Cars [WIP] Caterham

[Ben O'Bro]

This car still gets a lot of km on my setup, I'm a big fan of this car.
I still hope the little issue can be fixed where in Content Manager I keep getting: Total driven: 0.0 km. (Clamshell/RHD/LHD)
I know that I can check in the odometer app, but I have that enabled, so it would be nice to check instantly in CM though... please, pretty please ?

thanks for the feedback,
for some reason the km on the 165 works in CM, i have no idea why the SS dosen't :/
i'll try and send a message to CM author, see if he has a clue!

 

[Fanapryde]

thanks for the feedback,
for some reason the km on the 165 works in CM, i have no idea why the SS dosen't :/
i'll try and send a message to CM author, see if he has a clue!

I believe it must be CM related, since I discovered yesterday that all three of the Cats now show the driven distance...
Was going to edit my post, but you beat me to it.
Thanks again for the great cars !

 

[Ben O'Bro]

ok it may look like crap
but that's a big step
spent the evening redoing that **** of a ***** ***** **** unwrap.
I hate unwrap.

ps, that's the academy2017

 

[ALB123]

@Ben O'Bro I have never gotten the hang of unwrapping. I've thrown models away and rebuilt them differently just because I couldn't get it to texture properly. I haven't done any serious 3D work in several years, but I still occasionally dream about applying the UVW Map Modifier in 3dsmax and wake up screaming.

 

[Phoenix77]

spent the evening redoing that **** of a ***** ***** **** unwrap.
I hate unwrap.

Well done on getting that sorted... I'm pretty much allergic to anything UV related...
except if I described it there would be far more ****s!

 

[garyjpaterson]

Well done on getting that sorted... I'm pretty much allergic to anything UV related...
except if I described it there would be far more ****s!

I used to be the same, in fact it held up my Transit project for so long I almost gave up modding altogether!

Nowadays I really quite enjoy unwrapping, sort of brainless work I do when I can't be bothered being creative but want to feel productive! Usually do it while listening to a podcast or something

 

[Phoenix77]

I used to be the same, in fact it help up my Transit project for so long I almost gave up modding altogether!
Nowadays I really quite enjoy unwrapping, sort of brainless work I do when I can't be bothered being creative but want to feel productive! Usually do it while listening to a podcast or something

Well it's great that you stuck with it mate
The precision skills all you car modders have is almost like some kind of magic... very impressive
I've opened up the UVW unwrap modifier just to have a look... and I basically thought... What the..... lol
One day I'm sure I'll get my head round it... At least I've got my UV skills to the point I can do a billboard texture or several... quite a few things, including my Photoshop skills are starting to click into place now

And listening to things while working on mods is the way to do it... The amount of things I've listened to and not actually watched is pretty vast

 

[garyjpaterson]

Well it's great that you stuck with it mate
The precision skills all you car modders have is almost like some kind of magic... very impressive
I've opened up the UVW unwrap modifier just to have a look... and I basically thought... What the..... lol
One day I'm sure I'll get my head round it... At least I've got my UV skills to the point I can do a billboard texture or several... quite a few things, including my Photoshop skills are starting to click into place now

And listening to things while working on mods is the way to do it... The amount of things I've listened to and not actually watched is pretty vast

I don't really know best practice for tracks, but on cars its really simple. What took me so long is every tutorial I looked at was telling me different things, so I never knew what was right or wrong, so i quickly got overwhelmed and gave up.

In reality there is more than one way to go about it, it just takes some time to gian the experience to know what works best for you and what you're working on. And that means getting it wrong a few times first, which is always a bit daunting!

Stick with it, the more you do it the easier it gets! Soon you'll not even be thinking about it.

Yeah i get through a lot of music or youtube streams nowadays!

 

[Phoenix77]

I don't really know best practice for tracks, but on cars its really simple. What took me so long is every tutorial I looked at was telling me different things, so I never knew what was right or wrong, so i quickly got overwhelmed and gave up.

In reality there is more than one way to go about it, it just takes some time to gian the experience to know what works best for you and what you're working on. And that means getting it wrong a few times first, which is always a bit daunting!

Stick with it, the more you do it the easier it gets! Soon you'll not even be thinking about it.

Yeah i get through a lot of music or youtube streams nowadays!

I'm not sure where I need to use unwrap... So I'll leave that for now... Yeah I know what you're saying about tutorials telling you different things... My main thing has been finding out which bits of Max I need to know... and not only that... what the f***ing thing is called

Adjusting pivots is still a bit confusing... rotating vertex normals seems to go nutty for some reason... and normal seams are a bit of a pain in the... shame it couldn't just unify all of it!
But on the plus side... at least I know what a vertex normal is now

The textures, including tree billboards etc are really going to help when I go back to LA Canyons... and when I get a future Bixby Creek section of PCH done... might be much much faster... also the simple intersections on Pacific are teaching me things that will obviously help the Canyons sideroads The spacing tool also makes putting the chevron signs in so easy... Now if I can only stop myself collapsing the stack so often... loosing splines etc.

