Tracks Nisseringen Denmark from LIDAR data. (Pointcloud) WIP

[DanTDBV]

New picture, as I have discovered that, the Suzuki Liana is a ripoff.

A rallycross/peoples race track close to Næstved in Denmark.

My main motivation for doing this, is 5, 3 lap heats with myself behind the wheel for 3 of them. I had great fun.
It is also a way to learn the ropes, before I start on the Copenhagen Historic GrandPrix track in Fælledparken.

The ball is beginning to roll again on this project, so I decided that it was time to put it up here.

A little video showing the track IRL.

I have LIDAR/Point Cloud data of the terrain. I am creating the landcape from this.

To do:
Well, nearly all of it.

I have finnished my first part!

The IPE 140 post's that usually holds the Guardrails. I have made a 75cm and 100cm version.

If you are interested in what has gone before, head overhere:

http://assettocorsamods.net/threads/nisseringen-denmark-lidar-landscape.420/

Currently working on Nisseringen and CHGP Fælledparken

Copyrigt notice needed:
Copyright notice Nisseringen Point cloud and Ortho photo
As required, according to this site: (In Danish)
http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/vilkår-og-betingelser
Contains data from Geodatastyrelsen and Danske kommuner Fot-data
Ekstracted lokation : Nisseringen Næstved
DHM/Point cloud
DLD 14/11-2015 Punktsky_612_68_LAZ_UTM32-ETRS89
Ortho photo
DLD 27/11-2015 370_ECW_UTM32-EUREF89
http://download.kortforsyningen.dk/content/geodataprodukter
DLD = Download date
DanTDBV D@nN (My photo and film signature)

Yeah I am running tripple screens.

Happy modding.

 

[DanTDBV]

I have ditched nearly all the terrain work, that I have made so far. I have gone back to reducing the mesh, created from the Point Cloud, as much as possible with MeshMixer.

I am partway in this process. I have deleted those parts of the mesh that is not visible from the track.

After a long stint researching shipping containers, I have begun producing the different parts that go into them. I have found drawings with precise measurements of the parts.

I am going to create Standard and High Qube versions of 10, 20 and 40” containers. Both with and without interiors. Adding to that will be 40” ones with extensions and doors in both ends. Those where used on the Copenhagen Historic GrandPrix track in Fælledparken and are in use at their Bellahøj Park track.

When I am finnished, I will release the full Container pack, with all of the lose parts. Could be usefull to Container home builders.

Guardrails are beginning to show some promise. I am in the beginning of experimenting with textures for them. I am looking into what I can do, with normal maps and transparency.

I have created the galvanized texture in Photoshop CC and save it as a dds.

That is all from me this time.

Happy modding

 

[LilSki]

I am no way an expert about Lidar as I am still working on my first Lidar based track. I found it best to simply lay out my own landscape and then simply shrink it to the data.

You can see here how I laid out splines which I then converted to mesh which got shrunk to the data.

I then had some change of plans and ended up building the kart track and changing the paddock area so this is the end result.

By no means am I telling you what to do but just thought I would share my process of dealing with landscaping and lidar.

Best of luck!

EDIT: This shot shows comparison between my mesh and data

 

[DanTDBV]

Thank you LilSki. I need that.

I very much appreciate it.

Your results are definitely to aim for.

I have not really looked into splines yet, as my thought has been, that I have the surface and I hope I can use that. That I have not fully understood how it is done, has also made me shy away from splining.

I do have some ideas that I will try, before any attempts with splines.

For now I will reduce the mesh, from CloudCompare in MeshMixer, until I have a base I can experiment from.

This is where I am now

I was close to asking about the recommended tris/quad size, for landcape items.

And Hey presto! You have shown me the answer I was looking for.

I would like to use this opportunity, to thank You for all the help and great work, that you have been giving here and in other places.

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

Reducing the mesh, is trucking away. In the beginning I had 2.112.769 tris. Now it is 448.343 and I still have a way to go.

I don't know why, but I seem to be seeing trianglees everywhere

 

[IMrIMike]

View attachment 167214

Is that....is that....the infamous Suzuki Liana

 

[DanTDBV]

It was, I have just discovered, that it is a ripped model, so I will not be using it, to show off my work anymore.

