W.I.P. Nisseringen Denmark LIDAR landscape

[DanTDBV]

I am slowly leaving the startbox, for creating Nisseringen in Denmark from scratch.

This is my firs attempt at buildin a virtual racetrack.


To do list at this point:

Nearly everything.

I have finnished my first part!
The IPE 140 post's that usually holds the Guardrails. I have made a 75cm and 100cm version.

I have LIDAR/Point Cloud data of the terrain. I am creating the landcape from this.

After 8 weeks of frustration, I have discarded all my 3D work and started anew. More about that later

I have BTB, RTB, 3DSimED3, CloudCompare, Meshlab, Meshmixer and Blender.

I am in the proces of learning, how to do these things and finding the strengths and weaknesses of these programs, so I will be watching videos and reading up on, a lot of stuff here and elsewhere.

I will be posting infrequent updates on progress and setbacks. To do list will be updated as warrented.

The track is moving, but not yet alive, so to speak.

To build: Nisseringen and CHGP Faelledparken.

I hope to offer some great rides for others.

Copyrigt notice needed:
Copyright notice Nisseringen Point cloud and Ortho photo
As required, according to this site: (In Danish)
http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/vilkår-og-betingelser
Contains data from Geodatastyrelsen and Danske kommuner Fot-data
Ekstracted lokation : Nisseringen Næstved
DHM/Point cloud
DLD 14/11-2015 Punktsky_612_68_LAZ_UTM32-ETRS89
Ortho photo
DLD 27/11-2015 370_ECW_UTM32-EUREF89
http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/geodataprodukter
DLD = Download date
DanTDBV D@nN (My photo and film signature)

 

[luchian]

Oh, cool ! I was just saying hello in your introduction post .
It's great to have such reference for track building. Heights and height variations are usually difficult to get right, so this is perfect.

Good luck with the project, it looks like a little fun track - especially for small cars like the Abarth .
(and a very well sized projects to begin with).

 

[DanTDBV]

Why Nisseringen?

My trackbuilding dreams started with Copenhagen Historic GrandPrix Fælledparken 2012.
I knew about BTB and thought, wouldn't it be great to drive this in a racing game.
I considered doing it, but it stranded.

In 2015, I decided, that now it was to be. I wanted to build the CHGP Bellahoej Park track. I was told it is in the works.
I then decided that I would build, the CHGP Faelledparken track. I was in the beginning planning stages and got sidetracked.

I was invited to participate in a race day, at Nisseringen close to Næstved in Denmark.

The first real racing I have ever done. I'm 43 now and I got my drivers licence, just before I turned 40.

I participated in 5 3 lap heats. 3 as driver, 2 as passenger. I am pretty proud, that my second heat ever as a driver, ended with a second place. Adding to the fun was, that the track was wet. Fortunatly no rain.

I had a great day there. Pictures are from the track day.

It is a little fun track, with multiple layout choises. It is part tarmac and part dirt. The dirt creates some lovely slippery mud, when wet.

I just knew that I had to build the track. When I discovered LIDAR/Point Cloud data showing the terrain differences, it became first priority.

If you wish to see racing on the track, do a search for nisseringen 2015 on youtube.

2015 because they rebuilt the track last year.

55.222300, 11.897978 is the coordinates for the center of the car track.

More to come.

 

[DanTDBV]

Challenges:
Some of them are wishfull thinking, at least from what my research, has shown me so far.

• Sandboxes that work like IRL and stops cars, when they enter. Usually a heat on the track is 3 laps. I don't think it would kill anyone, if they had to wait for the race to finnish.
  
  
• Disabling respawn, when you get stuck, or take a tumble. If you land on the wheels and you and the car is able, you just continue. I wish I could do that for all tracks I use.
  
  
• Set the cars to be as destructible as possible. A great deal of the viewing fun, comes from watching carparts flying without people getting hurt. Hitting and pushing your opponents is allowed.
  
  
• Creating the right feel of the dirt/mud surfaces. That slippery soapy feeling when wet.
  
  
• Certain areas of the track has standing water/mud, when it is raining. I would love to get the splash, when driving trough.
  
  
• Showing the effects of those splashes on the cars. If you are unlucky, the windscreen gets covered in mud. If the viper and/or washer don't work, then that's just to bad. That would probably need to be cars rigged for the purpose. Some of the cars, almost get covered in mud.
  
