Firstly i need to say that this guide is somewhat depriciated as it was created for the initial ugc plugin and so some things may have changed. i do not have any interest in continuing to play RCTW as it turned out to be a load of ♥♥♥♥ and the devs/producers have no interest in making it better and so this guide will not get updated until the game itself has a major overhaul. i already sunk a lot more time than i should have into this turd of a game and certainly wont be giving it my time when the production team arent willing to give thiers.
Any issues you have with the UGC system are almost certainly down to a bug that I or someone else has already reported most likely before the game even released to the public, many well reported bugs in the game and the ugc system have been ignored and in turn i shall also ignore everything about this game. any comments to this guide will not be seen by me it I have unsubscribed to it and please dont send me a friend request to talk over an issue as i couldnt care less about this game anymore.

This guide only stands as a helper to those who feel there is something of worth in playing RCTW,
good luck to you.

All that said i imagine much of what this guide says is still acurate with the current version as almost nothing has ever been changed. the new features may have an offical guide to help with making UGC for the Pxp system but i doubt it is of much use.

Custom content is a term that covers content that is not in the game by default but is instead made by the players of the game yourself included, it refers to a wide range of content types from simple screenshots to user made animated scenery and the scope of whats possible to add is only only going to get wider over the coming months and even years.
Custom content is what kept the first three RCT games fresh and beloved still today, even if they do look dated they still play well and have more content being made even now many years on.

All the custom content can be accessed in-game via the content manager and it is hosted on the steam workshop.

This is intended to be a comprehensive step by step guide to all things custom content from the bare basics of the content manager to the advanced procedures of importing animated lights.
If you want to get straight into producing UGC then you can find detailed instructions for the procedures and guidelines to help make the process easier to get into. Check the guide index to skip to certain subjects, its over there somewhere------->
Be aware that each additional section does expect basic understanding of the subjects before it. I know its a long guide but spending the time to read it all will undoubtedly lead to far less problems down the road.

More screenshots and videos will come soon, I just haven't had the time to get that stuff ready please be patient this needs ti fit in around my actual job and life. If you are having trouble getting through the instructions take it slow and make sure you complete each step before moving onto the next instruction, skipping something will likely cause to it not working, please try again before asking for further advise. Unless you have encountered a bug of some description this guide should lead to correct usage.
You can comment, PM me on steam or the forum if you find something to be inaccurate or it isn't working for you. I will, if i can, try to help and adapt this guide where needed.

The content manager can be accessed directly from the main menu or whilst in-game by clicking the Social hub button in the bottom right corner of your screen.

The content manager by default will be on the local tab which means it will be showing just your own custom content from the game this includes your screenshots, saved coaster blueprints, saved parks and UGC.

As well as your own content you can also see content your steam friends have shared and content that is shared across the whole RCTW community by clicking on the relevant tab across the top of the content manager.

Down the left side of the content manager you have five tabs they are;
Activity
Media
Blueprints
Maps
UGC

The content managers activity panel shows all content listed in chronological order. This includes content from all the other categories of Media, Blueprints, Maps and UGC

The content managers media panel is where you can see and share screenshots of your park and other players parks. Currently only screenshots are available but there are plans to extend this to videos too.

For media you have a view button. Clicking view will open that screenshot right there in the content manager. Clicking again anywhere will close the screenshot.

The content manager’s blueprints panel shows all the saved roller coaster blueprints.

For blueprints you have an enable button. Clicking the enable button will initiate a download for that blueprint design.Once you have downloaded additional blueprints they will show up as a new coaster design when you start building a new roller coaster of the correct type. After a blueprint is enabled the button will swap to say disable and clicking it will remove the blueprint from your in-game UI

The content manager’s maps panel shows all the saved parks. The local maps list is essentially the same as the load game option on the main menu. The friends and community map list are other players shared saves that you can download and view, currently you cannot edit their park it is just a visit to see what they have created.

For maps you have either a load or a visit button. On your own maps you will have load and clicking it will load your saved park similar to using the main menus 'load game' option. When viewing a community map you will see the visit button. Clicking it will download the community members saved park and open it up for you to view their park in action but you cannot edit it in any way.

The content managers UGC panel lists all the available UGC. UGC stands for User Generated Content, it is content that has been made by players of the game using out of game tools then brought into the game and shared for other players to make use of too.
RCTW has been designed with UGC in mind from the beginning and the aim has been to integrate it right into the game to make it as easy to use as possible. The main source for this content is via steam workshop and thanks to workshop integration into the game you don't even need to leave your game to look through the workshops UGC.

For UGC you will have an enable button. Pressing the enable button on a local UGC asset will activate that asset for use in the game. Pressing the enable button on friends or community content will initiate a download and install that content for use in the game. Once a UGC is successfully enabled it will be present in the UGC section of the game UI (in the scenery section) ready to be placed into your park. After a UGC asset is enabled the button will swap to say disable and clicking it will remove that asset from your in-game UI

The search bar will search through all content in the current tab with whatever search string you wish to use. On a private or local search this will only search the file names but when searching the community files your search string will pull results from the item names, descriptions and tags.

The search results can be sorted alphabetically A to Z or Z to A or chronologically
The results list will display a range of information about each entry including what type of content, . The icon at the start of the name represents what type of content it is;
is a screenshot.
is a blueprint.
is a saved map.
is a UGC object.

The name of the content, the name of the player who created it as well as the date it was created are a few of the common information entries displayed in the content manager.

Common to all types of content is the hide button. Pressing this button will make that entry disappear from the list. This can be useful if you keep finding something you don’t like is turning up in your searches. If you decide you want to see the items you have selected to hide you can tick the display hidden button and those hidden items will show up again. You can then press the unhide button to have the item return to normal listing.

When viewing any of your local content you will notice on the far right there are three tick box options; local, public and private.
By default all your own content is set to local which means it only exists on your computer. By ticking any of the other options you will be submitting the file to the steam workshop and it will be uploaded and stored on there.

Who can access your submitted content depends on which option you choose.

If you choose public then anybody can see and access that content. Please note there are very few rules to what is acceptable on the steam workshop however, your uploads are subject to moderation and may be removed if deemed inappropriate by a moderator. It is possible to flag users uploads within steam and they will be checked and possibly removed if they violate the steam online conduct rules.

If you choose private then nobody other than yourself can see and access that content. This could be useful for storing assets that are not finished, assets you want to store as a backup without the public being able to use them or assets you want to access on a secondary computer without needing to transfer them

With media and maps there isn't much to use other than just opening the file but with blueprints and UGC you must know where to find your additional content.

After enabling a blueprint you will find it is conveniently added to the list of pre-made coasters in the games coaster creation UI, providing you are building the correct type of coaster of course.


