W.I.P. Riggswater

[MGMetroDave]

First WIP track. Wasn't going to share these just yet, but for better or worse, here are a few early screenshots to give a flavour of this fictional road track loosely based on rural northern parts of England.
There is of course lots of work and details to do, but I'm enjoying the process. Hopefully will look to release a beta version for testing at some point, but it may be a while off yet. Everything learned from this forum pretty much. I'm still very new to blender and to AC modding, so please go easy on me. . Anyway it's been quite fun making it. For those of you who are interested, the gull in the first pic uses stFlow with transparency and normal map. It swoops down and flies back up, flapping its wings. Swan is a dynamic object kn5. Bunting and smoke are ksFlags.
Virtually everything is (or will soon be) made in either 2 or 3 different detail versions of the object, being swapped in and out deoending on LOD distances, to allow for lots of little details close-up.

 

[Prototype]

Wow - looks like a real passion project ! How long is the course? A>B / loop?

 

[MGMetroDave]

Thanks @Prototype . I'm going to sound really stupid here... How do I find that out? I've been trying to work that out!

It's a loop course with variants, hopefully.

There are a few nods towards the AC modding community & sim racing hidden in the track (not shown in the screenshots).

 

[MGMetroDave]

Sorry. Ok I've just found out. It's 8km (5 miles).

 

[MLT]

This is such a nice scenery, also doing a great work already. Was wondering if there'll be some parking areas off road, where you can admire the scenery while having a smoke? It'd be great! Anyway keep it up, I'll be following this, can't wait for that beta. Cheers

 

[MGMetroDave]

Funny you say that, @MLT. The pits will be in that kind of parking area. Might include one or two more if I get the chance.

Thanks for the nice feedback! I'll post a few more shots in coming weeks. Lots of work still to do throughout! I'll be working carefully with LODs because I want it to be pretty, detailed and FPS optimised throughout. I'm thinking of including both high res and low res texture 'track skins'.

 

[MLT]

Sounds great!
Btw. what I meant was more of a lookout spot, you know, maybe close to the lake, where you could just chill after a long drive, to really breath in the wilderness and remoteness.

 

[MGMetroDave]

Yes. That's a good idea! I'll put it on my ideas sheet

 

[MGMetroDave]

LODs of work still to do....

Moo!

 

[MGMetroDave]

 

[DrPenguin]

Wow, this is looking really cool so far! Nice work.

 

[luchian]

Glorious screenshot

 

[MGMetroDave]

Just a test of CSP parallax displacement mapping (wall mesh and the stones on top of wall mesh), and the dirt inbetween the road and the wall. Pretty happy with it. I'm deliberately not using the parallax shadows option, to try to save as many FPS as possible .

 

[luchian]

Hey, that's actually quite nice on the wall of rocks.

 

[MGMetroDave]

Thanks. Yeah it took a fair bit of tweaking and experimenting with settings and making different versions for the displacement map. I'm constantly amazed at the work Ilja does on CSP! He's got some great new track stuff for us modders coming soon too. Looking forward to it!

 

[Johnr777]

Just a test of CSP parallax displacement mapping (wall mesh and the stones on top of wall mesh), and the dirt inbetween the road and the wall. Pretty happy with it. I'm deliberately not using the parallax shadows option, to try to save as many FPS as possible .

Looks good! But parallax is something not all GPUs can handle, so you should still set up a regular shader to fall back to in case in doesn’t work for certain people.

 

[MGMetroDave]

Looks good! But parallax is something not all GPUs can handle, so you should still set up a regular shader to fall back to in case in doesn’t work for certain people.

Thanks @Johnr777 . Yes I agree. It uses a a standard ksPerPixelMultiMap shader thankfully. Just the txNormal texture has an added alpha channel and a few settings in the CSP track ini file, which otherwise (if CSP wasn't installed) would all be ignored by AC I think. It looks ok with it switched off too. Is that what you mean by fall back, as in, do you think I'd need to do anything else?

 

[Johnr777]

Thanks @Johnr777 . Yes I agree. It uses a a standard ksPerPixelMultiMap shader thankfully. Just the txNormal texture has an added alpha channel and a few settings in the CSP track ini file, which otherwise (if CSP wasn't installed) would all be ignored by AC I think. It looks ok with it switched off too. Is that what you mean by fall back, as in, do you think I'd need to do anything else?

Yup, no that’s it

 

[MGMetroDave]

Ah good! Still very new to this whole thing so I appreciate any advice and recommendations, so thank you! I'll keep it in mind for other aspects of the track.

 

[MGMetroDave]