  If some cars could be specially rigged for mudsplash, then it would be great. It would be even greater, if they could be rigged for peoples races. That is head- and taillights removed, on some also the front/rear bumper. Holes covered up in plastic and tape. Standard roadcars are used, Seats are replaced with racing seats and racing harnesses, rollcages are added.

I would love to see and drive, an Opel Corsa rigged like that. Preferably red, as that was what I drove.

At the moment cars are way beyond my skill levels. I have enough to learn about trackbuilding as it is.

LIDAR woes, with a rainbow at the end to come.

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

LIDAR and 3d woes, with a rainbow.

Finding the right way into point clouds, is like navigating a dense jungle.

There are so many purposes and ways to use LIDAR data, that we have acces to a forest full of free and paid for software, plus lots of file formats. Ad to that, all the things you can do to those files.

I had intended to use BTB's point cloud import, but it want's it's data in a certain way. I couldn't find anything about, how to structure my data for use in BTB, so I quickly gave up on that.

It took me nearly 3 weeks, with several programs and lots of experimentation, before I created something I could continue to work with.

Just some examples: I was reducing the mesh in Meshlab, using the Quadric Edge Collapse Decimation filter. Instead of getting smoother as I expected, the surface was getting more and more ragged.

I had exported level 1 to 3 from the point cloud. It turns out that the surface, was made of pyramids instead of triangles.

Lesson learned: Only export 1 level for a 3D landscape model.

For six weeks I was fighting with, not being able to see the landscape, when importing it into Blender. Everything was fine in Meshlab and Meshmixer. Tutorials, troubleshooting guides, How to move the view help, nothing worked.
I was at wits end and about to ask for help, when I noticed “Failed to load..... line in the DOS box, that opens when Blender starts. To fast to read what it was, but I decided to redownload and reinstall. Bingo! It worked right away.

I have gone from Meshlab that has no undo, to Meshmixer, that has and even better, you see your changes and have to hit apply, before they are made to last.

Until a few days ago I was using CloudCompare and GOM Inspect to create the mesh, at full cloud resolution. Gom was leaving a lot of holes in the mesh and it took a long time to fix those before export.

It takes a heck of a lot of time, to reduce a full resolution cloud mesh, in Meshmixer.

Mesh pics belov are of the same area.

Certain errors in the mesh, gets the reduce tool to go “NO!, There is something wrong here!, I can't do anything!” I then had to select carefully, around the area to continue. Annoying when you have to reselect for the fifth time.

I found that I was reducing the mesh, 70 to 95 most of the time.

I thought, what if I reduced the cloud density before export?

I found that it was a good idea and discovered that, with 8 more clicks, I can export a mesh that needs much less cleaning. No need for GOM.

Now I need to find out, how to put a surface on the mesh. At least that is what I think, is needed before I can work with this, in 3DSimED and Xpacker.

Next: From LIDAR to mesh.

Happy modding.

 

[DanTDBV]

From LIDAR to mesh

I decided to do this as a tutorial.

You can find it here:

http://assettocorsamods.net/threads/lidar-point-cloud-to-mesh-tutorial.422/

I will get into sources for Danish Geodata later.

Next: I don't know yet. We will see where my inspiration takes me over the weekend.

Have a wonderfull weekend.

 

[luchian]

Hey @DanTDBV
This is very interesting information and funny "thinking process" . Last image looks very useful.

 

[DanTDBV]

Well not as much work as I had hoped for.

I have done some more cleanup work on the Nisseringen mesh.

Most of the weekend have been spent on, looking for a tutorial about how to wrap, an ortho photo onto the mesh.

Without any succes.

I know that I need to add a material, but that is about it.


I have a Geotiff image extracted from Naestved_2014.ECW dataset 370_ECW_UTM32-EUREF89

Nisseringen is in the black circle.

I would like to wrap the picture onto the model, as a temporary guideline, so I can see where I need to place the track and do adjustments.

I know it is possible, I just don't know how.


Until next time.


Happy Simming

 

[DanTDBV]

Now with texture.

A temporary one.

Thats all for now

 

[luchian]

Oh wow, the macro-texturing looks great in the last shot. Looking forward for more

Sent from my GT-I9100 using Tapatalk

 

[Pixelchaser]

you have an excellent basis in which to continue right there. fantastic.

just getting the texture over there makes the mesh much easier to read and reference.

