Improvement Suggestions

[Brendon Pywell]

I don't know everything so if you have thought of a brilliant idea, then let me here about it.

I value everyone's opinion but please don't feel too bad if your idea doesn't make it into BTB. Ease of design, speed, development time, priorities and game engine abilities all need to be considered when I mark out what's in the next release. I already have over seven pages of features I want to add to BTB so perhaps yours is already on there. I won't be listing it here as I don't want to influence your fresh thoughts, and nor do I wish to raise false hope. I only like to list things I know I can deliver.

Please don't post your same idea over and over again. No ones opinion is more important than anyone elses.

 

[cgraves10]

Not sure if anyone else has said this but I would like to see an option for the old way of doing terrains put back in instead of the click and drag. It seemed to take alot less time to make a more complex terrain.

 

[jay_p_666]

Not sure if anyone else has said this but I would like to see an option for the old way of doing terrains put back in instead of the click and drag. It seemed to take alot less time to make a more complex terrain.

You can auto-generate terrain to the whole track in one click using the other method called : add to whole track. Hope this help if that is what you want to achieve. BTB need to move forward, not backward. :wink2:

 

[cgraves10]

You can auto-generate terrain to the whole track in one click using the other method called : add to whole track. Hope this help if that is what you want to achieve. BTB need to move forward, not backward. :wink2:

Yea I have tried that, but I work with mostly oval tracks so when I creat the terrain, I have to adjust the height of every node. It just takes alot more time for me to finish the terrain on my tracks.

 

[woochoo]

i wouldn't have thought the inclusion of one terrain method should _require_ the removal of another. there are currently two methods, why not bring back the other and make it three? The right tool for the job is what BTB is meant to be, am i right? Maybe it can be viewed as the right tool shed with the right tools for the job?

edit #1: and example of the 'x' tree tool would be, once you have created a new tree texture in photoshop or whatever, and loaded it into btb's material panel, or even a specific tree texture panel in the 'tree tool' (pointy normals, 2 sided, alpha/chroma etc), you can create an 'x' polygon array (2 planes) like you would a box in 3dsm, (click, move size x & z, click, move size y, click). Then drag'n'drop the texture onto the 'x', scale or rotate the texture. Then set a wall based colision column (was that a new feature based on textures in v0.7?) and get on with the show, having the option of saving it into your own personal tree collection, which may or may not be in an xpack. something like that.

edit #2: another example of the way i see the program geared towards quick and easy default usage is the way you add custom textures. Having to copy an already existing material, then just change the texture. The new material ends up in the same xpack as the old one. As far as i can see you can't drag and drop anything to a new xpack. Honestly, i think i want to be able to make and or edit an xpack from within BTB. So, while the coping and retexturing of a material actually might speed up initial workflow, in the end it can lead to a tangle of xpacks and the feeling that your own work is getting locked into that of others. So this comes from a psychological sense. Xpacks work best when you have the xpack before you start making your track, not when you are adding content along the way, which is certainly what i'm doing atm.

Don't get me wrong, I can clearly see Piddy has done some wonderful AND unexpected (welcome) development with the program and up til now always moving forward. i think restricting simple, useful, previously available options is a step backwards however (shadows solid or texture, terrain modes).

I think it's about time, at 11 pages, that someone (not me ) compiled a list of the suggestions so we can all see where we are at (not for a vote though). Divided into interface, specifics of tools, new solutions etc?

 

[woochoo]

a measuring tool has been mentioned alread, but how about in addition to a measuring/ruler type tool, the dimensions of objects, trees etc are shown in a permanent status bar type arrangement like in 3dsmax, plus global co-ordinates for the objects, nodes etc

i hope someone does compile a list of suggestions.

 

[woochoo]

in the camera tool, an option to hide cameras (their location and activation spheres) by camera group (1,2,3,4). That would make it easier to see what is happening when you add similar cameras but in different groups for one reason or another, like different activation points.

 

[R Soul]

Smooth track merging would become quite feasible if we could change the direction of the hypotenuses of the triangles which make up the polygons of the track.

Say this is the second track:

You can create a new cross section where each of the blue lines is. For each cross-section, you can raise and lower the points (green Xs) to the right of the red hypotenuse (and the ones which are on it).

The points on the left of the hypotenuse can be lowered to be underneath the main track. With enough tweaking, you can get each hypotenuse to line up with the edge of the main track.

The Problem
The problem is that this only works when the second track bends to the right of the main track. If the second track bends to the left of the main track, those hypotenuses no longer line up, so a more trial and error approach is needed.

Suggested Solution
Allow us to have the hypotenuses run in the opposite direction instead:

The main advantage of this approach is that it removes a lot of the educated guesswork which can lead to a lot of frustration among designers.

edit: Even better would be the ability to set the direction per cross section, in case the diagonals need to be in one direction for leaving a track, and the other direction for rejoining.

