I'm currently working on two rF1 track conversions, and on both of them I have been able to get RealRoad working from a physics point of view. However, only on one of them can I see the actual race line build up visually with rubber and marbles. I've gone through the materials, the scene instance definitions and all textures, and they are close to being identical. The only thing I can think of now is the AIW file, which I haven't gone through yet. Does the AIW file affect RealRoad, and if so, in what way?
No, it doesn't. Make sure the instances are called RaceSurfaceXX, and check the Deform tag. Check if the SCN lists it as Deformable=True, CollTarget=True and HATTarget=True. Check if the RealRoad material is using the correct shader (Road Shader Two Diffuse Maps), and that the material isn't being overridden by another object higher up in the SCN (it will only load the first instance of the material it comes acrcoss). That's about all I can think of ...
Ok, thanks Luc, that's good news. I might have to redo the objects again, because the track is originally modeled with GMT objects containing both infield details, curbs, grass and tarmac. This won't work well with RealRoad though, so I copied all track GMT's and removed the asphalt part from one, and the terrain from the other. I might have forgotten to purge verts and faces before saving though, so just to be sure, I might do that again. It's not difficult, just very repetitive. Will report back. By the way, the track that works has "Deform=True", not "Deformable=True", so I guess both work? (Sadly, none of the attribute variants has any effect on the track that doesn't work)
Yes, with RealRoad you should have separate tarmac-only area object tagged as "Deform=true" with "Road Shader Two Diffuse Maps" material. If your RealRoad object contains other materials, you will get weird color distortions on those surfaces. That's why we need tarmac to be separate object than grass, gravel etc. Cheers!
Well, Lime Rock has the objects listed as 'Deformable' . There is no reason why a larger object containing more than simply the RealRoad mesh wouldn't work. The Deform tag in the exporter will only be applied to the tris that use a material that makes use of Deform. It is indeed good practice to keep them separate though .
Interesting... I never got it work that way. I always had heavy color distortions on cement kerbs (for instance...), if RealRoad objects contains other surfaces (or material) than RSTDM. I had to detach other surfaces to another object. Found that out hard way back then... I have to test this. I actually haven't tried this with build 125 and something might have changed... Cheers!
Interesting. So a material can be flagged as deform(able)? By the way, what are the texture requirements for the main texture and the 6 stage textures for the RSTDM shader? DXT version (1, 3, 5), mip-maps or not, alpha channel or not, etc. Are there any size restrictions, like if the main texture is square, the other ones must be square too, or anything else like that?
A material? No. I probably messed up my thinking when I posted that earlier. I suppose that happens when you try to rush a reply while loading a track in the Viewer .
Hmm, I just happened to look at the actual road mesh, and it's *very* different between the tracks: #1 RealRoad works fine on this track #2 RealRoad does not work on this track Can the odd looking mesh in track #2 cause RealRoad not to work? (I haven't tested to drive in the short straight in #2 where the mesh looks similar to #1, because it's not part of the layout)
Yes. Your track mesh cannot be single poly wide. You need more dense "grid" with RealRoad, like example #1. And you need more polys for lightning purposes too. Track surface specularity do not work correctly with single poly wide track surface. Generally speaking, rF2 can handle lots of polys effectively. Do not be afraid to add more polys on track surface. Performance wise, it's good to have as few materials as possible, but you can use more polys than before (without affecting performance). Cheers!
Uh oh, I was afraid it would be something like that, lol. Changing the 3D mesh is far beyond my knowledge, I'm just trying to convert existing rF1 tracks to rF2. I wouldn't even know where to begin with mesh editing, and I don't have access to 3DS Max, which I guess is a requirement to do 3D modelling for rF2? Anyway, thanks for clearing up the mystery. Now I know I do not have to spend more time on getting the track rubber to show up. I'll have to settle for the fact that it does work from a physics point of view, and that's good enough for now.