 

[DanTDBV]

I am throwing everything out, and start again from scratch.

I have decided that, I will cover the full density mesh, with a low poly one.

The result are better than what I got, with a subsampled cloud before meshing.

Working with the full density mesh slows the pc down.

I have decided to cut the CloudCompare mesh, into smaller chunks before exporting. This is much easier done, in CloudCompare than in Blender.

Well, until next time.

 

[Mr Whippy]

This is the problem with meshing/sub-sampling.

Some details you want to keep, others you want to lose.

Seeing the points in your 3D app and working off them visually/quickly and interactively, is really nice. The eye can see patterns and decide what data is useful in one instance, and not in the other. It's nice to have the full data there all the time.

Obviously you can't do that right now... I really hope someone writes a nice point cloud tool for Blender


The track looks very interesting. It's so nice and easy to build tracks with good reference data. All the work can then go into making it look great, rather than sitting poring over reference materials all day long... and still not being happy with accuracy

Dave

 

[DanTDBV]

Arghh!

I am still working on this, I'm just not making any real progress.


Multiple materials and textures are not behaving as I want them to.

I have started over with this part again and again.

I have my landscape object, where I have added separate materials, to different parts of the mesh.

Realized yesterday that I hadn't changed shader to glsl (Facepalm).


Certain textures doesn't show up, when adding them in Blender.
At one point I have exported an fbx, in the AC editor everything was mostly white and there was one material to many.
Turns out my grass material, that was the first I added, was linked to a material that Blender auto covered the model with. Different combinations of delete and reapply, would create the same results.

With the last attempt, this time with gsls, I had 5 materials, each with its own texture. I had the uv mappings covering (I think) the appropriate texture image. Only 3 textures showed up on the model.

I have been using Blender render, but I think it is somewhat unclear, when I have or have not assigned something.

This is one of the cases, where the info and tutorials I have found, have been for older versions.

If any of you, could point me to a current guide, I would be very grateful. If cycles render or nodes editing would be better or easier, then please let me know, with a pointer to a How To.


At the moment I don't care about realistic textures, I just want to drive some laps on the track.

This is to be a test to see how drivable, a mesh based on the reduced cloud is.



Spawn and timing objects is added as per instructions.



I'm borrowing the surface.ini from chuky's Gentlemenrallycross, I have great fun on that track. Much of the racing on Nisseringen is the same. A joker track is also used for certain races.

I have added a sandtrap surface, modified from the default sand surface.

Races on the track are usually 3-10 laps long, so I would like to have the traps, as realistic as possible. Any advise would be welcome here.


I understand the tires picking up dirt mud and releasing it again on the asphalt mechanics. Thank you chuky for the explanation.
http://www.assettocorsa.net/forum/index.php?threads/rally-cross-style-track-request.26424/#post-539218

What I don't understand, is the dust and carpet surfaces used on Gentlemen rallycross. I do imagine that dust, is for the part of the asphalt, that has mud upon it. A donte now.



I have bought Retopoflow for doing retopology, of the full resolution cloud mesh. It looks very promising. For certain areas I will supplement with manual work.


Until next time.

Happy modding.

 

[luchian]

Hey Dan,

By far, I am NOT an expert in Blender, but until now my best experience was this:
- recommend keeping 1 material/object. IIRC, multi-material was not really supported (but I might be wrong).
- only define material+texture in Blender - no need to set anything else up.
- respect the folder hierarchy ("texture" folder inside your wip track folder)

If you do this, everything else will be setup in the AC editor directly.

Also, for information, official AC tracks use no more than around 50-60 different materials (information confirmed by the devs).

LE: from what I see in your screenshot - you have only one object with the entire mesh, and assigned different materials to different zones (grass, sand, etc). But this is NOT how it should be done ! I suggest:
1/ if you'd like just to have a first drive on your track (and since you've put so much work into it, you should ) - use the split object by material function in Blender, so you'll have separate meshes for all areas. Then your track should work.

2/ you'll probably need a smoothing method on the road surface (I suspect it will be very bumpy as is ).
And for the visual mesh, better create a new new one aligned with the road - which should be easier to texture.

