Tracks Pacific Coast 1.0

[garyjpaterson]

Unfortunately this project has hit a bit of a speedbump... Due to something I've done... a modifier or something in 3DS, my terrain mesh has gone faceted...
I've unified the vert normals.. which solves the facetting problem and makes the terrain look pretty normal... Apart from the "normal seams". But the terrain shadows have gone loopy... and the temp trees I'm using to test a few things... don't cast the texture's alpha transparency outline on to the terrain... instead resulting in "blocky" shadows.

Also on my road transition textures if I have depth mode on eNoZWrite (the setting I want to use)... the transition textures disappear so I'm using eDepthNormal instead... I'm pretty sure these two things are linked... and somewhere the terrain mesh is slightly ****ed!

As everything goes on to the terrain... I'm not about to put a ton of things in only for them to have to come out again if I need to do something drastic to the terrain mesh. Until I solve this it's pretty much on standby.. B***ocks!

This is how crap they look in the editor... I've also tested in game and they look just as crap
View attachment 208413
It's a shame as this mansion road is really fun to drift down.

I think that that is just the kseditor reverting back to its low res default (if what I'm seeing is the problem). To fix, maximise the window the go to "layout - save current", then restart the editor - should look a lot better

 

[ALB123]

Oh boy...I really hope Gary has the solution for you. You've put your heart into this project! Things are really starting to look better and better. I absolutely love that round driveway with the Yellow 488. Those pavers look so real it's like I can already feel them.

Oh, even if Gary was correct about the Editor. You might still want to think about backing up your project folder daily, just in case... I'm sure you had a mini heart attack.

 

[Phoenix77]

I think that that is just the kseditor reverting back to its low res default (if what I'm seeing is the problem). To fix, maximise the window the go to "layout - save current", then restart the editor - should look a lot better

Thanks a ton Gary for the simple tip to have a high res editor.... I never knew that and have been looking at a low res editor ever since I've used it... what a dumbass! lol Looks much better now...

That wasn't the problem though.... It seems that the terrain mesh doesn't want to work with alpha maps... and the faces of my test Y trees are casting the shadow...

not the alpha channel of the texture... Hopefully it's a checkbox somewhere that I've missed. The trees are using eAlphaTest and the kstree shader.

I would have thought it's the tree... but that's been the same the whole time, and
also the roads side panels NM alpha transparency is no longer working with depth mode eNoZWrite... which it was.
So I'm using eDepthNormal instead which looks weird in the editor but works in game.

I think things might have gone wonky after a pro-optimizer modifier... But the normals seem to get messed up after attachs / detachs, welds and other commands.

 

[Phoenix77]

Oh boy...I really hope Gary has the solution for you. You've put your heart into this project! Things are really starting to look better and better. I absolutely love that round driveway with the Yellow 488. Those pavers look so real it's like I can already feel them.

Oh, even if Gary was correct about the Editor. You might still want to think about backing up your project folder daily, just in case... I'm sure you had a mini heart attack.

Thanks mate, hopefully somewhere I'll find why it's gone funky... Glad you're liking the improvements... It's a whole different road now...
The good news is I have a ton of backups... The not so good news is... I'd have no idea how far back to go to revert back... And I've made a ton of changes that I wouldn't want to go back on.

 

[garyjpaterson]

Ah ok, wasnt sure what the actual problem was as I'm not really familiar with track making.

 

[Phoenix77]

Ah ok, wasnt sure what the actual problem was as I'm not really familiar with track making.

No worries mate, with things like this happening... it appears I'm not really familiar with track making either... Hopefully I'll find it to be a relatively simple fix...

Making the normals explicit seems to have made the terrain shadows at low light look better, but it feels like the terrain isn't receiving the trees alpha transparency for use with shadows... The alpha channel is working for the trees transparency though... weird!

With the terrains NM and the side panel detail and the better road textures the sense of speed is very immersive... so that's something positive for me to focus on before I launch my computer out of the window! lol

Also while looking into what's going, on I'm revising my trees... with extra faces in the vertical... which makes the shading much smoother. It's just a shame that the alpha isn't casting a shadow on the terrain!

 

[movo.]

Have you set the KsAlphaRef (Last value of the KsTree shader) to for example 0.5? That transforms the shadow into the shape of the tree.

