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W.I.P. San Bovio Circuit - My very first track

Ayeyebraz0v

New Member
I had the idea of making this circuit since years, I firstly designed it with GT6 track app for tablets. Over the years I tried quite a lot of time to maker a track for AC with no luck, tried RTB and Blender, no way. Then few weeks ago something changed, I watched a good tutorial and I felt it was possible, so here I am. Now I'm slowly learning how to do things properly. I use Blender.

First things first, the layout: the idea is a small track with a flowing layout that works for cars and bikes, not a fast one but allowing all kinds of cars to race there
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Then we go on what I did wrong: my first exports were ok but I was not fully satisfied about the visual. There was this problem with KS editor, I couldn't achieve the results I wanted with materials. On any new exports I saw the track getting bigger so I started thinking about optimization and Johnr "showed me the light", I asjked him about trees, he linked me to a conversation on this forum and I discovered i named the trees badly, so I had to rename almost 600 trees, it was a long evening, but I got my trees with correct name, correct groups and KS editor confirmed, I'm still not sure trees are ok, but they are far better than before.

Then I started to get good reflections for glass and I found a way here on this forum

This new way to manage trees and relfections on ks editor made me think: what if I have to edit any single material in its own way? So I got a look here on the forum and discovered it's exactly like this. so I read the tutorial for the road and made my first well textured road and I feel very proud of that. Can's say the same about skidmarks, but I'll get there too!
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What happened next? I started assigning different shaders in ks editor to each object.
I saw th white lines behave weird with the light, set them with KSperpixelNM and now they are ok, the far buildings look odd, so I set them with KSreflection. I started using some different shaders, like 5 to 10 in total and the track looks way better but also became heavier for the system. At first I could race 40 cars flawlessly, now it's ok but there is a framedrop at the start.
NowI'm asking my self: did I abuse the Ksreflection shader? Does this kill the performance? Is it ok to use it for a lot of big objects or I have to manage the shaders in a different way?
Ks reflection make me get the best results i got till now
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The assets you see come from sketchfab, I will model the right assets later, this track is more to learn blender, ks editor and the workflow.

AI works very good and formula hybrid 22 managed to to a full race with no problems.
I managed to get 3d grass easily but the lighting was more complicated. I tried to follow the steps on a post here on the forum but no success, so I took a look at ext_config files from other tracks and copied some values, now the lighting is amazing and I'm now making different type of lights. It's a long way but I'll get there
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Now, let's go to the wrong things:
In the first image you see the ground outside of the track is very bad, that's because of the tutorial I watched. Now I want to solve it and I'm thinking doing this: i delete all the grass faces I can, then i will a add a plane, texture it with multimap RGB (like shown by JohnR, or like we do with the road), making it a bit lower on the center and place it just below the track to get a good surrounding area. This is beacuse I don't want to touch the track itself, for next tracks I'm thinking about making the ground and then shrinkwrapping the track to the ground, is this a good way?

I want to do that for two reasons: first I want to get rid of some useless vertices, second I started thinking that an area of 3x3 km with 3d grass could affect performance more than a smaller area.

I want to do the same with the road: now the roads are all using the same, ultradetailed material. That's ok with the track but what about the service roads, the parkings and so?
Would it be better to set them with another material and a simple ksperpixel (or whatever) shader to improve performance?

For now I'm not taking note of the material values I set in kseditor but I will and maybe post them in here cause I can't find a list of suggested values and i think it would of great help.


Any help, comment or suggestion is very welcome

For now I'm ok, sorry for taking this long.
 
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Ayeyebraz0v

New Member
Ok, I read a lot of useful stuff here on the forum and learned new things. The track changed quite a lot so I think it's time for an update.
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I cutted the 1GRASS objects closer to the track and placed a grass textured plane. I tried to remove the grass and textured it with a sat image. it was like 3800x2000 and the definition was poor, so now I took a 8k image of a smaller area, maybe it will work better.
I looked at the posts by Johnr about using multilayer for grass and gave it a try. I managed to make the mask and I saw the different textures applied but everything was so greenish. I made a lot of test with different textures and settings in ks editor but I never managed to be close to what I aim. I guess it's also because of alpha channel, I really struggle with that. It seems so easy, the more is black, the more is transparent, but using it is killing me. I guess I still need to understand how to edit it properly.
So for now the endless seamless grass stays. I will try to understand things better and try again.

