Tracks Blender to RTB

[Lutianaza]

Post title. Can't figure out how to port tracks made in blender to RTB, can't seem to find a way to import FBX into rtb. What do?

 

[Johnr777]

Post title. Can't figure out how to port tracks made in blender to RTB, can't seem to find a way to import FBX into rtb. What do?

Why? Blender will give you much better results.

 

[Lutianaza]

Why? Blender will give you much better results.

"Much better results". Really depends on what you use RTB for. Even if I wanted to make higher quality in blender the vertices limit would make the difference minimal in a lot of cases. Thanks for the help.

 

[Johnr777]

"Much better results". Really depends on what you use RTB for. Even if I wanted to make higher quality in blender the vertices limit would make the difference minimal in a lot of cases. Thanks for the help.

I disagree.

"Vertices limitations" is not what classifies a track as high or low quality...

RTB wont allow you to do things like custom UV mapping, smoothing groups, amongst other critical 3D modeling functions to give a project a polished look.

 

[AccAkut]

I disagree.

"Vertices limitations" is not what classifies a track as high or low quality...

RTB wont allow you to do things like custom UV mapping, smoothing groups, amongst other critical 3D modeling functions to give a project a polished look.

in my experience RTB made tracks often had way more vertices and textures (and materials) because the used assets weren't great, and RTBs setup can generate very inefficient kn5 files (creating duplicated materials and textures for repeating assets for example)
imo RTB could be great to make the initial track surface and surrounding landscape, maybe guardrails and other stuff following the track, but from there on one should continue working in a full 3D modeller tool

 

[Sergio Loro]

"Much better results". Really depends on what you use RTB for. Even if I wanted to make higher quality in blender the vertices limit would make the difference minimal in a lot of cases. Thanks for the help.

is like one of the top track builder of AC scene give to you the right path to follow and you use sarcams.

 

[Lutianaza]

I disagree.

"Vertices limitations" is not what classifies a track as high or low quality...

RTB wont allow you to do things like custom UV mapping, smoothing groups, amongst other critical 3D modeling functions to give a project a polished look.

RTB has powerful tools that are quicker to work with than blender. I don't need things in the distance to have high resolution for example, if I could do that in RTB I would save a lot of time.

There are actually programs that can outperform each other in certain tasks, and I'm using blender as the foundation and want to save time with the stuff RTB won't want me to shake it a million times for.

I didn't come here to discuss why I should use blender.

 

[Lutianaza]

is like one of the top track builder of AC scene give to you the right path to follow and you use sarcams.

Why reply to a discussion when you add nothing valuable to it? I asked how to convert and got "use blender" as an answer. I already am using blender.

 

[Lutianaza]

in my experience RTB made tracks often had way more vertices and textures (and materials) because the used assets weren't great, and RTBs setup can generate very inefficient kn5 files (creating duplicated materials and textures for repeating assets for example)
imo RTB could be great to make the initial track surface and surrounding landscape, maybe guardrails and other stuff following the track, but from there on one should continue working in a full 3D modeller tool

Yes, but RTB is faster and I can then again open it up in blender and get rid of a lot of it, I want to use RTB for things it is more efficient at than blender. You can import own assets too.

Yes, the kn5 files are messy; but there are workarounds on that.

Actually RTB is kinda bad at track surfaces and such, blender is more efficient and powerful in rendering a lot of landscape, but small landscape edits are better in RTB again.

Most objects I make are made in blender, because RTB likes to make buggy objects. Like for example guardrails that literally suck you in; those guardrails in tracks are usually made in RTB.

 

[Johnr777]

Yes, but RTB is faster and I can then again open it up in blender and get rid of a lot of it, I want to use RTB for things it is more efficient at than blender. You can import own assets too.

Yes, the kn5 files are messy; but there are workarounds on that.

Actually RTB is kinda bad at track surfaces and such, blender is more efficient and powerful in rendering a lot of landscape, but small landscape edits are better in RTB again.

Most objects I make are made in blender, because RTB likes to make buggy objects. Like for example guardrails that literally suck you in; those guardrails in tracks are usually made in RTB.

You pointed out 3 things RTB doesn’t do right in one single post, as well as claiming that going back and forth between 2 modelers is… efficient…

Maybe the replies here won’t answer your question, since the knowledgeable track creators use either max or blender. I suggest heading over to the RTB support forums and ask there.

 

[Lutianaza]

You pointed out 3 things RTB doesn’t do right in one single post, as well as claiming that going back and forth between 2 modelers is… efficient…

Maybe the replies here won’t answer your question, since the knowledgeable track creators use either max or blender. I suggest heading over to the RTB support forums and ask there.

I'm not here to point out what RTB does well, I simply replied to his comment. When I replied to your post you easily ignored "There are actually programs that can outperform each other in certain tasks..", but whatever.

