Hi Mark I've been following your awesome graphical updates from the start as this CART mod is by far my favorite mod. Was just wondering if you would consider releasing the cars that you have already completed and add the rest once their done. I use a reduced amount of AI to help with FPS so even having a couple of updated cars to race against would be awesome. Of course if you want to finish them all before you release anything is totally up to you as your the one doing all the hard work. Just thought I'd ask and am very thankful that your working on it, what you have so far looks great. Thanks again. Cheers Dave
Hi Dave, Thank you for your appreciation of the work so far. It may be possible to release one of the cars first, but for that to happen I would need to finish one first. At different points over the last year or so each chassis has been worked on and I am now at a point where most of the work is done on all of them but not all of the work has been done on any of them. So to put it another way, none of them are at a stage I am happy to call them completed, just yet. I am also waiting of Traveller's updated scripts for Blender to hopefully allow the usage of normal maps, as this really adds to the aesthetics. I also keep on learning new things that then have to be implemented on all the other chassis, but in the end I think the extra work will be worth it. Here is something just to keep you going (work in progress, Reynard liveries still original)
Are you not using the Carbody IBL shader on these? I didn't think there were normal maps available in the carbody shader other than for damage. Are you using something else instead?
You are correct the only normal maps that can be used with the IBL carbody shader are for damage. The normal maps I was talking about are for the other models that make up a car. Items like the steering wheel and cockpit tub that use the IBL standard shader, which can use a normal map for extra detailing.
I have been using the material editor to create the json material overrides, which work great. The issue is with how Traveller's scripts export the gmt's, as currently the normal map appears patchy. This is something Traveller is aware of and is looking into. His older script worked fine in this regard, so hopefully it is something that he can fix.
You can override the shader in the material editor too, so you dont need to export anything but a simple map at first then assign the other textures in the material editor later.
Unfortunately if you use the basic "L2DIFFUSET0" preset it will not allow the normal map to work. You need to export from blender using either the "L2BUMPT0" or "L2BUMPCMAPSPECMAPT0" presets, otherwise the necessary information is missing at the mesh level. I know this because I tried just using the "L2DIFFUSET0" preset for all my models and they all lacked working normal/bump maps in rF2, even when added using the material editor. But with the "L2BUMPT0" preset they work although currently not fully. Traveller explained "it is in the bump map support values calculation on export" that is the cause of the patchy normal maps. This is with the latest export scripts, it may be the case in future that Traveller will make the exported GMT's support normal maps even if the most basic of shader presets are used.
The issue is definitely with the scripts and Traveller is aware of it. I think with the latest scripts he streamlined the code which stopped it working correctly. If you take the GMT exported from Blender and open and re-export it with 3dsimED3 the normal maps will work correctly. Problem is I am past my 20 day trial of 3dsimED3.
