RELEASED-wip Kyalami 2016

[Patrice COte]

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.

I second that!!!
Thanks for all the details, really helpful stuff. Complements nicely other information sources. Many thanks!

 

[Prototype]

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

Thanks for the insight there. Got it.
Will definitely go ahead with that direction then.
Thanks!

I second that!!!
Thanks for all the details, really helpful stuff. Complements nicely other information sources. Many thanks!

Well I'm glad you're finding it useful. Thats definitely the reason Im posting here!

 

[Prototype]

GENERAL UPDATE

Concrete Walling and Barriers

Finished up all the concrete wall sections around the track.
Feeling really pleased with how its tidied up the general look of things all over.

More Runoff Areas

Continued with the Runoffs, still need to look into the multilayer shader.
Will look into doing that as a final polish pass on all of them.

Grass

Felt like playing around with the grass.
I did a test a few weeks back, and this week got to finally start making the final set of grasses.
These wont be placed here, this is just an area I was testing in.

Still playing around with the txVariation (inset above).

These wild grasses above will be used in more remote areas of the track, the bulk of the grass trackside will be 1 and 5 on my texture sheet, as the track is a little more manicured these days with the new owners.

Most of the tracks being made are in places like Europe or North America. (Of course there are some notable exceptions to that). So they're nice and green for the most part.

The climate at Kyalami is sub tropical, hot and dry. So grass takes a beating. I wanted to capture that, not just make the grass a perfectly maintained green.

In Johannesburg, the largest city of South Africa, the climate is subtropical, with mild and sunny winters (when, however, nights are cold) and pleasantly warm summers, usually sunny, but with some afternoon thunderstorms. The city is located near the Tropic, but also on a plateau at 1,700 meters (5,600 feet) above sea level, so the climate is tempered by altitude.​

PERFORMANCE AUDIT (2019.02.20)

Random screenshots taken while going around the track.
LODs all currently still set to a high number, and not dialed in yet.
Draw calls currently look to be on average around the 2k mark, droping to 1.3k and peaking at around 2.7k.
(This is from the nose cam of a car while driving around).
I see Im hitting as much as 5M Tris in places.
This is the limit right?

 

[Johnr777]

That’s a lot of tris, assuming it’s mostly due to the grass?

Hope you have an account at the official Assetto Corsa forums, because the best tutorial is on there, it explains how grass should be scattered, and LOD correctly in layers. It’s for 3dsmax but the just of it can be used with other softwares.

https://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/3d-grass-how-to.25087/

In simple terms, you want the 3d grass object/cluster you are using to cover an area, split into 3-5 layers, then you LOD each layer gradually, so you see the first couple of layers from farther distances and all layers when the view it’s up close. That drops your tri count drastically, no objects popping in and out of view, etc.

And using layers allows people to make use of the “world detail” slider in the game settings, if they need to make FPS a little higher.

Hope this helps! And the track is looking very good

 

[luchian]

I was not aware of this track before you mention it. Now I cannot wait to try it .

Figures are a bit on the high, but there is place for optimization. Cheers @Johnr777 for the link. I've forgotten about that thread.

Additional info here: https://assettocorsamods.net/threads/3d-grass.176/

When can we try your track @Prototype ?

 

[Prototype]

Thanks chaps! @Johnr777 + @luchian - both excellent resources.
Had a quick first look over them - got the gist of it.
Pretty interesting way to do this. Makes a lot of sense. Thank you both.
+1


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I was not aware of this track before you mention it. Now I cannot wait to try it . When can we try your track @Prototype ?

Yeah, the million dollar question

Current Production Plan (outstanding high level tasks):

I want to hit my Milestone 1 and 2 for completion plan before sharing anything publicly.
So I'd say in the 2-3 weeks ... ?

The "man days" above are actually really 2-3 hour stints (as this is the average time per day I've set aside for this project). Got a lot of other responsibilities on a daily basis to take care of!

 

[Leonardo Ratafia]

do you need any cameras help for that track? I'd be happy to help

 

[AccAkut]

This is the first track project I see full business plans for Astonishing work.

 

[Prototype]

do you need any cameras help for that track? I'd be happy to help

Thanks man very kind of you to offer.
But part of why I'm doing this is to DO this.
I want to learn how to tackle all the aspects of the process.
If I run into any issues, Ill reach out.

This is the first track project I see full business plans for Astonishing work.

Ive just had too many unfinished projects in my life. So this helps me keep things on track.

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Decided to record a quick 3 lap (totally rubbish) race.

• Ai 100% difficulty 100% aggression
• Me - 100% crap 100% aggression
• Formula NA 1999 100% turbo

Haven't driven this VRC 1999 Indy car in a while... damn its fun, Got to be one of the best single seaters in sim racing period.

 

[luchian]

Current Production Plan (outstanding high level tasks):

that did it !



..minutes later..

Otherwise, the photos look very good, and the color balance is rather neutral for the moment which gives a certain feel of real. Will look fantastic with final detailed textures. Great work !

 

[Prototype]

Otherwise, the photos look very good, and the color balance is rather neutral for the moment which gives a certain feel of real. Will look fantastic with final detailed textures. Great work !

Thanks @luchian - yeah thats exactly what I'm attempting to achieve.
Keeping all the textures "ungraded", and neutral, so that they hopefully will translate into any lighting condition.

And yes! I cant WAIT to dirty up this track surface with rubber!

Heres a 3 lap race with a time multiplier of x60, starting at around 2pm.