 

[woochoo]

Hey Brendon, how about an automatic settings capacity based off the details from rF export for the ISI scene viewer? or even incorporating that into BTB for a fully accurate rfactor rendering preview, if BTB doesn't have that already. Just putting it out there, i don't know how you do it.

and on the topic of fully accurate previews: the Sun tool. can we have it so we can set a time of day in the tool bar, rather than having to zooooooooom out a long way (usually) to 'physically' move the sun position. the sun tool is a great help in 'verifying' terrain polygons, so if we could keep the view on the same place while moving the sun, i think it would improve the user interface. at least up/down arrows for the time of day, in maybe half hour increments?, if not 5/10 minute increments.

 

[banger]

objects from user xpacks, to be able to removed all that instances if there an error with it,eg grass,cones,poles.tents

spend an hour looking for a missing texture texture (grass2) in roada57a still haven't found this.

ed

updated: found the error ,turn out to be not what i was looking for so is this giving out,false reports.has i found out it was one of the textures in a completly diffrent Dae building objects,not the terrain?

 

[bigcarva]

Xpacks import .GMT

 

[R Soul]

I'd like to suggest the ability to deselect objects from a multiple object selection in the same way we can deselect terrain vertices, as discussed in this thread:
http://forum.racedepartment.com/bobs-track-builder/17711-removing-things-multiple-selection.html

 

[woochoo]

i think i read Brendon was looking into, and maybe having success, with texture blending on roads. whether or not that means we can blend between road and terrain as well i don't know. but it would be useful if we could blend wall textures as well.

i'm guessing it might not be possible but if we could blend between three (yes, 3) textures on the same polygons, well, that would be pretty spiffy too, even if one of them HAD to be the background image (eg. google earth).

keep it up, but don't burn out

 

[ComeOverGaming]

Yeah, you are right ...

For a "perfect" track modelling software, Whe need a Road/Terrain bending utlility and another tool, something similar to UVW Maping in 3DS Max :dance2:

PD: That's only my personal opinion Brendon :wink2:

 

[jay_p_666]

Yep... UVW Unwrap and support of multitextures plate.

 

[banger]

hello piddy,

is there a way to use a selected terrain nodes on a double click basis,instead of the one click,i try three attempts on stopping the terrain from being selected into diffrent area.while raising it seems to selected a nodes on the other side of the track,of last place i was editing.

i know zmod2 has alock feature that may help.selected nodes and press the spacebar.and no other nodes can be selected,until spacebar pressed again. it happens quite frequently,you edited and exported and fine a huge pyamid in the mid of the track..:laugh2:

ed

 

[woochoo]

i get the 'pyramid' effect sometimes when i'm selecting terrain nodes in 3d view. if i'm selecting multiple nodes, sometimes i think i miss the node, so i click again and once i have all my nodes and move them, i realise that when i thought i had missed, i've actually slected a node on the other side of the track, not the road, the other side of the track. so something like 'ignore backfacing' would be a help. i think i've already said this, so i should say it again, but it ties in nicely with the previous post.

a more advanced mapping feature like uvw would be good, i agree.

and please return the option to select texture or sold shadows for objects in BTB.

 

[buckets]

i get the 'pyramid' effect sometimes when i'm selecting terrain nodes in 3d view. if i'm selecting multiple nodes, sometimes i think i miss the node, so i click again and once i have all my nodes and move them, i realise that when i thought i had missed, i've actually slected a node on the other side of the track, not the road, the other side of the track.

Assuming these are different terrain sections then you can simply hide the ones you aren't working on. This stops you selecting the wrong nodes.

 

[woochoo]

Assuming these are different terrain sections then you can simply hide the ones you aren't working on. This stops you selecting the wrong nodes.

that's very true and a good point, but normally when i do terrain work i'll do a bit here, and a bit there, and them some over there, so i always have all sections selected, just so i don't have to search through the list of pieces (there are quite a few).

it doesn't happen that often, so i'm more likely to be careful and just deal with it than bother finding the right piece in the list, which is why i would prefer an ignore backface. i guess being lazy doesn't justify a feature request. doh.

 

[Kyle Constable]

The inclusion of trees in BTB have helped massively in getting rid of the barren apocalypse look, but it still seems a bit dull. Is it possible to get a 'people planter' and possibly a generic grandstand in the next update?

 

[Steely69]

Re the advanced randomness with terrain adding. Can't quite figure exactly how it works now but it would be nice if the min/max value were based on the length of each panel segment incrementing with each successive panel. For example if your first panel was a metre long and you wanted it to go up and down 200mm you just enter +/- 20% and so on. It would also be really nice to have horizontal randomness similar to the track sections, even if it was only on the first terrain panel. I reckon you could get some really interesting/nice results with a little more control over these settings.