The "What Are You Working On?" Thread

[Kyuubeey]

@garyjpaterson

Great. Good explanation. Loved, favorited, told my friends, called the press, called my mom etc.

So the RGB map for the main skin can be an uncompressed .dds?

 

[garyjpaterson]

Yup for most cases, a 512*512px RGB will suffice, and uncompressed without Alpha should be 768KB (relative to a standard 2k skin, it could be smaller for other parts).

Thats full size:

 

[Kyuubeey]

More work. Haven't quite figured out this rear quarter part, where the sharp slope meets the side part. Not what the form is nor how he polyflow should go. Blueprints are most assuredly all a bit wrong on that part as well. Many pictures are disagreeing with them.

This is where I'm at now.

 

[Ghoults]

You probably need bigger txmap If you use your txmaps texture to give your decals or different parts of the car different reflections (part matte, part metal paint). You can look at the corvette and gt-r skins I've uploaded to rd to see examples of that. With small textures you get jagged lines. But with compressed textures you also get banding where the colors and reflections don't transition smoothly but create visible edges. So sometimes you need to compromise.

 

[garyjpaterson]

Yep definitely, if you want more than one effect 512px definitely wont be enough. Merc AMG GT3 or many of the Porsche race cars have this too.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Lots of physics work done. Front measurements were bang-on and the camber curve is basically 1:1. Not sure if it goes how much whack at the very ends of travel, but in a reasonable range it matches up. The rear, what a weird case. The measurements were/I had inputted them 60mm higher relative to the ground than what they should be. Exactly.

After days of photomatching, thinking about it, trying to compare to the curves, I finally got a result that makes sense, lines up with photomatching and produces camber curves more or less 1:1 to the data. I don't have lots of it, but I suspect if it's correct at the very ends and through a reasonable range, it's correct.

Skidpad G is showing a bit lower, but I'm not sure how exactly those were measured. We're talking difference of 0.010 - 0.015g here and my tires are still reasonable, any more tire and it'l start getting a bit too grippy for this kind of tire IMO.

In terms of 3D, done a lot of small tweaking here and there. Rear quarter kinda coming together, but it's a difficult one. Blueprints don't agree with eachother either.

Not in the pictures are the rear drum brakes and more detailed (inner) tire I modeled to get a more close visual representation ingame, for physics troubleshooting purposes. Gonna scrap those as soon as I get to making real wheels and tires, but eyes aren't very reliable. Artists know that. The closer the context of the visual image is, the more reliable it can be considered to be. So I need some brakes to check where exactly my link is in reality, when in doubt.

EDIT:

Oh, so THAT'S how the shader system works...

 

[Kyuubeey]

Getting there...

I want these general forms to be correct before I do any trims. Will make my life easier later. Ref car is not 100% the same model I'm making, but the body lines didn't really change from what I know.

EDIT:

And now for a break. Little by little it gets there.

 

[DrPenguin87]

I've been experimenting in ksEditor and Blender, getting a feel for each program and especially the shaders/materials system in ksEditor. It's been an interesting process and I'm excited to eventually get my local circuit into AC.

 

[Jericho Riley]

Okay, so I'm having trouble uploading a track onto kseditor? Where do I go for that? I've tried to drag and drop, and while I know it's not the solution, I don't have any experience importing 3d files.

 

[Kyuubeey]

@Jericho Riley

I believe the track needs to be in .FBX format and imported via "IMPORT FBX" or something like that. It has a limit of 60,000 or so verts, so I think you need to import the road, roadside, buildings, trees etc. separately.

Question to the good modelers here:

I want to achieve:

Specifically that flow line that goes from the back, over the rear arch and ends into the front arch, then smooths out past the front arch.

This is what I've been able to create, 2x Subdiv:

However my flow produces some trash geometry. This is unsmoothed:

Close up with wire:

Unsmoothed close up:

Does that stretching happen from the triangular faces stretching? Is there anything I can do to realistically model this cleanly? Thanks!