 

[DanTDBV]

I have been working a little more on my IPE 140 posts. (Ye guardrail hangers)

My original was 76 tris, but right angle edges, that makes them sharp, when appending it to another project. As I understand it, that is not so good.

Then I went to town, with the bevel tool. Crtl b, scroll wheel to ad loops.

With 2 loops for each outer edge, I ended up with 636 tris.

Feeling that is a little to much, I tried without any loops and got 216 tris.

My gut feeling is to stick with, the 216 tris version.

Only 2 things left to do on them:

Banging them up with dents, bends and scrapes. I will do this with textures and rearranging the mesh, for the more serious injuries.

Find out the smartest, right way to ad color variations, to them throughout the track.
There is colorvariations, from production batch to production batch, from different producers, sunbleaching, rust, mud thrown from the cars etc.

My head is spinning around multiple materials, multiple textures, overlays and what have you not.

I will need to do the same with the guardrails.

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

I want to know!

Is it possible to mount a trailer behind the car in AC?

I wanna try this.

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

It is now time to put on the Blender cap.

I have reached the point, where I have saved 5 different % versions, of the last racesurface reduction.
I have chosen one of them and have saved the results, of 5 different smoothing operations.
Then I have exported the one, that looks most promissing as an obj file.

I am now down to 84807 triangles, with about 20000 for the racesurfaces.

I feel that I am close to, staying in Blender for a while, with some stints in the editor.

I am happy that it is going in the right direction.

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

I have split up the area in different parts and sectors.

I have begun creating my first textures. I have bought Luke Ahearn's 3D Game Textures and are going to use the exersizes in it, to create a base library of textures.

I borrowed it on the library and it is in a format, that I can easily follow and understand.

The gray's and grass, is however created with, the help from online tutorials, tweaked to my liking.
The splotchy gray is from an abandonned attempt to use my older Orthophoto.

Yeah I just noticed the black dots. A PS clonetool mistake by me. I like the one below better anyhow.

I have decided to create all, of my textures from scratch. Then I will have no troubles, if I share them.

I am using Smooth Vertex to flattening, a lot of jagged edges, all around the different pieces.

It does shrink the outline somewhat, but I am going to create smoother, cleaner transisions between the areas anyhow, so I don't care. I am also cleaning up, a lot of unnessecary tris, around the edges of the physical meshes.

I have created a new Orthophoto and will try to add it, to distant parts of the landscape.
I consider using it as a background image, to tweak the track placement, but I think I will wait, until I have feedback from those who use the IRL track.

Original TIFF is 148MB.

This is going very well.

Baking of textures however, is not cooperating at all. I will return to that, in my next installment.

Ohh yeah, driving around with camping trailer is possible in BeamNG.

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

Some parts of this project are crusing along smoothly. Others have hit a brickwall.

Reducing the landscape is going to my satisfaction.

Splining the spline spline.

In revisiting splines again, I've discovered, that not knowing which type of curve to chose, is what is holding me back. There are just to many choises.

So, what curve should I use for what purpose?

I have spent a fair amount of time researching a car, that I want to use on this track.

Yes I have a lot of stuff in the works. That is bacause I need to have different things I can jump to, when I get frustrated with something that are not cooperating. Then I can return to it later when the temper has cooled and I can look at it rationally again.

I will let the brickwall wait until next time.

Happy modding

 

[LilSki]

I'm a fan of the Bezier curve. That is how I have done all of my tracks.

 

[DanTDBV]

Thank you LilSki.

Now I know where to start. Splines watch out, I am on my way.

Ohh, well I have some issues I need to work out first. That willl be in another post.

 

[TrailSlide]

may I ask how you obtained the lidar data? I'm wondering if there are now more cost effective ways to do it

 

[DanTDBV]

You may ask.

And you will also recieve. In this tut I show where and how to get it:
http://www.racedepartment.com/threads/getting-danish-landscape-information-tutorial-part-1.130987/

For future projects, I will be following LilSki's advices. The way I am doing it now is very timeconsuming, but it is also a way to get more basic mesh handling practice.

 

[DanTDBV]

The brickwall..... Yes.


