I just googled gJED and found a rFactor wiki I didn't even know existed. They have more info on the program there: http://wiki.rfactor.net/index.php?title=GJED. Quite an interesting piece of software.
I somehow feel this may make a big impact with regards to the RF2 modding scene, but that's just a gut feeling, I'm not a modder nor do I know anything about modding (especially on the graphical side).
It's a nice move. I'm quite sure that modding will be better. For example, just thinking to the realtime feedback with the material changes. I think it will make happy many modders
VERY big help for getting textures and material settings just right, and opens up for alot of different modeling tools to be used - not just blender or 3dsmax. Great stuff indeed
Wow, this look great. This might get me back to finally converting my rF1 fictional track to rF2. Not that I couldn't do it in 3ds max, but I didn't have the patience and discipline to really dive into it and continuously switching between max and rF2 to check materials, textures, meshes etc.
I'm really looking forward to this. It may not completely rid you of 3DS (doesn't look like it does the UV mapping for you) but it surely seems helpful. Now the only thing I want to know is: Is "a few weeks" faster or slower than "soon"?
You'll still need a 3D modelling program (3dsMax/Blender/whatever) for EVERYTHING related to the mesh (creation, animation, positioning, UVs, material ID, etc), EXCEPT for setting the material's shader, textures, material settings (alpha/specular settings etc) AND the mesh's instance settings (LOD distances, drivable/collidable/movable, shadows, reflections, assigning animations, etc). So no actual mesh editing in gJED - just setting mesh properties that are specific to rF2. I think that's right anyway.
Yes, you're right, there's stil a lot to do before you get to gJED. (maybe i should have worded it differently) But now you don't have to worry anymore about having the right plugins etc.
I don't know, having not worked with CAD programs. The key will be exporting to FBX format (an Autodesk initiated open file format if I'm not wrong). If your regular CAD program can't do that, there might be a way to do it by running it through some other program. You'd still need to set material IDs and unwrap mapping coordinates too though, which could be done in 3dsMax/Blender if they can read your CAD formats. Again, I'm just guessing. Someone else would know better than I. Yep, there is now a slight chance I won't ignore the next email I get from Autodesk about their next update It really is great for accessibility for modders. It won't necessarily magically make everything easier for a 3dsMax user (unless they have a more recent version than the ISI plugins work with), but for users of other 3D modelling programs they'll now not have to jump through additional conversion hoops (well, now it's only one hoop, and it's called... gJED, though I guess 3dSimEd is conceptually similar, except with support for a bunch of other games ).
You should be able to model in any CAD system as long as you can export into the need format without loss of too much quality. But i didnt found a way for the cad systems i know
3dsimed is nice, but it does not visualize graphics 100% as the actual rf2 engine, so for tuning materials it's prettty useless - also it has it's issues with certain 'flags' on export.
I would imagine you could model the whole track and have diffuse textures as kind of placeholders.... then tweak it in gJED with the required shaders.