WIP Bay Route #9

[GizmoY]

Im currently working on a new track. its been a whilst since ive been messing with racer. so working with the ini's and stuff is complicated once again! More so with all these new features.

The track is based off the popular Japanese highways, such as the "Shutoko C1 route".

However, this is my own rendition of the infamous public highway.

I need some kind fellow to help me move my models into a functioning track for racer, and for someone to explain any new features i can take advantage of to fill the track with Eye-Candy.

If you feel you are capable of helping me, please contact me!

Below is a quick render from inside Zmod (Yes, im still using primitive Zmod)

 

[GizmoY]

 

[pradzio1]

Looking good! ;D

 

[skybh]

I looks very nice !!

 

[GizmoY]

 

[Alexander Knoll]

Hi dude,
looks good!
...hmm...it's reminds me a little on the Cloverleaf from Luke...

 

[GizmoY]

Heres a little preview! a few bits are out of place and need sorting!

Have fun! (If someone wants to add some CG/ Bump mapping to the shader file. Be my guest!)

Mod Edit: link removed

 

[GizmoY]

PLEASE NOTE

the preview isnt a complete circuit (Before people complain), the final layout isnt 100% yet.

Q - Will there be a drivable City?
A - NO, only the highways! A City will form the track side Eye candy however!

 

[Cosmo°]

One observation I made is that the lane width suggests a fairly low traffic speed for a highway. At ~2.9m it's somewhere between 10 to 20% narrower than a typical highway, Japan or elsewhere. A quick search brought up this slightly older article on the topic, which might be helpful still: http://www.tollroadsnews.com/node/2780

There doesn't seem to be any side slope to the road surface, for water drainage, either. A common gradient value would be 3% for that and though it looks insignificantly small, will add to the experience and realism of driving on such a road.

 

[GizmoY]

you are right there. According to Zmod, The lanes are 2.938m Wide, I guess thats my mistake for not looking into this before i started. Its a simple fix, which is a good thing.

I will adjust the main, 3 lane highway. Ill leave the slip roads for this matter and adjust my other road "tiles" to suite.
Gradient could be added. Not looking for 100% realism, Looking for a good road to drive on, That closed in feeling you get doing 180+

The outer loop will be Wangan Inspired, And the inner loop C1 or Kanjo inspired. a Mix of Broad, long high speed roads across the ocean, with the smaller, narrower tight highways in a dense city.

 

[GizmoY]

Old Lane Width (2.9m)

New Lane Width (3.25m)

Zmod Comparison (The Cubes/ Squares represent 3.25m Width)

InGame comparison

Just had an hours session on Import Tuner (Tokyo Extreme Racer). Ive concluded my street lamps are to concentrated. I think i need to remove "every other" street lamp. and the highway banks on corners. I may need to tweak it a bit more!

 

[Mr Whippy]

It's certainly worth getting some reference imagery and getting your basic building blocks right at this point I guess.

Ie, lamp density, armco height and the armco strut intervals... slip road lengths and all that stuff. If you get it right now it's gonna save you tinkering later which might be more costly.


It's looking good though, nice work so far

Perhaps for the benefit of us guys watching the WIP it'd be cool to post a mood board of imagery you like the look of and ideas you want to get across here... it might help us to give comments/crits that are more helpful if we know what you are aiming for!


I've always wanted to do a Get Away in Stockholm type course like the Supra and Escort Cosworth drive, but alas, it's a HUGE task hehe... Modular is probably a good way to make a lot of it at first then you can slowly improve it or even get other people to work on chunks for you.

Lets hope Ruud gets that HDR image format working nicely soon too. It'd be cool to have some real HDR panorama of a city scape as a panorama background for the course!

Dave

 

[GizmoY]

If you have ever played any Tokyo Extreme Racer (Or Maximum Tune in the arcades) I want the Scenery to look very similar to that!

So, Tall tower block buildings with Air Con units hanging out the window etc..

I'm planning an Outer and an Inner Loop. The outer loop highway is what your currently seeing, Wide, open highways, Which will mainly go over Ocean, Water and Industrial Areas. Then the inner Loop (Which is what this Cross Junction i'm currently working on will join) Will be still 3 Lane highway, But the lanes will be narrower (Lower speed Zone ~Cosmo) But snaking through dense city.

For the outer loop will be scattered Parking Areas (Maybe for Future Multi player Meet-ups)

I'm now looking at saving on some Polys now on the current Scene, as everything totals nearly 50,000 Polys! I still manage to pull decent FPS though (130 odd) with it all loaded as a single model. I guess i could leave it and let Tracked do the work for me (Does it still Split/ Optimize like it used to?)

Ive done some adjustments. Ive deleted Half of the Streetlamps. As per Cosmo's Link aswell, Ive widened the Hard shoulder/ Breakdown Zone to 2.5m

Also, Dave. What do you suggest for the street lamps? Get rid of the "Fake" bloom X Tree?

 

[Mr Whippy]

Not sure.

Care to share any pics of the raw output from Racer right now?

The bloom should work if the lamps are light enough... I think the tone mapping we have in Racer right now is fairly realistic for 'eyes' at least.

Dave

 

[Stereo]

The bloom does work, just needed brighter lights than I'd expected. And when the sources are small it flickers a fair amount (which is why some of the farther lights have bloom, some don't).

This is just with a different texture on the bloom x-tree, a small white circle. emission=400 400 400.

As you can see, the transparent part of the x-tree still interferes with headlights - does this on other tracks too, not sure how to avoid it. I'd recommend just modeling out the surface of the lights, and setting that to an appropriate brightness.

Or, if they're textured right, using alpha as a control map for the emission would work too. The yellow half of streetlamp_1.tga is the light, right?

This is without the X-trees at all, just bloom. Mipmapping is definitely a problem here; to do this properly you'd want to make the mipmaps by hand.

 

[GizmoY]

That looks awesome! thats the effect im after!

Yes, The Yellow part is just for the Lamp Lense.

Ive Deleted all the X Trees from the latest update im doing

 

[GizmoY]

can you not Mapmap=0 like in the old days?

 

[Mr Whippy]

With mipping you can 'fake' the blooms enlarging with distance, making the texture bigger vs up close!

All you need at this point is a way to make them 'facing' planes rather than distorting costly x type setups.


Stereo, maybe for night tracks you want a custom bloom.cg and racer.ini settings? Boost bloom multiplier and up res as a starting move? Bloom seems to be LDR and unreal units so tweaking values probably set up for daytime use seems reasonable!


What is really missing though is vert lighting. Any way to do it in zmodeller? It'd add a LOT of depth to the scene with pools of light under each lamp!
Or you could do it with big additive splodges, might be cheap if its additive vs a blend too! (Loads of blends = costly!)

Hmmm...

Might have a play at my end with these ideas... See if it looks ok...

Dave

 

[GizmoY]

Vert lighting again would be using a form of X Tree though? or a Box with descends from the lens with a Gradient texture. Would maybe get the same results with the headlights.

I think a simple Globe of light around the light source is king. Just need a simple and effective way to add it!

 

[Stereo]

With mipping you can 'fake' the blooms enlarging with distance, making the texture bigger vs up close!

Hmm, might actually be helping then in this case. The mipping problem I was referring to is that the 'lit' part of the texture was bleeding into the 'unlit' part, which is why the poles were glowing in the second shot. First one's using the X-lights with a small white dot on a larger texture, so is probably mipping it bigger.

ZModeler doesn't do vert lighting, last I checked. Not sure what the best way to accomplish it is. If the road was built with that in mind, it could just be a second texture layer on the road - but wouldn't look right where lanes repeat the same coordinates and such.