XPacks Discussion

Brendon Pywell

Bob's Track Builder
Expansion Packs (XPacks)

BTB organises all Objects, Materials and Textures into Expansion Packs (XPacks). They are theme based so that the textures for the road surfaces, walls, trees and ground all look good together.

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By bunching objects, materials and textures together encourages a more aesthetic end result – although you will be free to use whatever XPacks you like!

This encourages two things:

1. People using your XPacks will create Tracks that are more aesthetic. That is the textures will look good together. Check how well objects from the Australia Rural XPack look against the road/ground textures.

2. Game performance will be increased by re-using the same objects/textures in creative ways rather than adding more objects from a number of XPacks. Good XPacks will reuse materials/textures, eg. the Texture for a house roof may be used on several House objects. When it comes to rendering performance, texture/material reuse is good.
These points will become even more important as the library of XPacks grow. Imagine having 12 different tree XPacks and trying to find some that match your terrain/theme.

Installation

Each XPack comes in the form of a Zip file. Additional XPacks will be created over time and installing them is a simple as dropping the Zip file into the BTB\XPacks folder. BTB reads directly from the Zip file, there is no need to extract the individual files/folders.

The initial BTB installation will not include much XPack material; they need to be downloaded from http://www.bobstrackbuilder.net/pro_users/XPacks.aspx .

Adding to your Venue

You use “File … Expansion Packs” to select which packs you want to be available in your Venue.

Each Venue (project) you create will exist in its own folder and all Textures and XPacks used in your project will be copied to an “XPacks” sub-folder. If you want to edit a Texture that you added to your project, you need to edit the one that gets copied to your Venue’s folder.

Updating XPacks

Over time XPacks will gain more Objects and Materials and you will want to get the latest one. Simply download again and drop into you BobsTrackBuilder\XPacks folder.
Your existing Venues will need to be manually updated by copying the XPack into the project’s XPacks folder and overwriting the existing one.

Creating XPacks

A new utility called XPacker is included to help you create your own XPacks. It will not build your objects or textures, but it does help you to organise them into the required XPack structure.
Press F1 for more XPacker help.

Creating a community of XPacks

I am not artistic in the slightest so it’s up to everyone here to help build a library of XPacks that everyone can use. My time will be focussed on coding more BTB/XPacker functions so I am relying on you guys to help out by submitting more material.
If you have textures, objects and materials that you think would be suitable, contact me ( bob at bobstrackbuilder.net ) and I’ll be happy to organise them into a suitable XPack. All work should be your own with all copyrights respected.

These are the current themes I have in mind:
- Alpine
- Desert
- City
- Rural Australia (Ennis)
- Coastal
- Forest
- Haywood Club (WeirdBeard)
- Jungle
- Racing (I need cones).
- Savannah Grasslands (Raceking)
- Snow
- Woodland
Feel free to come up with more (ideally along with your own contribution) or make suggestions on how to better categories these themes.

Object Import Format

The importing of objects can be done using either the Collada or 3ds formats.

I would encourage anyone looking to import objects to use the Collada format as it is far more robust and isn't plagued by the shortcomings of the 3ds format. For Max, you can get a free plugin for import/export from http://www.feelingsoftware.com/content/view/65/79/lang,en/ though I think you have to sign up before you can access the downloads.

I am happy to do the organising if you wish to send the XPacks my way ( bob@bobstrackbuilder.net ). Please feel free to give suggestions on how they should be structured or into what existing XPack you think they could be added. The textures should be your own work as I cannot use other people’s textures without their permission.

Advanced Editing

Creating Content

When adding one more object/material I always create a new XPack and test just that one item making sure it works ok in all games. Once it’s ready then I copy the contents of that XPack into the destination XPack and re-zip it.

This isolates the work so that I can test many times without the possibility of adding more materials/textures than required.

Editing Content

XPacks are just zip files. If you wish to change just one item of a project, it can be unzipped and so long as it keeps the same folder structure, BTB will use the unzipped version instead (restart BTB).

Say for instance you wish to change replace the colour of the Default\Barn object.

1. Locate the [yourVenue]\XPacks\Default.zip.
2. Extract the shed01_end.dds and shed01_side.dds so that they are in a folder [yourVenue]\XPacks\Default\Textures\Objects\Building\.
3. Replace the shed01_end.dds and shed01_side.dds file with your own.
4. Start BTB.

Any of the files can be replaced using this method.
 
Hy
How to import an object to BTB ? :)
I'm download object from google, opened in sketchup, save as 3ds object. I'm started the xpacker, but when i loaded the 3ds object i have an error: Texture missing.