What's the issue with moving between 2 modelers? File conversions of these sizes don't take long at all, and the process can be automated with code in several languages.

"Knowledgeable track creators use either max or blender" ait chief, you have the statistics on that one.
It's already been asked there, so I decided to ask the knowledgeable track creators.

 

[Stereo]

The issue is RTB is not a 3d editor, it's hard enough getting cross compatibility between Max and Blender with their opinions on mesh storage (for example smoothing groups; Max stores it as a property of faces, blender as edges, they are not equivalent and can't represent the same things, and no intermediate format converting in either direction will preserve this information) and converting it to something that doesn't work with generic 3d meshes in the first place just doesn't make sense.

 

[Lutianaza]

The issue is RTB is not a 3d editor, it's hard enough getting cross compatibility between Max and Blender with their opinions on mesh storage (for example smoothing groups; Max stores it as a property of faces, blender as edges, they are not equivalent and can't represent the same things, and no intermediate format converting in either direction will preserve this information) and converting it to something that doesn't work with generic 3d meshes in the first place just doesn't make sense.

Thank you for actually answering my question. While digging further I did find something that somewhat answers my question:

 

[Johnr777]

Thank you for actually answering my question. While digging further I did find something that somewhat answers my question:

He pretty much mirrored what was said earlier - converting it to something that doesn't work with generic 3d meshes in the first place just doesn't make sense.

But anyways, the video you posted is an example of using RTB as the main software, and exporting whatever is made TO blender for necessary modifications. I don't see anything being brought back into it afterwards, which was your original question, no?

At the end of the day, if you want something back into RTB, it will need to be brought in as an xpack object. But can only be moved around the scenery.... no modifications.

 

[AccAkut]

Actually RTB is kinda bad at track surfaces and such, blender is more efficient and powerful in rendering a lot of landscape, but small landscape edits are better in RTB again.

the big benefit is that RTB does take over the task of UVing the landscape and track. I haven't used RTB, but from the initial documentation and all those youtube tutorials it offered a lot of knobs to finetune mesh resolution and borders between stuff, all things that are not at all straight forward in Blender

Most objects I make are made in blender, because RTB likes to make buggy objects. Like for example guardrails that literally suck you in; those guardrails in tracks are usually made in RTB.

That specifically is not an issue of either tool but simply the person making the asset not understanding modelling conventions AC has, as in not using the visual mesh for collision. If the used asset follows this convention it should be fine to use in RTB.

RTB could be a really powerful tool, but from what I've seen too many try to use it as a shortcut and feed it assets made in SketchUp with 200 textures.

 

[Lutianaza]

He pretty much mirrored what was said earlier - converting it to something that doesn't work with generic 3d meshes in the first place just doesn't make sense.

But anyways, the video you posted is an example of using RTB as the main software, and exporting whatever is made TO blender for necessary modifications. I don't see anything being brought back into it afterwards, which was your original question, no?

At the end of the day, if you want something back into RTB, it will need to be brought in as an xpack object. But can only be moved around the scenery.... no modifications.

Yea; it somewhat answers it, but doesn't do what I wanted to use it for, no. I'll just have to cope with blender. I need RTB to be able to read laser data files to be useful as a foundation at all, so RTB is useless for my purposes right now.

 

[Lutianaza]

the big benefit is that RTB does take over the task of UVing the landscape and track. I haven't used RTB, but from the initial documentation and all those youtube tutorials it offered a lot of knobs to finetune mesh resolution and borders between stuff, all things that are not at all straight forward in Blender

That specifically is not an issue of either tool but simply the person making the asset not understanding modelling conventions AC has, as in not using the visual mesh for collision. If the used asset follows this convention it should be fine to use in RTB.

RTB could be a really powerful tool, but from what I've seen too many try to use it as a shortcut and feed it assets made in SketchUp with 200 textures.

It automates UVing yes, but it suffers from the fact that dealing with the same amount of objects in RTB is a lot more inefficient than it is in blender. It uses more resources to do the same things that blender can do anyway, so that is moot.

About the assets; you'd think you'd see a lesser amount of RTB tracks with these collision issues, no? I mean the sheer amount of them that has this issue is astounding.

Well yes, but I wasn't about to do that though. I simply wanted to edit small forms of landscape and place a few objects here and there, if done in RTB I could save hours over doing it in blender. That racks up quickly when you're doing it many many times.

 

[Stereo]

Probably a more feasible resolution is scripting those same tools for Blender rather than trying to convert stuff back and forth. Aside from fully random particle system based automatic tree/grass placement you could probably build something assisted where you just click from a top view then hit a hotkey to place stuff.

 

[ryze]

Probably a more feasible resolution is scripting those same tools for Blender rather than trying to convert stuff back and forth. Aside from fully random particle system based automatic tree/grass placement you could probably build something assisted where you just click from a top view then hit a hotkey to place stuff.

not gonna lie i think if anyone made a plugin like that people would pay for it