AC Modding Questions Thread

[A3DR]

After a while of poking around, fixed this problem. Turns out it didn't like the geometry sharing the same space as the inner windscreen. Not even close, had to put them about 2,5mm apart. Strange, as the original car and TRD versions have both geometries (outer and inner glass) in exactly the same position....anyway, just thought of sharing in case it ever happens to someone else.

 

[BrianB]

A long time ago I posted in the what are you working on thread about scaling issues I was having. I recently came back to give it another try, but the problem still persists. I tried everything that was suggested in the other thread, without succes.

The problem I had was the scaling of the wheels. For some reason the wheels were extremely big.
Now I decided to export the example fbx from kunos, to see if it also gave me scaling issues. This time the wheels were the right size, but the car itself was tiny.

Now I'm wondering if it's still a mistake on my side, or if 3DS max 2017 has some sort of issue.
So, before I try installing an older version of 3DS, is anyone here using 2017 3DS without issues?

 

[garyjpaterson]

A long time ago I posted in the what are you working on thread about scaling issues I was having. I recently came back to give it another try, but the problem still persists. I tried everything that was suggested in the other thread, without succes.

The problem I had was the scaling of the wheels. For some reason the wheels were extremely big.
Now I decided to export the example fbx from kunos, to see if it also gave me scaling issues. This time the wheels were the right size, but the car itself was tiny.

Now I'm wondering if it's still a mistake on my side, or if 3DS max 2017 has some sort of issue.
So, before I try installing an older version of 3DS, is anyone here using 2017 3DS without issues?

Have you tried making new wheel dummys, but don't rescale them once they are created?

 

[BrianB]

Have you tried making new wheel dummys, but don't rescale them once they are created?

Yes, what I did was: create a dummy, align it using the align tool (making sure match scale is not selected). No other moving/rotating/scaling.

EDIT: after trying some completely random things I think I know whats happening. If I scale the wheels down to 0,01 the size, they are the right size in game. So for some reason when exporting the wheel dummies are scaled up by 100, no matter what I do.

 

[Stereo]

FBX format technically has centimeters as the units but AC's editor ignores this and does the standard thing where 1 unit is 1 metre so you have to be careful to not have your editor automatically convert to centimetres.

 

[garyjpaterson]

Anyone know how to sort this ugly shadow situation above the tyres? Its like there are holes in the wheel wells, but I'm pretty sure the mesh it closed.

Any shader settings that can improve it, looks pretty bad (dark shadow on top of tyre surface, more specifically the fact that much of the tyre isn't in shadow, which it should be).

I have this on all 4 wheels btw.

 

[A3DR]

It's something about the shadow bias thing on the graphics.ini file... but even the official cars have it, is some kind of strange issue with the shaders. I've tried different values but always got weird results.
Make sure the "shadowbiasmult" value on the paint shader is 5 or 7, that seems to fix things a bit. Also that the underside geometry is watertight.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Not an AC question as such, but AC related.

In the attached picture of my BAC Mono suspension, the green lines are the pushrods from the suspension, the blue line with zigzags are the shocks, and the purple triangles are rockers / cams. BAC site gives spring weights of 325lb for the front and 375lb for the rear. In AC, would I need to make the springs stronger by the ratio of each rocker, or weaker? Front ratio is 1:1.76 and rear is 1:1.37.

I'm sorry if this a very simple theory but my head is spinning with everything I have learned of the last few weeks about cars in AC...

 

[Stereo]

That multiplies the spring, so front would be 1.76^2 * rate.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

So to replicate the real spring in AC do I need to use real rate * 1.76? As it will be a linear force?

 

[Stereo]

You'd also need to take into account the motion ratio of the pushrod connecting to the suspension which'll probably be less than 1.

 

[Ben O'Bro]

Normal maps.

Hi guys.

