Quartza, I believe you have to set the track texture to high. I had problems to when I tried at medium.
First, let me show you these Yesterday, I spent the day reworking all the grass, trees, asphalt and tatoos. I tried to remove that blue tint there was in the grass/trees. I probably haven't done a job as good as Tosch, but again, these are using default ISI profile. But it's clearly better than my first try! I did most work on the evergreen, since, as you might have noticed, they were sort of glowing when hit with direct sunlight early or late in the day. They are now behaving much better now. I also did a lot of work on the road textures. I remade them quite a few times, played with specularity settings, and finally got something that looks pretty darn sweet. I went with spec numbers of my own in the end. I also redid the tatoos from the original, since I desaturated them way too much on my first edit. Now they are better. And one last thing, I finally listened to those complaining about dust, and changed the way it appears. The dust is defined in different materials, and in different ways. It was as such before, but not as evident and it was pouring too much dust. I changed the way dust is generated, it is a lot less inconvenient now, and adds to the atmosphere. I doubt that nord is a perfectly clean track, otherwise, the maker of the track wouldnt have went as far as creating road textures with dust, and settings values for dust in the tdf. Also, if you look at videos, you will often find a dirty tarmac. Since most of the time, its random people that goes there and race... so you can expect quite a few going off road and back on... so this clearly put some dirt on the tarmac. I agree it was way too much, tho, since I mostly run practice sessions, it wasnt really an inconvenience for me, even if I play with AIs. But I'm not willing to totally remove it tho. I'll make sure its not a major problem when racing with many cars, but some amount and that will vary on parts of the track... curbs for instance generate really few dust, and go away fast. I'll likely tweak it a little further, but I'll let you all try those changes, as I'm uploading the new version now! Hope the new changes, and most specially the tarmac and dust will please most people now!
Interesting, I never tried medium and low, only tried high actually. I'll try to investigate on the matter. If anyone have any ideas why this is happening, I could certainly use pointers, as I'm clueless as to why it could happen. Very nice screen! Unusual camera position makes the best screens The 24h is planned. Forgive my ignorance, but before I started the project, I wasn't aware of nord's history, its different layout, pretty much only knew the tourist, and assumed that was it. What's the difference between 24h and vln? I know there is both in the 2.2a release. I have quickly looked it in 3dsimed, and couldnt find much difference with the 24h layout, so I wasn't sure what it was.
Those improvements look great! Seeing so much progress in less than 3 months, it is clear you are a very fast learner and extremely determined.
Very nice pics pleclair. I upload my stuff atm and send you a link later. I tried to fix the missing normal map in the bb trees, but no luck. Had a look inside the files (with 3dsimed) and everything seems ok. Don't know what is wrong. Maybe you have to export everything with 3dsmax. Anyway. I tested a lot the last two days and in my opinion the worst thing atm are the cracks in the mesh, especially in dusk conditions. The question is, is there a need to fix all these cracks one by one, or is it possible to create a huge poly, mesh, whatever, below the track to prevent the light from shining through these holes in the surface? Whatever you do. You are on a good way. Some hdr profiles for testing. All profiles have high gamma to prevent the trees from become to dark when not illuminated by the sun. View attachment Nordschleife_Tourist_hdr.zip
Thanks Tosch! I will have a look at those profiles soon! Regarding the normal maps of the bb trees, they are working, but not in the way they should, or not in the way you showed me in the 3 screenshots of essington. If they weren't working, we wouldnt be seeing the bumps on the tree trunks. But you haven't answered me on the question I asked you about the normal maps you used on essington? Are they made from the actual 3d trees, or they are made with crazybump or other ways with the image file? Cause if it's the first, I do not have the 3d model of the tree, only the renders. So I cannot make such a normal map. I made them from the actual image using crazybump. Regarding the cracks... I have tried to do such thing, create an undershadow object, but it didnt worked good, since the cracks appears at places with different mats. So if I map a single grass mat on the undershadow, it will sure be better than seeing the sun shine thru, but they are still very apparent since you cannot get a perfect blend, or anything close, or maybe I overlooked something? Plus, I'd rather fix them, this way, the curves, curbs, etc all becomes smooth as seen in the first 2-3km of the track. But to be honest, the cracks are barely seeable when driving, they are more a problem when you wanna make a screenshot tho So imo, getting textures to par will do a better job at raising the quality of track than fixing cracks first. Specially considering time it takes for both But I'll get back to it! I spent 3 weeks-1 month in a row on this, but I was going faster at the end. Its just it was depressing to spend so much time and get so little result. Plus I knew I had to learn about texturing, so I switched motive for a while
Hmmm, another question, you mention all profiles have high gamma to prevent trees from becoming too dark... but is it something that is "normal"? Or you had to do this because of a problem in the textures (either base or spec?) or specular definition? I have noticed the trees might be a bit dark at times still, what steps should I take to resolve this, without the use of the profile? Make the base texture lighter, and spec darker? Or make the base texture darker and spec lighter? Or is it something I could change with the fresnel values?