Note: The sun shining directly at the driver at around 4:40 in the vid. This section of the track is actually called "SUNSET", and its a real phenomenon on this track. I've personally experienced it on a track day in real life, and its pretty daunting, coming up to the hairpin almost blind. : -)

Car: Porsche 911 RSR - kinda appropriate, as Porsche own this track ; - )

 

[luchian]

, that patch of grass at 0:48 scared me.

The progress is great with this track. The only critique I would have at this point is that the texture tilling in the rubber walls is too visible and breaks the immersion a little. Maybe go with longer texture, or use less detail in the diffuse and add it by using multilayer ?

 

[Prototype]

, that patch of grass at 0:48 scared me.

Ha ha, yeah I've got delete that test grass :-D

The only critique I would have at this point is that the texture tilling in the rubber walls is too visible and breaks the immersion a little. Maybe go with longer texture, or use less detail in the diffuse and add it by using multilayer ?

Good feedback. Thanks.
TBH I've struggled a bit with that texture ... either too dark or too light, based on varied lighting conditions ... I think I'll try and tone down the normal map as a first pass ... and take it from there ... but yes, "fresh eyes" ... get so used to seeing something - you don't see it any more. Thats why we have forums, and make stuff in a glass houses! Keeping me on my toes. Appreciated !

 

[Johnr777]

Looking very good!

The tirewall cover is indeed too repetitive, I made mine 1x8 I think...

Also, how is your main grass shader setup? I see your diffuse is a sat image, but are there any detail maps?

 

[LilSKi]

First impressions are land textures need work. Looks like a very low res sat image being used for the grass areas. Being that low resolution I would do something different with maybe a repeating grass diffuse similar to the road.

The road is far too smooth. At this stage you really should have that nailed down already. Even before any details were added. The road is by far the most important part and that needs to be finished first. Especially if any issues come up you won't have to deal with moving existing objects around.

A good rule I like to follow is everything between the guard rails should be finished first before you move on to anything else.

And last is the armco has some pretty bad moire effect. You really can't have too detailed of a 3D model for the armco as the complex normals cause the moire. The only way to minimize that is to simplify the 3D profile of the guard rail to be a simple W.

Overall though it looks good thus far. I have a little bit of hatred for this course as IMO the reason it exists is it destroyed one of the greatest tracks ever created. It doesn't look too bad as a track but the whole time my mind is thinking about the original course.

 

[Prototype]

Thanks for taking the time to feedback guys. Much appreciated!

Tirewall

The tirewall cover is indeed too repetitive, I made mine 1x8 I think...

• Ive got a 4 meter x 1 meter world space texture on this guy ATM. So half of what you've got.
• I've got place on my texture map to go 8 meters in length (2 x 4m).
• I think the main issue still is my normal map being too extreme, and also not getting the right ( black / level of detail ) balance in my diffuse. But of course, adding more texture variation is always a big win to add to that.

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Terrain Texture

Also, how is your main grass shader setup? I see your diffuse is a sat image, but are there any detail maps?

First impressions are land textures need work. Looks like a very low res sat image being used for the grass areas. Being that low resolution I would do something different with maybe a repeating grass diffuse similar to the road.

• Ive currently got a 2048 x 2048 stretched across my entire terrain mesh. :-/
• Been using it mostly for placement reference, but also figured it was doing an ok job of the horizon texture as is? You guys disagree?
• Ive got (4 x) 1024 x 1024 tileable ground textures which I started vertex painting onto the terrain mesh. Still very much wip.

Ive also tried to blend these terrain textures as much as I can with the 3d grass textures:

The low res sat image on the horizon: Feel acceptable to you guys?

Question: Is this consistent with how you guys would do this?

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[Prototype]

And last is the armco has some pretty bad moire effect. You really can't have too detailed of a 3D model for the armco as the complex normals cause the moire. The only way to minimize that is to simplify the 3D profile of the guard rail to be a simple W.

Right .... yeah...

This is the current GEO:

Question:
So each rail currently has 7 quads - reducing that down to 4 (W) fixes this issue?

 

[Prototype]

The road is far too smooth. At this stage you really should have that nailed down already. Even before any details were added. The road is by far the most important part and that needs to be finished first. Especially if any issues come up you won't have to deal with moving existing objects around.

A good rule I like to follow is everything between the guard rails should be finished first before you move on to anything else.

Yup I hear you load and clear on this one. This approach is definitely the optimal and smarter priority based route to take, and anyone making a track should ideally stick to that as a general rule. Absolutely.

Thing is, being my first (and possibly last ) track, I'm having to learn how to do EVERYTHING, and that exploration process has been whats kept me motivated.

Making a "full basic track", and then layering on deeper levels across all the aspects of the scene has been how I've ended up doing it. Its been an organic process, and as a result not a very optimal process. But its been the route thats made it FUN for me. I've redone TONS of stuff, and that will probably continue to happen.
I guess thats why I put together a finishing production plan to make sure I do keep on track to a large extent going forward.

On the actual track surface:
Ive been doing tests along the way, and played around with rubber skids transparent overlays (page 1 - about 2/3 down), as well as the ksPerPixelMultiMap_NMDetail (page 4). All with limited results but, enough to get me going. I actually did your TUT on RD "Proper technique in track making plus tips" using the ksMultilayer_fresnel_nm .​

 

[Prototype]

Question: While Im at it:

SHADOWS:

Just not a smart idea to use shadows on walls? Or is there a work around here?
Or am I doing something wrong?

 

[Johnr777]

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.

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

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?

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.

Hope this helps!