So I duplicated the road mesh, merged it all back together, and since I made sure that all edge loops loop properly, it was piece of cake to remove the extra edges in the width direction, and keep only 1 in the middle, reducing poly count by a lot.
I also made a spline to spline map it to this new object, and duplicated the result to map 2 groove textures. One, the original from the track, and another, a tire marks texture coming from another AC track.
Here how it looks:
Also, since I was in the mood of fixing things, I also fixed the remaining flow connect mess up Fixed a couple of cracks I noticed with the replays.
EDIT: I will be revisiting the splnie after comparing a good lap with the groove I did. At first, I tried to follow the bmw guide, but the track is like out of proportion in the guide, and barely look like what I was seeing, so at some point I said screw that, and I tried to remember where I would be on the track when I lap it. I got quite a few corners, but some could be much improved.
First time I do this, I never done it for the rf2 version since the way rf2 does it didnt looked that bad with the groove texture mapped to the same uv channel as the diffuse.
EDIT2: The screenshot depicts the Fast preset.
I have noticed the tiremarks were seen to be hovering a bit too much over the tarmac, it wasn't really noticeable most of time, except when climbing a hill and coming on top of it... then they were easily seen, specially with certain sun positions.
ReplyDeleteI remember when I worked on the rF2 version, the rF2 engine had problems with z fighting with such a large track, so I had to use higher values, and I somehow assumed AC would be the same.
Turns out I can use much smaller values with the AC engine.
At first, I had the main groove set to 3cm above the tarmac, and the tire marks 1cm above it... now they sit at 0.5cm each. So the tiremarks sit at 1cm total from the tarmac.
Actually, haven't tried lower than this, might work.. will likely check since I'm curious!
I dunno, compared to v0.23, v 0.26 and v0.28 give me performance problems. My rig is in the low end, I don't use AI and disable mirrors, etc.,but until v23 was having very steady 40 fps, now I 'm having big stutters at may turns.
ReplyDeleteWhat could have caused that?
As I said previously, the way AC does the groove is far from optimal. In rF2, it is simply a texture mapped to a different uv channel in the road material. In AC, it is a duplicate of the track for each groove you wanna map.
DeleteAs for the length, optimally they would appear mostly around corners, so I will cut some part of the tire marks mesh later, making them appear in corner, and shortly before/after.
I want to fine tune the spline before making this happen tho, to make sure I cut the right parts...
You can expect some performance back when I cut parts of that mesh, but I doubt it will make it as it was before, as there will be like 2 road mesh and a half... or so...
Same for the trees, fences and that kind of stuff that can be seen on both sides... AC doesnt support two sided mats, so you need to duplicate polys for all these objects... far from optimal if you ask me.. but the engine deals with huge objects very nicely tho... I couldnt load the track mesh all merged together in rF2, AC does it just fine..
Both have strengths and weaknesses.
Something you could see tho, check your video settings, and make sure that your reflections settings and cubemap are set to the lowest or disabled, that might help. But it is likely off already...?
The skidmarks look very nice, make the track more alive. I thinl that some of them are too long imo.
ReplyDeleteAs for the groove, I was able to set the main groove 1mm on top of the tarmac, and the tire mark 1mm above the groove... so it looks fine now!
ReplyDeleteI don't know what is actually possible to do since i'm not a 3d artist but by watching this video:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=gqUzxv6XffM
I get the idea that what is missing to bring the track to the new sims standard is:
-New road texture
-Real sized kerbs (new textures would be good to, I think)
-3d grass (at least inside the fences)
You don't need to rush things up, but if you were able to bring these updates, the track would look astonishing. I'm pretty sure.
I
Regarding the textures, I already asked once if people would be interested in making donations so I can subscribe to gametextures and get some new textures for the road, curbs, trees fences and guardrails. The rest is alright since we don't get too close anyway.
DeleteFor the rF2 version, I was able to pitch in myself some 500$ or so in the project at tax return time, but it's long gone and I can't afford anything until next year basically.. so the only way I could get better textures done, as I cannot make some myself out of thin air, and I cannot get to the track to take pictures either (plus I would need to learn how to make textures out of them... I guess its not all that simple)
What I have, is time, plenty of it...
The height of the curbs will get fixed sometimes later. I wanted to do it, but I think quite a few people like them lower as not everyone is a pro on the track.
So I will keep this as one of the last thing I would do, so people who likes lower curbs would still get a decent version instead of using one of the first.
3d grass... that might not happen... thing is, if I do grass, I don't want to skim on the amount just so we have it... if we have it, it must be dense from most angle (except obviously from top)... like I've shown you in the grass screenshots, but with shorter grass for the track side...
However, with shorter grass, you need even more poly to make it look dense... so...
Plus with the grooves added, I will likely hit the cap with the grass much sooner now. Until a 64 bit version is released, and I hope they will need it for their nord, otherwise it might not be what we are waiting for, and won't certainly look like the pcars you shown me.... it is quite awesome... I'd be curious to know if pcars is 64bit or not... or maybe they don't load all of the track at once like most sim do... I dunno, but I doubt this would be possible with the AC engine on 32bit.. specially if you consider that all trees, fences, vegetations must have their polys duplicated since no shader does two side mat...
Thanks for the answer,I would be happy to donate, add a donation button here in the blog :D
DeleteWell, before you or anyone make a donation, I would rather like to make a poll first, to see if there is enough people interested to make it happen. Don't want you guys to donate for nothing either. Unless you wanna donate for what is already done, that is another story.
ReplyDeleteBut I would really like to get this to happen, knowing what they are capable of, it is litterally the work of AAA studios they do, so it would look pretty sweet.
I will be able to skip the road textures as a requests, since I have used the one from the nurb track and it looks pretty good.
Then once the poll is either positive or negative, I would contact gametextures and work something with them. Cause there might be a few textures they normally wouldn't do since it would be or no use to resale on their website, so I'll have to see with them if there is something that can be done, for a different price or price per texture request or something.
The thing that would benefit the most at this point is really the trees. If I can get some high quality replacements for the branches, I could seek thru the 3 trees bundles I bought for my rf2 version and replace the X shape trees with Y mesh and high quality rendered trees that would look similar to those I would replace. Not exactly the same obviously, but I think I can find trees that would look similar enough.
All curbs textures would also be a nice thing to have, fences and guardrails. They already make some for me, so I would only need the new variety that is with gtr evo. I believe those they made look similar to those most common around track.
And the fences, again, I got a few done already, but there is some different in this version, and I will bring back the 3d catch fence from the rf2 version into this one.... the catch fences are fake and have no 3d posts... so I will bring (eventually) all the better fences from the other version into this one.