 

[Phoenix77]

Have you set the KsAlphaRef (Last value of the KsTree shader) to for example 0.5? That transforms the shadow into the shape of the tree.

Thanks mate, that's awesome... that's done the trick with the trees... somewhere I must have had a brain fart and changed it lol So many settings to get right... and I've made so many changes. Thanks SO much

The side panels still look weird in the editor... but they work in game...

 

[movo.]

Nice one! No problem, that happens a lot to me too. Side panels seem to be missing a texture, or maybe a BlendMode setting? Anyways if it works ingame, nothing wrong then I guess.

 

[Phoenix77]

Nice one! No problem, that happens a lot to me too. Side panels seem to be missing a texture, or maybe a BlendMode setting? Anyways if it works ingame, nothing wrong then I guess.

Very nice one pal, a simple detail... But one I would have taken ages to find after a lot of swearing I've obviously done it before as my trees were casting ok shadows before... But where I lost my persistence file... I've obviously missed it out. Again many thanks... Top man

I'm sure anyone else who is looking forward to the next release also thanks you

The side panels disappear if I use eNoZWrite for some reason (It used to work fine).... which I did want to use. But they work in game with eDepthNormal so that will do for now

 

[Phoenix77]

I was attempting to put some cracks on to the main highway...

They show up in the editor, but not in game...
To save time F'in about (I was going to sync the physical mesh to these extra layers)
I'll have to leave things like these to a future update when I have less to attend to... and I can work out what exactly has gone wonky (technical term ) probably the same wonky thing that makes the side panels look crap in the editor.

 

[Phoenix77]

Finally a better Route 1 sign...

 

[Phoenix77]

Currently subdividing the physical roadmesh to 15 million polys...
then applying 20 displacement maps to random approx 500m road sections...
then will pro-optimize everything back down to under 900k.

The visual mesh which gets rendered will be around 49k polys.

I like this, you might like this... my computer currently doesn't like this

 

[Phoenix77]

Probably a bit hard to tell the subtle height variations in this shot...

Put the specular up a bit so you can see something.
But I'm aiming to get it so you can feel the centreline as you cross it and an undulating, wave like height variation.. nothing too sharp.

After I finish this, and get some barriers in... I might make a test version available.

Am I looking forward to blasting the NFS cars down here...
It's going to be tough work re-recording the AI lines

 

[Phoenix77]

A nice bonus with the Pro-Optimizer modifier is...
It downscales depending on the shape of the object with it's crazy paving thing...

Combine that with with 20 different displacement maps... and every single bump should be different. There should be no repeating pattern over 23kms

As you might notice the centreline is also not the same constant height difference, depending on how the road geometry drops by the line... or doesn't...
Hopefully this will work out how I want it to

 

[Phoenix77]

Having some strange issue with the displace modifiers for the FFB mesh...
The road surface texture is UV'd ok (stretched along the V)... But when I use the "Use Existing Mapping" checkbox on the displace modifier... certain road sections UV's seems messed up, not sure why?

Possibly this could be a simple thing... I hope so as it's a bit of a pain in the.... especially as it takes a while for the displace modifiers to do their thing on 88 different sections! Sometimes I love 3DS Max... sometimes I want to slap it! lol

EDIT: To avoid being held up I'm taking the risk of using the mostly correct HR FFB to record AI lines... as I'm reasonably confident that if I keep the same number of edges at the road edge... The AI lines will still work.

 

[Hachiroku_88PL]

You put so much effort into this, amazing. Hope those problems will solve soon

 

[Phoenix77]

Thanks mate, really glad you're liking it... and that you've followed my journey to get the quality higher.

I've got the HR FFB working pretty well... not perfect yet...
The FFB mesh has a very subtle feeling so the tiny sections where the displace has gone a bit wonky doesn't distract from the feeling of crossing the double yellows, and also feeling the white lines as you get it tight in on the apexs.
It's good enough for me to move on to putting the barriers in now.

On the 1st page of this thread the core of the track looked like this

This is where the core of the track is now... a little bit of an upgrade

Ok there are no objects apart from the roadsigns at the moment...
But there are going to be so many trees that I need to wait until I can organise them properly into layers, for performance reasons.

Got to love this car, it's perfect for this road

 

[Phoenix77]

All the guardrails are back in...

But they're not everywhere so they won't always help.

 

[aphidgod]

Rear left looks very sad.