After you have enabled additional UGC assets you will find them listed in the in-game UI under Scenery / UGC.
You will be able to place these items just as any other item with the added control of being able to place them at any height, this means you can place them floating in midair unsupported if you want to. The suggestion to allow 3axis of rotation has been made and is something the dev team will be looking into implementing in the future.
Depending on if the asset was created with the collision option off you can place the asset on or in any other object, this does mean you can do silly things like placing a wall directly over a coaster track but the train will not collide with the asset. A more sensible thing to do would be to place a wall with a hole in it for the train to race through and make it an exciting ride visually.

The process of adding basic UGC into the game has been designed to be as streamlined and simple as possible. Models can be created in any 3D package and exported to be used by the RCTW plugin. There are limitations to what formats are supported (see hints and tips). But if you do encounter these limitations you should be able to convert the file using Blender [www.blender.org]which is a free open-source 3D package that is extremely powerful in what it can produce. Blender is a good option for anybody wanting to get into modelling UGC as it provides tools to create practically anything with no price tag. No tutorials on how to produce content will be supplied on here as the process is different for every modeling package and application. If you want to get into modeling YouTube is a very good source of information for practically every 3D modeling program.

Once your model is in a supported format the process of importing it into the game is very simple for standard static objects but it does require a few extra steps for more complex assets for example with animations or lights. While these processes do require a few extra steps no programming skills are required for any importing. To get started importing you need to install Unity version 5.2.4.

To begin importing your own assets into RCTW you will need to have Unity installed. You do not need to have any prior knowledge of how to use Unity to be able to add standard assets into RCTW. What little you may need to know for more advanced assets is all covered in this wiki.

Unity if you are unaware is a very versatile game engine that offers a free version of the engine and editor. The free version of Unity editor is all you need but you must get version 5.2.4 as that is the version that is compatible with the current RCTW plugin. While it isn't the most recent version of Unity there is no difference to its features for adding UGC. You can get hold of Unity 5.2.4 from hereI would recommend you install using the installer option as it offers the unity editor on its own or with some extra features although you most likely wouldn’t need those extras anyway but it’s just a little easier to use.With the installer you will download a small file called the Unity download assistant. Once you run this program you will be asked to read and accept the ToS for Unity. Next you are asked what components you wish to install. You can disable all extras and just install Unity 5.2.4f1 or you may want to experiment with the extras it makes very little difference for use with the RCTW plugin. Once set click nextFinally you are asked where you want Unity to download to and where it should install to. I would recommend not changing the download as it is set to temporary location and will remove them afterward but if you wish to hold onto the install file you could change it to a set location. The install folder option I recommend you at least add the version number to the end of the install folder name but on what drive you put it is entirely up to you. Once set click nextNow the download assistant will begin downloading the components you selected and installing them to the folder you specified, this may take some time.[unity3d.com]

Once Unity has completed installing you can launch the program and you will be presented with the launch screen where you may be asked to log in, you can create an account with unity and login with those details or you can just click work offline. The online mode isn’t needed for making UGC. Now you can create a new project you should type in a name for this project. Let’s put RCTW UGC and you can set a location for the project, this can be anywhere you want it to be but make sure it’s easily accessible as you will may be navigating to this folder to add new assets or save new texture maps. Make sure that 3D is selected and create project. Unity will launch an empty project.


First thing you are going to want to do is to load the plugin file into the scene, on the main bar go to Assets/Import Package/Custom Package and click it.


Now you have a navigation window and you should navigate to the RCTWContentPlugin.unitypackage file which is found in your game install directory it will be something like
SteamLibrary\steamapps\common\RollerCoaster Tycoon World\RollerCoaster Tycoon World_Data\UGCPlugin\RCTWContentPlugin.unitypackage
When you have located it, open it.
For some users the install folder may be hidden or if you are unsure of where the game is installed an easy way to find out the location is to open steam and find Rollercoaster Tycoon World in your games library and rightclick it, select properties, then select the local files tab and press Browse Local Files. This will open a browser in the game install directory from here you want to open the RollerCoaster Tycoon World_Data \ UGCPlugin \ RCTWContentPlugin.unitypackage folders and you will find the unitypackage file here copy that file to a favorable location such as your desktop to find it much easier when you import the custom package into Unity

When you have opened the custompackage in Unity a small window will appear listing a lot of different files all of which should be ticked, simply press import. This process may take a minute after which you should notice the top bar has RCTW in it now and in the Project explorer window you have a folder RCTWContentGeneration. This folder you should leave alone as it contains all the files required by the plugin, messing with these may stop the plugin working properly.

Now you have the plugin installed this is a good time to save the project, on the top bar go to File/Save Project and click it. Now whenever you start Unity you can load the project with the plugin already installed to save you needing to keep adding the plugin each time you start.


You are now ready to begin importing your fist UGC asset but first lets cover the basics of Unity

So you have Unity 5.2.4 installed and don't know much about the program... don't worry you don't need to know much, and you don't need to know any programming. all you really need to know is where to find the basic parts of the program.

The Unity UI is made up of a number of panels, by default you should have four panels open but there are others that you can open but for most operations these four are all you will need. The four are; Scene, Hierarchy, Project and Inspector


The Scene panel is a preview of the scene; it’s a full 3D representation of what is currently in the scene. Bear in mind that this view doesn’t have the same lighting as the game will have so don't expect everything to look exactly the same in preview as it will in the game.

The Hierarchy panel shows a list of all the items in the scene it also shows the hierarchy of the objects by having all objects that are linked listed below and offset in from their parent. You can also expand and collapse hierarchy chains to be able to see or hide the children objects by pressing the small arrow to the left of anything that has hierarchy. when you create a UGC asset with the plugin it turns the object file into a prefab and adds some componants to it. In the hierarchy panel you will see the prefab first. If you expand the prefab under it is the Object file it will have had (clone) added to the name and below that will be any sub objects that the model is made of if, if your created object had hierarchy in its objects it will be displayed here in the same way.

The Project panel is a small explorer type window that has its root directory at the assets folder in your specified project folder. It cannot explore folder structures below this level but can explore anything within the assets folder structure.

The Inspector panel is where most of the editing to objects is done. If you select an asset in the scene or hierarchy panels then the inspector will show you all the options for that asset. For example you can find the XYZ position, rotation and scale in the inspector also any materials that are applied are edited here, they will be listed at the very bottom of the list. Lights or particle effects options are also found in the inspector panel pretty much all options for an object are going to be in the inspector panel. At the top of the inspector is the apply button which must be pressed to save any changes you make in the inspector

Across the top of the program window is the main toolbar where you can find RCTW which contains the RCTW importer plugin. You should also be aware of GameObject which is where you add in unity lights and particle effects.