I think that my Blender is not set up correctly, to creating for Asetto Corsa.

It looks to me like things like lightning, basic worldsettings, rendersettings and who knows what else is off the mark.

A while ago I was fighting for 1½ week with Texture baking and it was not working as expected.

I was trying to bake a diffuse tex of my guardrail, with the mounting hardware and the corrosponding normal map to a clean rail.

I also wanted to try to bake the rail, to a flat plane together with a normal map, to see how that works.

I followed 5 tutorials to the letter, all in Blender render.

I didn't get any usefull results, no matter what and how many times I tried.
I had one where the bake repeatedly only would go to 13% and then stop.

Something was wrong, but what?

Somewhere it was mentioned, that the baker's are using the rendersettings. Can't remember where.
I tried to set up the camera and hit the renderbutton. Blarrrhhh. The result looked even worse than this render.

It is not only renders that does not look good. When I have objects close to each other I also get issues in the viewport.

So I need to set up the correct foundation in Blender.

This have made me thinking about, how any help could benefit the most people.

How would you guys that are repeatedly praised, for your outstanding work feel about it, if I where to create a thread, with an invitation for you, to post the basic settings, for the software that you are using?

Happy modding

 

[Stereo]

I think this covers the basics of how I have Blender configured (purely for game export, not rendering within it - that's a whole other set of complications, esp. for transparent objects. For AO & bumpmap bakes this is enough)
So for example with your guardrail bake, I would only make the AO & bumpmap textures in Blender, and combine them with the metal flake image using GIMP.

I do a lot of vertical resizing depending what I'm working on cause it's easier than opening & closing the extra panels imo.
Z & alt-Z are handy shortcuts, Z switches between solid & wireframe, alt-Z switches between textured & solid. I think Multitexture is why my textured mode is unlit (it needs lights set up a certain way which I haven't done)


I was planning to model up the radiator and bake it to a simpler model soon so I'll be able to comment on that process. One thing to keep in mind is that Blender's normals and AC's normals don't really work in the same way so you shouldn't expect amazing things. Stick to baking details onto flat sheets. Or if you really need to do a full object bake, switch from Tangent to World space normals & in the ksEditor use "nmObjectSpace = 1" in the shader (only available on some shaders), but this is a big pain to work with.

 

[DanTDBV]

Thank you Stereo.
I will try and see what this will do for me.
I will look forward to learn more about your radiator baking.

I will be looking around the different AC forums for more baking information.

I had a little scare yesterday. Was adding my ortho photo as a texture to distant parts of the landscape mesh.

Suddenly all objects where black in texture mode.

It looked okay in rendered mode, but What the heck!

Turns out that I had hit w in object mode and turned on Restrict Render Unselected. When I turned it of I was back to normal again.

Phew!

Happy modding

 

[DanTDBV]

I have hit a snag that is blocking my landscape work

My 3D Cursor is no longer moving to the clicked point in User Perspective.

It seems to have a mind of its own when I click to place it.

The distance from where I click, to where it appears varries. The pictures show the most extreme case, where it seems to appear behind me.

It makes the work somewhat difficult.

It is working correctly in Ortho.

I think that I may have activated something by accident, but I have no idea what.

I have been doing a lot of Lasso Select and Shift Select lately, while doing retopology on this mesh.

It used to work as it should, but suddenly while working, this od behavior started.

It has happened once before with another file where I saved it, thinking that it was a Blender snag that would go away by restarting Blender. It didn't.

I opened an older file and redid the work, until it happened again.
This time I exited Blender without saving the file. Didn't matter, the behavior is somehow embedded in the file.
It is only in these 2 files, that this is happening. All others are working as they should.

Using Ortho could be a workaround, but I prefer to work in User Perspective. Also if I hit the same mouse/key combo and it happens again, I am sunk.

I have tried:

• Factory reset
• Dissabling and activating all addons
• Upgraded to 2.78c
• Changing mouseclick to right and back to left.
• Dissabling and activating:
  Cursor Depth, Auto Depth
  Zoom to Mouse Position
  Rotate Around Selection

If anyone want to look, I have uploaded the file here:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/zggo71eifnvv98j/Nis 2302 2017.blend?dl=0

Happy modding.