SOLVED 3DSmax - Units are Off and car feels shaky.

[darksession95]

Well, i started to model my track today. I use Max 2017 and got problems with units, i set everything to meters/meters (UI and main). Which size should i use at "Scaling Factor" when exporting to .fbx? Because it seems that the measurements are not always right. I made a 1.80 m wide plane and put a Car on it, it is not 1:1. Now the second problem. My car is completely shaky on a straight line, it starts to wobble and is hard to control while this doesn't happen on other maps. I redone my project three times and varied lenght and size, and the handling is always trash, don't know why. Could someone check my settings? Thank you!

 

[luchian]

For scaling, maybe have a look at the other one in "world scale" (iirc) in the additional tools tab ?

Regarding weird wobbling:
- Does your mesh have enough density/subdivisions ?
- How big is your track ? Any chance being more than 16km x 16km ? If yes, you will experience weird behavior the farthest you go from origin. Speaking of origin, check that also. Maybe through some mistake is not centered (or close to) on your track ?

These are a few ideas that come to mind now.

 

[darksession95]

Well i made a complete new track. Around 2km x 2km for testing purposes. Set everything to meters and Scale Factor to Meters. Suddenly my car spawned upside down and got pushed to the ground. Something is fucked up.

But one question, why does it say "Scale Factor". I don't want to scale when exporting, i just want to use the original project settings. Oh and what do you mean with the origin?, you mean the center point of my grid in Max? Well this is how i usually place my track :

Edit: I noticed that the guy holding the stop sign is wayyy to small, hes a third of my car. Whats wrong here?

 

[Pixelchaser]

scale factor needs to equal 1. always. but not in these settings. only on export and import of any model.

heres my settings that seem to work fine, they are the same as yours. so something else is wrong. and my max2012 is set exactly the same.

the most important part is this here , scale factor = 1, which I don't see in your earlier images, it can only be that that is wrong as far as I can tell. if it is at 300% the size, its likely a feet to metres problem somewhere in your workflow. like as if you captured in feet and it converted it to metres. which is exactly what happened to me on my first lidar track capture, but not only on export is this important, its important on import of FBX too. for example on many models I import I must set this to centimetres for scale factor to = 1. max wants metres. aslong as scale factor = 1 on import or export, max will receive correctly scaled objects.

also please note Axis conversion. Y needs to be up for the physics engine. Y also needs to be aligned up on your spawn objects only, that includes timer gates, start finish line etc. every scenic object can be left with Z up as default regards its origins. this will solve the road feel issue. and the previous should solve the scale problems.

 

[darksession95]

Thank you for your input. I think i fixed the car falling through ground problem, i had to rotate my start boxes to 180 Degrees. And yes, it doesn't say anything at "Scale Factor", i reset my 3DS settings and nothing changed.
Is there any other way to change the Y-Axis to be UP, currently my UP Axis is : Z as you can see.

I think rotating the road will fix the wobble issue, something is fucked up with my axis.

Next problem. My car doesn't fall through anymore. But the scale is still wrong. I set everything to meters (Units setup and UI, exported with "Scale : Meters). And ingame my 4,2m wide track is almost as WIDE as a Ferrari F40. I rescaled my objects a bit and made the road 6,0m wide. This seems realer to the size that it should be in game. But then again my Pit Guy is 1.5x bigger then he should be. Does this mean you can't resize physics points such as Pit Boxes, Start boxes and so on? If yes, why is my track still too small? I uploaded the fbx file and the finished track, maybe you can find the error. Thank you!

(I created a shitty track from scratch just for demonstration, its not how i would usually model something).

https://www.mediafire.com/?4e1q3ctjn47hxty

 

[darksession95]

Thank you for your input. I think i fixed the car falling through ground problem, i had to rotate my start boxes to 180 Degrees. And yes, it doesn't say anything at "Scale Factor", i reset my 3DS settings and nothing changed. I also fixed the scale problem.

But you need to help me with the road feel problem. Should i try to rotate the road (so Z is Y?). I rotated all Engine objects to be Y-UP, but the road simply doesn't feel good. Its extremely wobbly.

 

[Pixelchaser]

slow down a bit here. all models should be Z up. even the physical road you drive on.

all spawn objects, that's car start positions, car pits position. start gates etc. need Y up. by way of axis orientation, not physical orientation. so its only the pivot or origins you should change.

1. goto object pivot/origin, if blue Z is up. open rotate input box. apply 90 degrees on x to show green Y axis up. then leave pivot

 

[darksession95]

Thank you i did so. It fixed it. But the road feeling is somewhat strange. I may upload my finished map later, maybe you can try it out and tell me if you have the same problem.

 

[Pixelchaser]

ok so you track is for me, 400 metres wide ande its not a track, its like a pyramid shape along a road.

 

[darksession95]

Hahaha, give me a sec, something is completely fucked up.

 

[Pixelchaser]

in response. there is a saying. "No shit, Sherlock"

 

[darksession95]

So okay, a new approach . Everything is fine now. The scale etc. But the car still wobbles like crap. Can someone try out the map ingame, im not sure if its my settings or my controller. (I use my Controller for testing instead of my G27).

http://www.mediafire.com/file/4e1q3ctjn47hxty/Autobahn_Racebahn.rar

FBX included, im really not sure what the problem is. Everything is subdivided nicely but its so slippery.

 

[Pixelchaser]

ok, you have quite some things to learn. the road we use for the visual model is not the road we drive on in Assetto Corsa. well !... you can of course but you are going to experience lack of grip and zero surface.

AC uses an invisible layer , that is usually in a separate kn5 file, and is much higher resolution than any visual layer. AC uses 3ms physics interval readings, so this means ideally you want a polygon every 3 milliseconds.

this layer is not rendered (set to non render in the (AC sdk editor)) the name for this should be 1ROAD etc etc. the visual road can be named so as to not be physical. any object with a number before it denotes it as a physical object.

I suggest for testing you make 0.25 metre spaced polygons.

@LilSKi has a tutorial on the matter. hopefully he could post it here.

 

[darksession95]

Nice to hear, that means everything i read in forums is a lie, and we use a collider mesh for the track? A tut would be really helpfull.

 

[Pixelchaser]

well no idea what you have been reading, but all official ac tracks have a most simple visual layer, and an invisible physics layer, visual could be as little as 1 polygon laterally.
an ac track is roughly split into,

track and scenery. 0.5 - 1 million polygons or is it Tri`s ? (not sure)
physics layers. approx. 500K polygons
trees and grass. 1 - 2 million polygons.

around 3 million all in, and that would include lods too.

 

[LilSKi]

I work in blender but the same principles apply.

http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/proper-technique-in-track-making-plus-tips.122794/

 

[luchian]

all models should be Z up. even the physical road you drive on.

Just a note here (@darksession95 , in order to avoid possible confusion):
All objects need to have Z-up at export dialog, correct.
However, ONLY spawn points need to also have the pivot point rotated.