One other panel that you may use is the animator panel but this panel is only used for bring in animated assets and it will appear when it is needed and it will sit over the top of your scene view panel. To get back to scene view, simply press the tab at the top of the panel that says Scene to switch back after you are done with the animator panel.

For some basic controls for the Unity scene view panel check out this short official Unity tutorial

In order to bring your asset into RCTW it is best to use the .FBX file format as it is a powerful format that supports detailed meshes, UV information, material maps, and animations. You do not need to use .FBX though as you can make use of other formats but .FBX is arguably the best option.
You should save your object file in the Assets folder within your unity project folder which you defined when you started the project. or you can drag it from an explorer window and drop it diectly into the project panel to copy it there.
I have made a toilets sign post and saved it into the assets folder


As soon as you save your object file into the Assets folder Unity will produce a folder called Materials also in the Assets folder, it will also create Shader files for each material that is in use on that asset. if your object has any material maps then you should put them in the materials folder for ease of use.
I have created a basic texture map that says toilets on it and my model has 3 materials assigned to it when it was created.


Now you are ready to import the object, on the top bar go to RCTW/Open


A small RCTW importer window will open up. As this is your first asset you should first press Create New, a dialog will open up with a blank field for Name.

Click this empty field and put in a name, try to be descriptive as this is the name that your asset will have when it gets into RCTW. When you have entered a name click Create. Its worth noting that using spaces between words will not export with those spaces, its a thing with Unity and game dev in general its very uncommon to find an asset that has spaces in a title, Unity doesn't use spaces at all, therefor its a good practice to capitalise each word to break up the words, you can rename to add spaces in later on if you really want them.
I created my project simply called ToiletSign



You should see that the scene preview window has been updated and contains a peep in T-pose and a ground plane. This peep can be used as a visual of how your object is scaled in game space and the ground will show you at what height the object will default to being placed at. So let’s bring in your object and see how it fits.
In the RCTW plugin window you should see the project settings and add content roll-outs have been expanded, if they haven’t click the arrow and it will expand to show the options. For now let’s leave the project settings and just go to adding our scenery object so click Scenery.



A new dialog window will open up which says FBX: - None (GameObject). You can click the little circle at the end of the line to open a file selector or you can simply drag the object file from the assets folder in the Project panel and drop it into the box that says None (GameObject).



Depending on how complex your object is it may take a moment but an image of your object should appear along with a Create button, you should press Create now.



Your object should now be placed in the scene preview view, probably right on top of the peep so you can see how the scale looks against an in-game character but it most likely doesn't have the materials you created in your modelling package. This is because a number of material attributes might differ between programs and so they won't carry over it all depends on the shader system that you used on your materials in your modelling package.
Mine are all just grey because I didn't bother to set any materials because I knew standard materials wouldn't carry over, I didn't even apply the sign map even though that would have been applied. It might be good for you to test to see just what does carry over from your chosen 3D package and then you know for future models what you can and cant carry over, if you can use a physical based shader in you 3D package (most can but maybe not by default) it will probably carry everything over but then it might still need a tweaking because of different lighting
This is my toilets sign post but its totally grey at the moment


Im going to just skip over the edting materials and other things for a moment (until next section) and just build the asset as it is currently, you can always return to unity to edit things and rebuild, so for now lets just build it with no materials just to make sure it works without errors.
To send the file over to the game you just have to press Build "..."


Your file will be converted into an RCTW UGC. in the bottom of the RCTW panel you will notice a bunch of checks that have been run and if all has gone well they should all say OK!


You can now proceed to the game and enable it in the content manager and it will be added to the game under scenery/UGC.

If you encounter any errors during the build then please post them as a comment and I or someone else will hopefully remedy your problem.

So lets take a quick look at materials (there is a more detailed section on materials further in this guide). First it would help if I explain exactly what has been created so it make more sense as to where the materials are. You can close the RCTW plugin panel for now.
When you import your object via the plugin in the hierarchy panel you will see it has added a new entry for your object, this new entry is the "prefab". If you click the arrow to the left of the prefab name it will expand out and there will be another entry with your object and (clone) in the title this is the "asset". The asset is indented slightly to the right this means it is a "child" to the Prefab above it which is the "parent" depending on how your object was created there may be another arrow on the asset which will expand out to show all the model parts those will all be child to the asset.
If you select the prefab then in the inspector you will see the prefabs components which is just a transform and a box collider. The transform is where the prefab is currently located and the scale it is currently at you can alter the scale here if your object is not the correct size for whatever reason, there is a section on scale later in the guide so you may want to skip down to that for further information. The box collider is a very important component even if you have collisions disabled in the import. I will explain editing the collider later in the guide generally you wont need to change that though just be aware all prefabs MUST have a collider or you object will not be bulldozerable, this is something you should always check for before uploading to the workshop.
So wheres the materials? Well they aren't applied at prefab level they are at asset level or if your asset has multiple parts it may be each part has them separately so click the asset in the hierarchy panel or you can click it in the scene view, initially it will select the prefab but if you click again it will cycle through each object under the cursor.
With the actual mesh selected in the inspector you have a few new components they are mesh renderer and shaders. you can alter the mesh renderer options to make the object not cast or receive shadows but that is not very likely, below that are the shaders that the mesh is using, Press the small arrow to expand out the shader settings, now you can alter the appearance of the material to achieve the appearance you are looking for. These shaders that are applied to your asset are also actual files that the plugin created when it imported the object.
In the project panel if you open the folder for your prefab theres a folder called art go into the folder and then into scenery folder, here you will see all the files for the prefab. If you go into materials folder then you will find all the shader files that are currently in use, you can select a shader and edit its settings here it makes no difference if you edit the shaders here or on the mesh they are the same file. I usually find it easier to edit the materials here especially if you have a lot of different materials applied, while its not good practice to use a lot of different shaders on a single asset as it will reduce performance but for simple assets it can be easier. See the materials section for further information on matking materials and advanced materials section for how to use a single shader for an entire object.

Assuming you have got your scale and materials looking how you intend them to be you are ready to send the asset over to RCTW, before we do that lets just make sure to save changes to the prefab. some things don't require saving but some things do I make it common practice to save the prefab before every build just to make sure. To save prefab changes select any part of the prefab in either hierarchy or scene panel and in the inspector at the top you will see an Apply button, pressing this will save any changes made to the prefab. Now your ready build.

If you closed the RCTW panel then simply reopen it from RCTW/Open and you can now press Build '...' and your prefab will be converted into an RCTW UGC. You can now proceed to the game and enable it in the content manager and it will be added to the game.

Once you have installed the RCTW plugin you will see on the main top bar you have a new entry RCTW in here you can open the RCTW plugin panel.

This panel is where you create new projects, add the object file into the project and export the object into the game. this process is covered in importing a standard asset.

