The "What Are You Working On?" Thread

[AccAkut]

question for the texture and Shader gurus: I want to use a diffuse skin with metal detail for my exterior

but in the Editor I'm presented with this:

What am I doing wrong? Detail texture is that light blue.

 

[Ben O'Bro]

question for the texture and Shader gurus: I want to use a diffuse skin with metal detail for my exterior
View attachment 246116
but in the Editor I'm presented with this:
View attachment 246117

What am I doing wrong? Detail texture is that light blue.

i'm no guru but, here is what i know, you need both diffuse and _map to have alpha channel transparent in order to use your _detail i believe, also maybe the png is messing with this ?

 

[AccAkut]

i'm no guru but, here is what i know, you need both diffuse and _map to have alpha channel transparent in order to use your _detail i believe

nope, that wasn't it, still looks the same. i also tried combining all the layer and exporting to dds directly, same result.
edit: that black stuff is displaying the specular from the metal_detail btw

 

[chili pepper]

So I started the job that I have been putting off for so long... adding the 3D grass. I have only added my 'base' grass for now (just simple short and long green grass), and only around 1/3 of the 11.5km is done. Once the base is down I can then go round and add stuff like flowers, shrubs and ferns where they are needed (rather than throughout the whole lap). I have also experimented with using the ksGrass shader for my wooden fences, as that allows me to add some colour variation, unlike the ksPerPixel shader which only uses the colour in the diffuse texture. I'm getting there, slowly...

Dude, seriously....

This thing is going to be epic. Bonus is every one of Ben's creations will surely be well suited for driving it.

 

[garyjpaterson]

question for the texture and Shader gurus: I want to use a diffuse skin with metal detail for my exterior
View attachment 246116
but in the Editor I'm presented with this:
View attachment 246117

What am I doing wrong? Detail texture is that light blue.

Alpha for the diffuse on the areas you want to have the detail texture must be black.

By the looks of things the alpha seems to be using your AO or something, so is not displaying the detail fully everywhere.

Also I don’t believe the RGB map needs an alpha channel at all, i always save without one.

 

[AccAkut]

Alpha for the diffuse on the areas you want to have the detail texture must be black.

By the looks of things the alpha seems to be using your AO or something, so is not displaying the detail fully everywhere.

Also I don’t believe the RGB map needs an alpha channel at all, i always save without one.

I just "fixed" it, or rather I went a different way. Exported diffuse and alpha channel as separate bmp and combined them into DXT5 with DXTBmp.. must be something with the Gimp exporter messing up. I remember having the same issue on the interior texture of the Audi, and I think I "fixed" it by adding a 10% opaque black layer to the texture.

 

[stingray_SIX_TWO]

 

[Ryno917]

So I started the job that I have been putting off for so long... adding the 3D grass. I have only added my 'base' grass for now (just simple short and long green grass), and only around 1/3 of the 11.5km is done. Once the base is down I can then go round and add stuff like flowers, shrubs and ferns where they are needed (rather than throughout the whole lap). I have also experimented with using the ksGrass shader for my wooden fences, as that allows me to add some colour variation, unlike the ksPerPixel shader which only uses the colour in the diffuse texture. I'm getting there, slowly...

Stunning. Just stunning.

 

[stingray_SIX_TWO]

meet the rebirth of Speed 8 in F1 forms
View attachment 246060

Ok this is just above and beyond here...revitalizing the Speed8 on the current F1 gen. Awesome!

 

[stingray_SIX_TWO]

Found this camera/light combo by accident - so revealing of the model's shape and curvature. Will continue to use this throughout the modeling process...

 

[Ghoults]

question for the texture and Shader gurus: I want to use a diffuse skin with metal detail for my exterior
View attachment 246116
but in the Editor I'm presented with this:
View attachment 246117

What am I doing wrong? Detail texture is that light blue.

You are not doing the alpha mask properly in gimp. You only have one layer in gimp that has transparent parts in it. Gimp probably fills all those transparent parts with white or black (along with very bad rough rasterized edges) when you export to dds. You need to add mask layer for the diffuse layer in gimp to export it. In gimp mask is alpha in dds (if you use dds that has alpha).

So, (in gimp) right clikc on that one layer and select "add alpha layer". You can simply add a white layer. Then copy paste your diffuse layer into the mask layer and invert the mask layer colors. Then make your diffuse layer black and paste the parts you need for the car that you want to be visible. Make sure your diffuse parts are little bigger than the mask holes or you get edge stripes on the transparent part edges. Don't use other than the full black and white options. The other ones create edge issues.

