WIP Osaka Loop (Hanshin Line)

Bonjour all...

Following on from my old Highway build a few years ago (Still unfinished...) I've started a new track!

I'm sure everyone is familiar with the Osaka Loop/ Hanshin Line / "Kanjo Loop" By now. I want to re-create that atmosphere of the Midnight run darting between traffic, Hazards flashing...

This track was/ is intended for Assetto Corsa, But fortunately, i only know how to get tracks into good old Racer. So, lucky for you, Racer will be my test bed before someone no-doubt ports it over to their Game/ Simulator of choice.

(Link to the road on google maps - https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?sadd...164795&mra=mift&mrsp=0&sz=14&t=m&z=14&start=0)

I've highlighted the road in question below.
11048620_10152700658053015_6692808346678139979_n.jpg


It has an Outer loop with 2 smaller, Inner loops. If anyone is familiar with the Arcade game "Maximum Tune : Wangan Midnight". This circuit is available, and it in certain mode, you circle all 3 loops (Starting with the Outer, Then the Middle, Then the inner - to complete the race)

So, Anyway...I have once again made some "Tiles" that will allow me to build the circuit like Lego, using good old Zmod (i know i know..)

Now with it being a city highway, its surrounded by typical Dense, Japanese infrastructure, of no doubt a few hundred buildings circle just this one highway. So i have started by modelling, in semi-detail, actual buildings surrounding the highway.

11024720_10152698378138015_1600614978230062294_n.jpg

11043174_10152700448968015_5977348893644424692_n.jpg


Now, i need "Help" Populating the exterior of the circuit with buildings. I'm currently aiming to do 1 building a day for the next few weeks. I'm using Google street view, to select a building, i take a few screenshots and off i go and work the magic in Sketch-up. As you can see my 2 examples above, not 100% accurate, but you will be blasting past at speed. so i doubt you will stop to take in the lovely Japanese apartment blocks and parking storage towers...

Now if any of you think you can model buildings, then i would like to ask you for your help! Hop on Google street view, select your building, Model away and post it here with relevant textures.

i think i will need approx 50 different buildings in order to create an environment that doesn't look like its been copy pasted, obviously each building will be used at least once, but working some texture magic could make the building completely different, therefore making 50 buildings look like 200 buildings...if you are following me.

in an ideal world i would like to make it accurate, but for the sake of stress and fun - I don't think i need to go into that much detail.
 
Last edited:
The previous version was Bay Route 9, right? Will be nice to have a full loop for continuous top speed runs.

I can help out on night time lighting tricks again, maybe other relevant Racer features.
 
Correct, my last project was Bay Route 9. The issue with that circuit was my imagination. i had no clue how to make the roads interesting and what shape the circuit should be. Atleast with this circuit its going to follow closely to its real life counterpart as possible.
 
This is the track in a different game (
- They are running Anti-Clockwise in this, In this game you can go either direction. But IRL the road is clockwise only)

I want to re-create the atmosphere of the circuit as visuallised in that gameplay video. I know is far from the Eye candy size of things, but will do the best i can.
 
As Stereo noted above, doing some slightly more in-depth building texturing might mean we can end up with really sweet looking buildings.



I'm more than happy to help out if you just pick a building and point me in it's direction.

My request though because it makes iterating and updating easier, is to rough out the buildings in a file, so what I send you literally drops into place without being touched, so each time I update it you can just delete (building_39) for example, and then just re-import my version, with same named model, textures, shader entries etc.


I'd probably unwrap each building though and do a light map and PBR, so it can have nice glossy windows, matte walls, AO maps etc, and also one shader and look really nice.

Obviously we'd need to be really tight on texture size, so knowing exactly how big it'd be on screen when racing in 1440p for example, would let us get the textures spot on.

I suppose you can always optimise later with texture atlases too... easier than you'd think if you do it at the end of a build :)



I'll download what you have so far and have a play, but this sounds good!

It's so easy to plan a big track, another to actually get something going and in Racer and workable, so kudos for getting something going along these lines again that we can all enjoy :D


Cheers

Dave
 
Thanks for the input Dave. Im still working with the track at the moment, my issue currently is getting the curvature of the road correct, unfortunatly Zmod only rotates in 1 degree increments, which is leaving the main, long 4 lane highway sections a bit "jagged" when the road starts to curve to the left or the right. the smaller, tighter curves are not a problem and come out "OK". Ive spent the last 3 days working on a "Fork" in the highway (As pictured Below)
11063509_10152728298023015_483843069371127972_o.jpg


And here is my current rendition...
11080654_10152728275893015_3389020179856490869_o.jpg


ive placed a couple of buildings for scale reference.
11051930_10152727691243015_4433372647644584478_o.jpg


I'm not making a 1:1 scale of the actual road, but more of basing this track off the IRL counterpart, its general shape and direction, but im not happy with how this section of road turned out, so i will be re-doing it next week.

