RELEASED-wip Kyalami 2016

[Pixelchaser]

Then you'll love Fusion, because its based off detailed super accurate data.
Sent you a link to the Stutz STL files ...

thinking about buying a Wacom cintiq alternative reckon itll work with fusion ?

 

[Prototype]

thinking about buying a Wacom cintiq alternative reckon itll work with fusion ?

IMO, no. Organic work like photoshop painting, zbrush etc for sure, traditional 3d work, not so sure.

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PERIMETER BUILDINGS UPDATE

They're starting to fill up!

No texture work done yet (UV and AO bakes done), but as @luchian says, thats the easy part ! pfft. ha ha. Ill just "photoshop" it. np. done!

Vert counts per building are ranging between around 400 - 1500.

 

[Pixelchaser]

yeah, those buildings are popping just like they should and all similarly. nice standard that shows right through.

 

[luchian]

IMO, no. Organic work like photoshop painting, zbrush etc for sure, traditional 3d work, not so sure.

------------------------------------------------
PERIMETER BUILDINGS UPDATE

They're starting to fill up!

No texture work done yet (UV and AO bakes done), but as @luchian says, thats the easy part ! pfft. ha ha. Ill just "photoshop" it. np. done!

Vert counts per building are ranging between around 400 - 1500.

wow, fantastic work. I know you say ("think") you are all over the place, but from my window, it's fantastic. And your presentation skills.. ! Budget sounds fair to me also, I would not go lower. Great work, always exciting to see an update in this thread.

 

[Prototype]

wow, fantastic work. I know you say ("think") you are all over the place, but from my window, it's fantastic. And your presentation skills.. ! Budget sounds fair to me also, I would not go lower. Great work, always exciting to see an update in this thread.

Well, thanks guys. Just enjoying the process and its a fun project. Certainly the scope has changed since I first started ... Im definitely more invested in it than I initially thought I would be.

So, a few weeks into this thing now ... and each step has been a learning curve along the way. Im not a Blender user, so putting together a pipeline using the packages I'm more comfortable with has been part of the exercise, this apart from RTB, which is a first time experience.

SO - this is the pipeline currently:

If I had lidar data it would have probably looked something more like this: (so go figure!)

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RTB

So my little foray into RTB has been a mixed bag of good and bad, but I'll say its definitely had more pros than cons so far. And I honestly dont think I would have been able to prototype the track layout as efficiently if it had been done using more traditional methods. Literally hundreds of back and forth tests so far. Getting the road mesh to behave perfectly is challenging to say the least, and thats been amplified by the fact that this track is just one compound curve after the next with constant elevation variation.
... So the road mesh that RTB spits out will be used as a template to build from.

HOUDINI

A friend of mine has been building some tools in Houdini that will help in this next phase of development, building a finalised road mesh system.

Thanks to @luchian for his great thread "ROAD - How-to ? (physical and visual layer)".
It forms the conceptual basis for what we've been working on here as well. : - )

TRACK OBJECTS PIPELINE
Ill share some more on that a bit later ...

 

[luchian]

Once again, the documented process of this journey is a pleasure to read !
I will be very curious to find out more about the tools you guys are developing, they look very handy.

Also one important note: I was merely the "scribe" for the road mesh tutorial, the actual info comes from @LilSKi one of the top track modders for Assetto Corsa. He was kind enough to give his benediction to post this here .

 

[Mitja Bonca]

Wow, simply amazed over this track. I wanted to build it my self, but gave up, since lack of data 2 years ago.
And now I see this beauty, simply amazing indeed.

 

[Prototype]

Once again, the documented process of this journey is a pleasure to read !
I will be very curious to find out more about the tools you guys are developing, they look very handy.

Also one important note: I was merely the "scribe" for the road mesh tutorial, the actual info comes from @LilSKi one of the top track modders for Assetto Corsa. He was kind enough to give his benediction to post this here .

Wow, simply amazed over this track. I wanted to build it my self, but gave up, since lack of data 2 years ago.
And now I see this beauty, simply amazing indeed.

Well thanks guys.
Will be sure to share more info on the tools once they're finalised and properly tested.

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TRACKSIDE OBJECTS

EXAMPLE - MODULAR RETAINING WALL SYSTEM

A good friend of mine who has worked on multiple Xbox launch titles since the first Xbox console always said "game dev is smoke and mirrors".

What he meant by this is working as smartly as you can - get away with as much as you can, from a time, resource, and perf budget point of view.


This track has a few retaining walls.
So this is how I approached it.

The ultimate way to do this - would be to model the sections out in hires 3d, bake out normals and AO, build a low res mesh version, and then apply the maps generated from the hires mesh.
That would be fine, but for the context that this asset is in the world, allows for trying to achieve this in a simpler way.​

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• The Diffuse texture was my starting point, and the component that would do most of the heavy lifting in creating this asset.
  
