Curbs looking spiffy in the editor!

I was curious to see how the curbs would look in the editor, so I exported a small segment of road, along with the curb and the part before the curb, and see how it looks.  Pretty stunning I must say!  The different time of day really shows a difference now.

I didn't thought about that before, but since the curbs have their own geometry, which differs of the road, and the beginning and end parts, it adds a bit of trouble, and will likely take me a lot longer than if I would have done them as they were before, but I believe the efforts will be worth it, don't you think?

Since there was no way I could connect the curbs to the road cleanly, I put the pivot point of the curb a little back, just a tiny bit, so it will sit a little over the road, as you can see, it doesnt really show up, and will save a lot of poly doing so.

I guess that's why the original was made like this!  With the curbs and stuff not connected and overlapped a bit.  I'm just too perfectionist and it bugs me... but I have no other choice now to do the same.  In the end, in game, it doesnt matter, but it's just that I like when things are clean and nicely made.. .stuff all connected.. but seems modelling for games requires some trickery!  Not that I modeled before for different purpose, but I suppose you don't have to resort to that kind of stuff when you are no really limited by poly count.

Development news

So far so good!

The cambers are done all around track, and closely match those of gtr evo.  Still need to interpolate a few bits, but overall, it's pretty good.  At first, I had no idea how I was gonna do it, so I found a way, but around halfway, I found a much better way of doing them, was going faster and a cleaner job, didnt need to interpolate as much.

I'm not sure if I'm gonna nail the two karussells right tho.  This is a lot more tricky, and I'm not certain how it's done from scratch.  So what I did was cut the karussel inside (the separate texture) and since it was pretty much the same size and shape as the original, I was able to conform it and do a few adjustments for the couple of verts that didn't conformed since they had no surface to conform.  

I have started work on the curb.  I'm currently modelling them so they will be 3d, and won't need fake bump added.  I have really liked the 3d curbs in the gp section, so I thought to tourist could use the same.

I am using the texture gametextures made for my other version.  Here is how they look.  Sorry for the low quality render, I don't know how to setup the rendering as I never had to.  But the texture should look much better in game.  If you have tried my rf2 version, you know how they looked :)

I will also do some research on how I could model the... I dunno how you call that, but the bricks as shown in adeneau or the inside of the karussel.  Since I have no really good texture for this, I thought it would be better to model it instead, and use a brick/concrete texture and ground/grass on the inside.

My finger is still pretty swollen, but it doesnt hurt as much on idle, and typing with my other finger on that same hand doesn't hurt no more, so that's why I was able to type this!  I can move it about 45 degrees.

So that's the news!  Anyone tried the new track mesh with mod cars?  Haven't heard anything yet... as they say, no news, good news?


EDIT:  Done with modelling the reference curbs and mapping each tile. There will be a lot of variations in the curbs now.

Actually, I'm having fun now!  Here are some sample of the concrete extension as found in hohenrain and lots of other places.

Won't be needing fake bumps no more!

The second style of concrete

I'm putting a plugin I bought a few months ago, when I was working the paddock area on the rf2 version, to good use.  Quad Chamfers from Marius Silaghi.  Actually, I got many of his scripts, lots of useful stuff in there.

It does much better chamfers than 3dsmax does.  A lot more options, and since its a plugin, it goes to the stack.

Something went wrong with the second concrete, had to redo it, and this time, I beveled the tiles a bit, I had forgotten to do it on the screenshot above.

Here is the "x bricks":

The first spline based Nordschleife available in the share!

Well!  I'm extremely pleased to announce that the first spline based nordschleife is now available.  Don't expect much, no shaders assigned, two textures, road and grass, no curbs, no nothing.. except the track and about 25-30 meters of grass on each side, no relief.

I tried the ferrari evo on it and the tatuus, the two cars from the defaults which had problems on the track before, and both drives perfectly on the new mesh.

So I'm letting it out early so you guys can throw all kind of cars at it and see how it goes.  Beware tho, there is no visual aids, so you will need to know the track like your back pocket to drive on it without falling past the wide patch of grass!

I'm not even sure if I'll be able to complete it, but I'm having a shot.

