Handy track building hints...

[boomer541]

Tried making waving flags with an image that had 9 flags and found that the waving was different dependant upon the position in the image.

Multiple textures in a building image that has railings has problems with the shadows being cast on other parts of the building.

So, it depends upon the use of the image. Try and see if it works if not change it.

 

[luthobu]

More on this. Have been looking at the default CG skydome, and I must admit that
I never really liked it. Something (I did not know what until I researched it) was very
wrong with it and it never seemed to be a real skydome.

So, I loaded the skydome from Carlswood in Zmodeler, mapped the sky_clouds.tga
and then, lo and behold, was the error. The lower part is simply stretched and when
that lower part is visible in the track it looks like either a mis-shaped Aurora Borealis,
or even worse, a sci-fi gateway to another dimension! (Alas I made no screenshot
of the latter).

After cutting off the entire lower part (see attach) and adding a different transparent
sky_clouds.tga, I not only got a better FPS (less polys), but also the lighting seemed
to become more accurate, and the best part is, the sky looked once again like a sky!

Now, I am not saying that the default Racer would benefit from this discovery, but I AM
going to redo my own releases with this, IMHO, improved skydome (attach #2). It is
important to point out as well, that the new skydome must be lowered from its original
position in order for it to work (it must fully cover the track).

 

[Ruud]

@luthobu: can you mail me that cut DOF file? I could use it. The initial idea for the slightly >hemisphere dome is that sometimes gaps in the track enable you to look down a bit, so I gave it a bit of extra geometry.
As you can see in your first image, the texture is mapped to the top half. Then for the bottom half, it is mirrors (not really stretched it seems). So it's flipped (instead of wrapping, which would give serious seams).

It is better indeed to avoid that and lower the skydome to keep within the nicely mapped region.

 

[camsinny]

Wouldn't that wreck the sky calculation though?
I agree that the mapping is bad on that texture but surely it'd be better to remap it and possibly use a different texture than cut part of the object?

 

[boomer541]

I made a little tutorial about making skydomes for ver 0.0814 and up. It's in the download thread and make very nice skdomes.

 

[Mr Whippy]

Imo, the skydome should be calculated and displayed without any user input.

I'd prefer to see our dome mesh there to hold cloud maps, but not be used for the calculation of the projected blueness etc of the sky itself.


Imo, longer term, bundling it in with the sky cloud mapping is a bad move. The sky should be independent of the clouds. Then we can do lots of fun things with the cloud mesh itself, like rotate it or whatever to fake movement... I dunno...

Also then the cloud map should use a rgb for normals, and alpha for transparrency/coverage... mmmmmm... the current system for clouds and mapping doesn't look nice except in bright sunny conditions in the middle of the day with clouds set to 3 or so. Dusk/dawn they look totally wrong

Dave

 

[Stereo]

I was just scouting out a local park on streetview (still thinking about making a local road track so I can base the scenery on reality) and I noticed the Google streetview has fairly high resolution photos. Might be useful to grab some road textures from, or maybe even skyboxes? (would need to find somewhere with no telephone poles, lol)

When I toss it into fullscreen mode it gives me this. It seems to have 1 more usable zoom level closer than this, at least for stuff around street level (the cameras pointing up are not as good)

 

[Mr Whippy]

Just spotted this little script/plugin for 3DS Max...

http://www.scriptspot.com/3ds-max/scripts/ghosttown-lite


Looks quite powerful, not sure how you get to use it though. A bit like CityGen or whatever it is called.

Hmmm

Dave

 

[QuadCoreMax]

+1 Dave

Free Maya City Generator Plugin :

http://cg.tutsplus.com/freebies/software-tools/kludge-city-01-7-maya-script/

 

[QuadCoreMax]

Blender City Generator :

http://arnaud.ile.nc/sce/

To be tested & showcased in Racer !!! :wink:

 

[boomer541]

Two good places for textures for track makers:

http://www.got3d.com/index.html
http://www.cgtextures.com/

got3d has some 3d trees made the way DavidI makes them along with animated people.

cgtextures is huge, most textures are tileable.