The current work I've done on Pacific has been slow and tedious as the terrain mesh was really messy... to the point it might have been quicker starting from scratch... Using a scatter plugin to put thousands and thousands of trees in will hopefully be much more fun

Oh... and if I had a quid for everytime I got something wrong... I'd be seriously loaded lol

 

[garyjpaterson]

The textures, including tree billboards etc are really going to help when I go back to LA Canyons... and when I get a future Bixby Creek section of PCH done... might be much much faster... also the simple intersections on Pacific are teaching me things that will obviously help the Canyons sideroads

I'm salivating already at just the thought of LA Canyons... even more so these days with the NFS cars by Dan and the 550 I'm making..

But yeah, seems like a lot to get your head round in track making, car modelling sounds a lot easier! Maybe more complex modelling, but it seems like a simpler process to get there!

 

[Phoenix77]

I'm salivating already at just the thought of LA Canyons... even more so these days with the NFS cars by Dan and the 550 I'm making..

But yeah, seems like a lot to get your head round in track making, car modelling sounds a lot easier! Maybe more complex modelling, but it seems like a simpler process to get there!

lol Glad you like the Canyons so much... and it's good that you still have the fastest lap crown around there
I've been so busy with Pacific I haven't even taken the VT or 512 thru the canyons yet!

Oh yes.. a 550 done with your skills will be extremely sweet! I'll be looking forward to that one

It's all probably as complicated to be fair... just in different ways... The authenticity and accuracy you need to make a car model believable... That's no simple thing mate... with an accurate feeling to it as well... That sounds pretty complicated to me!

Which of your projects are you focused on getting finished next mate? I'm looking forward to all of them

 

[Leonardo Ratafiá]

What you need to finish is OTing hehe
Just kidding guys

 

[garyjpaterson]

Which of your projects are you focused on getting finished next mate? I'm looking forward to all of them

Good question! Currently almost fully focused on the GT1 project for RSS, after that, who knows! Got some ideas but don't want to disappoint anyone if I don't follow through.

Anyway, don't want to derail Ben's Caterham thread, head over to the GT1 thread or http://www.racedepartment.com/threa...orking-on-thread.126119/page-154#post-2572631 if you want to chat!

 

[Phoenix77]

What you need to finish is OTing hehe
Just kidding guys

I just type stuff to stop my brain getting frazzled by verts, textures etc... lol
I'll get back in my modding cupboard now if you get back in your TV Camera cupboard Leo

Good question! Currently almost fully focused on the GT1 project for RSS, after that, who knows! Got some ideas but don't want to disappoint anyone if I don't follow through.

Anyway, don't want to derail Ben's Caterham thread, head over to the GT1 thread or http://www.racedepartment.com/threa...orking-on-thread.126119/page-154#post-2572631 if you want to chat!

Yeah fair point, sorry Ben... got carried away chatting mate
I'll check those threads out mate... even though I should be doing some real world work that's overdue lol

Getting back on topic...

View attachment 211437

You should make that a skin, just for a laugh

 

[Ben O'Bro]

No worries, mi casa es su casa!

you should see the unwrap now, it's near perfect (not), but i like to think so
I used the "relax" tool, that's awesome
I used "pin" thing to rotate and squeeze elements pinning different area, that's also awesome
Don't get me wrong, unwrapping still sucks, but a little less with these tools

I also heard max 2017 has new tools regarding unwrap. I still use the 2016, so we'll see about that

 

[garyjpaterson]

I use relax almost exclusively, never pinned anything before, will have to look into that!

I use 2017, can't say I've seen anything new over 15 i think i had before, but it crashes a lot less so I'm happy

 

[Ben O'Bro]

and speaking with pictures now
i made lot of parts easy to custom with a tiny dds
here is a preview between few early skins taken from the 2017 season

and said unwrap

 

[AccAkut]

any reason you made the rear unwrap the way you did? I would think rotating clockwise by 90° would make it heaps easier to align to the skin on the bonnet, and overall easier to paint as it looks like everything is mirrored except that rear portion

 

[Ben O'Bro]

any reason you made the rear unwrap the way you did? I would think rotating clockwise by 90° would make it heaps easier to align to the skin on the bonnet, and overall easier to paint as it looks like everything is mirrored except that rear portion

hmm that sounds like a good idea
back then it was space issue, now that i moved the side of the car to the edge, maybe i could indeed put it back aligned with the body

 

[Ben O'Bro]

Academy getting there

copy/pasted skin.ini and got all the same helmet