BTB & 3DSimEd Walkthroughs Needed!

[Drummer]

Hey folks!
[rant]
Well, I've been using both these programs for a while now, and what I find incredibly frustrating is the sheer lack of proper, easy to follow walkthroughs, or 'idiot's guides'. I've been trawling the web for help with a number of things:

Firstly there's terrain creation in BTB. It's a right faff! Once I have terrain laid out, I find creases and dodgy faces everywhere. Ironing these out is a monumental challenge, even for someone with knowledge of 3D modelling, like myself! All I want is to create a highly detailed, smooth infield, with no dodgy bits! I follow the very vague instructions on most of the 'tutorial' videos I've found, but to no avail!

Secondly is using the XPacker utility. Now, I've got a rough understanding of how to get a model into BTB, but I can't, for the life of me, figure out how the heck to get these models looking right! I made a simple tree wall. A single face wall with a tree texture/transparency on it, for creating the illusion of distant trees lining the horizon. Upon bringing it into BTB, I'm faced with a floating wall, which is half buried at one end and around 30 feet in the air at the other! I've tried moving, rotating and scaling, but nothing works like I thought it would.

Thirdly, I wouldn't mind knowing how to go about exporting a circuit from 3DSimEd to Rfactor and getting it working ingame. I've searched for really informative tutorials, but anything I've found is mesmerisingly complex and impossible for me to understand.

I'm pretty nigh on certain that this request will only yield more big words and 100+ step tutorials on how to get a simple texture onto a flat square, but I'll give it a shot!

Please, can someone out there find or make some proper tutorials, either with video or lots of screenshots, on how to use these programs? I'd be eternally grateful, for anything that actually helped me to understand them, instead of needing an extra tutorial, in order to understand the tutorials, and I'm sure many other users feel the same! So, if you've created something in BTB or 3DSimEd, please tell us how you did it!

On another related note: Admins, is there a date/time set in stone for this site to become fully active again, please? I've found lots of links to apparently helpful stuff on here, only to find a 404 at the end of it. If you'd like links to these 404's, please let me know.

Thankyou all!

Glen.[/rant]

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

You got a point there, it took me about a year to get the hang of (almost) everything.. I did however find creating simple tracks a breeze with BTB... Babysteps and short tracks at first, anything over 3km is way too big at first. You cut down export times, tests etc plus projects are faster and easier to deal with.

What is the problem with terrain? From your description you have watched all the available tutorials and still come up short. Personally,i found the terrain was the most simple thing to learn but BTB was my first 3D editor.. Some may find it hard after learning some other software, specially 3Dsimed (IMHO, very VERY hard to understand, very cluttered and confusing for a novice..) BTB i found was easy at first, a lot of help around, frustratingly hard and help was scarse at midlevel and the finest details are only revealed thru months of experimenting...

Getting a single object to treewall is not the best approach. Try using that same object as SObject, define "curve with spline" and "vertices follow the ground" options to plant it to BTB ground. Or use that texture on Wall, then you can shape those faces inside BTB. Single objects have to be pretty much spot on, ie no additional shaping done in btb (only rotate tool is actually useful and even that is awful, there's no numerical entry.....) Using SObject instead gives you a lot more shaping possibilities (they stretch, rotate and scale much easier)

One thing is clear, no one, i repeat, NO ONE is going to make full scale tutorials anymore. For individual problems, yes, that more of a possibility. You have to explain your needs more precisely, give screenshots, you get individual answers to individual problems.. So stop hoping for tutorials and start posting questions in BTB forum, i've gotten help for every problem i've encountered that way.. Use search there, the back log is huge.

 

[Drummer]

Hey, thankyou for your reply!

Well, my issue with the terrain is basically that I need all the terrain to be highly detailed. See, my end result is actually going to be a circuit that I can create an animated movie with, as opposed to a game. So, this instantly brings the whole thing up a notch or three! I'm an absolute nutter when it comes to detail. Everything has to be lifelike, to the point where the armco barriers must be 3D, spectators must be 3D and marshal's posts must have at least two fire extinguishers at the ready. My camera views could end up anywhere, from in-car views to shots from grandstands and even helicopters! So, I need to fill my infield with lots of clutter, lots of different surfaces, roads, buildings and vehicles. I'm finding it very hard to create anything other than a dead flat circuit, with a high poly, smooth infield terrain. I'm getting mountains and cliffs, missing faces, which take ages to painstakingly fill and areas of low-poly mesh, which create creases. Also, the lighting in BTB is horrible for terrain smoothing! I know you can 'move the sun around' but it's just an extra faff to add to the faff list. Navigation is an itch too, as I prefer to fly around at will. The fly around mode is way too close to the track, so I use zoom and rotate camera. Thing is, the longer I hold down the mouse button to rotate around, the more likely it is that the stupid menu will pop up and wreck the flow of things.

But yeah, the main problem is creating even, high poly terrain meshes. The provided YouTube tut's are too sketchy. I can't stand the "you'll probably want to take more care than this, I'm just doing this roughly..." thing. If you're going to show us how to start a job, then show us how to finish it!

[EDIT] Also, there's an infuriating lack of keyboard shortcut list for BTB... I only just learned that shift + w gave me two wireframe options in the 3D view...

[ANOTHER EDIT] In fact, it wouldn't be a bad idea for someone else to kindly do this terrain, as I'm about ready to eat my computer... The fact that it seems impossible to keep the poly count the same, no matter how far away from the track you are, is utterly infuriating me. I know I'm in kind of a unique situation, but there has to be a way, there really has! Why does no one think 'Skyrim' with racing games? I want to create a circuit with no limitations like this. Just because it's the infield, doesn't mean it absolutely has got to be low poly! -.-

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Hmm, that is unique situation indeed.. Terrain is not the best tool to do hipoly stuff, it's made so that it's lopoly by default, for obvious reasons.. Moderator should move this topic to BTB section, it fits better there.

One possibility is to use the terrain as mostly BTB Ground and add the details using the Wall tool. Terrain is hard to UV map in any detail, Walls are much better at that. I can show one trick that i've used to create hipoly terrain... It uses a large "grid" as an SObject and using the "move vertices to follow the fround" function to cover the terrain with highly detailed mesh.. plus UV mapping is much easier in dedicated 3D editors.. That way you can have the basic topography using the terrain, something which the terrain is superiour tool.

There's one project in my fileserver that you can check (Race07 export but since you have 3Dsimed that's no problem..): http://Cream.Galleria.fi/BTB/Tracks/ChickenRun.zip It has the mountains and stones made with that method. Suits your needs perfectly as it has adverse effects in performance (huge transformation cost..)

EDIT: Here's the XPack to study: http://Cream.Galleria.fi/BTB/XPacks/Hills.zip It has the "move vertices" off, as it is very heavy to modify with that option turned on.. So remember to turn that on after you got the position close to the final.

 

[James Capper]

There is just one more hurdle you need to get over, and that's the fact that the new version needs to come out of beta stage before any one can do anything else.... I've had this before where you start a project it then goes from beta to final your then stuck with trying to convert your work from the old beta to the new final and it dosn't recognise it so you end up starting all over again.