Gap on track

[jempi]

Hi,
I'm working on my first track and everything went fine. Always found a solution here in the forum or in the BTB website. But now I found a gap on the track, I have no idea when this gap appeared, went several steps back, did'nt change anything. I removed the surface point, but didn't change anything. So I don't really know how to solve this.

Here the screenshots how it looks like

I'm using BTB Evo, newest version.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

You certainly have something strange going on, cross-sections should not cause gaps, only the first node does. Also don't try to create a cross-section in top of a node, that'll never work. That simple thing is why the gap sometimes appears on the first node, it's the only one where node and cross-section are in the same place. But having them in all cross-section is a sign of larger mistake, someone should take a look at it.

You can decrease the size of the upload by not including the largest XPacks you've used, i think we all have them all, if not, good excuse to load one. Default XPack (default.zip} can be always left out, that saves you 8 megs of otherwise redundant data, everyone has default.zip (unless you use the Default.zip for evo in the XPack collection, in that case you should mention it.) In any case two folders you HAVE to include from My Projects\[project]\XPacks are Common and Default, those contain all the materials you've altered in anyway. (Default contains the definitions and thumbnails, Common has all the new/replaced textures...)

That default.zip for EVO is a must download for all EVO users. It replaces the original which has rFactor startlights, they work in different sequence rules (original startlights are one step ahead all the time..). It also has the "CK-Tools" objects, it's quite handy (rulers, gradient tool, multi-material cross-sections etc.)

 

[respawned]

Yes I'm using the evo default pack.

If I remove the following packs my project is 94 megs,
Default
Haywood_Club
PLP Textures
Road Dark, Mid and Light
Rural Australia (that everyone should have already)

I have not edited the textures in the xpacks themselves but have a separate folder that I use for edited textures, I then copy them to my game folder (the track is for Race07 so I don't need the compressed versions). I just found easier doing it that way. That file is 16megs and includes the thumb, gbd and aiw files.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Ok in that case i don't think it's worth removing the packs unless what ever upload service you choose to use has a limit. I use that method often too (replacing textures in the trackfolder instead of in the project), testing new textures in BTB results on countless duplicates and unused textures that stick to the end of the project..

One good way of simplifying the process is to create a batch file with following code:

copy /y /q *.* [trackfolder\mas]

Copy /y=yes to all prompts /q=quiet modem don't invoke a window *.* = all files and folders in this directory, trackfolder you know already. Sourcefolder is what ever folder the bat is located, it copies everything from that folder to targetdfolder and replaces all duplicates.

Name it what you want, just make sure you use the .BAT suffix. Place it in folder where all new textures are located, right-click and select "send to" and send the shortcut to desktop. You can then move that shortcut to wherever you like. The same can be used if you like to preserve AIW, GDB etc between exports: remove the "\mas" from the code and use a folder named "mas" to replace all textures. Really handy in the later stage of the project. To use it, simply double-click and all files from the folder the bat file resides are being copied and replaced in the target folder, no questions asked.. You might need to set permissions if you have really strict Vista or later MS OS.

 

[respawned]

Thanks for the great tip Kennett, very useful.

I think I will leave the gap issue for last. I also have a shadow problem where the cars shadows disappear on 2 parts of the track. This also happened on my first 'test' track I made

Anyway I have uploaded the track as is for now (Race07), it's not finished but is mostly working well now. AI still needs some tweaking but for now they are fairly fast on 110%.
I am hoping to get some feedback from people who have actually driven Killarney, up till now I have used video footage and Google Earth.
Here's the file in case anyone would like to test, Killarney 0.1 (beta)
http://www.mediafire.com/?iqta2vpz86igk00

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Shadows disappearing under the car is a tough one, i tried that in Cicada but never identified the problem (i remade the track several times but they never worked, had to leave it in release.) It just happens or not, it's just luck. The same goes for that 1st node/1st cross-section gap bug.

You really should send the BTB project to someone, i have some free time right now, no projects (well... there's always something... ). I can take a look at it over the weekend.

EDIT: I took a drive around the track and good work. Bumbs especially are very nice, too many people leave the roads completely flat. Size is a bit large but it's early development, projects are larger at this point.

 

[respawned]

Thanks, yes I paid attention to the bumps since Killarney is famous for being rather bumpy.

I have uploaded the project file, http://www.mediafire.com/?4dsv3d4clpby7y5, I left out the biggest xpacks (Default, Haywood_Club, PLP Textures, Road Dark, Mid and Light, Rural Australia), they are available here, http://cream.galleria.fi/BTB/XPacks/, incase you need them. Would be interesting to hear what you find.

Thanks for the help!

PS. Regarding the disappearing shadows I noticed that rotating the track will move the positions that it occurs. Using that and some trial and error it can be minimized somewhat.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Rotating, changing altitude, that does change the shadows. It's just luck. I'll take a look at the project.. BTW, cream.galleria is my "site", i'll "probably" have all those files

 

[Lee Knight]

With shaows, I've noticed recently that if I form some terrain at a later date thats right next to some other terrain (so that when finished they appear as one piece) that I've already got they then shade they're shadows differently....
Whats the go there & is there a cure to get them shading the same?
Sorry if this is off topic, but felt it fitted in with the previous shadow questions....