I have to ask about normal maps, you know the blue stuff
I don't know what to select on the photoshop filter options. Result is different in 3ds (vray) render and inside the game. I just tried the Mustang BOSS from our genius guys here, and it's amazing. And the tyres... they look really good. So i'm asking for some tips here
If it's settings wrong in the plugin for the normal maps (i tried few combination of invert X Y Z, but never managed good result), and which one of black or white should represent the high or low part before converting it to normal

See what i got so far:
the side is okay, but doesn't really matter whether it's upside down or not. Where the thread really seems ok from some angle, but others look like some holes are popping off

ps; don't mind the Hoosier, it's just temporary old stuff from my archives

 

[Stereo]

Unfortunately AC's not actually consistent with normalmaps so I have a set of test maps I use to speed up trial and error. X and Y are swapped in some of the shaders.

e.g. this is for ksperpixel_multimap_nmdetail's detail normalmap channel. Load test map in ksEditor, check that it fits with the current shader (move sun around, the arrows are 45 degree slopes in each direction, but it's kinda easier to tell on the straight lines whether they behave like ridges or indents) then match it up to the texture. For example your tire texture is rotated 90 degrees CCW from this assuming everything visible in the tread is indents.

I find it a lot easier to tell when X and Y are swapped with this sort of image than a more usual bumpmap where they can both kinda look the same from some angles.


Also you cannot mirror UV coordinates, that'll make the normalmap work backwards, everything has to be unwrapped the same way (so text reads left to right etc.)

 

[garyjpaterson]

Seems to be centered on the driver or maybe steering wheel, assuming I've found the same camera (start of the pit straight on Silverstone International)

Btw, I forgot to say - you're correct, its the steering wheel dummy that the cameras focus on

 

[BrianB]

Hey, I'm having some issues with the collider. In the CM Showroom the collider looks fine:

But in game it's as if it's a meter to the right. So when the right side hits a wall way there still is about a meter between the wall and the car and when the left side hits a wall it goes through the wall and glitches through the floor.
The collider is within the tri limit, has the GL material and it looks like it's in the right place.
Any ideas on what I might have done wrong?

 

[Amir Vodokotlic]

Would it be possible to build fully electric car in AC?

By using kers charge as its power.

The tesla model that was released 3 years ago has data folder with all .ini open not locked to .acd file.

So I thought of rebuilding it to be fully kers powered car.

Have engine that produces virtually no power, so it will load in ac.

Than have bunch of kers/ers controllers.

 

[Ben O'Bro]

Hey, I'm having some issues with the collider. In the CM Showroom the collider looks fine:

But in game it's as if it's a meter to the right. So when the right side hits a wall way there still is about a meter between the wall and the car and when the left side hits a wall it goes through the wall and glitches through the floor.
The collider is within the tri limit, has the GL material and it looks like it's in the right place.
Any ideas on what I might have done wrong?

Are you using 3Dsmax?
Be sure to reset xform on the object (it clears all the transformations rotation scale etc.) and have a pivot point as explained in the PDF found in sdk, with the y up (if i remember correctly) (wait i screenshot mine)

then the export in meters same as your car
i don't remember anything special to do

check colliders.ini maybe ?

[COLLIDER_0]
CENTRE=0 ,0 ,0     ; where the center of the collision box will be placed. 0,0,0 XYZ reference is the CoG
SIZE=0 ,0 ,0        ; the size of the collision box in XYZ meters

 

[Ryno917]

Would it be possible to build fully electric car in AC?

By using kers charge as its power.

The tesla model that was released 3 years ago has data folder with all .ini open not locked to .acd file.

So I thought of rebuilding it to be fully kers powered car.

Have engine that produces virtually no power, so it will load in ac.

Than have bunch of kers/ers controllers.

When it comes to a video game, there's really no difference between an electric and a gasoline powered car. Change the power curves to match an electric motor, remove the weight of fuel and instead have the dead weight of the battery which doesn't deplete as its energy is consumed, replace engine sounds with a whizz and you've got an electric car.

Also, there's no such thing as a fully KERS powered car, that is physically impossible to do. A car can not recover as much energy as it uses, so the car still has to have batteries on board. If it were possible, then there'd be no range anxiety with electric road cars.

 

[Amir Vodokotlic]

True but would be fun to actually do it correctly. Considering kunos 918 can be driven with battery only for little bit.

Also it doesn't need to recover energy. If you return to pits the KERS charge resets to full.

Have really high discharge time. etc.

 

[Ben O'Bro]

Two questions guys,

I can't seem to remove the CINTURE_ON from displaying when you get into the race, although it's not shown in the previews or studio
Any clue what i missed ?

the second, hard to show in a screenshot, hence my beautiful talent artist below
to display the heat coming from the back of the car, how do i set the position of this effect ?