W.I.P. Project: Shire, Glen Rannoch

[luchian]

@Pixelchaser you are driving the wrong way in the roundabouts ! Imagine what that would do online
Damn, but your Shire is huge ! How on earth will you populate that ? Crazy dude. Waiting to see more.

 

[Pixelchaser]

it is crazy, but as long as its broken up, each item of variation or difference will build up, so its no different to a normal track really just the same stuff at different scale. I take care of the bulk stuff and itll take of itself really. and Scotland theme is wide and baron mostly with little pockets of habitation or amenities etc.

I'm carefull to consider lod distances that will hopefully draw these little area out of memory when your not in them etc. for example I will apply lod to any barrier and when 500 or more away from it ill undrawn it from the scene, and little areas will always more than 500 m from anything else. and the little area might have lod figures to it undraws at over 500 m distance. and each little built up area will be at least 500 m distance from any other little area etc and built behind base scenery and generally unviewable from most areas or obfuscated by other objects with higher lod figures etc. etc. and we will just go on and on till we decide its done. being a massive areas has its advantages theoretically in terms of all this unloading. its how GTA engine works. they use 8 lod models, whilst I'm not going to invoke a lower quality model, I'm happy to turn shit off completely.

experimenting with large side details, I ripped an image from google street view and made this. not entirely happy with it, its just the wrong art. but something like this can work quite well in certain areas. of course here ive blown the scale up which was a bad idea pixel space wise."but" as a multilayer controller diffuse and mask from it could be nice.

 

[Pixelchaser]

an overhead shot of my layout. track space covers 5 x 5 kmand scenery plane is 12 x 12 km

 

[Pixelchaser]

google street view for distant tree lines , I had to try it. ive cobbled this one variation of 4 together, its a rough Scottish wild forrest. 3200 polys to fill 1 kilometre long x 100 m wide. quite nice I think. ingame will be a better test.

 

[Pixelchaser]

very nearly ready for its own thread. After remaking absolutely everything for it. it was a proud moment testing this in its entirety this evening. and I made my target of 1 million polys. pretty amazed really. this cats eyes malarkey does work quite well...

 

[Pixelchaser]

and a bit of daytime. I still have a road normal facing issue going on though. affecting the overall effects of light and shadow. one aspect of this error that I do like is the baking of ambient occlusion. the kerb normal edge to road should be 90 degrees horizontal but it is about 60 degrees. nice ambient occlusion possibilities, I think at a degree or two off set the corner between road and kerb will be darkened nicely without it affecting the main road pieces. ! probably take it to max after I finish these distance trees, these will get covered with y trees.

 

[JigoroS13]

Nice Tool i try this Before RTB

 

[Pixelchaser]

finally made it to max. and fixing all the annoyances with normals and what not. and exporting my work now seems like a completely different affair. having separate physics layer, separate night version. woahh. its really coming together so nicely.

 

[Pixelchaser]

Need a name for my track. Loch Rannoch is a real place and also a fictional setting in Toca Race driver 2 game for their fictional track. so I'm thinking Glen Rannoch will be my title. and we will be driving around Loch Rannoch. simples. it has some connotation which is all I want. so consider it an update on RD2`s thematic approach.

 

[luchian]

So.. does that mean we get to drive it soon ?

 

[Pixelchaser]

there maybe some private testing required. its just too boring at the moment though. not that it will get any less boring, but the visual stimulus on offer isn't that good at present. my plan is all trees, grass, side textures and no more builds before that's implemented. trees are good to go just need to plow the time into speedtree and learning that. on the subject of trees. Ill be using upwards of a million polygon trees rendered in 2d. should look gorge. heres the sample tree

 

[luchian]

Oh wow, this looks actually very good !
So this is what Speedtree can generate ?

 

[LilSKi]

Oh wow, this looks actually very good !
So this is what Speedtree can generate ?

Speedtree is extremely powerful. It is actually more meant to make full 3D trees even with animation. But it also give you the ability to make a 2D alpha image based off the 3D view. All of my trees have been made from speedtree.

 

[Pixelchaser]

yep its the premier tree making facility. not sure but given the nature of Y shaped trees and the 120 degrees angled planes involved i wonder if you could program 3 cameras in blender/max and actually capture the correct angles for that 120 degree image for the 3 y shaped planes etc... obviously it would be 3 images and not just 1 for a tree. could be an improvement...


in brands hatch they have trees made from this (very crudely though) 2000 polygons. and the lower lod and shadow generator object for them is a Y shaped tree .

ohh and it was used for the tropical trees in the last star wars film scenic shots. awesome program.

 

[Pixelchaser]

still needs a bit of tuning, but this is an example png. you can turn off any assets whilst rendering etc. so you could render just the branches. just the leaves etc. for variations you could simply lessen the amount of leaves etc on same model for autumn time etc. same trees of course.

 

[luchian]

Looks believable enough actually. And considering how easy is to bake textures out of it, it's definitely a strong alternative to traditional photos.
I know this is just a quick sample, but what about the shadows ? I would assume something soft is preferred ?

 

[LilSKi]

Looks believable enough actually. And considering how easy is to bake textures out of it, it's definitely a strong alternative to traditional photos.
I know this is just a quick sample, but what about the shadows ? I would assume something soft is preferred ?

You can adjust that in the lighting section of speedtree. This looks like the default lighting. Obviously you can adjust it some in any graphics program too.

 

[Pixelchaser]

yeah, id rather just tune it all in photoshop tbh. not sure about shadows. something wrong ? I'm using the same light angles for all my output trees, maybe softer shadows is needed.

and trust me when I say, kunos trees arnt that great on quality tbh. they all about optimisation to a point I don't want to go to myself.

 

[luchian]

Yeah, I was referring to baked in shadows.
For example in the sample image above, they look very good. But they would fit only sunny weather. So I was wondering if it's possible to bake them a little softer so they don't look bizarre on cloudy whether for example. .
Anyways, you guys rock. There is inspiration all around

 

[Pixelchaser]

knowing myself, I think I'm likely to swap the trees out for more suitables , doing it for a custom twilight weather I'm having made anyway.

the actual problem with those weathers (imo) is that they are cheap, if you gona have cloudy overcast day, your shaders need to accommodate that in their design. and the textures, not tuned on the fly by hdr. anyway I get why etc. its just that its like that because theres only 1 or two guys track making, they've no time. and plenty other limits.