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

It's due normals not being in the same angle between two faces. If you don't know what normals are, try googling info (vertices normals). Basically normals control the edge of face, smoothing the transition between two faces.

Normals is what killed alpine hills 2.0, i got the whole terrain lost it's normals and i never could repair it again (due to unsuccesful merging..) If the angle between connecting faces of two separate objects is 0, it should retain the same shading values, normals at the edges of individual terrain object is always 90 (straight edge). BTB doesn't have manual normals control of any kind, you can always try some other 3D editor for smoothing out terrains

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

I don't have that PLP Textures XPack, it's not in the collection...

 

[respawned]

You should find PLP texture pack in the file "more_xpacks.rar". At least that's where mine is, if you don't have it let me know, I will upload it.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

You should find PLP texture pack in the file "more_xpacks.rar". At least that's where mine is, if you don't have it let me know, I will upload it.

Thanks, i got it...

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

Okay, got it working. A quick response: never seen cross-sections behave like that. The gap is small but appear at every cross-section... I'll take a look at possible remedies later.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

OK. Good news and bad news

Good news: Not everything is lost, maybe a few hours of work ahead.
Bad news: You need to do all cross-sections again. It seems that one cross-section somewhere along the project (maybe #1...) got corrupted and you've copied the error. If you delete the cross-section and make a new one, you get no-gap cross-section. It's gonna be tricky since when you delete a cross-sectiona and create a new one, it iherits the properties of the last cross-section and thus, the corruption. You may need to leave two cross-section with gaps but you should get mpst of them renewed..

You can't use copy/paste, the bug gets copied too.. Try to make notes of the properties of the points in cross-section and textures used and their map coordinates. Fortunately you have quite modest cross-section profiles, so it simplifies the process a lot.

One suggestion: Use smaller terrain pieces, your GPU will thank you since it doesn't need to draw so much stuff and you CPU and rest of the pipeline will have less vertices to process. Try to think what can be seen and try to make the terrain pieces to correspond to that view.. It's not bad, probably will not cause any harm in the future. And you may actually ruin some of the normals at this point, maybe try saving an alternate version and try to re-organize (split&merge) them to be more GPU/CPU friendly.

 

[respawned]

Thanks, yes deleting all cross-sections then inserting new ones fixes the gaps on the track, but it still leaves gaps where the track meets the terrain (at least it did for me). This could mean my terrain also inherited an error so it may also need to be rebuilt.

I did manage to export the track to 3dsmax using SimEd and it took less than a minute to merge all those vertices, but how to get it all back into BTB (or the game) from there is still beyond me.

Since the gaps only appear at the origin of the cross-sections I am thinking of just placing extra geometry at those spots. I think that's going to be the easiest fix for me at this stage, and if done carefully should only add about 100 - 200 polygons.

 

[Kennett Ylitalo]

You may be able to avoid the terrain gap. Just move terrain point, just a touch will do. It should connect back to road edge. Basically you need to refresh the terrain/road connections. I hope that'll do, it's a bitch having to re-create new terrain just because of a small bug. Remember that if you're pushing those patches thru the existing surface, you are doubling/quadrupling the triangles plus creating a whole bunch of tris that aren't shown.. There a nice pictorial about that subject somewhere in the forum. If i remember correctly, it was a thread involving variable banking. But the game can take a fair amount of excactly that kind of trash, fortunately.. All seams should be welded, there shouldn't be any corner of a building going thru terrain but that kind of optimizing can be only seen coming from game companies with hundreds of modellers, not solitary modder... EDIT: If i'm not mistaken, this going off topic but.. in 3dsMax it's possible to weld all seams pretty easily, basically taking the process that GPU has to done in "trashy" maps and applying it before it's exported.

So if you have any 3ds Max experience, combining BTB with it is might powerful combo... BTB has some of the best spline control around, lots of dedicated tools for track design, good and quick basic composing tools (placing the objects...) and 3ds Max has everything else. But it need also 3DSimEd in between to translate between the two and not everyone can afford Autodesk prices (or are not willing to pirate). And the BTB -> Max pipeline is one-way, makes some operations difficult.

 

[respawned]

Actually I use 3dsmax for work everyday (I'm a 3d artist/animator), I have been using Max (and also Maya) for over 7 years now.

So now that I have SimEd installed I can start using Max as part of my workflow, just up till now I was hoping to get away with using just BTB.
I need to get my head around importing and exporting the track and terrain while still keeping it all working in the game, for now I'm looking for tutorials but there's not much out there it seems.

If you like you can visit my website to see some of my 3d work, it's mostly my personal projects there, my latest game work is still locked up in NDA agreements.
Site is here, www.imaganimation.com

 

[respawned]

Car shadows are fixed thanks to Goresh, there were 2 parts of the track that needed to be tagged as shadow receivers in 3dsimed, for some reason BTB was exporting them as non shadow casters.

I must say 3dsimed is nice software, not nearly as complicated to use as I thought it would be. For my next track I will be using it, and 3dsmax much more.

 

[ebrich]

Nice track - has a good feeling even though apparently it's a bit gappy!
Shame to hide your work from the track though.

Look forward to it's completion.

 

[respawned]

Hi ebrich, I can't take credit for the nice garage in the scene, it was part of a xpack for bob's track builder. So far I've only been adjusting the textures to better match the real track.
Thanks for trying it out, should hopefully be finished in a week or 2 from now...