Transport Fever 2: Better Building Textures (UV1 Materials)

I’ve noticed the Wiki & the lack of guides covering more information on UV1 textures and how to make more realistic overlays. In this guide, I’ll show you what UV1 textures are, how to use them and have a better building model over all.

UV1 is a second UV layout on a mesh, while the first UV is refereed to as UV0. UV0 is what you would use for all the tileable textures for the model. This data is stored in the .msh.blob file and the .msh file. In model editing programs like Blender, you can add multiple UVs to one mesh. This is used for any UV1 material presets for the game. You can read over what materials include UV1 on the modding wiki.[www.transportfever2.com]

Some things to note:

• UV1 materials do NOT support dirt/rust aging
• UV1 materials do NOT support armature.

Here you can see what appears to be a lack of tiling textures. There’s a shadow map overlay over the building, just like on a vehicle model.

Personally I use Blender & Substance Painter. For Blender, lets start with creating a second UV. This section will be focusing on UV maps for blender, as I dont have experience with 3dsMax, Maya or Modo.

Here is under the mesh info tab. UV0 must always be at the top, while UV1 is always second. You can name the UV whatever you want, the name doesnt affect anything for the model.

Next, select all the meshes you wish to be on the same AO image, and enter edit mode. You can do this quick and dirty with Smart UV if you wish, detail isnt as important. In edit mode, select everything and then Smart UV the mesh.

Tip: I recommend for blender users to check out the plugin UV Packer[www.uv-packer.com] and Batch Uv Tools[blendermarket.com]. Both are free plugins, while the former makes for a better UV map layout for more optimized shadow maps and the latter allows for more easily selecting UV maps among multiple objects.

If you got the UV packer plugin and have it installed, I suggest UV packing it through the plugin as the built in packer doesn’t optimize the space as well.

This step is a little different. Personally, I use substance painter. If you’re like me and use a separate program for baking, then here’s how to export the object. If not, jump down to the Blender section.

See how the top one (UVMap) is selected? You need to select the second UV on all meshes which you wish to have a baked AO.

Next, I personally export my object(s) as an OBJ. Make sure to uncheck the setting for exporting materials, this will force substance painter to create a brand new material for the entire mesh, and will make your life easier for exporting the finalized texture.

If you use substance painter, I actually made a smart material you can use on your own model. You can grab that here.[drive.google.com] Make sure you bake all maps.

The bake should look something like this:

After you’re happy with the AO map, export the AO channel textures and create a grayscale DDS. You can do that by creating an account on Nvidia’s website[developer.nvidia.com] & downloading either the standalone tool or using the Photoshop plugin. You can make it either a BC1 format or a grayscale format (BC4).

If you use blender, you can use the standard procedure for baking an AO map. Just make sure UV1 is selected on all meshes. You can select multiple meshes to be baked at once as long as they make up the same UV layout.

I also encourage you to look for/use grunge layers to lay on top of your baked AOs in a photo editing software with the multiply setting. You can google “grunge images” and find a multitude of different images to make as an overlay.

Almost done!

By this point you should have UVed both UV0 and UV1.

Before you export, make sure all objects have all the material slots used. If any mesh has a material slot which doesnt have any faces assigned to that mesh, the Model Editor will crash.

Export your model via FBX as traditionally done. You can look further on my FBX to Blender Steam guide I’ve made as well.

In the Model Editor, you can now assign the UV1 material types. The below is the material presets I use:

In the Map AO section, assign the file name to the AO DDS that you created in the previous step. You’ll need to do this for each material you have on your model.

I really hope this helps you all, and personally would love to see further buildings being made with UV1 textures. Great way to add more realism to your buildings.

Happy modding!
-TMBH