RELEASED-wip Kyalami 2016

[barf]

Your work looks great Prototype!! I'm learning from this, keep it up!

About the low-res satellite photo, had a quick look and openstreetmap have orthophotos for the area. Exported a 4x4km 0.6m/pixel GeoTIFF here. But it's 10535x10590 pixels and I think ksEditor has a problem with NPOT textures (even though AC/DX doesn't), can export a square-pixel version if that helps? Maybe you can UV map some actual palette onto your ground mesh with it or something?

 

[Johnr777]

Your work looks great Prototype!! I'm learning from this, keep it up!

About the low-res satellite photo, had a quick look and openstreetmap have orthophotos for the area. Exported a 4x4km 0.6m/pixel GeoTIFF here. But it's 10535x10590 pixels and I think ksEditor has a problem with NPOT textures (even though AC/DX doesn't), can export a square-pixel version if that helps? Maybe you can UV map some actual palette onto your ground mesh with it or something?

Interesting, didnt think openstreetmap had any satellite images, is there a different way to use their website?

 

[Prototype]

Grass - The map I used for Mosport is 8K. It had to be, as there were a lot of access roads, parking lots, etc. And for them to show correctly, it needed the extra resolution.

We usually use a masking method. A texture that we use it’s RGBA channels to introduce detail maps. There’s a good write up on it in this forum!

So my 8K diffuse map has an 8K mask and I believe 2 grass detail maps, and 1 road/gravel detail map for the 3 channels. Sounds like a lot, but it is covering a lot of the environment.

So if I'm understanding correctly, its the ksMultilayer_fresnel_nm shader and the texture maps associated with it that you used there?​

Guardrail - yes, simplify them like LilSKi suggested, or don’t make the middle curved in detail as deep.

Struggling to get my head around why? The more contrast - the more likely to get the buzzing? So less info / shallow geo etc creates less contrast? I wonder how much of that is attributed to normal mapping tweaks etc ?
​

Road - think he means smooth as in driving smooth, not the texture. Have you built a high resolution physical mesh underneath and added some random noise?

AH. I guess my heads in textureland Honestly, it feels pretty good to me, but Ive had my shakecushion on etc during testing, erhaps I should be testing with without it.

Ill check the FFB clip graph, but I'm sure I'm getting nice general force feedback from the road in general.
Definitely not trying to be defensive in any way... my policy is 100% to be open, as I'm learning here.
Will share some tests on that ....​

Shadow - yeah, the editor has its issues, you can play around with the shadow bias values to get a better shadow in the editor, but that’s about it. The shader patch does have some extra settings to make it better in game though.

Damn pity - but Ill def try what you suggest. Hopefully I can get it something "acceptable" otherwise, I guess we just leave it off. I was thinking about doing a "blob shadow" under the fencing, following the terrain verts - so an alpha texture mimicking a shadow ... but this may not be worth it. I just hate the barriers looking like theyre floating. Another way might be to use the 3d grass in the bad instances, to mask out the issue ...

​

Hope this helps!

Very insightful, as always. Thanks.

​

Your work looks great Prototype!! I'm learning from this, keep it up!

About the low-res satellite photo, had a quick look and openstreetmap have orthophotos for the area. Exported a 4x4km 0.6m/pixel GeoTIFF here. But it's 10535x10590 pixels and I think ksEditor has a problem with NPOT textures (even though AC/DX doesn't), can export a square-pixel version if that helps? Maybe you can UV map some actual palette onto your ground mesh with it or something?

That was super kind of you! Thanks a bunch man!

Its the pre 2014 track layout unfortunately :-( ...... BUT - Im going to see how I can use it anyway. Great to have all that visual info at that resolution. Im thinking I can use this on the surrounding hills etc ... Its way better than what I have currently. Ill post some tests ...​

 

[Johnr777]

Correct, ksMultilayer_fresnel_nm, similar shader technique used on road materials.

Im going to attach some examples of how I set the grass shader for Mosport. Its the way I decided to go, doesnt necessarily mean its the only way to go.

