WIP Bay Route #9

[GizmoY]

Started on some Accurate Signage

Junction onto the Main highway.

Added Chevrons to the slip road wall textures

Just need to find a more suitable texture (All Chain link) in decent quality!

 

[GizmoY]

Here is an Updated version. Still nothing Major, as im spending days detailing this Overpass section. Next update will include some longer roads (Possible a Loop at least) or some Scenery!

http://www.speedyshare.com/2Egga/Bay-Route-9.rar

For anyone who wants to tinker with the shader and at some CG, please feel free!

 

[Stereo]

Here's a cg shader + textures for the lights to illuminate at night:
http://nmurdoch.ca/7z/Bay_Route_9_cg_lights.7z
And stick both of these in data/renderer/shaders/ if you haven't got em.
http://nmurdoch.ca/cg/standard_billboard_v.cg
http://nmurdoch.ca/cg/standard_daynight_f.cg

daynight_f uses the alpha channel to indicate what lights up - 0 in the alpha channel is dark, 1 is emission set in the shader. So eg. if you want the signs lit at night, you'd paint the illumination on them in the alpha channel, like this:

Then switch to the daynight shader, like the streetlamps use:

shader_roadsigns_1~vf_daynight
{
  emission=20 20 20
  layer0
  {
    map=roadsigns_1.tga
  }
  layer1
  {
    map=roadsigns_1_night.tga
  }
}

The second layer being the name of the new image, and the emission line setting how bright it gets.

Which becomes, in-game,

(oops - I counted 4 lights above the signs, thought they were all over the same one.)

Anyway, once that's fixed,

Which, I dunno, you can check out by grabbing this tga. Although there's probably a better way of drawing the light-spot, I just used a radial gradient.

 

[Alexander Knoll]

THX Stereo! Looks wonderfull!!

 

[GizmoY]

That looks amazing!!

 

[Bram Hengeveld]

Wow that looks just sick

 

[luthobu]

awesome

 

[Stereo]

Oops, hadn't got the latest version of daynight_f on my site. Fixed the link.

Gotta give Gizmo props for making the track in the first place, without that I'm nothing.

 

[GizmoY]

Props to you though! thats pretty much exactly how i had visioned the track to look like a night! Seeing the rows of lights in the distance.

However, the lighting on the signs really do it for me!

 

[pradzio1]

That's just incredible, man... :O

 

[SwiftPL]

OMG, that's just awesome!

 

[Mr Whippy]

Now for a feunt wet reflection on the track

Looking nice!

If only we had 2nd uv channel for light maps, then you could simply have the light map turn on and be an emission multiplication for only the desired areas!

Hmmm

Looks very nice any way


But IMO we need a way to make the lights light up the road... In absence of light maps maybe verts?

Maybe a road texture that also has emission you use under lights?


Hmmm... tons of approaches just finding the one you wanna go with

Dave

 

[Stereo]

I can't tell from documentation whether the projection lights affect performance per light, or if it's just the number of polies being lit up that's a concern. It'd be nice to just set one up under each lamp, and get them all done in one illumination pass. I sorta feel like it'd be best to just generically illuminate roads if the lights aren't going to be casting actual light that can hit the car. When you look at something like http://www.toolfactory.com/olympus_contest/images/spring 07 photo final/4418.jpg with reasonably closely spaced lamps, there's not a lot of variation in brightness levels.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Yeah I guess you could generic illuminate which works ok. I guess issue is generic limits artistic freedom but ultimately you can just make more textures etc

I'm testing here with some illumination ideas that are not ideal but give you a bit more power for getting a nice look. Not sure on performance but that is why I'm testing


Yep projected down lights would be nice. Not sure on the hit. In theory with a big projection map you could hit a large area but have many lights on it. Ie car headlights can be made of many dots to look like many single lights!


Next problem is shadows

This is where the night tracks in gt5 feel really nice.

Note how those tracks are also very 'light' on everything else, probably due to load if many shadow casters etc... Hmmm



Dave

 

[Mr Whippy]

Hmm, downloaded, generally very nice.

I think you really need to make two separate 'times of day' for it though.

If this is intended to be a night track then it's important to get the balance of values right.

Ie, right now the sky is very 'bright' for night time use, clouds 0.1 gets the klux value about right, but even then that is for a moon lit night...

The values for klux for the ambient also seem a bit high really.


Obviously these are easy tweaks to get right but when balancing all these things it's hard to get one right when others are wrong, so the glowing light stuff might need re-tweaking once other stuff has been tweaked, and since so much is dependent on the TOD then it's better to make the track a static and specific time of day, especially when going for a certain 'look' for the course too

Right away you could tell that illumination levels for the sky/ambient were too high, light reflections in a black car just didn't jump out.
Putting klux to ~ 0.001 for the sky, and ambient values to around 0.075 rgb suddenly made everything 'feel' much more natural. So just look up some real values for things to get them even in the right ball park and it'll start to come together much quicker in getting the look right


I can see a lot of potential for the course though, I'm excited to see where it's gonna go


Part of me thinks it'd look great with a full-moon evening, but a bit foggy too, so you get the close ambience of the light glows and don't need to worry too much about distance details (horizon), but benefit from some subtle shadows from the moon.

This is where per-track custom racer.ini values would be nice. With a lower resolution shadow map blurred a bit more the moon shadows would add a nice soft extra bit of depth to the course


Cheers

Dave

 

[GizmoY]

What about a gradient on the road texture? from the inside to the outside, Give a kind of cheap glow effect?

 

[GizmoY]

Another quick one Stereo! Im adding some details atm.

The planes i added for Lighting, Do they follow the camera at any angle? Just so i know with these new details im working on!

 

[Stereo]

Yeah, they can really be set up pointing any direction and they'll turn to the camera. They'd only need to be pointing a specific direction if you want them brighter that way (which would require a modified shader to accomplish anyway)

 

[Mr Whippy]

So what is the planned final layout?

A big loop? Or point to point?

Kinda reminds me of Autobahn course from Nfs5 a bit... Had that looped around with multiple routes it'd have been amazing

This will be great for online racing, more so if you can get some light night time traffic working in it too

 

[GizmoY]

I haven't drawn a map so to speak. I tried, But it just doesn't seem to come out the way i want it oo.

The Main outer highway loop will go for around 7-8 Miles, Pretty much straight with a few sweeping curves and elevations to mix things up. Speeding through Tunnels, Industrial areas, Bridges etc. Then it will end with another junction which will just loop back on itself (So both sides of the highway will be used) with some Dead ends which lead to no where.

The current junction i'm working on, will lead to the inner loop, Which is tighter and will be going through Dense city, Tunnels etc (So plenty of buildings etc)

I will also scatter some parking areas. so in the event Racers MP System becomes stable enough, could be meeting spots for on-line players.

I'm just perfecting the "chunks". Once they are done the track will pretty much build itself in a few days! Just a case of Separate each chunk by material, Re-Export each model and load into Racer.

I'm just toying what to do with Scenery. Flat planes for buildings? or some actual models?

Ive noticed racer has a "traffic" system. Is this something i can take advantage of? Moving traffic for the highway? or could it be used to "Fake" a plane taking off and landing at an airport i'm planning to add? (Simple oval "Track" with a Transparent Texture and splines?)