The "What Are You Working On?" Thread

[Pixelchaser]

aren't those rather heavy duty canvas/plastic materials, strong enough to prevent cars from diving between the rows of tires? They don't flutter...

flutter ? I don't see any motion. is thee too much geometry?. aww what a shame. unless you go to lime rock and measure the covers thickness. you`ll never know.

 

[Ryno917]

aren't those rather heavy duty canvas/plastic materials, strong enough to prevent cars from diving between the rows of tires? They don't flutter...

I understand that the animation was a method to get multiple versions of a distorted mesh so it doesn't look like cardboard. Most of these walls have some deformation to them because the material, while heavy, is not rigid. I thought it was quite ingenious, actually.

flutter ? I don't see any motion. is thee too much geometry?. aww what a shame. unless you go to lime rock and measure the covers thickness. you`ll never know.

Amplitude might be a touch high, but the general approach and idea is fantastic imho.

 

[LilSki]

Yeah but it's a bit overdone IMO.

And I haven't seen any with Continental on it.

 

[Pixelchaser]

I understand that the animation was a method to get multiple versions of a distorted mesh so it doesn't look like cardboard. Most of these walls have some deformation to them because the material, while heavy, is not rigid. I thought it was quite ingenious, actually.

the zoom is practically max so I can capture all angles in the image. which is quite deceiving and exaggerating of the content. its an image but not one youd get in game without binoculars really. but that's how the shot came. what can I say.. lol... its rather tame actually. the sections on the right more appropriate visually, the left emphasizing that it is modelled too.

 

[LilSki]

Oh just chill out. Nobody is attacking anybody. Just some simple criticism with some basic observations. You post stuff online you have to deal with opinions. It is as simple as that. Do I like the idea? sure. Do I think it is overdone? Yes slightly.

 

[Pixelchaser]

Oh just chill out. Nobody is attacking anybody. Just some simple criticism with some basic observations. You post stuff online you have to deal with opinions. It is as simple as that. Do I like the idea? sure. Do I think it is overdone? Yes slightly.

im cool, im having fun. and I agree. and cant disagree with photos you show either I have seen a different pvc continental covering in a video from around 2 years ago that is why its there. just trying ideas. and some artistic licence at the end of the day. everything a prelude to success and trying to get away from the flat cardboard thing that happens in game environments with naturally flat objects. also its black. black objects in 3d is not nice to create. its the fake light on the texture that's exaggerated.

edit: your all correct ive decided. and if I think back to me seeing the continental plastic covering, maybe I was looking at some simple sponsorship applied over the inch thick rubber matting. you see I like the idea of more light bouncing off from it so its not flat. so I reckon keeping it more flat geometrically and maybe covering it with a deliberate extra cover for sponsorship is a good way of making it more visually appealing. I hate them. no light no shape. just blobs of yukky black/grey objects with boring silhouette. they need something and theres no reason for not enhancing them like you would in real life with sponsorship etc. a pvc covering that does wrinkle and deform. or a tarpolen with logos that's stapled to every other tyre stack through the rubber crash mat., maybe it even curves over the top of the stacks tied with rope etc. I dunno. but I will be taking that extra liberty because its not a real environment.

edit: not sure ill have anymore of anything anytime soon because i was getting help with some buildings. alas that help hasn't been in contact for 1 month. so i worked my ass off. did plenty. and now its a bit if of disappointment yet again. i just don't have all the skills for a complete job just yet.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Some more physics work, more gathering references, more thinking what variant I'm gonna make, more researching AC shaders and modding in general... I'm not very happy with how much of a boat the car the US got is, so maybe I'd like to focus on another market, Europe for example. On the other hand, Over 90% of 240Z's were produced for the US, so...

And I finally tidied up the dreadful rear quarter and rear panel. Maybe I can make this even cleaner, but it looks good and is easy to manipulate. Now to get the shape just right.

Fixed rear up a bit, and more shiny pics. RD's servers must *love* me.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Tweaked the rear a bit. Closer now.