This explains the edge issue: http://shaderbits.com/blog/uv-dilation
It is for ue4 but the early part applies to every game and is useful info for uv mapping as well.

 

[Shigeno427]

Here's as far as I've got so far, it's very early WIP so still very rough looking..

It will automatically detect the steam folder (from registry) and then from that gets the ac install folder from the steam manifest file and then from there the car folder and lists the cars within (that are compatible - not implemented yet see below).
Clicking the change (top right) button brings up a treeview with folders inside a "Base tire folder" that you specify (where all your packs are for various cars).
Still do do:

• (learn how to) read json ui files to give proper names for cars and skins
• save base tire folder to a config file or my.settings.etc
• add system of 'supported cars' to the car objects contained within the list view, where it knows the files required (name and extension) for a given car and then only allows use of the tire packs that are compatible with chosen car.
• Implement copying of files, but only files listed in the car object (see previous point).
• Add a button(s) to set all the compound for all skins to the same value, possibly with a random function
• Ideally move to WPF (Windows Presentation Foundation) to make it look nicer but I'm not familiar with any of those objects/controls.

Using a datagrid view for the main skins/compound-colour selection but the combo box cells are a bit fiddly to operate from a user perspective as you have to click once to select the cell and then again to get the drop down and then click somewhere else to accept the change.

On the JSON bit, which version of the .NET framework are you compiling against? You can get away with v4.6 and it still be compatible with everything except XP (and pre R2 Windows Server 2008), if you want XP support you'll need to stick with v4.0

The reason for asking is there's a json reader as part of .net, there was an odd bug in .net v4 but I believe it works better in v4.6. Otherwise there's the Newtonsoft.Json library (available through the NuGet packages manager) that is probably even more of an industry standard than the .net version, although this does mean an annoying dependency on the relevant dll file, which it's always nice to avoid. There are ways to include the dll in the .exe file and have it extract it to the working directory when it runs to avoid having an 'installer' if you do end up using the newtonsoft version.

With regards to 'My.Settings' vs a config file, it depends if you want your users / cleverer users to be able to adjust it, as My.Settings is buried down a rabbit hole and thus slightly inconvenient to find, but it is a lot more plug and play from a developer's standpoint... If you go the my.settings route, I'll ping you over a few lines that allow the settings to persist between version numbers (as it's a pain otherwise!)

The actual logic for which tyre texture etc. are allowed is outside of my area of expertise as this is AC specific I assume, but if you want to sound off any thoughts lemme know, and if it requires decoding of binary files etc. let me know as this is again part of my job

I've no idea if you've much software experience etc. so apologies if implementing 'random' stuff is already second nature, but happy to offer some suggestions on how to select a random tyre type etc. if you want, can make it random or have it be random but certain options are more likely etc.

I assume there's more to the copying of files than just using the basic file system functions, again happy to offer advice or safe practices etc.

I've actually been stuck using WinForms for a long time, so if you just want some eye candy I've got plenty of nice controls (all just code, no .dlls etc.) that you can have, buttons that glow / fade in / out with rounded alpha blended edges and so on, you can do a LOT with the painting functions and such so if you've got an idea of how you want the application to look cobble a photoshop or a doodle together and I'm happy to put some code together for you or whatever. Even just the car list including the images of the car etc. would give the application a lot of apparent style, add in some darker grey background colours and 'flat' looking buttons and you're most of the way to a modern application anyway!

It'd be really nice to actually be able to contribute something to the community so I really am happy to help

 

[hirothropologie]

physics test 0 wing 0 traction control

 

[ltcars]

Is there an app that shows you the live power distribution?

 

[ltcars]

physics test 0 wing 0 traction control

Are you going to build a drift car in a Bentley Body or is it just a joke of you?
Or does the real car really handle like that?

 

[stingray_SIX_TWO]

Nerd-Mode: ON

 

[davewilliams000]

On the JSON bit, which version of the .NET framework are you compiling against? You can get away with v4.6 and it still be compatible with everything except XP (and pre R2 Windows Server 2008), if you want XP support you'll need to stick with v4.0

I didn't know .NET had a JSON reader, and already grabbed the newtonsoft one via package manager. Most of my coding is the odd spreadsheet at work in VBA so when it comes to actually making a stand alone application I don't do it very often - the last time was last year when I made version 1 of the tire app (which was very basic). I'll just need to figure out how it works. I'd imagine it's designed to not be too difficult.