You can also load up previous projects to update your asset

Once you have made your project and imported the scenery object you can safely close this panel while you work on your materials or other edits you wish to make to the asset then reopen the panel to do the build.
Just remember to apply the changes at the top of the inspector before you do build or those edits wont be exported as they haven't been saved to the prefab file. This is regardless of if you close the RCTW plugin panel or not, its just how unity works, no edits are saved until you press apply.

Additionally to the standard process you can change the project settings that affect the export, although generally you will want to leave these options as default, there is very little reason to not want a screenshot or to actually want collisions.

Within the Unity RCTW plugin panel you will find the project settings, these are optional toggles that can be changed on your asset. Currently the plugin has 2 options they are;

• Take screenshot for build
  
• Project has collision

The Take screenshot for build option toggles on and off the screenshot camera taking an image to form the thumbnail of the asset. With the option turned off your thumbnail will contain a red ?. Under normal circumstances you should turn this option on. Be sure to check the section on how to set the position of the screenshot camera

The Project has collision option toggles on and off the collision detection when placing the asset. With the option on you cannot place the object on or in any other object, normal collision detection will exist build off a box that encompasses your model. With the option off you will be able to place the object anywhere with no collision restriction, note the collision deactivation only works one way. see further down the guide for how to edit the collision mesh if it causing you problems with collisions.

If the Take screenshot for build option is enabled then the scenes camera is responsible for creating the thumbnail that will be attached to your asset when it is exported to the game. The camera can be positioned and angled to any view you may desire to best display your asset in its thumbnail.
To alter the screenshot camera simply select the camera in the scene view or the hierarchy panel and use the move and rotate controls on the toolbar to change the view directly in the scene view panel, a preview of the cameras view will be displayed in the bottom right corner of the scene view to help you to visualise the current camera view.

When you import your asset into unity it may not have the same materials as it had in the application you created it in. This is because unity material shaders may not be the same as the shaders your modelling program uses and so it cannot read the values. Even if Unity does read you material correctly to be quite honest there is very little point in messing around creating perfect materials in your modelling program as they will undoubtedly require more work to perfect in the game engine. I tend to just apply maps in my 3D modelling app to ensure mapping is lined up and not mess around with any other options until the model is in unity.

With your model in unity you can select it in the preview window or in the hierarchy panel and its details will appear in the inspector panel. If you scroll down to the bottom of the inspector you will find the materials that your model is setup to use. From here you can make use of the unity physically based shader options to craft almost any type of surface appearance you could want. Covering all these options would take too long see here for a short official Unity material tutorial video.
there is also plenty of other tutorials for material creation on YouTube
After you have made any changes to the materials (or anything for that matter) you MUST click apply at the top of the inspector before you press the build button in the RCTW plugin. Pressing apply saves the changes into the prefab file that the plugin builds the asset from.

A few things I will point out are;

• Build your maps initially large as its a simple process to scale it down to a reasonable size while its technically impossibly to scale it up (scaling a raster image up will never make it look better)
  
• If you prefer the specular method over the metallic method then you can change it, see the video above
  
• the smallest map size you can use is 32x32
  
• A good format to use for texture maps is .PNG with compression on. it offers alpha channel.
  
• Don’t use textures over 2048x2048 unless the map is going to be applied to an object that has an absolutely massive surface area (such as a properly UV mapped object). Going over 2k will have performance impact for near zero visual gain.
  
• Be conservative with your map resolutions. Test the map out and produce it at a resolution as low as possible while preserving the intended appearance.
  
• When building normal maps Unity reads them as up/right so make sure to use the up/right colour settings. If making normal maps doesn’t make sense to you then you can just use greyscale bump maps and unity will turn them into normal maps, it just isnt as effective as making them 3rd party.
  
• The occlusion setting can be used to reduce the lighting the material receives, it requires an image for the mapping but you can make a 32x32 pure black map and then use the slider value to tone it to your liking.
  
• If part of your model is going to be transparent make it a separate material or you may find your opaque parts are not as opaque as you would like even with a solid alpha on those parts.
  
• You can use any Unity shader you do not need to stick to standard materials, you can also use custom shaders

In games an asset gets something called a draw call on it to produce the render. This draw call is run separately for every image (known as a map) your materials are made up out of, this means if you build an asset that has 2 different material types lets say one wood and one stone then you will have a draw call for each. if you have much more materials each containing a number of maps to produce the material effect then you are adding to render load. To combat this and make your asset more streamlined you can combine a number of different materials into a single material that will reduce the draw time of the asset while often doing little to reduce its quality.

Materials in unity can be made to do a lot within a single shader. If your models UVs are laid out properly then you can set different material appearances to different areas of your model without requiring lots of materials and separate maps. If you can cram more information into fewer maps then that is the best way to produce. Heres a great Q&A[answers.unity3d.com] that really does describe the draw call and how to reduce it better than i just did

The offical Unity materials tutorial mentioned in the previous section can show you how to set different material types to a single object that has UV mapping, as for how to UV map you should search on Youtube for how to setup UV maps in your preferred software or the modelling applications official help files might help.

Texture maps should never need to be over 2k thats 2048x2048 pixels. Only if an item has a large surface area (such as if its properly UV mapped) and is going to be seen regularly up close would a texture map above 2k be beneficial. As with facecounts you should try to be conservative with the number of pixels you use in your texture maps. If the asset doesn't benefit from having more detail then it doesn't need it. Try your map out have a look at it from a general distance and consider if it could be reduced or if it needs to be sharper before just making it a big map, the smaller your maps are the more efficient the asset will be for users, finding the balance between quality and performance is a major part of a texture artists job.

I always make my texture maps at a resolution above what i think will be required and then it can be reduced down when it is saved out without degrading the original in case you do need to ever upscale it. You can always make an image smaller without issue but you cannot make one bigger without it blurring. Think ahead and keep all your originals at full size just downscale for the image for saving out game versions.

Texture maps can perform slightly better if the width and height of the image are multiples of 16, but you can use an image of any resolution.
Games really love the power of 2 scale, 32,64,128,256,512,1024,2048 these numbers are ideal to use as map dimensions, your map doesn't need to be square you can use a map size of 256x1024 if it suits your asset.

There is a maximum image filesize limit but it was recently raised and I have yet to discover what the new limit is. It should now be high enough that you wont have an issue importing a 2k png with alpha. I'll update this when i discover the new limit, if there is one.

And finally... Custom shaders.
This is the only part of the UGC system that allows additional programming and obviously you will need to have some knowledge of coding to produce your own. The UGC importer will allow any shaders to be used on an asset this includes all the premade shaders such as the particles additive shader or any other unity ships with. In addition to the Unity basic shaders custom shaders are also allowed to be created and used on your asset.
For example the volumetric lights effect on my spot lights is produced by a custom shader but I am not the author of the shader and so I am not at liberty to share its code, sorry but it would be very disrespectful to share its code.

