Asset importing

Asset importing is pretty straight forward as outlined in This official guide.

As the models and textures are separate, the models are exported as OBJ files and the textures are packed along side with them as PNG files with the respective suffixes. The naming convention for textures is

[model name]_[suffix].png

Whereas suffix can be:

d: for diffuse colors, can also include ambient occlusion data for visual purposes.

s: specular maps, which specifies how reflective parts of buildings are

i: illumination maps which defines where windows or other building lights that are supposed to illuminate at night are

The import folder should look like this.

Once the “raw” files are pasted into the import folder, they have to be made into a game asset. A game asset can be made in the game’s asset editor, where a specific “category” is chosen for the desired model (residential, industrial,.. Etc, this shouldn’t matter much since the buildings will be placed by hand anyways). And also the footprint (in game tiles scale, where each tile is 8m x 8m) is specified. The buildings are scaled correctly by default (as provided by the modelling guidelines Here) and should be kept at 1 scale unit.

As a common practice for assets that repeat like houses in a specific residential area that all have the same design, only one house asset should be created with only the building model included in the asset, then later on in the map editor it should be decorated accordingly with trees and fences and other visual queues.

As for assets that have only one instance, like a university campus for instance or a town square, the asset can contain most of the decorations and accessories that go along with it.

Brief walkthrough of asset creation Here