Is there a central repository of gJED information. I see videos here and there but no central forum? I can't find a keyboard shortcut list unless I'm overlooking something. Also has anybody opened a FBX of a vehicle and had parts not in their proper position? I open the same FBX in other applications and the various objects are all in the place I saved them. Thanks in advance for any insight.
Thank you, but I am well aware of the wiki page that hasn't been updated since May 5th, 2015. I don't see any keyboard cheat sheets though. Also while there are some good videos, they seem to focus more on tracks and not on vehicles.
Yeah... gJED is not working for vehicles right now. I am hoping the next update to it corrects this and makes it a bit more stable.
Vehicle (.gen) files are not supported yet. Instances with multiple objects is not supported yet. Doing individual parts and create .gmt's and manually create the instances in a .gen is possible. But it requires a lot of know how.
I hadn't heard the issues with gJED and vehicles. That is nice to know, thank you. Guess I'll have to wait then.
The main issue with the gen creation for cars is not really gjed specific. Gjed does (ish) work but is cumbersome to use (random crashes, shader setting changes not visible, constant need to restart and some things has to be checked in game which can be extremely time consuming and slow). Only real thing missing though is documentation and animations for drivers (and other moving parts?). But gjed can do texture animations for leds and tire blurring and all of the basic modelling, texturing and materials and car instrumentation stuff. Most of the common shaders come with gjed. You need 3dsimed for some things though. You really want 3dsimed because the only way to learn is to unpack other people's work. For track creation I have no idea. The issue is the way most of the rf stuff is not really explained anywhere so you need prior knowledge about how to make 3d models for games to work out the stuff that is not explained anywhere. And what little info there is for 3d model creation for example is for the 3dmax plugin which makes it impossible to use for model creation in maya/blender/etc if you don't have previous modelling experience. If you have some previous experience then some of those pitfalls can be avoided by slowly figuring them out (vertex colors, uvmaps, materials, shaders). As for the rest ... some of the stuff is explained but it is all in drips and drops all around the internet in various forums buried deep in different threads. If you are familiar with rf1 then it is all easier (I'd assume) because rf2 was designed for experienced rf1 modders. But coming from "outside" it is impossible unless you have someone to help you who is familiar with rf2. Hopefully there is huge drastic change when dx11 rolls out and hopefully the tools and documentation are upgraded to support the new features and make it possible to start from scratch. I make it sound kinda impossible but it is definitely doable if you know a lot of rf1 r have rf2 knowledgeable people to help you. Gjed is not really the hard part for car creation. I did try to create some basic guide images for gjed but I never really figured out how the stuff works (I kinda get the result I want but don't truly know why and how some things ... function) and I did not get any help so I dropped my project: https://forum.studio-397.com/index.php?threads/help-me-write-some-basic-gjed-guides.52800/
Yeah, I kind of figure that I would have to rely upon 3dsimed. It imports the FBX's fine and I can compare the most recent released materials from say the USF2000 and use those as templates for my mod.
Also if you loaded a previous car in 3dsimed and your FBX, you can possibly copy and paste the shaders from one car to another... but of course your car FBX needs UV mapped correctly in the first place.
Good idea, it should be mapped properly since I converting a rf1 to rf2 and had gotten into Devmod a couple of years ago. I'll give it a shot. 3dsimed has been an invaluable tool.
If you use gjed do you set lod distances for car gmts in gjed or in gen or both. I'm asking because some lods seem to work (like dash) if set from gen but others (like wheels and rubber tires) don't. Or is there some rf2 logic and different things (different rules for different instances and upgrades..?) need to be set from different places?
For cars in the .gen file. Reason for this: - some .gmt's are used in different instances with different lod's - based on <HIGH> <LOW> etc detail settings, gmt's have different lod's defined in the .gen
My issue is that the lodin and lodout values don't seem to be doing anything. I tried to se the lodout to 8 and I can still see the mesh from far away. Examples: <STARTUPGRADES> Instance=LFTIRE<UPNUMBER> { Moveable=True MeshFile=<LFTIRESA> CollTarget=False HATTarget=False LODIn=(0.0) LODOut=(8.00) ShadowCaster=(True, Solid) Reflect=True MeshFile=TYRE_LF.gmt CollTarget=False HATTarget=False LODIn=(0.0) LODOut=(15.00) ShadowCaster=(True, Solid) Reflect=True Deformable=true MeshFile=TYRE_LF_1.gmt CollTarget=False HATTarget=False LODIn=(15.0) LODOut=(18.00) ShadowCaster=(True, Solid) Reflect=True Deformable=true } <STOPUPGRADES> Neither of those lod values do nothing. One is supposed to vanish at 15 metres and another at 18m. But both are visible from the furthest away camera. I don't have any <high> or <low> bits but are those necessary for lods to work?
