RELEASED-wip Kyalami 2016

[Prototype]

TRACK SIDE OBJECTS CONTINUED...

MODULAR BARRIER SYSTEM

Studying the general barrier system and breaking it down into modular components.
These pieces will cover pretty much the entire track, except for two corners which will require specific assets.

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SCALE

• Absolutely critical to get right.
• Based off key measured items at the track.
• The approach I took was breaking my texture atlases into 4 x 4 meter grids.
• Models were built around this system.

• A total of 9 textures and 36 modular building blocks (not all shown here) were built off this "template".
• These models will be instanced together along a spline to build out the entire tracks barrier system.

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Virtual Lego Blocks ready to be placed into position:

Textures all need another pass and tweaks, now that they're in context, and one or two places where normals orientation needs to be sorted.

But this is the asset set straight out the box, and going to be fun, and hopefully pretty quick to do, now that the ground work is done.

 

[luchian]

 

[Prototype]

Ha ha

 

[Prototype]

Laying down wall barriers.
Got all the metal guard rails in.
Now starting on the concrete walls.

Starting to look like a race track!

 

[Prototype]

Multi-map

Started trying to refine the track surface.
The track was resurfaced in 2015, while undergoing reconstruction. So its fairly dark and smooth.

I wanted to capture that, but also inject a little more weathered detail into it.
So a small amount of artistic license I guess.

Next steps on the road surface will be the groove line, skid marks and marbles.

 

[luchian]

Asphalt looking especially good in this one, very nice !

 

[Prototype]

RUN OFF

Spent a good few hours getting the first runoff area textures work done.
Fair amount of trial and error.
Now that I'm happy with the result, Ill be repeating the setup for the rest of the runoff areas.

 

[luchian]

The "scale" of the textures looks a little big atm, but I imagine it's only the first pass. Otherwise, this is advancing really nice. Actually looking forward to give it a try.

 

[Prototype]

The "scale" of the textures looks a little big atm, but I imagine it's only the first pass. Otherwise, this is advancing really nice. Actually looking forward to give it a try.

Yup.

What I've been trying to do to map on a simple diffuse and normal over the entire area, and then use a seamless detail noise texture which is multiplied over the entire surface. I cant, however seem to get it to go any smaller than this. :-/

Maybe this is just the wrong approach?
Or Im not getting the multiplier to work properly or something?

Thoughts?

 

[Pixelchaser]

lighting looks funky. in the second and third to last image the transition of light over the road and run off is weird as in not working correctly. 1 side is darker than the night the other very lit. id say the approach is wrong there mate.

is it multimap or multilayer shader ?

in multilayer the detail textures are your automatically scaled and programmed seamless detail that is multiplied over the whole area for you asphalt (pebbles) just needs diffuse and RGBA channels mask.


btw,..the tiling on these detail channels is slightly offset in the shader programming so it will never actually be match able pixel to pixel. and this is the key to why AC has its own road styles and looks

 

[luchian]

Yup.

What I've been trying to do to map on a simple diffuse and normal over the entire area, and then use a seamless detail noise texture which is multiplied over the entire surface. I cant, however seem to get it to go any smaller than this. :-/

Maybe this is just the wrong approach?
Or Im not getting the multiplier to work properly or something?

Thoughts?

Hmm, it's maybe the normal that makes it look so big ? Afaik, normal should also be used like the detail, meaning you'll multiply (tile) it in the shader settings. But I might be wrong, I am not too good with texturing my self. I can only say when I like/don't like something

 

[Prototype]

RESOLVED

Thanks for keeping me in check guys.
Both issues resolved.

For the benefit of anyone else potentially running into these issues:

ISSUE 1:
Track lighting differently based on direction.

What happened:​

• Normals Orientation
• The normals on my track surface were not pointing up, but roughly towards the right.
• So when the track was going in one direction and then going in the opposite direction - the normals reflected the light in opposite directions when the sun was in a low position.
  
  
  How did that happen?
• When I saved out my normal map it defaulted to 32bit which somehow lightened the overall image.
• When converting the normal map to 8bit, its resolved the issue, and the RGB channel values were corrected.
• I don't know why this happened but it must have something to do with additional info contained in the 32bit file that altered the overall effect on export.
  
  
  
  
  

ISSUE 2:
Detail maps not tiling as I expected them to, resulting in a lower resolution detail.

What happened:​

• I used :
  ksPerPixelMultiMap_NMDetail
  
  Only has:
  detailUVMultiplier
  
  
• I should have used:
  ksPerPixelMultiMap_AT_NMDetail
  
  Additionally has:
  detailUVMultiplier
  normalUVmultiplier
  
  Using those two controllers allowed for the tiling size to be adjusted as expected.
  

RESULTS:

Closeup: Texture noise matched between the painted runoff and the track surface ^^ using
detailUVMultiplier and normalUVmultiplier

 

[Pixelchaser]

yeah makes sense there. good job with using multimap shader too. there is no right or wrong but I fear you are going to have better results with using the multilayer shader, only reason you would use multimap is to take advantage of the reflection parameters on the "MAP" blue channel. its use in the sim sees it as predominantly used as a car shader.

all kunos tracks use multilayer except one that is black cat county and that is to take advantage of that reflective aspect which makes sense as its not a race track.

A gain you would get would be the abbility to variate through 4 seperate texture detail types. channels and have blended specular values between the diffuse and the individual detail speculars (alpha channels)

another gain is that you can scale each details texture channel individually to extreme extents.

one question though, at the model level have you used any tiling for uv`s at all ? and if so what have you tiled exactly ?

 

[Prototype]

That multi layer shader looks like a little beast. Lots of stuff in there. Will dig into it.