I know AC will probably have their own before I finish this up, but I'm now only interested in AC if you know what I mean.  I'd like to offer it to all current racing sims, if they wish to adapt it to their engine.  It's gonna be built for AC, so all in standard mats, so conversion to most engine should be easy... only rf2 will require a bit more to convert the mats, I'll need to check and see if there is a standard to gmat converter script... that would save a bunch of time.

So I'll keep you updated on the project.  And let me know how your mod cars handle on it.

EDIT:  I've done the width changes in the road, all that remains are the camber and both karussells.

Not quite the end...

Well, the dust have fallen, and I'm back to work.

Unfortunately, I can't type very well, I might have broken my left hand index finger, otherwise, its badly bruised.

Fortunately, working in max is easier...  so don't just stop visiting my blog yet... :)

The end

Well... I'm a bit pissed... I just don't understand how fucked up this whole world have gotten.  What am I doing wrong?  Ok, yeah, I'm taking stuff from a game, and make it available in another.  But this game we are talking about is dead.  I'm not charging anything for what I do, and even recommend to buy gtr evo, and know a few have bought it because of me.  So those are extra sales they wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

I even distribute the track to people owning gtr evo already, so what is the harm?  Anyone are free to convert the track if they own it, right?  For their own usage?  So I'm doing it freely for all those people, how is that any different than if everyone went about and converted their own version?

What I'm gaining in the process?  0 donations so far, and a little visibility.  And this is the main reason I'm doing this, I'd like to get noticed, but I doubt it will ever happen anyway, I just suck and can't create anything myself yet, and losing Nord also means I just lost all motivation to do this... cause I don't want to work on another track.  I've been working on this track (well nordschleife) for more than 1 year, and I'm still loving it as much, if not more.  My lap times are still improving regularly and no other tracks would offer me this level of replayability.

If I could sit with someone and go thru the process of creating something, I guess it would be enough for me to start something, but I just don't know where to start.  I tried many times to take the google earth mesh and do something with it, and I just don't know.

In case you think I was lying when I said I had the okay from Jay, here what he wrote me on August 2nd, as you can see, it wasn't the I, hereby, grant you bla bla bla kind of permission, but it looked to me more like a permission than an order to stop.

"I will not ask you to call back copies, and its ok to share with these people as long as they dont spread it outside your little circle. As a favor I would like you to ask those people the following question: Would they buy the AC Nordschleife DLC when it comes out even though they could use that one for free! And when they answer no, don't send them the anything anymore!"

From there, I emailed him twice, asking if it was okay if I would add more people to the circle providing they send me proof they own gtr evo, and he wasn't replying.  So I went ahead, and added the How to get access page.


On the 19, this is what he sent me:


"Sorry was away for a few days.

The thing i really want is to stop any and all conversions. I appreciate you take the effort of making things comfortable, but fact remains our content ends up in competitors games. And that to me is a chapter i want to close off as much as we can.

I hope you understand our stance in this all!

thank you in advance,

Best Regards,

Jay Ekkel"

So, yeah....  I'm fucking pissed.  They were certainly gaining more than I ever would have doing this.  SimBin started as a mod team, grew up on mods, as all their previous games were highly supported by the modding community, and yet, now they embrace the milk your customer model, or should I say free 2 play model, and turn their back to modding.  Yet, the community accept this behavior, and many still support what they do.

Oh, and just a thought regarding conversion vs scratch.  Why would someone make something from scratch for a company that doesn't give a fuck about you, and hardly ever acknowledge your work and at least thank you for it, let alone sending you a little something for it, knowing their game have more value because of the many things added from the community?  Honestly, the more I see clearly into this, the less I think any of those deserve anything made from scratch.  They get all the benefits, they sell more copies of their game, and what do people get?  A few end up working somewhere, and just how many end up burning themselves in the process and end up with nothing.

If you don't share my point of view, I don't give a fuck, and don't even bother commenting.  I'm out.

I will still go thru my emails and send out the BTSync keys to those who sent me their screenshots, and in a week or so, I'll stop my BTSync, letting time to everyone to sync one last time.

And my birthday is in 2 days.... happy birthday to me.

EDIT:  I just sent the keys to those who emailed me, if I missed you, as google kindly groups up some emails from different persons together, let me know.