 

[AccAkut]

@Jericho Riley

I believe the track needs to be in .FBX format and imported via "IMPORT FBX" or something like that. It has a limit of 60,000 or so verts, so I think you need to import the road, roadside, buildings, trees etc. separately.

Question to the good modelers here:

I want to achieve: View attachment 286960

Specifically that flow line that goes from the back, over the rear arch and ends into the front arch, then smooths out past the front arch.

This is what I've been able to create, 2x Subdiv:

View attachment 286961

However my flow produces some trash geometry. This is unsmoothed:

View attachment 286962

Close up with wire:

View attachment 286963

Unsmoothed close up:

View attachment 286964

Does that stretching happen from the triangular faces stretching? Is there anything I can do to realistically model this cleanly? Thanks!

The 60.000+ limit is for tris per object, so no issue importing the whole track as on fbx

 

[Ghoults]

@Jericho Riley

I believe the track needs to be in .FBX format and imported via "IMPORT FBX" or something like that. It has a limit of 60,000 or so verts, so I think you need to import the road, roadside, buildings, trees etc. separately.

Question to the good modelers here:

I want to achieve: View attachment 286960

Specifically that flow line that goes from the back, over the rear arch and ends into the front arch, then smooths out past the front arch.

This is what I've been able to create, 2x Subdiv:

View attachment 286961

However my flow produces some trash geometry. This is unsmoothed:

View attachment 286962

Close up with wire:

View attachment 286963

Unsmoothed close up:

View attachment 286964

Does that stretching happen from the triangular faces stretching? Is there anything I can do to realistically model this cleanly? Thanks!

subdiv adds more geometry which basically just makes the reflection errors smaller. What you could do is to add more geometry called support loops. These are just long lines that are placed near edges that don't necessarily add any new shapes but support the curvature of the mesh. I mentioned earlier that you don't want to go from wide faces to narrow faces suddenly as that creates an edge and with default blender shading it doesn't work with hard edges. I did not check whether you use blender 2.79x or 2.8 but there is an addon called weighted normals which is super useful for things like these. It does not play nice with modifiers but allows you to get better vertex normals with less tris.
https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...-the-workflow-in-blender.131925/#post-2565823

 

[Kyuubeey]

subdiv adds more geometry which basically just makes the reflection errors smaller. What you could do is to add more geometry called support loops. These are just long lines that are placed near edges that don't necessarily add any new shapes but support the curvature of the mesh. I mentioned earlier that you don't want to go from wide faces to narrow faces suddenly as that creates an edge and with default blender shading it doesn't work with hard edges. I did not check whether you use blender 2.79x or 2.8 but there is an addon called weighted normals which is super useful for things like these. It does not play nice with modifiers but allows you to get better vertex normals with less tris.
https://www.racedepartment.com/thre...-the-workflow-in-blender.131925/#post-2565823

Where exactly should I place the support loops? On the arch? I tried just about everything to no change in Blender... 2.79 btw.

This is how it looks ingame.

 

[Ghoults]

Sometimes it is not worth it to make it all quads if you know you are not going to subdiv it. You can look at kunos wireframes for example how they deal with those kinds of issues. I don't remember a car from ac that has similar edge near the fenders but look for one and you can see how the pros worked around it. You can carefully add triangles and add them in such way that no face loop suddenly goes from wide to narrow. For example if you look at the faceloop behind the rear tire fender when you follow it from bottom to up you notice it goes from narrow to wide. The car side edge is supported well but the rear fender is not.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Sometimes it is not worth it to make it all quads if you know you are not going to subdiv it. You can look at kunos wireframes for example how they deal with those kinds of issues. I don't remember a car from ac that has similar edge near the fenders but look for one and you can see how the pros worked around it. You can carefully add triangles and add them in such way that no face loop suddenly goes from wide to narrow. For example if you look at the faceloop behind the rear tire fender when you follow it from bottom to up you notice it goes from narrow to wide. The car side edge is supported well but the rear fender is not.