 

[Prototype]

TREE TEXTURES

Started playing around with getting final tree assets into my scene.

Lots of good stuff to read here btw:
https://assettocorsamods.net/threads/setting-up-trees.162/
​

• But thought I'd share some of the texturing techniques I've been using, as well as some color and tonal theory.
• Firstly, a good deal of variation can be created just by using random transforms (orientation, scale etc) of a single asset.

But for this to work nicely, there’s a couple of set up requirements.


So here are some basics:
Photographing Trees

• Ideally, on an overcast day at around noon.
• WHY? You mitigate directional light. (If you’re rotating trees, the light source will conflict visually if you have strong directional light on your tree image.)
• You get a lot more ambient light among the leaves adding detail.
• You get a cleaner background to extract an alpha channel from. (There blues in the leaf colors, making sky selection harder if your sky is blue).

Additional Notes:

• The leaves in trees create a generally high contrast scenario.
• If you look at a tree, and squint your eyes, you're going to see pretty much two tones only - highlight and shadow.
• There is very little in the way of mid tones. Why? Well, the leaves are either in light or in shadow, with very little ambient light bouncing in between, when seen from a distance.

Here’s an example of a tree on my street. Its shot in the late afternoon, but this is irrelevant, if it were shot at noon, the highlighted sections would simply be at the top, but the scenario remains the same:

This effect was put to good use in vintage posters, where areas of strong contrast were interpreted into solid colors. Just look up any old Monaco posters! Tim Layzell has put a contemporary spin onto this device, demonstrating this point pretty well:

Look at the trees and clouds (exactly the same theory applies).
http://www.timlayzell.com/index.htm
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​

• Kyalami has a lot of Blue Gum Trees (not indigenous) as well as Acacia Trees (indigenous).
• I've started with the blue gums, as they break the horizon a lot more than the Acacias because they’re taller.
• Building up strong silhouettes is key, so the blue gums have taken precedence.

1. Start by trying to find a tree and vantage point that gives you as much sky as possible behind it.
2. Remove background detail.

1. Crop the image into a square format.
2. Make sure the main trunk is centered vertically on your image.
3. If the trunk is not centered, it will duplicate (X and as well as Y trees).
   
   Additional Info:
   Make sure your anchor point is at the base of your geo.

1. Duplicate the tree layer
2. De-saturate layer to full greyscale
3. Push RGB channels until you start getting a full black (left slider).
4. Push until you get full white (right slider)
5. Adjust the middle slider to get as much detail back as you can.

1. Add in a white background, merge layers.
2. Invert the image
3. Paste inverted image into alpha channel

1. Load the alpha as a selection
2. Select > Load Selection > Source: Alpha
3. Choke selection by 1 pixel (so that your selection sits one pixel inside the tree RGB image) (left image)
4. Select inverse - (Shift Ctrl I)
5. Hit delete key - to remove all background
6. Create a layer behind the tree RGB and fill with a color that blends into the tree (right image)

RESULT:

1. RGB (left) / RGB with Alpha (right)
2. You don't want to see any white along the alpha edges.

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[luchian]

Every post of yours is a pleasure to read. It's not only about the very useful information, but it's about the way of presenting it, and most important - about conveying the experience or process of building a track. It's never just a question of laying a few planes and a texture (what the end user will see), it's ALL this. And from a modder's point of view, this is fantastic.

Thank you for taking the time to write.

 

[Prototype]

Thanks @luchian, appreciate the kind words

Tree Textures PART 2

Color and Tone

Going into a little more depth:

Ive found that by adding a subtle darker gradient going from the bottom upwards, (shadow) and a highlighted gradient from the top down, (sun) a more natural feel is achieved.

I've over exaggerated it here to demonstrate the point.

1. Also shown above is a a tonal tweak to the image, pushing the contrast more, using levels.
2. We started with a photograph that was taken on a overcast day, eliminating directional light.
3. A side effect of this situation is that we have low contrast, but more ambient detail.
4. So the process above attempts to add that contrast detail and interest back into the image.

1. Multiple tree textures.
2. Very often I've seen sets of tress that obviously were randomly sourced and the color hues, color casts, and tonal ranges are all out of sync, creating an undesired effect.
   
3. Using levels to push all the tree textures into a neutral tonal and color range. - demonstrated with Trees A1,2,3
4. Once we have this, a subtle color adjustmnet per tree can can be applied to create variation. B1,2,3
5. A little goes a long way!
6. You can see by the RGB values above that its barely negligible, but in the engine, the differences are noticeable.
   
   
7. Testing! Testing!
8. Ive been going through multiple iterations of each tree wrt to tonal and color adjustments.

9. Once all the gum trees were dialed in, atlasing them onto one texture sheet.
​

RESULTS (WIP)

 

[luchian]

Ive found that by adding a subtle darker gradient going from the bottom upwards, (shadow) and a highlighted gradient from the top down, (sun) a more natural feel is achieved.

For additional shadow you mean ?

Because otherwise, this is done automatically, if you do what @LilSKi was recommending. i.e. to add a subdivision, and to move the origin at the botoom.

 

[Prototype]

For additional shadow you mean ?

Because otherwise, this is done automatically, if you do what @LilSKi was recommending. i.e. to add a subdivision, and to move the origin at the botoom.

The advantage of baking in the shadow is you're halving the geometry on your trees ...

 

[Johnr777]

The advantage of baking in the shadow is you're halving the geometry on your trees ...

Yes, whoever, your tree might only look correct in certain sun/lighting angles.

By doing what Luchian suggested, the normals behave correctly in all sun angles, and you get a fuller, more round look out of those flat planes.

And IMO, not a significant amount of faces to worry about, unless there’s an insane amount of trees