modeling with sketchup

[CalPolyFan]

I am very excited to see the in-game building modeling tool they have come up with. What do we know about it, besides that it exists? Is there any video?

 

[Hackner]

I am very excited to see the in-game building modeling tool they have come up with. What do we know about it, besides that it exists? Is there any video?

Where did you read such a thing?

Ive only seen the prop editor in the release date revealing trailer. I got the impression that it only gave you access to some game assets sou you could edit and create building, but only using existing things.

 

[Ole.]

Can I use 3Ds Max too?

 

[OlaHaldor]

Yes.

 

[thomthom]

Excellent. I found out that only sketchup pro exports that file, but technically I could open it in blender and do what you said!

If you don't have Pro, then you can use Make to export to COLLADA - then you can use for instance AutoDesk's FBX converter utility:
https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/forum/index.php?threads/modeling-with-sketchup.837565/
What's nice with that is both are free.

I believe Sketchup automatically creates UV maps? Because you can apply textures with Sketchup if I'm not mistaken.

You apply materials by using the Material window. Once applied you can position it by right clicking the face and choose Position Texture.

There are several extensions to SketchUp that makes UV mapping easier - one of my favorites are ThruPaint by Fredo:
http://sketchucation.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=44552

Now, seeing how this is game assets I assume one might need to use one material for it all. (I just started playing the game a week ago and I just started looking into modding today.) If you find that you need UV Unwrap etc then I can recommend Dale Marten's SketchUV extension - it let you set up a workflow third party UV mapping tools:
https://extensions.sketchup.com/en/content/sketchuv

...can't wait for high poly, inefficient models to bring the game to a crawl or cause crashes...

Unless things have changed? sketchup isn't really a low poly modelling tool and isn't part of most game developers pipelines.

Not sure where the claim that SketchUp isn't a low poly modelling tool - this is something that depend on the modeller - not the tool. You make low poly if you want.

Hello -by the way. First time posting. Long time user of SketchUp - recently(-ish) hired as a developer for SketchUp. Been enjoying Cities Skylines and was curious of it's modding ability. Ended up in this thread because I was looking for existing tools to import/export game assets to/from SketchUp. (Entirely as a regular game user - I'm not here in official business.)

I need to do some more reading up on the modding tools, but so far I see that once generally create FBX models in order to import into the game. But I'm not seeing so much on how to open existing assets into modelling applications...?

 

[Mr Maison]

So far I been modeling in Sketchup Pro and exporting to FBX through Blender. I would love to be able to skip Blender all together. The only thing I'm not sure on is the scale, positioning and rotation within Sketchup before exporting for asset editor. Anyone know?

 

[thomthom]

Hey Thomthom,

Good to have a SU dev here!
I have been trying to convert some of my Google Earth building models to CS but I'm having a hard time with the textures.
Most of my models have 50+ textures so I need to bring that down to one for CS. Do you know of any SU plugins that might be able to do that?


Cheers,
Eduard

I've never made game assets before, so I've never had the limitation of combining all the material into using a single texture. My background is in visualizations where I was able to use multiple textures freely. However, this sounds like something that should have been solved many times already - hopefully there is some standalone tool that would be possible to utilize which takes a model and merge textures into a single one - then updating the UVs in the original model. Main thing here is taking all the individual textures and finding an optimized way to pack them together into a single texture and resizing to fit target environment. (What's the desired texture size for this game for assets?)
If there is such a tool, then I'd think it should be possible to create a little glue extension inside of SketchUp to smoothen this task.

So far I been modeling in Sketchup Pro and exporting to FBX through Blender. I would love to be able to skip Blender all together. The only thing I'm not sure on is the scale, positioning and rotation within Sketchup before exporting for asset editor. Anyone know?

I haven't tried to export into the game yet - but what are the current issues with the FBX exporter in SketchUp Pro?

 

[Voimiensumma]

Hi,

I have the SketchUp Make 2014 version and it does export to .fbx, so that shouldn't pose a problem.

 

[Mr Maison]

I haven't tried to export into the game yet - but what are the current issues with the FBX exporter in SketchUp Pro?

I think it have something to do with FBX ASCII. I cannot import a ASCII into Blender from Sketchup. I would have to convert using FBX Converter so to keep it simple I been using OBJ. Using FBX binary works from Blender to asset editor.

Anytime I export straight from Sketchup as FBX the model does not show in the editor. But I won't say it's a failure yet because I have yet to do a proper UV map in Sketchup to really test. I figured at least the bare model would show but idk if textures being present or not have anything to do with seeing the model in editor. Also I set the model to meters in the FBX export options. I don't know how that ends up. In Blender setting the scale to 100% along with location and rotation setting works (seems like a necessary step). I guess someone have to figure out how to properly prepare the model for export to work right out of SU. UV mapping is the main reason I went the Blender route to export my SU models. I'm updating my Fredo tools now and currently figuring out how to get the texture map to work in Sketchup starting with a simple house model.