Diffuse (small sample of 8K texture), black and white.

removed all the details from the photo, like walls, fences, vehicles, objects, etc. You'll also notice the common color painted over the asphalt and grass edges, thats because i want my grass edge to blend into this texture. So that texture will have this same color.

Mask (again, small sample of 8K texture)

The mask looks this way because in the image software, we are using its Red / Green / Blue channels individually.
Red is one type of grass, Green is another type of grass, and Blue is a "road/gravel" type of detail. I cheated a bit here. used the sat image from above, pasted in the red channel, then again in the Green channel, but inverted it, and then manually painted the roads in the Blue channel. Quick and easy... You'll see the blend in the mask texture from the 2 channels, meaning in certain areas you are going to have the details map mix, which looks nice and reduces tiling... or you can "paint" a road if you need to, etc.

Then the detail maps for each shader slot, which are colorized. This way you can introduce color back into the shader. Some guys have the diffuse colorized and the detail maps black and white... Anyways:
RED:


GREEN:


BLUE:


And a Normal Map used to give a large area a nice rough look.


Also, to control specular, you'll need to make an alpha channel for each texture (diffuse and detail maps, not mask), and adjust brightness/contrast for the alpha channel to achieve a nice look / sun reflection. Each detail map will need to be tweaked in ksEditor... like its tiling, strength, etc.

It will take a lot of tweaking, trial and error for sure, but it is one of the most import areas of any scenery. Also feel free to open the track up with 3DSimED, it will tell you all the shader settings, etc, and look at or borrow my textures if you'd like.

 

[luchian]

Beautiful effort @Johnr777 , thank you as well. I am also struggling with this, because I always have the feeling that I should get away with only a couple of 2k textures. I guess I'm stuck in 2005 .

Do you have any 3D grass on the hill in this last pic ? It looks very very nice as it is !

And your trees in this photo.. awesome.

 

[Johnr777]

Video cards have the memory, so there's some freedom. We dont want 2005 tiling effects!

Just being efficient with it, all that really matters in the end, use up a little extra on vegetation but atlas map 5 TSOs, or all your rumblestrips, etc

 

[barf]

Interesting, didnt think openstreetmap had any satellite images, is there a different way to use their website?

You can use their APIs in QGIS to export photos and height-maps etc, or even directly from blender with blenderGIS or blender-osm.

I found the photos here: https://blog.openstreetmap.org/2013/01/01/new-aerial-imagery-south-africa/

 

[Prototype]

Wow thanks @Johnr777 !

Appreciate the detailed breakdown!
As I'm sure many people are also.
Excited to give this a try.
Think I suffer from the 2005 syndrome a bit as well :-D
Your grass looks amazing.

 

[Johnr777]

Do you have any 3D grass on the hill in this last pic ? It looks very very nice as it is !

And your trees in this photo.. awesome.

No, didnt really need to, cameras dont really film that area, I "free cam" up there . Just good detail maps and stronger settings.

Those trees are from the 0.8 public release, I have a few more photorealistic textures in place for the next update, thanks to LilSKi.

Excited to give this a try.

Excited to see your trials!

The track has real promise, will be a top mod for sure

 

[Prototype]

Wow thanks man! Im trying !

 

[Prototype]

EARLY WET TRACK TEST

Wet-look track texturing test, slightly slippery track friction settings, and (moment of silence) SOL

 

[Prototype]

Getting sidetracked here .... (kinda) (maybe not)...

Really enjoying playing around with the ks shaders.

What I like is - the premise is basically the same throughout - referring to the multi layer / multi texture type shaders.

Also, for the first time, had a look at the free roam cam and its settings in-game - (never been a big re-play guy), but super cool to see shots of the track with cars in it. ... and what a beauty this Mazda 787B is huh?

Holy crap I was just hitting screenshot after screenshot - so addictive !

WET:
Small tweaks on the existing road textures and using the fresnel shader along with it ^^^^^.
Still not there, I still want to get the feel of "puddles" etc in there. But that will be for another day.

Geez that car! ^^^^ Using an H-shifter with this thing is sublime.

Started laying the 3d grass down in earnest for real this time. ^^^^

 

[Pixelchaser]

yeah, now the screenshots come alive.

