assets/code in a separate test bed. That way you can see if there are issues before integration. I should have more time to test Sunday and/or Monday.

 

ok thank you for clarifying ..well this is very odd, I've done just about everything except get textures to compile. In the inspector how do you have your texture setup is it 2048 with reading and write enabled? I don't exactly see what I'm doing wrong.

 

Not sure if this was said somewhere but:
-You have to download a textures pack and import it into Unity.
-This will create a folder named Assets/CScapeCDK/Editor/Resources/CScapeToolset (and all neccessary subfolders, but at this moment we won't be messing with them). We will just check if we have this folder.

At this point, you are ready to open CScapeToolset scene and see if everything works:
-Go to CScape Baker object, and clink on a Bake Textures button.
-Rendering Textures progress bar should appear and if everything goes fine, it will become Reading Texture files progress bar. This can take longer, but depends pretty on your hard disk speed - (in this phase Unity is just importing new texture assets)
-If this goes OK, your system works as intended.

But from what you are saying - you get stuck at this step if I understand well:
-This is just a process of importing new assets into your project (like with any other texture assets that you are downloading form assetstore). A speed of importing textures really depends on your CPU and Hard Disk speed. If you stop this process, you will leave your project full of corrupted texture assets. And this will inevitabely lead to an impossibility to compile textures afterwards. So, if you get stucked, you have to repeat a process of baking textures and let it finish completely.

 

@olix4242
Yeah thanks I have done the first part and I have all the needed folders in there and I was able to get the Cscape tool to bake out the tiles and I got them to compile. But for some reason what I seem to really be having a hard time with is just getting a new brick texture compiled for buildings and a new texture fỏe the street, will the baking object bake out these textures too?