I have had a play around but my coding skills are limited and I couldn’t figure out how to make a marquee style scrolling map shader but I know it’s possible to do given the know-how and a scrolling shader would be of great use to a number of UGC creators. I have suggested to the devs to provide such a shader or an authorised script for scrolling textures on UGC but they are very busy at the moment.
I am no coder by any stretch of the imagination so I am not very qualified to give tips on this subject, perhaps others can add comments giving tips on creating custom shaders or maybe sharing their own shaders.
You can find help on making shaders on the unity website and theres a load of shaders on the asset store, you may need to pay for them though.

When you add content into the game from unity it will be listed in the content manager under local UGC. If you already have the content manager open on this panel when you add your content then you will not see it listed, you need to refresh the list.

The easiest way to refresh the content list is to just change the content mode. I just press on local maps and then back to local UGC and the list will be refreshed.
The lack of refresh feature has been pointed out to the devs already; hopefully it won’t be too long before it’s added.

Once your local UGC list is refreshed you will see your new asset is listed, to add it to the game all you need to do is click enable and it will be added straight into the in-game UGC UI. After you have enabled your content the enable button will switch to disable, pressing this will remove the content from the in-game UI but will also remove any instances of the asset from your park unless you have saved the park. Saved parks will retain the disabled content until you actually bulldozer it or delete the asset completely, see section on deleting an asset.

The RCTW plugin allows you to load up past exported projects in order to make changes to them and re-export over the original.

Firstly select the Project from the dropdown selection box Selected Project. This will load the project back into the scene. Now you can make any alterations to the assets materials, scale or add more features. After you have edited your asset you must click the apply button at the top of the inspector for it to save your changes to the prefab.
After your changes have been applied you can just click Build'....' again and it will rebuild the asset with the new settings.

Now if you return to the games content manager you will need to disable and re-enable the content for it to reload the updated version. Unfortunately disabling while in-game will remove all instances of the original from your game, this is something I have suggested the devs to look into making an update function that doesn’t require deleting all the originals. Disabling and re-enabling from the main menu content manager will actually leave the old version in a saved park. Again the devs are looking into this.
Hopefully an update in-game feature will be available soon, until then don’t go crazy placing your new asset until you are happy with it and don’t need to update it anymore.

If you asset is already shared on the steam workshop and you want to do an update to it then you will notice a new up arrow icon this is the steam workshop update button. Pressing this will send the new version to the steam workshop and it will overwrite the older version. This update won’t go down to the subscribers they too will need to disable and re-enable the asset to get an updated version. Again this issue has been raised with the dev team.

The next few subjects that just don't really fit into any other section its a little like a Q&A as most of the points are relating to questions I have seen getting asked on the forums.

Im going to cover specifically .DAE files but these instructions should work for several other file formats not just .DAE for example downloaded .STL or .3DS files.

The .DAE format is not properly supported by Unity and it loads the format with a very large scale difference.
The only reason you may want to exprt a .DAE file is if you are exporting from the free version of Googles Sketchup which gives you no option to export to anything other than .DAE
If you are building a model in Sketchup and the assets size doesnt need to be accurate then you may want to just scale it down in Unity going by eye I found that a scale value around 0.025 is approximately correct if you built it to scale in Sketchup.
If you need your scale values to be accurate then it would be best if you turned that .DAE file into a better supported format such as .FBX.
An easy and free way to do this file conversion is to use Blender. The install process is pretty straightforward just follow the process as any normal install, then run the application.

When Blender starts a new scene it loads up with a few basic objects in the scene already, you should remove these items before you start the conversion. In the top right corner of the Blender program you will notice a list of objects in the scene. you want to get rid of the camera, cube and lamp objects. you can do this by clicking on one of them then holding shift down click the other two objects to have all three selected together. then if you look to the left side of the program window you will notice a delete button, press it and press the confirm that pops up to remove the objects from the scene.
With your now empty scene you can click file/import/collada.dae the window will change into an explorer to find your .DAE file. once you have imported your .DAE into blender you don't need to do anything to the file you can simply export it straight back out.
Click File/export/FBX.fbx and set the save location and the export will allow Unity to read the file without messing up the scale of the object. You may as well save the .FBX straight into the unity projects assets folder to save you needing to move/copy it later

First off let me open this subject with a description of what a polygon is in a game, you may think you know but you some people may be wrong as the term is very misleading.
The word polygon comes from the Greek language and it means a shape of any number of sides and its true you can model an object with a 5 sided polygon or any other number for that matter but heres where it gets confusing. There is no such thing as a polygon at render, ANY polygons that have more than 3 sides will get chopped up until it only consists of 3sided faces commonly known as triangles not really polygons. So bare that in mind whenever someone is speaking of polygons, faces or tris in games they are ALWAYS referring to the number of triangles. A 4sided square face counts as 2faces, a basic cubes minimum possible face count is 12 not 6.

One of the biggest things to keep in mind is the face count of your asset. Games need to run in real-time and the more faces it is asked to render the more time it will take to draw each frame.
There really is no hard and fast rule for how many faces you should use since everybody has a different computer specs and every object has a different requirement, but it should be proportionate to the size of the asset you are producing and just how much it is going to be a focal point. A small sign really doesn’t need to have 20,000 faces but a large volcano might. Be conservative and make intelligent decisions on the face count you need to have to get the asset to look right. As for an actual max limit, I have imported 70,000 face asset and it had no problems with it but I really wouldn't recommend ever using that many faces it was just a test object, above 70,000 really should be avoided for all but the biggest of UGC assets.

If adding extra polygon detail will really add to the asset quality then sure go ahead but always be aware of the visual payoff outweighing the performance drag especially for shared content where the consumer might have a lower spec system than yourself,

Setting smoothing groups, applying normal maps and quality texture maps can provide a fairly polished result on a really low face count asset and the performance will be much less effected by using these tools to achieve an appearance of a more detailed mesh.

Try to avoid using extruded text especially if the font is very curvy as it can produce a multitude of faces that are often unnecessary. Text is normally better off being in a texture map than actually modeled unless the text is an actual feature and then you should be careful not to make it unnecessarily heavy on face count.

Always try to delete any faces that will never be seen because they are inside your mesh surface, if its never going to be seen don't send it to render, delete it during creation.

Bare in mind that currently UGC doesn't allow Level Of Detail (LOD) models so it will be almost as processor intensive at close range as it will from the other side of the park.

I have seen that a model of 175,000 faces has been uploaded to the workshop and I cant help but think that is incredibly wasteful of system resources for an asset that has no LODs and takes up a space much less than 0.1% of your park area and for 99.9% of the time wont be noticed. Be aware that games only run with a few million faces rendering at a time, if you add something that takes up just 1% of that budget you are going to screw with the performance pretty quickly. For a compare crysis 3 main characters (debateably some of the best in gaming) have under 60,000 thats a character that is considered the main focus of the game and quite frankly looks amazing, more faces are not always necessary.