• Once I had made the texture, it was brought into Fusion and a side profile sketch was created, using correct real world scale.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The sketch was then extruded to 1.4 meters in length, (to create each segment) and the inverse was also extruded to create a Boolean tool object.
• Parametric modelling and Booleans "are a thing" - unlike mesh based modelling, where booleans should be avoided as much as possible.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Two models are created from this - an end piece and a pattern piece.
• The end piece is then mirrored to create a start and a finish piece.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The solid body model is then converted into a mesh and the faces not needed are deleted.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The texture is then UV mapped to the meshes.
• There a few standalone and plugin based 2D normal maps tools available, but one that is often overlooked is the native photoshop tools, which I used to here to quickly create a normal map from my diffuse map.
• You can edit your normal map in the channels once its created.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• I made 5 repeating "pattern" pieces (middle pieces).
• This was overkill, and I'd probably get away with 3, if not 1, if I tweak the texture enough to dial out visual repeats.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This is where Ill use RTBs tools to build out a new object that Ill again re export and bring into Houdini.
• The reason I'm using RTB for this step, is because its spline based tools can very quickly snap a sequence of objects to the terrain mesh, and build a new mesh from that.
• I used it to create the multiple retaining wall meshes used in the track from the few simple modular building block meshes I made in Fusion.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• This wall is more than 200m long, and has a complex compound curve. ^
• The meshes are now imported into Houdini.
  
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RESULTS

In summary, a fairly light, high impact, organic set of assets made from 3 simple building blocks in a few short hours.

 

[AccAkut]

Using Houdini and RTB, interestig combo. The same (making an object and have it follow a terrain following spline) can be done in Blender too, probably not with the same adjustments.
Really like your documentation on here.

 

[luchian]

Another awesome update ! Looks very well, will do the job just fine.
Did not know about the Normal Map in PS. I was actually using the nvidia plugin for PS, but that crashes 9/10.

 

[Prototype]

Using Houdini and RTB, interestig combo. The same (making an object and have it follow a terrain following spline) can be done in Blender too, probably not with the same adjustments.
Really like your documentation on here.

Yeah .... I mean, working in one software package is first prize.
When you're importing / exporting between packages you're always going to introduce complications ....
... and the process I'm playing around with could be construed as convoluted for sure.

But, this is part of what I enjoy doing, playing around and experimenting with different ways of doing things. Its fun for me. Problem solving, and making things. Its kinda what I do.

I think, what I'm really trying to convey here is APPROACH.
How one might tackle certain problems and tasks in solving problems.
Something that can be interpreted into any software package or tool set.

If I were to decide that making AC race tracks was something I was going to do a lot of, I'd most definitely re-familiarize myself with blender (used it in 2006 - v2.x). Then I'd go through all of @LilSKi 's tutorials amongst a few others. Learn how to do this the proven and proper way. Have lots of support as a result, and attempt to make beautiful tracks.

This is a super fun project for me, and its primarily about the process, having fun with it, and hopefully end up making something that other people and myself can enjoy.

Another awesome update ! Looks very well, will do the job just fine.
Did not know about the Normal Map in PS. I was actually using the nvidia plugin for PS, but that crashes 9/10.

Hey @luchian , heres a quick tut for the ps normal map tool in PS.
Some slightly un-intuitive buttons and ways to do things in the dialog boxes, so this should help...

http://www.mattrittman.com/create-normal-map-photoshop/

 

[Prototype]

QUESTION

Hey chaps.

Ive got multiple alpha planes in front of each other.
Got what looks like a draw order issue?

FENCE in front of CROWDS

• In the Ks Editor its fine.
• In game, the crowds draw in front of, or alpha out, the fence.

Current shader (both):
eDepthNormal
KsPerPixelAt
eAlphaBlend

Texture (both):
.dds (DXT5)


What am I doing wrong?
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EDITOR:

GAME:

 

[luchian]

Try the alphaTest, iirc.

 

[Mitja Bonca]

set it like this way.

 

[Prototype]

Fantastic guys! Thanks. That did the trick.

 

[Mitja Bonca]

Hehe, when I took this screenshot, I also noticed I haven't done the uv mapping for the fence posts you see them dark here. Thank you.

 

[Prototype]

Ah you're building Vransko. Nice. The main building has some amazing architecture. Its a motorcycle track right?

 

[Mitja Bonca]

Not really, its a safety training polygon. It has lots of different layouts. There are only races with karting and minomoto. Could be even for cars, but its not adviseable, since the lack of runoff areas.

 

[Prototype]

MORE EXPERIMENTING (early grass tests)

I've been building the track objects, and the hard edge between the concrete barrier walls and the ground plane is really standing out like a sore thumb. So I figured I'd play around with some grass tests today.

For a first pass I'm really happy with this, but the inevitable hit on GPU is hanging over me.
So I did a quick rounded off calc in my budget spreadsheets, and this is where I am, if I use the density of grass in the screenshots below all the way round the track where its needed.

About half the track needs grass right up at the edge of the track.
So thats about the full length of the track, counting both sides of the track.
The screens below have two parallel rows of grass geo, hence Rows 1 and Rows 2

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I used the same string object tool in RTB to generate the grass mesh sequences.
Only this time, I also used the randomizing function which scales and rotates the single grass objects randomly within defined parameters.

 

[luchian]

Another cool write-up. If you continue this way, this thread will become sort of a "Build your SECOND Track - Advanced Guide"