W.I.P. Sydney Olympic Park

[Jordan Nixon]

Hello all,

-------------------------------------Intro-------------------------------------
I have been a lurker here for quite a while. I finally decided a few months ago to try my hand at building a track. I have read through a ton of threads here trying to learn and soak in information.

I love Australian V8 Supercars, and really wanted to drive/race Sydney Olympic Park and I haven't seen any good mods for it. That is what led me to attempt to create this track. Be warned, I have basically zero 3d modeling experience. I created a few ovals and other simple tracks just to figure out the basics. But this is my first attempt at a real track.

I'm hoping the first response isn't a link to a mod for this track that already exists.. I mean, I would be happy to finally have a mod for this track. But, I am also having fun learning to create it!

As of right now, it is just streets and walls, with a few extra objects I have been playing around with. There is nothing in the background yet. I want to be sure the driving surface is correct first. The textures and walls are just a place holder for now, I will work with those once the driving surface is how I like it. One more thing, I don't have runoff areas blocked off yet. It is possible to drive down the wrong road and hit an invisible barrier.

I am using V8SCorsa mod to test the track. https://v8scorsa.weebly.com/

Here is a link to google drive folder where I will share the track. You should just be able to install via content manager. Be sure to click into the version folder and download the 7zip file.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/17ruVHD7UDOXbKXqQ5zywQc75vah9ACC2?usp=sharing

-------------------------------------Focus Right Now-------------------------------------

All constructive criticism/feedback is appreciated. Please keep feedback to the track layout, elevation, and kerbs for now. Again, I am an amateur at best when it comes to 3d modeling. Just here to learn and have fun.

Elevation Change - Dawn Frasier Avenue has been tricky. The Blender GIS data on the elevation was pretty horrible. I have watched several Supercars replays trying to replicate. I would love feedback, especially if anyone around here has driven Dawn Frasier Avenue.

Turn 2, 3, and 4 - This left-right-left section has been tricky. To me it still doesn't feel quite right, but it is really hard to tell. I have been trying to compare the speed I can carry through and compare it to replays.

Turn 8 (Edwin Flack to Dawn Frasier) - This little section has been tricky as well. The shape of the corner is a not quite a 90 and should have a later apex. I think I am getting close, I will probably adjust some more.

Kerbs - I have rebuilt kerbs a few times. Supercars uses very aggressive sausage kerbs. My first attempt was way too small, you could just drive right over them with few repercussions. They are quite a bit larger and less forgiving now.


-------------------------------------Future-------------------------------------

This is what I'm planning on doing once I get the track layout, elevation, and kerbs correct:

-Add more detail to track surface and add fluctuations and bumps so it isn't just a smooth surface.
-Work on road textures
-Rework the walls, make them look nicer and add the fence.
-Add all the braking markers and other track items (cones, tires, etc)
-Work on adding trees/shrubs that sit along the road
-start working on the rest of the environment
I know it is a lot more complicated than this, just trying to work out a basic structure of what I am planning.

 

[GT VIRUS]

Sydney has extensive lidar coverage, so you should stop using BlenderGIS data for this. There shouldn't be any need to guess the data, as it's all available and pretty accurate.

https://elevation.fsdf.org.au/

 

[Jordan Nixon]

Sydney has extensive lidar coverage, so you should stop using BlenderGIS data for this. There shouldn't be any need to guess the data, as it's all available and pretty accurate.

https://elevation.fsdf.org.au/

I will check this out. I know there are several threads on the lidar data and how to utilize it within blender.

Thanks!

 

[Jordan Nixon]

Alright, I have downloaded the lidar data and managed to get a nice mesh into blender. The elevation I have on Dawn Frasier is definitely wrong. Also, the track layout I currently am using (from blender GIS) is also a bit too large. The overall layout is correct, but seems to be scaled 10-15% too large.

This kind of sucks, but I think the best thing to do is to start from scratch with the lidar data. I am going to split the visual surface from the drivable surface so that I can keep as many vertices as possible. This should make for a much more accurate driving surface. It will probably take me a while to tackle this task, but I am looking forward to the challenge!

 

[Jordan Nixon]

I have been working with the Lidar data over the past week or so. Haven't had as much time as I would like to play around with this. I did a test only on Australia Avenue to try and see what the full lidar mesh would drive like, and it was WAY too bumpy without any smoothing. So I definitely need to smooth out the road mesh.

Since the lidar data wasn't going to be accurate down to the actual bumps, I decimated the surface a bit to try and make it a bit easier to work with, and hopefully not crash AC. I decimated the surface outside the track area pretty good. I may decimate more if vertex count becomes a problem. Although, I think as long as a single mesh doesn't go above 65k vertices I should be okay. Not sure what the actual vertex count for the full mesh is, but I am sitting at 367,489 faces; most of that is the actual drivable surface.

More to come soon.

 

[Jordan Nixon]

Hi everyone,

I am getting close to having a basic drivable mesh with the Lidar data. Still doing some smoothing and editing to make the surface drivable.

However, upon doing some testing I am having a weird issue with car spawning. When I first load into the game my car will be free falling and I don't see the track or any objects. After about a 2-3 second delay the car resets on track, in the correct position. From this point, I can drive the track and do anything like normal. At this point it's really just an annoyance. But eventually I will have to try and fix this.