BTW, ThomThom I responded to your post over at Simtropolis

 

[thomthom]

Hmm... It looks like the FBX exporter doesn't have an option to set ASCII format or binary. I actually don't know which one we use - I'd have to dig into the source. Does the game have a preference?

I'll see if I can start testing the export process next week. Read up on the asset requirements and fiddle with the export settings and see what happens.

 

[Mr Maison]

I think Sketchup exports to FBX ASCII. Here's the modding page of the Wiki http://www.skylineswiki.com/Asset_Editor

It says to set the model to metric where 1 unit=1.0 meters Now I have to learn the metric system. I'm used to imperial inches and feet.

 

[thomthom]

I think Sketchup exports to FBX ASCII. Here's the modding page of the Wiki http://www.skylineswiki.com/Asset_Editor

It says to set the model to metric where 1 unit=1.0 meters Now I have to learn the metric system. I'm used to imperial inches and feet.

I think you are right - I inspected the FBX files and it looks like all ASCII. Didn't have time to check out the source code yet.

I had a quick glance the other they about creating assets, and it seems to be that setting up a template with guidelines - or even temp geometry - to layout and visualize the grid spaces one has to model for would be useful. I'll look into setting one up once I have figured out the requirements.

 

[thomthom]

Hmm....

I've tried export from SketchUp and Blender - none which seemed to load in the Asset Manager. I also tried running the FBX files through the AutoDesk FBX converter utility.

In Blender - what export settings have worked for people?
Are there more requirements of the model that will prevent it from being loaded? Does it need some exact dimension?

 

[Shelltoe]

did you triangulate all faces?

works very fine for me. i use binary not ascii... but don't use blender at all so can't help on this part.

 

[thomthom]

did you triangulate all faces?

Ah - was looking at this guide: http://www.skylineswiki.com/Asset_Editor
It didn't mention triangulation. I'll try again.

 

[thomthom]

but don't use blender at so so can't help on this part.

What do you use?

 

[Shelltoe]

c4d a very old version though
you can produce pretty nice meshes in sketchup but you need a uv mapping tool. just checked the sketchup extentsions briefly and found them not being really helpful (compared to my c4d).

I don't really like blender for its interface. i don't even know how to modify my mesh in it and after 5 clicks my interface is all messed up


EDIT:
SketchUV actually looks kinda nice. will give it another try some time.

 

[thomthom]

If I can just figure out how to export the models I have an idea for the texture handling. Using a rectangle packing algorithm one could generate a new single texture and update the model's UV to match.

Though I'm still stuck at the FBX export - Blender and SketchUp. I've tried triangulation, made sure there is no model hierarchy, export units to meters, alas.

 

[thomthom]

I don't really like blender for its interface. i don't even know how to modify my mesh in it and after 5 clicks my interface is all messed up

That sounds familiar - I've never tried to use a 3d modelling application where I struggled so much with doing even the basics such as basic polygon edit. The paradigm is just so different. Though a friend of mine guided me through some of the basics - but that was a couple of years ago and I realize I've forgotten everything. I think I had set up custom shortcuts to be similar to SketchUp.
Once you know a few applications already, in my case SketchUp 3dMax and Rhino, it's harder to find incentive to stick long enough with a new one to properly learn it. Guess its something with age as well. Anyway, I digress.

SketchUV actually looks kinda nice. will give it another try some time.

I haven't used it much myself, as I've not really needed to UV unwrap in SketchUp. But this might be the tool for the job in this case. Though I'd love to find a way to pack existing textures into a new one.

 

[Shelltoe]

well yeah of course if i had to use the open source solution i would definitely care more about its.
i guess a simple youtube video would help a ton in my case

after all i had a look at it several times cause i really wanted to give it a try (actually with every major release or demo movie that popped out) and usually i have absolutely no problem diving into new programs.
if there's a paradigm then it's blender devs not knowing what good interface design is
just googling "user interface blender bad" tells me i'm not the only one with this opinion. aged maybe
imho it makes all these nice movies even more astonishing

did some uv mapping years ago. as i got a visualization/design background i usually don't care as well. it's only used in games. or maybe some realtime visualization
sketchuv looks like what's needed to do it kinda accurate. i guess you'll want "roadkill" aswell.
i'm not sure what you mean with "Though I'd love to find a way to pack existing textures into a new one."