I think for cars, the gen file is king, but tracks, it's the other way around. I know when I've made cars, I never do LODS in max, just in the gen, and it seems to work. But tracks I've tried that, and it won't work.
Some questions about shaders 1. does gjed support custom shaders? 2. on the racedepartment forum marcel answered some question that there is a dirt shader for cars. Is there an official shader or is it some modder's work? 3. can that shader be used with gjed? How?
1. Yes - copy your custum shader.mas or as loose files in the shared folder you are using. (For example the lens flare) Downfall 1: the custom shader won't be in the shader list unless it's in use by a gmt. So you need to apply it first then you can choose it in the list. Downfall 2: Lens flare doesn't save its texture stage and doesn't export its texture stage. So you can only check things in gjed. But you'll need to apply it in 3ds max with the gmotor plugins. (don't know about other custom shaders) 2. Don't know: but the dirt takes very very long until it's visible. So if it's a sprint car then i would use the car paint shader. (You can up date the car at a later stage) 3. Yes. If it's a custom one it might be buggy in gjed. I've only experimented with the lens flare shader... View attachment 20958 the .gfx file describes 3 shaders: if you scroll down in the file you'll find 2 more. View attachment 20959
Car paint with damage + extra layer is available in gJED by default. I didn't know what its purpose was. Now i know. In my experience: Texture animations in gJED can't be set properly at the moment. Or i'm missing something?
I have some questions about cockpitinfo stuff. 1. When using a ttf font file is there any way to adjust the color or is it always white? 2. How to make bmp fonts for rf2? Do you need to draw it manually in image editor or is there some freeware software that can create bmp fonts from ttf files (like ac that offers font generator tool)? 3. I've tried using bmp fonts but the quality looks really bad (blurry). Is there a trick how to make the bmp fonts to look less blurry? Is there some pixel resolution matching required to get the font to look good? For example I have a tga background file that is 120x80 should the bmp font be made 8pix tall for example? Or multiplier of that (4 or 16) to get a good result? Or just make as big as you want while making not too big. cropped form fullscreen 1920x1080: https://i.imgur.com/dXTcELe.png Not really cockpitinfo stuff but: 4. How do you get rid of the awful jaggies on some of the textures in the image? Like the tach face and the stickers (ignition, on, off, fog)? The textures are high res enough and should look better.
What does the "auto levels" do in gjed in material mip mapping properties? Should you turn it on or off and what kind of number does it want on the number box? Also what does the mip shad bias do?
- Auto level must be ticked - Level at "0" (will be -1 when you reload the track) - And trilinear must be ticked. These options should be default like that and are only their to make things look complicated. This is to make sure the ingame texture filtering is working with the usersetting. You can force ansio filtering if you really want too. Mip map bias: http://wiki.rfactor.net/index.php?title=MipMap Mip map shadow:
Thanks. So for every object autolevel should be ticked and level at 0? What if the texture does not have mipmaps, should autolevel still be ticked and set to 0? Do these need to be set up for all textures for each shader (specularity, normal maps, t2) and with same values too?
TBH: don't know if the level at "0" is necessary. There is no info about it. The only thing i know is that for all textures on a ISI track/cars the level is set at "-1". The only way to do this is: - set this level at "0". (for all texture stages) - save the .gmenv - and if you reopen your project these values are set at "-1" Tick auto level and trilinear are mandatory to tick, so the ingame-user-setting for texture filtering is working as it should. read this thread: https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/mip-mapping-anisotrophic-question.51793/#post-848929 Mip Map bias is a dds "prefilter". Mip map downscales texture resolution at a distance to avoid to sharp textures that causes a pixelery image and jaggies. Don't know what will happen with textures with no Mip maps. If it's for in car cocpit textures: They never start to mip map. No, Mip map bias for spec, norm map does'nt need to match. - Mip map bias higher then 0: is useless: it's beter to downscale your texture resulotion in photoshop to save Vram. But in gJED it's a good way to evaluate if texture resultion isn't to high. - Mip Map bias lower then 0: Can be used for objects/textures you always look at the distance. In other words textures that never reach the "0" mip map. Like trees and far track side objects. So you can downscale texture resulotion and save some Vram. IMO: modern graphics cards have enough Vram. So i go with a good texture resultion and leave mip map bias at "0". So the texture will look good up close and far away. Some large surface textures like the roads 1ste diffuse, covers a large area. and might mip map to soon. A negative mip map helps. For cars: use a good (not to high not to low) texture resolution. Cars need to look good up close and at a distance. Negative mip map is for texture you only look at a distance and not or never up close to downscale texture resolution and save Vram. But the filtering: auto level ticked and trilinear ticked is for all texture stages. BTW: If you work with FBX and gJED, the texture filtering doesn't work. I've set this in the nvidia controle pannel. If you open a track with a scene file or seperate car gmt's. gJED will use the texture filtering you set in gJED. (If you ticked auto level and trilinear.) So i turn this override value off.
Super helpful once again Gijs! I was actually wondering about the autolevel and the number whether those should be the same for all textures of the shader. The t1xt2 shader for example has 4 textures (and the car shader has like 5 or 6 iirc) so I wonder if all those need to be set to trilinear and autolevel?
Yes, unless you want force another texture filtering then the ingame setting. But i don't see the point in doing this. And ISI doesn't use force values. So why having this option? For all texture stages. - Tick auto levels and set it to "0" (stil don't know what this level does. ) - Tick trilinear. - And leave mip bias at "0" Note: cube stage will use mip bias "1". Don't know why? If you change it to "0". It will revert back to "1". So i guess it's mandatory.
How do you align lcd display text to the right? By default it seems the text is aligned left. Below is a screenshot from my car which has all the bits aligned to the left. Then the other pic is the mak corp 962c which has speed display which is aligned to the right: (the text alignment is marked with cyan on the pic. I got it a bit wrong as the text aligns to the top of the image and not to the bottom but other than that I hope you get what I mean). Is it the texture which is saved into some specific tga format or is it something in the max plugin/gjed?
How does suspension animations work in rf2? My understanding is that you don't need to animate them in 3dsmax (because the skippy has no separate .anm file for suspension). Do the parts need to be named in certain way, combined in certain to gmts and can you use multiple materials for suspension parts? What files you need to edit? I have currently made the suspension out of multiple gmts (I know this is probably wrong, they should be combined into single gmt... just because?) and they don't even line up inside rf2 and the front upper a-arm is not drawn correctly inside rf2. But shows up ok (not aligned in correct position but not deformed) in gjed and spinner. Do the suspension pivot need to be set up in certain way (orientation?), placed in certain place? Looking at the skippy files it makes no sense at all why the pivot is placed where it is?
