Building windows with cubemaps - Searching for help - BTB + 3DsimED

[Cloudheaven]

Hi guys, i'm trying to apply cubemaps on the windows of my buildings along the track.
Since BTB don't offer this feature, i know that i must use 3DsimED for this effect.
Sincerely i need help by someone that know how to do that! :frown:
Once i make the track with BTB, i open the .scn file of my track on 3DsimED and edit the
texture what i want, applying the cubemaps.dds, and i see that on 3DsimED my cubemaps works fine!
When i try to export the track on a new folder, i copy all that i have from the new folder (all the .gmt files)
to the existing track folder and when i trying to load the track on rF, i have several error.
I've tried to rename the _output.scn (the new .scn file from 3DsimED) to the name of the track,
(eg. Monza.scn) but with no success!
Perhaps when i try to load the "new" .scn file on 3DsimED, i notice that many textures contain several error.
How i can do this effect? Is possible to have cubemaps in this way?
Please help me

And sorry for my very bad english! :tongue:

 

[Kyle Puttifer]

If you do an export from SimEd then all of your textures must be in dds format, a track exported from SimEd cannot load pngs or jpegs. I learnt that from experience.

 

[Cloudheaven]

Many thanks!! And then, once i will have modified the texture from 3DsimED, only
for the cubemaps, if i will convert every jpg/png texture in .dds format, i will get my track buildings with cubemaps?
I have to convert so many texture xD
Thanks again!

 

[R Soul]

_output.scn doesn't contain everything. A complete .scn file has a few other things defined. After exporting a track from BTB, open the .scn file in a text editor. It starts with CUBEASF (not sure what that means), then there are some SearchPath variables, MASFile, View etc. After the sky box is defined (Instance=skyboxi), the track and objects are listed, starting with t0_s0. If you open up _output.scn, you'll see that it starts with t0_s0. In other words, only the things listed after the skybox should be overwritten.

 

[catboy]

The only thing you must change is the material shader.
Open Material of window, and go Shader:
choose "cube map t1" (begins with the simplest, there are others with bump, specular etc..)
in Cube map: load your DDS cube map.
change the blend 1 to 0.5 (50%) press ok.
export only the object (GMT) to track folder .
Open game to see the result.

 

[catboy]

I think you must have "HardwareShaders" folder in 3dsimed folder, and copy the shaders (coreshaders.mas) from rFactor\GameData\Shared

 

[Kyle Puttifer]

Not sure what that has to do with cubemaps and SimEd forcing GMTs to use dds R Soul, unless you have some crazy version of rFactor that has texture names in the scene file!
What Cloudheaven describes is a problem I have had before with BTB tracks, and Xpacks that don't use dds textures. I just put all of the offending textures into a folder and then batch convert them after a SimEd export (is that your batch file R Soul?) before pasting them back into the track folder.
Perhaps you can link him to what he needs? I have the batch file, but I've just opened it in Notepad and it refers to some nVidia exes in the C:\ folder, which he would need to download. I don't have a link for them, it's an installer of some kind IIRC.

 

[R Soul]

I've never heard of that batch file. My post was referring to this:

I've tried to rename the _output.scn (the new .scn file from 3DsimED) to the name of the track,
(eg. Monza.scn) but with no success!

I know that one doesn't have to update .scn file if one is just modifying materials, but Cloudheaven's procedure was getting in the way of him knowing whether or not the cube mapping was working properly.

 

[Cloudheaven]

Many thanks for the replies!!
I'm thinking a simply way to have the building's windows with cubemaps!
If I work only on the single building (created with Sketchup PRO, that unfortunately don't use .dds)
and once I have exported all the work in 3ds (and then replace the texture from .jpg to .dds)
can I have the possibility to get the building with cubemaps and export that into the circuit in BTB through Xpacker?
Or maybe I need 3DstudioMax for that? At the moment my program suite is BTB, Sketchup and PS4.
Many thanks in advance for the help, and again, sorry for my poor english!