However I have an issue.

Does anyone know why this happens?

It appears correct in 3D and no evident particularly bad geom.

EDIT:

More pics, this time on Ultra reflections. Look at the bonnet and the door.

 

[mclarenf1papa]

Tweaked the rear a bit. Closer now.

However I have an issue.

Does anyone know why this happens?

View attachment 286682

View attachment 286683

It appears correct in 3D and no evident particularly bad geom.

View attachment 286684


View attachment 286685

Since normals in AC aren’t perfectly flat, I think UV mapping has an effect on surface normals. Might be the problem.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Since normals in AC aren’t perfectly flat, I think UV mapping has an effect on surface normals. Might be the problem.

Hmm, I see. In the 3D it appears for all intents and purposes okay. However my UV map is a lazy piece of crap that's automatically unwrapped because I just want a solid color. Perhaps the problem areas are badly stretching UV?

EDIT:

Or overlaps.

Should remember to at least unwrap again before export.

EDIT 2:

Huh, cleaning up the UV didn't do anything. There aren't even any seams in the UV where the issues occur! They are in the same places as they are now, by the way. Is it a mesh/normal issue in general?

EDIT 3:

Applied modifiers natively, remapped UV, reselected texture in editor. Nothing. In the editor it appears correct as well, I think.

Then I turned reflections off in AC, to get just the texture solid I believe. This seems to have fixed it. So it's NOT an inherent mesh issue, then?

EDIT 4:

Seems to have been a ks shader issue. I was using "ksCarPaintSimple", I switched to "ksPerPixelReflection" IIRC, with the same settings, result:

Also more consistent with how it appears in the editor. What is ksCarPaintSimple used for then? I was under the impression it was for cases like this, to put something quickly into the game. Is it perhaps for static props?


Documented here in case someone has the same issue and finds this.

Previews now also incorporate reflections when autogenerated with CM. Interesting. I knew something was wrong. Not gonna post pics of that too because I've spammed so much lol.

 

[BrianB]

Also more consistent with how it appears in the editor. What is ksCarPaintSimple used for then? I was under the impression it was for cases like this, to put something quickly into the game. Is it perhaps for static props?

When I put something in for quick checking I usually use KsPerPixelNM with the flat_nm that can be found in the same place as the documentation. Try that and see if it works.

 

[Kyuubeey]

When I put something in for quick checking I usually use KsPerPixelNM with the flat_nm that can be found in the same place as the documentation. Try that and see if it works.

Excuse my ignore, but what does nm stand for? Normal maps?

 

[BrianB]

Excuse my ignore, but what does nm stand for? Normal maps?

Yes, nm is normal map.
I don't have AC installed at the moment so I don't remeber the exact names but I believe in the same place that has the pipeline pdf, there is also a folder with textures including 'flat_nm.dds' which is simply a flat normal map. That combined with a png of a color in KsPerPixelNM should already be enough to get it to show properly.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Yes, nm is normal map.
I don't have AC installed at the moment so I don't remeber the exact names but I believe in the same place that has the pipeline pdf, there is also a folder with textures including 'flat_nm.dds' which is simply a flat normal map. That combined with a png of a color in KsPerPixelNM should already be enough to get it to show properly.

Alright, thanks. I tried it, in the editor it's largely identical, there is just some strange seam in the front lower portion of the front bumper. Perhaps because of the relatively unsmooth geometry around there. It's not quite perfect.

Out of curiousity, what's the recommended setup for a reflective metallic paint? When looking at KS cars, the reflections appear quite a bit sharper than mine. I don't really understand the system very well myself.

Oh, and sorry if this is the wrong place for this stuff. A lot of skilled people browse this, so I'm mainly posting here for visibility.

 

[BrianB]

Alright, thanks. I tried it, in the editor it's largely identical, there is just some strange seam in the front lower portion of the front bumper. Perhaps because of the relatively unsmooth geometry around there. It's not quite perfect.