I made new pits and pitbuilding, I retextured them twice and probably i will remodel them but for now they do the job. They really don't need to be amazing cause the track it'supposed to be small and private.
I placed big glass windows cause I wanted to play with reflections and lighting and on the reflections side I'm quite satisfied, I don't know about the lighting.
The texture is a little too dark for concrete but I already modified it and in the next export I will see how it looks.
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I used the ksmultilayerfresnel... and values by Lilski's tutorial for the road and it's beautiful. This time it worked well cause I'm using textures by Ben O'bro and Zooming Past on RD and they're good. I tried making my textures, they don't work well for now, guess it's always the alpha channel. I made the mask and it's ok, no aplha channel is involved.
I also made some new skids, they are better than the ones of the first post but there is still work to do
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I made some treewalls far away and removed some far trees, i did not name them as KSTREE_GROUP.... but if I remember well I can, I will check they are set the right way and give it a try

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Here is a video of the track. There is on boards and Tv cams in the day and in the night. AI is driving


Next steps should be physical road mesh and setting walls in the correct way by making non renderable wall objects and so.
I still need to model real houses and offices, it shouldn't be too complicated but i never start, at least i made a texture that works for half of the houses around. And yeah, I almost forgot, I want to model my own lowpoly tractor. I write it here so I have to do it. It can be ugly as hell but I have do it.
Then I need to solve the camera problem: 1st camera never works, can't figure out why. Along with that I still need to tweak inpoints and outpoints as well as Fov.
Everytime I change a value in the camera file and then launch the track for the first time ac crashes, so I don't edit cameras so often.

Of course this track is not comparable to a well made track of yours but two months ago i did not remember how to assign a material to a cube, there is no hurry, I'm quite satisfied of what I see, the fact the track works, Ai can race, can pit and there is cameras it's already a success.

Thanks for now!
 

immortalx

New Member
Wow the level of detail on this is beyond words. After seeing this I'm motivated to learn about lighting because you made it look insanely good!
 

Ayeyebraz0v

New Member
Thank you! It's still a long way, I'm now noticing the buildings seem a little too short compared to the real ones, luckily it is an easy fix: select all objects, S, Z and that'it!

If I managed to get different lights everybody can, you will get confident in no time
As I have a little spare time I have to try your nodes to make the texture mask via blender, it is very interesting and it could help me a lot, the multilayer grass is on the to do list
 

Ayeyebraz0v

New Member
Time for an update!

I made the real offices and houses around the track and they got the track look "familiar".
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I started modeling houses making them detailed, with windows, balconies and so, they were horrible.
So I made a cube and extruded it to get the shape of the building, applied as texture a photo of the building took by Streetview and in 5 mins I was done. For now they are ok, I will probably work a little more on them.
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I made new pits and pibuildings, this time I'm ok with the pits, the pitbuilding is not 100% convincing but it's way better than the previous one. Then I made a little building in the other area of the track and my scratchmade grandstands. I made a texture with various materials and a NM, then used the same material on all buildings, so now I feel like I'm the king of optimization. I'm now noticing I have no images of the grandstands, next time!
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The track is supposed to be in the center of Pianura Padana, very close to Milan, so everything is flat but you are surrounded by the Alps and you can see them, watching south there is Oltrepo Pavese hills and you can see them too. I added the real buildings and trees are placed where the real trees are but the track still felt in the middle of nowhere. So I added a background image and now when I drive I start to get the feeling of the real place. The 360 image is far from good quality, I made it by pasting various google earth screenshots but I made it fast and for now it's ok. I had the problem of the upper line shopwing up (same with treelines) but i solved it by scaling down a little the Y when uv mapping. I used ksperpixel alpha as shader and set blending alphatest and the alpha at 0.75. Yes, it is quite pixelated but I think it's better than no surround. I will try to edit the image a little to get better result
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I also made my own tirebarriers with my textures, also made concrete carpets are these ok to you?
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Physical road mesh and good walls are still in the to do list and I'm forgetting something for sure but at the moment this is all that comes to mind.

Thank you all, 90% of this is because of this forum, I am very grateful to all the people who shared their knowledge.
 
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