So in conclusion how many triangles your mesh should be limited to is totally subjective, you have too many when you have wasted faces, that's detail that doesn't offer anything other than loss of performance. Be intelligent with your modelling, use only what you need to and the game and all the users of your asset will be far happier. Many users will be running the game on lower spec systems and it wont be clear that your high poly asset is causing their game to lag, be mindful of other users if you intend on sharing the asset on workshop.

The pivot point is very important. All objects have a pivot point, in unity it’s the point where the move and rotate gizmo is placed.
The objects pivot point is the part of the object that will be placed on the cursor or snapped to the grid when you place the asset in your game.
This means by manipulating the pivot point you can change the position your asset will get placed. You can even trick the game by having your pivot point very offset from the actual object mesh and then place the object at the edge of your park and the object mesh could be well outside the park boundary.
Building assets for use with the basic UGC pbp takes pivot point manipulation to get right. Be aware though that the pivot point being placed outside of the mesh will extend the collision box to include the pivot point. See the section on how to edit collision mesh for solutions to this if it becomes a problem.
Moving the pivot point within unity isn't an easy task as it take a fair amount of work to manipulate its position, therefor positioning the pivot point should be done in your modelling application before exporting it to Unity.

Scale is a big thing to keep in mind (oh the pun). If you are modelling in a professional application and exporting with the .FBX or .OBJ formats then you should not encounter any scale problems anything you model to be 1meter wide in your 3D package will be 1 meter wide in the game
You can build your models using imperial measurements the .FBX and .OBJ formats will read the size accurately no matter the measurement used. Just be aware that RCTW even when its set to imperial measurements in the options is actually running in metric to keep consistency. The imperial values are just calculated off the metric system and rounded off so the in-game imperial measurements such as track hieght will not be exact it is rounded off to nearest foot. the metric system however is exactly meter steps.

Many people will want to use Googles Sketchup and the free version exports only in .DAE this format is less than ideal but it is accepted. What you will find though is that your model turns out absolutely huge. After a little testing I found that an approximate scale value is 0.025 on the unity asset. This is by no means accurate I am not spending time to get this completely accurate it’s a failing of Unity reading the .DAE format in (it has nothing to do with the RCTW plugin, unity doesn’t officially support .DAE anymore). In order to get your .DAE Sketchup model scaled accurately you might want to send it to blender (a free program) and export it to FBX which unity is happy reading accurately. See the section on converting file formats for how to convert .DAE to .FBX using Blender.

Also regarding scale if you are making any objects in unity then you should be aware that a 1x1x1 unit cube equates to a 1 meter cube (metric FTW :p) Also in the game the grid is spaced in meters and the altitude steps are also 1 meter increments. This combined with pivot point manipulation is how to build for pbp.

The .FBX format is the best format to use if it is available in your modelling software.
You can also make use of the. OBJ format which is a solid format but it doesn't hold material information as well as .FBX.
Finally you can use .DAE format, this format should be avoided really it was only included by request of a SketchUp user as that is the only available export option in free SketchUp but be aware Unity and .DAE do not get along, see previous section on scale. if your model is none of these formats you might be able to convert it using Blender there a section about converting file formats using blender that will fix the .DAE issue and allow you to convert models of different formats for free.
If blender cant do the conversion then you likely have a very strange file format that may be custom to the program it was made in, you should try to locate that program and export the model out of it in a more suitable format.

If you have made a UGC object and no longer want to keep that asset in your game you can delete it, currently there is no in-game tool to completely delete an asset although you could just disable and hide it in the content manager.
To delete your UGC you should first disable it in the content manager then you need to navigate a windows explorer to; C:\Users\*MyUserName*\AppData\LocalLow\Nvizzio Creations\Rollercoaster Tycoon World\UGC\Local the appdata folder may be set to hidden in windows see here for how to unhide the appdata folder[www.howtogeek.com]
You will find this is where all your local UGC is stored. From here you can see each custom UGC item you have built in a separate folder for each.
If you delete one of these folders it will be removed from the game, it will still exist in Unity as a project so you can add it back in again later unless you delete the project folder in Unity as well then you are right back to the start.
If you have shared you asset on the workshop then you will need to remove it from the workshop first or you might get a replacement downloaded from steam, to do this just check local in the share options and then you can delete the assets folder in Appdata/LocalLow and you will not see that item in-game again.

You may have noticed that some workshop assets are little more than just basic static objects, some have lights attached or are designed to fit together for creating buildings.

None of these more advanced UGC methods require any programming knowledge as at the moment no scripts are allowed to be imported into the game via UGC. This is to avoid disrupting the games code but it does bring a few limitations to what can be done. For example making a texture scroll marquee style has not yet been managed without needing a script. I have found a workaround but it does require a bit of extra work to make the appearance of moving textures happen. The only thing that we can currently implement that requires programming knowledge is custom shaders and building those will take a strong understnading of Unity and programming

There is quite a lot that can currently be done with the UGC system but it does require a few extra steps or a little extra planning. These next subjects are expecting you to already be adept with all the basic factors, if you arent yet comfortable importing an asset and altering parts of it before exporting it to the game then you should return to the basic section before moving onto the next few subjects.
Lets get into making more advanced UGC

The process of adding lights is quite a simple one and it is technically identical to that of adding audio sources, and adding particle systems. First of all you will need an object that will be home to your light to actually add to the game, a lamp post for example.

Get your object.FBX in the assets folder and any maps it has ready in the materials folder. Open the RCTW importer plugin and create a new Project. Check the options are how you want them and then click scenery. Drag your object.FBX into the dialog and press create. So far everything is straight forward and the same as a standard asset. But don’t click build yet you need to add you light now.

On the top bar go to GameObject/Light and then pick the light type you want, generally you would want to use spotlight for a direct light source like a floodlight and a point light for an omni directional light such as a lamppost.

now I select the light in the hierarchy panel I position it in the scene view to be approximately where the bulb for the light will be. For some lights you may want to offset the light a bit to gain more spread it depends on your personal needs.

Next check in the inspector what its options are set to, you may want to add shadows or alter the distance the light functions (range) or how bright it is (intensity) you can also alter its colour or add a cookie or flare. When you have your light looking good press apply at the top of the inspector to save your lights options. For more information on light options see here for Unity’s official lights tutorial.