I'm intending to subdiv, actually. Even then, a car's more or less impossible all quads if you'd like it out this decade, but I'd at least like these kinds of glaring issues to be solved. You think adding more support for the fender would fix it? The strange thing is that no matter how I orient the vertices, it seems to have the same shading unless I really move them out of line. Not enough geometry?

 

[Ghoults]

Yes, you want more geometry to support the fenders. Look at this for example. The face loops go around the fender.

 

[Kyuubeey]

Here's what I tried. It looks much cleaner without subdiv, and with subdiv.

There's some artifacting on the very edge of the arch. Doesn't blend into the body smoothly, but creates a sharp reflection or an unnatural shadow. I think it might not be very noticeable in-game/is normal. Is this normal or can I fix it somehow?

Thanks @Ghoults

 

[Kyuubeey]

Eh, I'll take it. Not quite where I want it but it's a step up from yesterday. Maybe I should lower my standards for my 1st car model, as well. Can't get it perfect on the first try...

EDIT:

It's getting there. Trying to make the geo as clean as I can for as little shading bugs as possible. Everything's not smooth and aligned yet on the flow line so that's why the angle is a bit off and the shading is weird in the middle. I'll get to it, and try to think of a better yet way to model around the fenders as well.

 

[CC]

Eh, I'll take it. Not quite where I want it but it's a step up from yesterday. Maybe I should lower my standards for my 1st car model, as well. Can't get it perfect on the first try...

View attachment 286986

View attachment 286985

EDIT:

It's getting there. Trying to make the geo as clean as I can for as little shading bugs as possible. Everything's not smooth and aligned yet on the flow line so that's why the angle is a bit off and the shading is weird in the middle. I'll get to it, and try to think of a better yet way to model around the fenders as well.

View attachment 287056

Like for example here inside 3DS Max,
I created a quick cylinder to replicate a standard wheel arch so to speak,

here on the mesh its just smoothing group 1,

very primitive geometry at this stage,
but for example,
we can add loops now and see what happens to the mesh with turbo ,

"turbo=no_loops"

"turbo=loops"
1/

2/

these ways are ok to use, but generates major extra lines in the geometry,
and simple depends how much skill you have, because at some point, will be a pain with a couple of stages of turbo and 100,s of lines everywhere,

some people use these techniques,

I prefer this method,
mesh smoothing group=1

mesh with isolated smoothing groups=0 loops,
here we have just the basic mesh with 0 loops but the smoothing groups altered from everything at smoothing group =1, to the edge of the arch to smoothing group =2,
you can make it 2-3-4-5 ect ect,

now with turbo,

the mesh is much more cleaner and the areas are not blurred and warped where the turbosmooth algorithm as tweeked the mesh,

now after this process, I will add some loops to give the smoothing back again,

this is my process anyways,
using turbosmooth+smoothing groups+splitting the mesh the edges,

body panels, and different areas I will always apply different smoothing groups,
bonnets, boots, doors, windows, all have there own smoothing groups,

if you have a wheel arch for example, or a surface where its smooth then hard areas with chamfers,
simply split the mesh the edges,

the end result will be much cleaner, much sharper and way less complicated,
hope that helps somewhat,

youll find when you come to do your glass the windows looking at your mesh currently there will be some issues, time consuming issues,
applying these techniques will save you time, give you better results, and less complications during the project build.

 

[Kyuubeey]

@CC

Thanks for the info, and even pics! However I'll just have to model more to get the context to even understand what you mean with your advice, you see. So it kind of falls on deaf ears. I'll get it when I come to it...

My main issue right now wasn't that part of the arch itself, I have a pretty good idea how to do that, it's the one that attaches to the car. Can't help but feel I'm stretching the faces too much with the triangles and whatever and there has to be a better way.