With regards to 'My.Settings' vs a config file, it depends if you want your users / cleverer users to be able to adjust it, as My.Settings is buried down a rabbit hole and thus slightly inconvenient to find, but it is a lot more plug and play from a developer's standpoint... If you go the my.settings route, I'll ping you over a few lines that allow the settings to persist between version numbers (as it's a pain otherwise!)

I did use my.settings last time but the tip to allow persistence between versions would be useful. However, this time I think I will need a config file (using json as I have to learn it anyway) as I'll need to include a 'supported car list' which will be better in a config file I think. I implemented this last night by manually populating the 'CarCollection' class using a sub, but would be better if it was in a file so I don't have to edit the code if a change is needed. I believe (from reading the front page on the website) there's some functions in the newtonsoft json library to help with serialising objects to a file.

The actual logic for which tyre texture etc. are allowed is outside of my area of expertise as this is AC specific I assume, but if you want to sound off any thoughts lemme know, and if it requires decoding of binary files etc. let me know as this is again part of my job
...
I assume there's more to the copying of files than just using the basic file system functions, again happy to offer advice or safe practices etc.

It's going to just be a case of copying over the specific files needed (using the filesystem objects) from one folder to another. The app is basically a way of picking 2 folders to copy from/to, but in a very fancy round about way . e.g. RSS formula hybrid 2018 should have 5 files: RSS_T.dds, RSS_NM.png, RSS_Blur.dds, RSS_NM_Blur.png and another one that I can't remember the name of (dirt texture). There's no way of actually knowing if a specific file matches the UV map of the 3D object so I will just check the filenames. This will be kept in the supported car information and I will copy these across to the 'Car' object in the list view (may be better with a list box?) at the left (using the .tag of the listviewitem to store it so I didn't need to write an inherited class, although I did do that for the tree view for selecting tires). Then use this information when loading the tires to check if a particular folder contains the correct files, and again when actually copying the files to only copy the files needed. The only difficulty will be if it requires elevation as in all likelihood, we will be copying to the Program files\Program Files(x86) folder where most people have steam\AC installed. I may just need to make it ask for elevation every time (using the app manifest?) which would be simpler. Will maybe need some option to backup the existing textures in the skin folder (e.g. rename to name.dds.backup or something)

I've no idea if you've much software experience etc. so apologies if implementing 'random' stuff is already second nature, but happy to offer some suggestions on how to select a random tyre type etc. if you want, can make it random or have it be random but certain options are more likely etc.

suggestions welcome for the randomisation. I will need a new window that displays the available colours and you can select which ones you want to be randomised (e.g. which tire compounds were at a specific race you want to run). Will first do a simple 'make them all the same' button though.

I've actually been stuck using WinForms for a long time, so if you just want some eye candy I've got plenty of nice controls (all just code, no .dlls etc.) that you can have, buttons that glow / fade in / out with rounded alpha blended edges and so on, you can do a LOT with the painting functions and such so if you've got an idea of how you want the application to look cobble a photoshop or a doodle together and I'm happy to put some code together for you or whatever. Even just the car list including the images of the car etc. would give the application a lot of apparent style, add in some darker grey background colours and 'flat' looking buttons and you're most of the way to a modern application anyway!

Not really thought too much about the appearance yet, but as you say including some images would be good. For the car list I could either add the 'badge' image found in the /ui folder of the car folder or add the 'preview' image of the 1st skin in the list. Once I've got it functional I'll move on to aesthetics.
The next step is to get the json reader working, then do the file copying and then put in some data validation/error checking. I haven't put in much error checking so far as just testing on my own machine and I know everything is there I've got steam/AC installed on my laptop as well, which I sometime use when making skins (my laptop definitely wouldn't run AC very well!), so I can use that as a test bed for error checking without altering my main PCs files.

 

[gecco]

Sublime
With the 3D grass all seems to fall into place and it becomes a drop-dead gorgeous, rich and dense scenery

P.S I'm checking this thread daily to see if @Fat-Alfie or @Brun have posted some new screens, I'm such a sucker for this stuff

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Thank you! I'm really pleased with how it's starting to look now

I think it will probably be ready to release in a few weeks time - my 'to do' list is getting shorter and shorter (I'm down to things like 'add window boxes to village houses' and 'add animated bunting' )

 

[F_B]

Thank you! I'm really pleased with how it's starting to look now

I think it will probably be ready to release in a few weeks time - my 'to do' list is getting shorter and shorter (I'm down to things like 'add window boxes to village houses' and 'add animated bunting' )

Great to hear that. This is the track I’m looking forward to the most right now!