Noob Question: Black areas beneath model

[FX2K]

First let me say that until CS, I have never used blender or any other 3d software for that matter...Never made a model for a game, never done any of it.... so I'm off to a good start

Now with that out of the way, I started to play around and thought I would try to make a 'hedge'.
So I made a really nasty model (don't laugh) read up about the textures, naming etc and produced the following:

Its not so visible in the second shot (the black base issue that is), but its there.

Now aside from me spending about 30 seconds with uv unwrapping etc (so its all wrong scale wise) every part of my model in blender is textured and looks ok (ish) but when plopped in game, I get a 'black' area beneath the model.

Any hints as to what I am doing wrong / how to avoid that black area?

 

[Ayce]

Check your UV tiling in Blender. I had that happen a long time ago in Max/Unity with something similar. Turned out there was a tiny gap where the tiles lined up that wasn't easily seen in Max, but looked terrible in Unity.
Interesting hedges, as well.

 

[FX2K]

Check your UV tiling in Blender. I had that happen a long time ago in Max/Unity with something similar. Turned out there was a tiny gap where the tiles lined up that wasn't easily seen in Max, but looked terrible in Unity.
Interesting hedges, as well.

I'll give it a close inspection.. just experimenting at the moment, but I think I'm hooked

 

[Ayce]

Something else just came to mind: Check the texture size. If it's off by even one pixel, it can show up as a black/transparent strip.
Hope this helps.

 

[FX2K]

Its not the uv mapping, perhaps something to do with a base, like some buildings would have when 'self levelling' i.e a house would possibly have concrete show where mine shows black.


I had a play with hex editing the crp file changing m_placement to 04 (from 03) which was interesting.. hmmm.

Still not got to the bottom of it yet, perhaps changing the origin and sinking it into the ground on purpose may help?!?
Still.. I'm having fun!

 

[FX2K]

Well, I think I was right above, it is looking for a 'base' texture which is used when levelling a building, i.e the a concrete base.
If I import it as a prop / tree it has no such issues when placed in game in one form or another. Previously I was importing under the water category.

So, how would you go about defining a 'base'?

Also, there seems to be a difference in how the alpha transparency works between building types too.
Under Water or Prop it has the transparency as per screenshots, Under Tree it doesn't and under park its all black... lots of learning to do.

This is another example which is similar behaviour to above.
The exact same asset / files imported under water vs park category:

Water - Originally water tower iirc:

Park - Can't remember what template I chose here, but it was listed under parks:

Exact same files done in the same session.... I have no idea why it's behaving differently.

 

[FX2K]

Well, I finally figured out the above.. that was a problem with the base asset I chose to import from. Since then, my hedge is now complete, with lods too

At the moment, its a single 1x1 ploppable, but it follows the road lines, allows an overlap and looks pretty decent IMO.

 

[IVIaarten]

I like the idea of those, working on that 'British country feeling'?

Maybe some rough rocky walls in the future?

Little tip on the textures though; try desaturating it a bit, since the game engine tends to oversaturate things in game.

 

[FX2K]

I will be playing with the colour a little more, its not quite right
I would like to do a lot more, but I'm still learning blender etc, so it may take me a while to get there...

Anyway, I added it to the workshop if anybody wanted a look, its not a prop, I made it a 1x1 ploppable park with a round placement icon, this way it allows a fairly decent amount of overlap, handy for corners: http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=419125765

 

[Ayce]

Glad you got it sorted.

 

[FX2K]

Glad you got it sorted.

Me too. It was all related to the 'template' chosen when importing, which is a bit of a pita.. hence I just made this thread about it: https://forum.paradoxplaza.com/foru...rol-over-options-when-importing-models.848905