Now we have our light and it is looking how we want, we just need to add it into the prefab that the plugin made when you imported the object. In the hierarchy panel you will see the prefab listed with the name you gave the project. Press the arrow to the left of it to expand its components (if it isn’t already expanded). Now you can see the contents of the prefab it will have the object with the same name but (Clone) at the end, this is the object within the prefab (if your object is made of multiple objects then they will all be listed further down the hierarchy list). To add your light to the prefab look at the hierarchy panel and just drag the light you made and drop it onto the object with clone at the end of its name it will move to sit below that object. Now click the (clone) object and click apply in the inspector to save the light into the prefab, you will notice the lights name turns from black to blue to indicate it is saved.

Now everything is set the light is part of the prefab that the plugin made for the asset and everything looks how we want it to. Go back to the RCTW plugin and click build. After a moment the export will be completed and you can go and enable your asset in the game

Note. adding lights to objects is one case where you may want to disable an objects shadow if it is producing a strange shadow due to the position of the light. a light post where the light is on top of a post for instance will cast a wide shadow below it, disabling the shadow cast on the post will make it light the ground much better.

The process of adding particle effects is quite a simple one and it is technically identical to that of adding audio sources, and adding lights. Any particle effect that doesn't rely on an external script should be importable. First of all you will need an object that will be home to your particle effect to actually add to the game, you may not want any actual geometry for example on a fog effect so you could have a single small face and hide it below ground by having the pivot point above the mesh.

Get your object.FBX in the assets folder and any maps it has ready in the materials folder. Open the RCTW importer plugin and create a new Project. Check the options are how you want them and then click scenery. Drag your object.FBX into the dialog and press create. So far everything is straight forward and the same as a standard asset. But don’t click build yet you need to add you particle system now.

On the top bar go to GameObject/ParticleSystem and click it and you can see it is now listed a particle system in the hierarchy panel and the basic particle system is in the scene view. In order for the particle system to preview its animation you must have it selected

Now you will need to select the particle system in the hierarchy panel and position it in the scene view to be approximately where the emitting point will be using the transform gizmo to get it positioned.

Next check in the inspector what its options are set to, particle systems have a lot of options to create a large range of effects. This process is rather complicated due to the large amount of options. For a full tutorial on particle system options see here for an official Unity particle system tutorial.

Now you have your particle system and it is looking how you want, you now need to add it to the prefab that the plugin made when you imported the object. In the hierarchy panel you will see the prefab listed with the name you gave the project. Press the arrow to the left of it to expand its components (if it isn’t already expanded). Now you can see the contents of the prefab it will have the object with the same name but (Clone) at the end, this is the object within the prefab (if your object is made of multiple objects then they will all be listed further down the hierarchy list). To add your particle system to the prefab look at the hierarchy panel and just drag the particle system you made and drop it onto the object with clone at the end of its name it will move to sit below that object. Now click the (clone) object and click apply in the inspector to save the particle system into the prefab, you will notice the particle system name turns from black to blue to indicate it is saved.

Now everything is set the particle system is part of the prefab that the plugin made for the asset and everything looks how we want it to. Go back to the RCTW plugin and click build. After a moment the export will be completed and you can go and enable your asset in the game

This section is kind of a placeholder.
It is possible to add audio sources, the procedure is the same as adding lights and adding particle systems to the scene but I have found that after experimenting with them it is not possible to have the volume fade with range. This means that any audio sources you add will be heard anywhere in your park. This was only realized very recently and I have asked to see if a solution can be found from the devs I hope to hear some sort of solution soon, it may take a while to get the plugin updated to feature the required function to make audio fade work properly.
Until then avoid adding audio sources unless you are well versed in Unity and think you can get a workaround but then I doubt you would be reading this.

You may have noticed that a number of workshop assets are sections of a themed design that are intended to be built together to produce custom buildings, this is piece by piece (PBP) building. RCTW doesn’t officially have the tools for pbp building in it yet but a couple of workarounds have been found to allow for some basic construction’s to be made even without having the official pbp tools yet. Both methods have pros and cons

The first method is to use snap to grid, pros; it’s easy to make sets for this method, cons; everything must be aligned to the world grid.

It has been found that the grid has 1meter steps on it and when you raise a UGC asset it goes up by exactly 1 meter. This means that if you design your pieces so they are always considerate to the 1meter steps they can be placed seamlessly together using the grid snap. You may want to make a piece 3 meters wide by 3meters tall and that will fit together just the same but with using fewer pieces per wall
By taking this into account and by manipulating the position of the objects pivot point you can start to place objects offset from the grid.


The second method is to use regular snapping. Pros: you can place your building at any angle, cons: it’s a lot more difficult to plan out and execute and when official pbp come along it might make your assets not fit properly. I would would only really suggest using this method for walls and fences not so much for full building sets as getting corner snaps can be tricky.

It is also possible to use the standard snap function but after experimenting I notice the snap function doesn’t put the two collision boxes perfectly together, it has a small offset this is a common thing in games to have collisions having small offsets to reduced glitching. I guess this gap is what the official pbp building system will fix while adding more functionality. You can however manually edit the collision boxes down a small amount to get your pieces to snap perfectly at any angle totally off grid. I found the offset amount to be 0.05. The problems arise when your assets collider mesh is generated larger than the actual assets planned snap points, this occurs if the top is wider than the base or if you have your pivot point outside the mesh. If you plan for these issues and know the size of your model accurately you can overcome these issues too. See the next section for how to edit collision mesh.

Both of these methods are less than ideal as they each have their own problems but, at the end of the day UGC pbp was not planned to happen it just has, the dev team is working on real pbp tools. This is only a stopgap until PBP building tools are featured in the RCTW in the not too distant future. That will hopefully alleviate most if not all the issues that currently exist,

When you import your object into the Unity RCTW plugin it automatically creates a collision mesh that is a box that completely encompasses the model, it’s called a box collider. This collider box exists on the asset for a few reasons;

• One is for the in-game delete and move functions to be able to detect your asset in order to perform the operation on the asset. Without it your cursor wouldnt be able to detect the asset and so you wouldn't be able to perform these actions meaning after you place it you can’t move or delete it. Having a box collider is very important do not remove it entirely or make it so small you have trouble getting the cursor on it.
  
• The second reason for the collider is for it to detect collisions, but wait, what if I disabled collisions? Unfortunately the collision disabling function currently only works one way, in other words you can put a collisionless UGC anywhere at all even placing a wall in the way of a coaster train and it won’t raise issue however if you try to build a coaster through a collisionless UGC then you will still collide. I have raised this issue with the devs and in the future this may change but for now editing the colision box can allow a track to be laid through your asset after it is placed.
  
• The third reason to have a collider box is for the snap function. Currently the snap function in RCTW has an offset value this means that two 1meter cubes with their collision boxes also at exactly 1meter as it’s created will actually snap together leaving a small gap, the offset. it is possible to reduce the size of the collider to account for the offset but it can be tricky if your object is of an irregular shape.

