Converted track gets stuck in loading screen; why?

You are welcome. Glad I helped. You are doing a very good job with blender so you more than deserve any kind of help from the community. Thanks for that!!

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Well, if I'm doing a good job.....I don't know. But I'm learning a lot those days and who knows what may come. I might just get the hang of it and make a nice track.........gonna take a while

But I was thinking of making a track out of scratch; just a small oval, road, pit road and fence. Just to start with because I think I will learn a whole lot doing that.
Building it out more later on and so on; just a project to learn a bit.
Probably going to ask some more then

Thanks for your help!

 

I do think so. First steps of modding involve getting stuck many times which is very frustrating. Having the patience to provide as much info about the problems in order to get help is very useful since it will also help other people sorting out them as well.

I have been using BTB for many years now. As you know it is a dedicated software to build tracks for several racing platforms including rfactor. However, I got stuck many times like you so I know how frustrating it is. Now with rF2 it is even more complicated since several new features are unavailable in BTB and need to be tweaked with 3dsimed. Besides BTB has some track building limitations that makes it difficult to do several tasks providing the expected quality for a 2015 track.

I can see that blender is now an alternative so I might give it a chance in the future to avoid using 3dmax which I dislike a lot for its complexity. For now I am waiting for Race Track Builder to be released within some months before deciding the path to take.

If I go for blender you might be able to help me since I am a noob

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Talking about frustrating........

I've been busy for about 8 hours just to setup a piece of road.......
The things you encounter when you are not used to this kind of program:
- "add plane" is the only option to make something flat; add rf2 object gives me a cube. The plane is not exportable in gmt.
- I need to make vertices; NO info to be found on that! How to merge them, yes........
- Pan/tilt of a copied piece of track that stand over the new one crooked (so one point goes into the old tarmac first lets say) and I can make all kinds of turn except the right one.
- edit mode gets stuck in the black line thing so I can only move up or down one part and I have to restart Blender
- making a curve in the plane object; all there is to find, is make the road go up and down; not a left turn

I can go on for hours with this; fact is that all information there is to be found, goes from the point you know a lot of beginning stuff; nowhere is told (properly) just what a mesh is, vertices are made, the proper handling and so on and so on.

Problem is; I get frustrated, get mad, throw the mouse and quit. I can't leave it and half an hour later; I start again, ending with a throw of the mouse, now a bit harder........ this goes over and over again and I can't come out; not a healthy situation.
As I have no background in all this; maybe its for the best to leave it alone I'm thinking now; this is not meant for me.

The community is very helpful, but I can't keep asking all those questions; got some static about that when I started building my GP2015 mod too.

Thanks for the kind words!

 

Navigator,

You are trying to grasp several very different, but very related subjects. If you still don't understand what a mesh is, then maybe the following Blender ebook will help get your feet on the ground around 3D modeling. Then you can take on Blender in particular. And finally you can start working on rFactor 3D models (tracks).

The ebook is called Blender 3D: Noob To Pro. It's a wiki located here.

Don't try to understand everything in this ebook in one try - like many complex subjects, you need to understand Part A before you can understand Part B. But the problem is you need to understand Part B before you can understand Part A. Expect to go back and forth between chapters of the ebook. Learn the overall concepts in the chapters that mention the labels we have been using in our postings. Then go back and start getting a little deeper in each chapter. You will learn some each time you go through that cycle. If something goes over your head, don't spend time on it - move on to another area and come back later. This all takes iteration after iteration, like others have said, patience is required.

For example, chapter 2A give a basic definition of a mesh and what it is made of, vertices.

As to some of your specifics, if you want just a plane that you can export to rFactor, you have two options.
1) Use the Add Plane option you mention. However, at that point it is not anything rFactor will know about. To make it into an rFactor object (or a GMT) you will need to use the Add rFactor Material from Traveller's rFactor Menu, which will add all the additional parameters rFactor needs but Blender's Add Plane does not add.
2) other option: use the Add rFactor Object from the rFactor Menu, then in Edit Mode, Vertex selection mode, select all the vertices that you do not want and delete them. Since the added rFactor object already has all the needed rFactor parameters, you will not need to Add rFactor Material.

As to "making a vertex", there isn't a 'make vertex' option. You need to start with a object that has vertices. You can then delete the ones you don't want, or if you are wanting to build something larger, you can extrude a vertex. I think you need to get a bit more of the basics before we detail those procedures, just know there is usually more than one way to do what you want. Just get the basics down first. The ebook above is a good start at getting the basics of 3D and Blender.

 

Thanks for the explanation Richard.

That particular site I have bookmarked and is my main "goto" place, but still.........it is a bit hard.
You say "object that has vertices"........but as I understand a vertex is just a corner and a simple plane has 4 corners, 4 "Vertices" as I just learned "vertices" is the multiple of Vertex
So, just that plane object already has that; do I see that right?

I thought -when trying to alter the tracks- I was picking up to much at once and so I thought; I start with the beginning; make a piece of road out of a flat object.......that should be easy......... Little did I know that this was way harder even. I lowered a 10cm high crosswalk line in the Baltimore track and was "proud".......thought this plane object should be doable

I am going to play with it some more when I get home, thanks!

 

patience will reward thee......

Keep up the good work

 

Well, this topic and the other "Blender, just a few pointers needed" have become sort of the same now as I let my frustration about one point go last night.
Sorry for both.
I will put this post in both topics therefore.

I tried making al the triangles in a plane object and (much) ashamed I have to say........ I just can't get it done.
At some point I thought I had it, went back in object mode and it went into some kind of weird cube.

I'm not enjoying this anymore whilst "repairing" the tracks (Edmonton and Baltimore) are going "okay".
I do things, trial and error and its getting better; there are extra gmt's in there to create some kind of rumble strip for braking arias and they were 20 cm high (!!)
That seemed a bit to much, so I lowered them into the ground to see what happened. Now I make them higher again so they are there, but it doesn't send me in orbit
Surface was white at some places and I couldn't get it proper; maybe not the best way, but I put another .dds to the gmt and its okay now.
Maybe its half baked work, but I can drive it now and I learn a lot from it.

Trying, seeing some use of my work, is nice.
I thought I could learn from making a very simple piece of track totally out of scratch........I'm not good enough and I understand to little; maybe some day.......but if I go through with it now, I know I will lose all interest and everything stops (probably after having a heart attack too as I get VERY irritated).

My work is FAR from being any good, but I use this for myself so no one gets irritated by such a bad version and things will get better.
I mean; first I lowered the black strips, now I understand I can bring them back and bend the edges down a bit for instance; I do learn

Strange some borders don't have a good visual on them and that will be my next point of interest, but for now I have plenty of work getting the tracks right.
I think I have to do that first and learn more that way. I mean; if I even can't make a decent strip of road.......this is not for me at this time.

One thing is for sure; I AM going to have some more questions along the way
Hope you guys are still willing to help me out as you always do. Thanks a lot guys!