Out of curiousity, what's the recommended setup for a reflective metallic paint? When looking at KS cars, the reflections appear quite a bit sharper than mine. I don't really understand the system very well myself.

Oh, and sorry if this is the wrong place for this stuff. A lot of skilled people browse this, so I'm mainly posting here for visibility.

Most people use KsPerPixelMultiMap (or MultimapDamageDirt once you're ready to go that far) for the car paint I believe. It has a slot called TxMaps which controls the reflections:

If you don't have content manager yet I really recommend it. In it's showroom you can click on car parts and see exactly what values and textures people use. Really helps to get an idea of what sort of values to use.

 

[Stereo]

Multimap_damage_dirt is actually slightly preferable if you don't have a normalmap, as it only uses the normalmap when the car gets damaged. even "flat_nm" is not quite flat in PerPixelMultimap. (just an issue with storing normals in an 8 bit per channel texture)

Just use plain white & fully transparent texture in diffuse/maps/dirt/damage until you create textures for them, and paint colour can go in the detail texture.

 

[Kyuubeey]

@BrianB

Interesting. So these are just .dds files with those RGB values, or is it controlled in the shader itself somehow? If the latter, what kind of texture do I apply? Flat white?

@Stereo
Hmm. I don't understand much at all about 3D tech principles, but I get the gist. Should the main texture be the car color as well?

 

[BrianB]

@BrianB

Interesting. So these are just .dds files with those RGB values, or is it controlled in the shader itself somehow? If the latter, what kind of texture do I apply? Flat white?

@Stereo
Hmm. I don't understand much at all about 3D tech principles, but I get the gist. Should the main texture be the car color as well?

Just a single dds file with these values.

I assume you mean the txDiffuse with main texture, and yes, that is the car color.
Or you can do like Stereo said and put a transparent texture there and control the car color with the txDetail texture, which is a metal_detail.dds that you may have seen in other car skins. If you use a metal_detail don't forget to set useDetail to 1 and set the detailUVMultiplier to something like 10 or 20 in the shader.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Played a bit with that and managed to produce something like this by combining my old car paint with a new one in different channels.

Oops! Forgot pic!

@BrianB

metal_detail is something like metal flakes or scratches or whatever, right?

What exactly does detailUVMultiplier do?

 

[garyjpaterson]

That old lotus comparison is great but it always confused me a little, because it doesn't change just 1 channel at a time. So I've tried to put together a new one, hopefully I've got this right.

The 3 channels correspond to (I think!) this:

Red - specular intensity
Green - reflection sharpness
Blue - reflection intensity

So as such, a RGB map with maximum values (white) produces what you would expect, bright specular highlights, sharp and strong reflections:

Next up, 0 red. Looks very similar, just less specular highlights. (Also don't look at the bumpers in these comparisons, it does not change here):

0 Green is much more extreme of an effect, with no sharp reflections, or in other words extremely soft reflection. I'm not 100% sure why it looks as it does, my theory is it diffuses the white parts of the sky so much the whole car is near white (and shows off the spec on the detail texture):

Then we have 0 Blue - this time it pretty much removes the reflections completely, giving an extreme matte effect. A mix of blue and green works well for a better looking matte effect:

But in practise, I would never suggest using a plain RGB map, I would always combine it with the AO bake to try and make it appear more natural and varied.
So I use this in 90% of cases, Maximum Green which gives sharp reflections everywhere, though the red and blue channel varies from 0 in shadowed areas (lower half of bodywork for example), which helps stop the bright reflections and highlights on the bodywork from the road:

Here is a final comparison of that effect in-game (not my car) -

RGB Map based on AO like shown above:

Pure white RGB map, so max reflections and specular everywhere:

Maybe not an answer to anyone's questions but hopefully useful to someone.

Edit*
Final thing - for most cases its fine to have your main skin RGB map as an uncompressed (no alpha needed, so 888) at 512px. I'd only bother using a higher resolution RGB map if its for special skins with more than 1 effect needed, so say a livery with gloss and matte elements.