So how do you edit the collider box?
When you add your object into the unity scene via the plugin it creates in the hierarchy panel a prefab. The prefab is the object that has the collider box assigned to it and its the only part of the asset that having a collider on will register in the game. If you select the prefab in the hierarchy or scene view panel then in the inspector you will see a component of the prefab is a box collider.
In the box collider settings you will notice a size with x, y and z values this is the size of the collider box that has been generated measured in meters. if you click on the component title then you will notice a green box outline appears in the scene view this green box represents the size of the collider.
To edit it you can either alter the actual x, y and z values or your can press the edit collider button and that allows you to grab the small green spots that have appeared on each side of the green box outline and you can move the sides of the box in the scene view.
which of these method you want to use depends on what you are wanting to achieve.
If you are just altering the collider to reduce its collision footprint then it would be easier to use the edit button and just drag the sides to something more suitable. Do not remove the box collider completely or make it too small to ever be able to select it for the reason mentioned in point one.


if you are trying to do pbp with snapping then you will want to be accurate and so use the value inputs. You will need to have the box perfectly aligned in the center of your mesh and have the width and length 0.05 meters smaller than the actual mesh size. These values to get perfect will need to be sourced from your original 3D modelling program, really only try this method if your know how to find measurements accurately or it will just become a headache trying to get it to fit right. Also be aware that once the offical pbp system is featured your colliders may need re-sizing back up 0.05 to work with the new system. I almost decided not to feature this method do to its complications but I think for doing custom walls it would be quite easy to implement, I wouldn't bother with full pbp sets in this fashion.

I believe there is two ways to animate your asset but I personally have only tried one of them, the other would be to use Unity’s animation tools to control an object but I am unfamiliar with the toolset for Unity animations and this system works fine for me. It may seem complicated at first but after you get it done a couple of times it won’t take you 2minutes to get it exported

In your 3D modelling package use the animation controls to keyframe the animation you want your asset to have.

With your animated asset made you should export it to .FBX and ensure you have Animation ticked and Bake Animation also ticked in the export options, you should also ensure the animation frame times are set correctly. Now your .FBX has the animation saved into it we just have to instruct Unity to use it.

Get your object.FBX in the assets folder and any maps it has ready in the materials folder. Before you import the object into the plugin click on the .FBX in the project panel and then in the inspector click the Animations tab, make sure import animation is ticked and also loop time and loop pose are also ticked or it will only play the animation once.

Open the RCTW importer plugin and create a new Project. Check the options are how you want them and then click scenery. Drag your object.FBX into the dialog and press create to add it to the scene.

Now you should right click on any empty space in the projects panel and click Create/Animator Controller this will create a new file in the assets folder, you should rename this something descriptive to the asset so if later down the line you make another animated asset they don’t all have name of new animator controller (F2 to edit name of selected item)
Now double click your renamed animator controller and the scene view panel will change to show the animator panel with a diagram of the items within the animator controller. Currently it will have a box for any state and a box for entry. Now you need to find the animation that was created in your .FBX.

In the project view click the little arrow on your object.FBX and it will open up all the components of the file in there you will see a file that has a play icon on it, it is probably called take1 but it may be named after your asset, it depends on the name of your asset. When you have found the play icon drag that into the animator panel, it doesn’t matter where. You are now done with the animator panel so you can click on the Scene tab in the top left of the panel to return to normal scene view.
Now select your asset prefab in the hierarchy or scene view and look to the inspector. You should have an animator component listed in the inspector, if you don’t have it you can add one by clicking Add Component and typing and then clicking animator (not animation)
Ok so all that is left to do is to tie these things together in the animator component. It requires two inputs. The controller slot you should drag the animation controller you previously made from the project panel into the controller slot. The avatar slot may already be filled in or it may be blank, if is blank then you need to find the avatar part of the .FBX. If you look back at your .FBX in the project panel and again open the components with the little arrow if it isn’t still open you will see there is an icon that looks like a basic human torso and head, this is the avatar file. Drag that file into the avatar slot in the animator

Finally you should click Apply at the top of the inspector to save all the changes to the prefab. Everything is setup you can finally click build the asset in the RCTW plugin.

Thanks go to DarkHorizon for figuring out the animation controller part.

Currently I have yet to find a way to make a texture scroll or shift its UV offset. I’m sure it’s possible with a custom shader and if that becomes available that would probably be a simpler option until then this is a workaround.
The way I have discovered to give the appearance of lights turning on and off like in a chasing lights effect is to have the lights literally chase each other. By this I mean the lights are actually animated to move in sequence.
The way I did this is to plot out the positions of all your lights all evenly spaced out with a distance you know between them all. Then make a material for light on and light off, you may want to do some medium lit in between too, apply these materials to the bulbs so you can see clearer what is going on, you will need them in unity anyway.
Onto the animation, make a keyframe that as the base position for all the lights. Next you need to move all the lights along the sequence one step, knowing the distance means you could just locally offset move them on mass which makes the process much quicker. When the light bulbs are in their second position you keyframe them there and you continue this process until you have as many frames as there will be steps to the sequence. Now you need to change the keys from a curved animation to a stepped animation to make them jump from position to position rather than actually moving.
Finally you just need to copy the first key to the end of the sequence and ensure your keys are spaced out evenly to get the speed of chasing that you want to achieve.
Now you need export the file as described in the animated assets instructions. And set the emission of the bulb materials to give the correct appearance

A benefit to doing the effect this way is you could actually add Unity lights to the lit bulbs and they would chase around with the bulbs, just be aware that lots of Unity lights would affect performance so only do this if the effect will outweigh the performance drag. The con to this method is it’s a little time consuming compared to having a scrolling texture controlling the lights. When I figure out how to do a scrolling texture I will add a how to on that method.

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I am working on templates for a number of the stock buildings to be able to build a model that would fit over the buildings easily. As these are completed I will post about them here and drop a post in the forums.

A canopyless station is now here and after having been busy IRL i havnt had any time to play around with RCTW much since the launch. I do have a little free time coming up so i will try to come up with some guides for stations, problem is each type of train has a different size station so I am trying to come up with a modular station design that can but used to fit any station. I will update soon on how that goes

The peep skins feature of the Plugin is a little rough at the moment, I havnt done a whole lot of testing but I have found it to be a little lacking compared to what I was hoping for.
Currently the system appears to be a texture replacer for a few of the guests and staff.
I cant really recommend using the peep skins feature in its current state as there are a couple of bugs in the system but you could have a play with the map to get your own peepskin designed for when the feature is a little less buggy.

if you actually just read all that I appreciate you taking the time to read everything with all that this guide covers you should be able to make a whole load of really cool things and i look forward to seeing them on the workshop. you can combine different subjects to get things like moving lights or tunnels for coaster tracks with water particles dripping from the roof.
Good luck and have fun, let your creative flag fly.