In regards to the buildings, my plan was to just plot cubes, giving each their own individual building number with a basic, white texture (Not mapped) just so i had a general idea and scale of what needs to be done. Obviously there must be a good 500 buildings which outline the road, but modeling 500 seperate buildings is tedious, but at the same time, i do not want the road to be like a cartoon, driving past the same buildings every 2 seconds (Albiet if you have time to notice)
 
500 buildings is a lot, but I think once you've done the main front ones, the ones nearer the back can be repeated... or modular in nature, so you can add a bit of variety but use the same base textures say.


I think you just need to keep working away at it, what you've done already looks good so no need to lose heart.

Yes, just block out buildings in roughly the right place and then give them a number and send them out to people interested.

I'll happily have a bash at a few over the coming month or so.

As per the junction/roads. Do you think it'd work to build big modules that were quite flexible and then you can reuse them?
Ie, mirror and flip them and stuff to add variance... say four big corner pieces of various radius. A few big junction types, slopes etc?


This is where I always fall down with big projects. I rough them out and get happy with the concept, but then getting into all the details can be a real heavy hitting event when you realise it might take years to finish haha!
But then it's hard to visualise a track until it's roughed out, so you can get bogged down in details to visualise it but if it doesn't work out it's work down the drain a bit...



So maybe (just thinking) try modular building at first, and repeating buildings more, along with rough blockout buildings.

Keep driving it and refining it and once things feel great you can start to add in unique intersections and buildings to finally polish it off more?!


Either way keep going. I'm happy to help out with a few bits if I can, and I think Stereo is too on cool shader approaches to get great looking night time looks to the tracks.

I even think the concept is pretty cool for now. It's not too big, and could be made smaller at first and then extended to the other loops once the first are completed.


Cheers

Dave
 
I'm not sure of Racers current multiplayer antics, but a free roam of maybe 20 cars would be quite enjoyable.

I am already making it "Modular", its how i have done all my tracks (Tad lazy, i know..) But some of the sections need to be "unique" such as this intersection.
 
Yep a free-roam with 20 cars would be completely possible.

Things work, they're just not ideal...

For the experience to be more fun than frustration you need to control variables such as scripts and poly counts/draw counts a bit more robustly than usual :D


Modular is good then. Again you can keep it simple then improve it later on with more customised junctions etc.
I'm more than happy to see similar looking intersections and stuff at first, for it to get more customised as you refine the track.

Even Bay Route 9 was really great, even before the tunnel. Just having a few loops around with flipped junction intersections and stuff would have been fine, even if you could loop it in a few minutes.

It'd be really nice to implement the 'night' element into the track so you can daytime, twilight and night versions that are somewhat 'automated' and change without you having to change too many shaders and textures.



I'm more than happy to create a nice matched sky dome and TOD setup for night time, dusk, or something along those lines if you like.

Dave
 
i really liked the night time version of Bay Route 9. its a shame i couldn't enjoy it as my GFX Card at the time was naff. I've recently got a decent nVidia card which has massively improved my gaming visuals. Night time version is certainly on the cards. I have re-used the streetlamps from bay route, so they already have those small squares you used last time to make it look spectacular. Im running the current set-up with basic shaders, no bump maps or anything fancy. that can come at a later date :)
 
Yeah the traffic works from what I understand.

I've never had it working really in-depth, just had a few cars driving around as tests.

I'm not sure how good the logic is but from what I've seen in my tests it could easily be made to just loop various routes around a looping highway type setup like what you plan... which would make things interesting :D


As per street lamps etc, I think Stereo had written that cool shader so the glows were camera facing... which worked quite well with a good texture too.

In theory with some more work these can probably be made to look even better again.


I just like the idea of doing buildings with light maps, and running the envmap for reflection in the road if it's wet (looks ok from the cockpit, less good from outside).
Wet night time looks stunning like that with the PBR shading system! Especially if it's twilight with slithers of bright sun streaking through between the occasional building :D

I've done simple tests here, but to have it working on a nice track would be something else :)

Dave
 
Ouch, you need to split the bridge geometry and lamp post geometry into another object with flags=0 set... right now I'm hitting the bridge supports at the joins :D

wireframephys on/off in console to get a view of what the car can hit/bounce off etc :)

Dave
 

Latest News

Online or Offline racing?

  • 100% online racing

    Votes: 74 7.2%
  • 75% online 25% offline

    Votes: 107 10.4%
  • 50% online 50% offline

    Votes: 149 14.6%
  • 25% online 75% offline

    Votes: 281 27.4%
  • 100% offline racing

    Votes: 409 39.9%
  • Something else, explain in comment

    Votes: 4 0.4%
Back
Top