 

[DanTDBV]

Thank you luchian

I found a tutorial on how to do the split. Afterwards I realized that keyrocker shows how to do it, in the Blender to Assetto Corsa video.

Blender 2.76b:
Edit mode / Select object / Hit A until all is selected / Press P / Select By Material

Unfortunatly I tend to forget what I have read or seen and where. Hence the resources list. When I saw it the first time, I was still fighting with point clouds. It took 6 weeks to get something usefull into Blender.

As for the road, I will do go the physics mesh + visual mesh way.

Roadsmoothing.
I think you are right. ;-) I will try different tecniques and see how it goes. Among them Retopoflow.

When I think i'm close to the feeling, as I remember it from my 15 laps, I will release a public alpha for testing.

I do not think it will be difficult to find testdrivers. I'm on the Facebookgroup of the club, that runs the track.

 

[DanTDBV]

Just a quick update.

I have succesfully driven some laps at Nisseringen tonight!

The major problem was Blender FBX export scale settings. The output was way to big.

There are still som minor scale issues, but the are workable. The track is just a tad to small.

Textures and materials are also behaving.

Whooopppeee!

Happy modding

(I am!)

 

[Mr Whippy]

Ah scaling issues

It'll never be right until you can get an decent sized exact length measured in reality vs digital.

I remember early cartographers struggling with this... ok we have Google Earth these days but even that ruler might be out depending on altitudes etc.
In the old days they used to measure distances on frozen lakes because they were true flat surfaces as a reference plane

 

[DanTDBV]

I have had 3 frustrating weeks

No matter what I did, the car was misbehaving, when starting a practise or a hotlap

It started in the air, dropped some meters, returning to the same point and dropping again. Repeats until leaving the track. Meanwhile my G27 wheel rattled, so you would think it was tearing itself to pieces.


For nearly 2 days no matter how many exports with changes I made, nothing changed in AC.
No wonder. If you don't replace the files in the AC track folder, that is to be expected! Did I feel stupid? Yes! Another facepalm!


During those weeks, I have checked and rechecked and tried nearly all, of the recommendations I could find and think of. Except one.

Because of a post about the differences with first spawnpoints, I tried to start a quick race.

Both cars started in the air and immediately began to tumble down, down, down, down, down, some 200 meters.
It finally landed on a track that was supposed to be 24 meters wide. It looked 2400 meters wide!


HEY!!! Didn't I read about Blender FBX export scale settings somewhere? I did, but can't remember where. Now I had a clue! Setting had been 1.0, tried different settings and finally ending up with something more correct.

The track is still a tad to small, but that is correctable.


I have been a little confused with the Blender FBX export settings. The scaling is one thing, but I have also seen both -Z forward and Z forward mentioned.
The 7.4 format you can chose in Blender 2.76b, is FBX 2013 and it seems to work for me, without converting to FBX 2012. I have no idea if that is the case with more complex models.
Y up is still holding.


For the next 3 weeks, I will for positive personal reasons, be doing little if any work on this project.
I will not be able to do a proper job, of researching and testing the exportsettings myself.
Therefor I would be very gratefull if someone in the know, would do a writeup with picture/s of the correct procedure/settings and post it. Then I could ad the link to the resourcelist.


However upon loading into ksEditor, all surfaces where different shades of Ivory whiteish.
At the moment everything uses ksPerPixel, as I has been focussed on getting to drive on the track.
The beautyfication will come later.
It now looks right in the editor and in game, after changing ksAmbient from 0 to 1 and ksSpecular from 1 to 0, for each material.


And yes it is a bumpy ride, the LIDAR surface that is. I will begin to look into different ways, to do something about that. Like RetopoFlow, laplacian and so forth.

It is also about time to finish, the base version of the European type B barriers. Think squared armco.


There will be a racetrack this year!

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

After a period with absolutely no trackbuilding whatsoever, I am slowly ramping up again.

Starting fresh from my cleaned centered cloud, I have created a full resolution mesh.

I have divided this mesh into 5 managable pieces.

Now I am going to experiment with the Retopoflow addon.

I will also continue the work on the guardrails. That is going to be a chapter unto itself. What with the different colorations, bents, damages and other interesting differences.

Then there is the long grass..... Well later... Much later.

The positive personal reasons for the hiatus, are still going very well.

There will be a Nisseringen track in the end!

Happy trackbuilding.