 

[Prototype]

ksMultilayer_fresnel_nm, and Terrain.

This is my initial exploration of the method, as outlined by Johnr777 a few posts up.

@Johnr777 > I couldn't bring myself to download 3DSimED and crack open your track. I just feel like I would be "cheating". I know thats probably being silly. But I felt I wanted to use your tutorial you sent, and work through the process that way. :- )

This is starting to look very close to the kind of grass and vegetation you find in the area.
Hardy, dry. Fed by thunderstorms.

I haven't worked through the specular components of this yet ... I'm hoping it will add a bit more.

 

[Pixelchaser]

not bad, multilayer prefers albedo textures for the main diffuse. no shadows or highlights. colour only. but that's how to use it. one thing I notice is disparity between the scale of the 3d grass and the ground underneath, you ought to achieve the same type of grain either through scaling and the detail texture used. the two should be indistinguishable (preferably) pull those dark splodges out from the satellite map, that's the non albedo at play.

 

[luchian]

Getting sidetracked here .... (kinda) (maybe not)...

Really enjoying playing around with the ks shaders.

What I like is - the premise is basically the same throughout - referring to the multi layer / multi texture type shaders.

Also, for the first time, had a look at the free roam cam and its settings in-game - (never been a big re-play guy), but super cool to see shots of the track with cars in it. ... and what a beauty this Mazda 787B is huh?

Holy crap I was just hitting screenshot after screenshot - so addictive !

WET:
Small tweaks on the existing road textures and using the fresnel shader along with it ^^^^^.
Still not there, I still want to get the feel of "puddles" etc in there. But that will be for another day.

Geez that car! ^^^^ Using an H-shifter with this thing is sublime.

Started laying the 3d grass down in earnest for real this time. ^^^^

wow, these shots.. awesome !

 

[Johnr777]

Definitely heading in the right direction!

Lol, I still open up other people’s tracks all the time to look at values and techniques... wouldn’t worry about that at all.

The normal map looks a little weird, try a general ground type normal, instead of one based on grass textures and see how it looks, might give a more natural look IMO.

And like Pixel suggested, you’ll need to use a clone brush and remove all those details from the main texture, like the curbs, etc

 

[Prototype]

Thanks @Johnr777 , took a peak under the hood at Mosport!
It was like opening up a chest in a movie scene with golden light rays and the voices of angels ...

But seriously though , blown away by how few textures you actually used ...
... and the way you did your sat map for example - really interesting ...
Im going to ape your setup and see what it looks like in my scene.

Also, I see you have multiple kn5 files .... can you lend some insight into why/ how you did that?

-----------------------------

And on a final note, damn, that is one amazing track to drive. It flows beautifully, and your execution is exceptional. (I dont need to say this - you know that already, but I just had to ...).
Really appreciate you allowing me to get some first hand reference off of it.

 

[Johnr777]

Thanks @Johnr777 , took a peak under the hood at Mosport!
It was like opening up a chest in a movie scene with golden light rays and the voices of angels ...

But seriously though , blown away by how few textures you actually used ...
... and the way you did your sat map for example - really interesting ...
Im going to ape your setup and see what it looks like in my scene.

Also, I see you have multiple kn5 files .... can you lend some insight into why/ how you did that?

-----------------------------

And on a final note, damn, that is one amazing track to drive. It flows beautifully, and your execution is exceptional. (I dont need to say this - you know that already, but I just had to ...).
Really appreciate you allowing me to get some first hand reference off of it.

Glad you like it!

Yeah, keeping textures to a minimum is key, that way you never really lose control of your track’s DIP values, and overall the project is just that more efficient.

The multiple KN5 files is more of a tidyness thing for me than anything. I have multiple layers in 3DS Max, so it’s just easier to work with and export one layer instead of the whole project, and I suppose much quicker in kseditor too to load, say... one grass fbx, instead of loading the entire track with all the objects.

All the good things you see in my track I learned from LilSKi, Rigel, Fat-Alfie... the bad stuff I came up with on my own

 

[Prototype]

All the good things you see in my track I learned from LilSKi, Rigel, Fat-Alfie... the bad stuff I came up with on my own