Swingcam and track cams have a lod multplier. To view your lods correctly you'll need to be in cockpit cam and drive behind an AI. Take a look at the skipbarber.gen The <HIGH> etc ... lines are for the opponent quality setting you set in the graphic settings. They are not mandatory but people with less powerful PC's will appreciate this.
Is there any way to know how many uv maps does a shader need for example? Should you always use 4 (0,1,2,3)? Some seem to work just fine 3 or maybe even 2. Does the term add for example mean the same thing in every shader name? What does it add? Just T1 x T2 or vertex color or alpha layer or specular or whatever? Also because the material window is so narrow you can't even read the full names of the shaders in gjed. Is there a list of shaders somewhere with their full names? What do these mean in the shader names: - tex1 - fresnel alpha (fresnel reflections are controlled by the alpha layer of the T1 texture? What happens if you use alphatest with that? Is it used for both?) - is there any way to control draw order if you have multiple alphatested or alpha blended shaders on top of each others? - what's the difference between "T1 alphatest" and "T1" where you have manually turned on alphatest? - what is stamp vertex? - are vertex colors only used in shaders which have vertex in the name? Is there any way to know if the shader wants a dds file alpha layer or not or should the alpha always be white? So some shaders expect certain file types? Like dds, tga or bmp in certain cases? How do you make bmp fonts for rf2? When a shader is used with specular in the name (not specular map, just specular T1 for example) does this mean the specular then comes from the alpha layer instead of specular texture? Is it always like this?
I don't believe so. Trial and error is best way to find out. Add means add, as-in the mathematical operation. You're right, though it's not always clear from the 'short' shader names what's actually being added, and when. It's unclear whether two maps are being added together, or whether a resulting computation is being added. Unfortunately, gJED doesn't have the 'long description', which explains a lot of this stuff; the short names can be suuuuper confusing. For example, "Bump Cube Specular Map Add Specular Reflect T1" is a really confusing way of saying that the cubemap is modulated (multiplied--see below) by the Spec Map's alpha channel. Its long description says: "Diffuse lighting, normal map, cube map modulated by spec map alpha, specular map, tex1, DX9." In a semi-mathematical notation it's: result = (T1.rgb x diffLighting) + (SpecMap.rgb x specLighting) + (SpecMap.a x CubeRefl) (To address your example, T1 x T2 is a multiplicative (MULT) process--in other words, it always gets darker when the two maps are combined. 3DS Max plugin only afaik :/ Again, gJED should have the full desc. as Max does. "Diffuse"/albedo texture Got a specific example? I'm not seeing fresnel alpha anywhere. I don't believe you can with Alpha Testing, because it actually writes depth, so there's no need to sort. However, you can check 'Sorted' on alpha blended shaders, and they'll be drawn back to front, I believe. Occasionally, you may need to tweak the Offset (I believe higher values means closer to the camera, if I recall correctly), but you should try to not touch this unless you know what you're doing. I believe I read something in the rF1 docs that values over a certain amount are reserved for inside the cockpit. Perhaps someone with more experience with cars can chime in and clear things up. I think I read somewhere in these forums that the T1 Alphatest is deprecated (i.e. an old shader that shouldn't be used anymore, but they didn't remove it because some older content was still using it). Stamp vertex is how you get billboarding. The Track Technology docs covers this very well. https://www.studio-397.com/modding-resources/ I think vertex colors are usually passed in to the shaders and applied as a way to tint your materials if you'd like, if it doesn't explicitly say it's used in some other manner. It is dependent on each material. However, keep in mind that this will increase the size (memory) your meshes take up. This is one way that you can get some faked / baked AO or color bleeding into your meshes. However, that's very dependent on the quality of your mesh in that case. Yes, the shader will say if it's using the Alpha channel in some way. See the above example. The only time it doesn't explicitly say is in the diffuse texture if you're using alpha blending/alpha testing. I'm not sure about the car shaders, but track shaders can/should all use DDS textures. If you don't need an alpha channel, don't export an alpha channel. Use DXT1 no Alpha compression, unless you absolutely need the better quality and alpha channel that DXT5 affords. In general, those are about the only two DXT compression 'modes' you'll need. If a shader doesn't say it uses the Alpha channel, and you're not using Alpha Blending, then it doesn't matter what you put in the Alpha channel. I'm assuming you mean for car numbers or something else car modding related. No idea. Perhaps this question should be posted in the Car Modding forum, specifically. I don't believe they're used at all, afaik, in Track modding. That means that the specular value comes from the specular color in the Material panel (Down in the 'Reflectivity' section). I hope this helps, and isn't coming too late. Sorry nobody responded earlier...I only just saw this post today, myself.