You will find examples in the link I pm'd you. I don't need a 3d model for the normal maps. In my opinion a tree has roughly the shape of a sphere. What I do is to create a normal map from the texture for the fine details and superimpose the normal map of a sphere over this by using Photoshop (new layer - overlay - 75% opacity). You have only to make sure the alignment is right (blue-bottom left, pink-bottom right, white-top).
That seems to be a general problem with the billboards and my only solution atm is to add a special normal map. Without a normal map the billboard acts like a billboard when it comes to lighting. The thing is flat. When the sun is slightly behind the tree, the texture receives no light and the billboard turns into "darkmode". With the normal map you can add a "shape" to the tree and some parts are iluminated, while others become darker. Edit: Here is a photo I made 10 days ago. Have a look at the trees in the background.
Now that is what I call research. Heading to the track to make sure your HDR profile best matches reality.
Oh!!! I'll be experiment with this, makes perfect sense! Thanks Tosch! I will post screens when I got something worth showing! Or if I run into troubles and need help tweaking things!
BTW, here is the download link for v0.97d I have just uploaded: https://mega.co.nz/#!5YRSTD7b!Zd9xEjMqNHfs39IpkRhrmzen62ppUP2msVl1fP9oDWQ This brings the same changes as you have seen in the screens earlier this morning. The better grasses, trees, road and tatoos, along with new dust definitions. Btw, the dust isnt set in stone. I want your feedback on it, but keep in mind, I dont want to totally remove it. I think it should stay there, but I'm up to make it in a way that is not disruptive, or just a little, and not in every spot there is dust, as there are spot that should be dustier than other. I'll also update the 1st post now. EDIT: What I personally liked about the dust before, was, I'm often running in practice on it, well always, and with few AIs, like 10-12 at the most... most of the time at least. So with such few cars on such a large track, you often end up racing alone, and with many corners, you have no idea how close you are to the guy in front. Dust often allowed you to catch glimpse at those, quite a bit before you actually see the car, because of the frequent corners. So it became a motivation to catch that guy and pass him
Hmmm Tosch, on the sphere thing... I wanted to start right away and have my first shot at it, but I'm wondering how to create the sphere. I would think I make one in 3dsmax, render it, save the image, and create a normal map, is that it? But how do you light the sphere first hand in this case? Top down, or another position? Or a simpler solution, create a circle shape layer in photoshop and apply a subtle radial gradient? But again, where would I place my center point? Center? After I got this figured, we will have some much better trees in nords!!
The main thing is the path through the GP circuit. One uses T2 - T4 and omits T5 thru 9. The other omits 2 - 4 and uses 5 thru 9 pretty much. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikiped...00px-Nürburgring_-_Grand-Prix-Strecke.svg.png
