Creating Tracks - Tutorial

A single thread for tutorial of creating tracks.

XMR Editor allows prepare tracks and cars and insert into the game.
You can import any 3d model (whole track/car or single object like tree, house, driver body, tire etc) from 3dmax. You can also create your own track without 3d max.
Tracks and cars are saved in different ways.
File types.
.tdo – single or some objects of track/car/object
.wld – world project that contains system info about scene.
.we – world environment that contains all materials, markers, cameras, lines etc
.trc – texture packet. All textures must be as .tga files.
.mtl – materials of scene/car that can be imported/exported
.mss – markers of scene/car that can be imported/exported



Typical algorithm of creating track:
1. Creating 3d models with textures in 3d max, but without materials. XMR editor uses its own material system.
2. Export scene from 3d max as .tdo file for XMR Editor
3. Converting single .tdo file to track project
4. Inserting additional objects like trees, stones, etc
5. Setup graphics materials for all objects
6. Setup physics properties for all objects and polygons
7. Setup lighting and shadowing
8. Generating shadows
9. Creating starting grid
10. Export to game.

At first we have to create a basic 3d model of the track in 3d Max or similar software.
XMR Editor allows create tracks from the scratch but it’s more convenient to work with familiar software like 3d max.
Export scene as .tdo file. Before this you must copy an export plug-in from XMREditor\3dmax_export_plugin to your 3dmax\stdplugs directory as .dle files.



Then run XMREditor and open just exported file as .tdo.



Then we need to convert single .tdo file to world project.
Open from the menu World->ConvertToWorld.
After that you can see a dialog where you should define numbers of blocks (default values of 16 are quite enough for most scenes).
Type your project name and its parent directory and press Convert.



Close XMR Editor (or all windows) and run it again.
Open your just created world project as .wld, but not a single .tdo file.



After loading you can see something like this if default textures are not assigned.
You can configure your camera from the menu for more comfortable work.

The next step is preparing texture packets for the track. These steps are similar like for cars:
http://www.racedepartment.com/x-motor-racing/36377-creating-cars-tutorial.html#post579037

You can use .tga file as textures with size 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, 512, 1024, 2048 or 4096 pixels.
1. Create a sub-directory in your track directory and call it Textures for example \\Track30TestingArea\\Textures.
2. Copy all .tga files you need to this directory
3. Copy files texPacker.exe and tpack.ini from \\XMREditor\Textures Utility to this directory also.
4. Run texPacker.exe. It creates MyPack.trc or any file .trc that can be loaded into XME Editor. You can define your own name of texture packet in tpack.ini file.
5. Open Texture Manager from menu.
6. Open you texture pack that your just created - MyPack.trc and save the scene. Next time when you open the scene these textures pack will load automatically.