Please anyone help for me :)
One step by step help :)
Thanks!
 
XPacker expects the texture to be in the same folder as the 3ds file. It looks for the texture so it can copy it to the Materials folder for the current XPack. If the texture isn't found, it uses a placeholder.

You can either reload the 3ds after putting the texture in the same folder, or go to the Materials tab, and for the Diffuse texture, go to Load and then find the texture file.
 
More tips:
- you can also make new material in xpacker ("Add from Textures" button) and assign to object. This way - if you use more objects from the same texture (like Texture Atlas), you can first load all your objects, then merge all their materials into one, and finally assign that to all objects in a row. This improves game's performance a little, due to less materials.
- important about 3dsMax - if you map your model with Unwrap UVW, you must break all verices there before collapsing. I had strange issues (for example black polygons in game) with vertices welded in Unwrap UVW.
 
Hi guys,
I was looking for some nice ripple boards instead of the default ones, especially some colourful, e.g. red-yellow-red, would be really cool. Do you remember xpacks that includes ripple boards or have some one for me?
I tried to make it by my own, but sadly, that wasn't a handsome one :(
thanks in advance
 
I made (after some nightmarish do-it-yourself sessions due to the numerous bugs in BTB and Xpacker) a simple Xpack with some race control towers - I felt a lot of tracks could use those.

The Xpack works, but the towers have the 'move points' (for moving, rotating, etc) in the wrong place. Not on the objects themselves, they're about 20 meters away. Makes it hard to manipulate the towers afterwards. :O_o:
Any idea on how to correct this? Haven't encountered it before.
 
You need to correct it in the 3d editor (3dsmax, maya, sketchup), move the object to origin 0,0,0

In Sketchup you can create a group, open that group, highlight everything inside that group and export using "export selection" option. It'll do simple volumetric calculations and relocate object origin to bottom centre. NOTE! Object origin is not world origin! In BTB (and everywhere else) world origin is the 0,0,0 location in 3D space that all object locations are referenced to (for ex object origin is 20,40,2 from world origin) . Inside object all vertexes are referenced to object origin (the corner point in your cube is 2,5,4 from object origin). So we have two worlds, the "big world" that contains objects and small "world" inside object. When groups are used in SU, they work exactly like that in BTB and in game. Exporting from inside a group is a nice step in the workflow, mimics the end result very closely (always a good thing), you can do multiple objects in one SU project, keep materials optimized and shared effectively between objects etc. You can do the whole XPack in one SU project.

In 3dsmax and Maya, there should be tools/options for calculating object origin, the process is mathematically really simple.

For large objects like houses, it's better to use a corner rather than the real center; makes it easier to reach those object handles later in BTB. Objects that usually needs to have object origin along the center axis are circular (cones, oildrums) where as "corner origin" is good for cubes and blocks.

Objects that have their origins off by huge amounts also start to behave very oddly. The error needs to be kilometers to have any real consequences but it's a good advice to have the object origin very close to volumetric center anyway. BTB "fixes" this as it's very hard to manipulate such objects so modellers keep their object origins in check from start to finish, promoting better habits ;)
 
You need to correct it in the 3d editor (3dsmax, maya, sketchup), move the object to origin 0,0,0

In Sketchup you can create a group, open that group, highlight everything inside that group and export using "export selection" option.
Objects that have their origins off by huge amounts also start to behave very oddly. The error needs to be kilometers to have any real consequences but it's a good advice to have the object origin very close to volumetric center anyway. BTB "fixes" this as it's very hard to manipulate such objects so modellers keep their object origins in check from start to finish, promoting better habits ;)

Thanks, Kennett, for the explanation (although you wonder why this bug/error occurs in the first place - I never bothered with messing with this '0,0,0' value for the object handles).

I did import the tower objects from Sketchup, but unless there is an easy way to correct the handles back to 0,0,0 in perchance Xpacker I don't think I'll go to start all the way back in Sketchup again (major hassle! )
 
Can someone tell me exactly what I have to do, to make String Objects with SketchUp?
I can't find a single Xpack with proper safety fences or barriers, so I thought of doing some myself, but I'm not quite sure how to create an sobject.
 
Thanks!

EDIT: The help section didn't help me though.
I want to know what I have to consider when I build objects in SketchUp, so they properly line up.
I've tried to make string objects out of already existing things, but they had gaps, weren't facing the right direction etc.
 
Some additional xpack-related question: I seem to remember someone making one with some (static) karts in it, as pit-related objects. :p If I'm wrong, maybe it's a usable idea for some tracks?
 

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