Any ideas why this might be happening? I searched through some threads and have not seen this exact issue. Usually the spawn point either works or it doesn't. I have recreated the spawn objects and double checked their orientation. I thought maybe the sections of mesh were too large, so I cut them down into smaller sections, that didn't help either.

Not sure if this could be an issue, but when I imported the Lidar data, its default position was REALLY far off from 0,0,0. So far off that I couldn't even edit the mesh without blender acting really buggy. So I moved the lidar mesh to 0,0,0 and no longer had issues. Unsure if this is helpful, but figured I would share just in case.

 

[AkinOstrich]

I have been working with the Lidar data over the past week or so. Haven't had as much time as I would like to play around with this. I did a test only on Australia Avenue to try and see what the full lidar mesh would drive like, and it was WAY too bumpy without any smoothing. So I definitely need to smooth out the road mesh.

Since the lidar data wasn't going to be accurate down to the actual bumps, I decimated the surface a bit to try and make it a bit easier to work with, and hopefully not crash AC. I decimated the surface outside the track area pretty good. I may decimate more if vertex count becomes a problem. Although, I think as long as a single mesh doesn't go above 65k vertices I should be okay. Not sure what the actual vertex count for the full mesh is, but I am sitting at 367,489 faces; most of that is the actual drivable surface.

More to come soon.

Working with LiDAR myself, I'm curious if you lay down the LiDAR mesh first, then add an additional mesh on top, essentially shrinkwrapping it. If so, how detailed do you try to make that mesh? How many meshes do you need to cover the area? I'm sure you have a road mesh and a terrain mesh, correct?

 

[fughettaboutit]

Hi everyone,

I am getting close to having a basic drivable mesh with the Lidar data. Still doing some smoothing and editing to make the surface drivable.

However, upon doing some testing I am having a weird issue with car spawning. When I first load into the game my car will be free falling and I don't see the track or any objects. After about a 2-3 second delay the car resets on track, in the correct position. From this point, I can drive the track and do anything like normal. At this point it's really just an annoyance. But eventually I will have to try and fix this.

Any ideas why this might be happening? I searched through some threads and have not seen this exact issue. Usually the spawn point either works or it doesn't. I have recreated the spawn objects and double checked their orientation. I thought maybe the sections of mesh were too large, so I cut them down into smaller sections, that didn't help either.

Not sure if this could be an issue, but when I imported the Lidar data, its default position was REALLY far off from 0,0,0. So far off that I couldn't even edit the mesh without blender acting really buggy. So I moved the lidar mesh to 0,0,0 and no longer had issues. Unsure if this is helpful, but figured I would share just in case.

Maybe you got it already fixed, but that sounds like you run the game in hotlap mode (or you have set spawn-point at hotlap-position in practice) and did not include a
AC_HOTLAP_START_0
dummy. I you dont have that dummy, then AC will put your car at 0,0,0 and if there is no road at that place, then you just free-fall...

 

[Jordan Nixon]

Working with LiDAR myself, I'm curious if you lay down the LiDAR mesh first, then add an additional mesh on top, essentially shrinkwrapping it. If so, how detailed do you try to make that mesh? How many meshes do you need to cover the area? I'm sure you have a road mesh and a terrain mesh, correct?

Yes, that is basically what I have done. I imported the lidar from cloud compare, and then created "paths" to match the road. Then I created a plane and added the array, curve, and shrinkwrap modifiers.

As far as detail, I decimated quite a bit of the detail. With the full lidar mesh in blender my computer was too slow. From within cloud compare I isolated the road mesh from the surrounding area, and reduced the numbers of points. I can't remember exactly how much I reduced the mesh, but the surrounding mesh was reduced significantly more.

I would assume you could accomplish the same thing with the decimate function within blender. However, if you separate the meshes and decimate, the separate meshes may not line back up perfectly. That's why I ended up reducing the number of points in cloudcompare before I turned it into a mesh.

My roads are about 155k vertices, and the surrounding terrain is about 30k vertices. I probably eliminated too many vertices, but that is where I am right now. Also, I am still learning. There may be better ways to do it than the way I am. So take whatever I say with a grain of salt haha

edit: I think my 155k count was wrong. Because the KS editor forces me to split Australia Ave alone into 3-4 pieces. The max vertices for an object is roughly 65k. This would mean that Australia avenue alone is about 150-200k.

 

[Jordan Nixon]

Maybe you got it already fixed, but that sounds like you run the game in hotlap mode (or you have set spawn-point at hotlap-position in practice) and did not include a
AC_HOTLAP_START_0
dummy. I you dont have that dummy, then AC will put your car at 0,0,0 and if there is no road at that place, then you just free-fall...

I'm 99% sure you are right. I hadn't created all the objects yet, I only created enough to get the track up and running. I think the car was falling because I was in hotlap mode by mistake (haven't created that object yet), then it just automatically reset to AC_PIT_0, which was set up correctly. I appreciate your feedback!

Edit: This may be an issue with the version of CSP I am using. I just had the exact same thing happen on the Nordschleife Tourist. I haven't altered that track in any way. Weird.

 

[TheSlitterGaming]

i keep getting your access has been denied when i click on the link