rF1 track makeover – seeking advice

Discussion in 'Track Modding' started by Sub, Nov 29, 2012.

  1. Sub

    Sub Registered

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    Hello! I’m currently in the middle of a 3 month class on modeling for games in 3DS Max and I’ve decided to use my new found abilities to completely work over a track I was building in Bob’s Track Builder. I realize it’s going to be a massive undertaking, but it’s a track I love and it can help me become more proficient in Max.

    A little history first. The track I’m building is a complete reconstruction of a fantasy track that was originally in Motor City Online. I’ve had to modify it somewhat to become a circuit track since the original was just a point to point track that you raced back and forth on – so all of the original track is there with some heavy additions to make it a circuit.

    In preparation for giving it this big makeover, I’ve removed all of the foliage and a number of superfluous objects that weren’t vital to the reconstruction. I’ve also left behind all of the old textures with the intent of texturing it with the original MCO textures, modeling to those and then completely retexturing the entire thing. Any of the structures you see in these screenshots are intended to be proxy only. Everything will be remodeled and given a formal treatment. I also left all the fences in as guides for fences I intend to build myself. So, I’ve basically reduced the track to a canvass for completely rebuilding it.

    That being said, I really have no idea how big of a task it will be and I’ve got a list of questions going that I’m wondering if some of you may be able to answer. I’ll greatly appreciate any information you can give me and hopefully I can become some kind of helpful addition to the community… if I can manage to look up from the enormous amount of work ahead of me.

    Before I post screenshots, here’s my current list of questions:

    • This is a pretty standard BTB type of track surface. Are there any known methods for optimizing it to take full advantage of rF2’s Real Road technology? Do I need to give it more polys in one direction or another?
    • I’m a little concerned about some of the enormous tris i’ve got throughout the terrain. Could that create any problems in rF2?
    • Could rF2 handle a point-to-point styled track? I haven’t completed building the full circuit in BTB and maybe I wouldn’t need to? Building it exactly like the original, but keeping my custom garage/pit area near the beginning would really speed up the process.
    • Is this track just too damned big? I know I can bring down the tris now that I know how to optimize things in Max, but it’s still going to be a monster.
    • The original track had some collidable objects (like gas pumps) that would go flying when you ran into them and flames would shoot up from the ground where you hit them. Could rF2 handle something like that?
    • Are there any tutorials around for lighting things? Is it done in Max or in rF2’s dev mode? I’d love to have street lights and little shop windows that light up when the sun goes down.

    That’s all I can think of for now, but I’m sure there will be more as I think of them. Here are some screenshots of the track as it currently looks in Max:
    View attachment 4841
    View attachment 4842
    View attachment 4843
    View attachment 4844
    View attachment 4845

    Thanks in advance for any thoughts or advice!
     
  2. Johannes Rojola

    Johannes Rojola Registered

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    I try to answer the best I can.

    -Seems like you need more polys for road surface to make the realroad feature work better.
    -That is not a issue.
    -Yes similar way than in rF1.
    -No it is not, I have experimented with tracks larger than 200km to one direction without problems. If you have performance problems you need better optimizing for trackside objects, like LODs and visgroups.
    -Well you can make the pump collide and even fly away, but I think the burning flame is impossible.
    -I am not quite sure about this, I think it is done in Max and by editing SCN files.
     
  3. Luc Van Camp

    Luc Van Camp Track Team Staff Member

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    Track mesh density seems OK from those screenshots. So does the overal tricount. My only real concern would be the material count for all those buildings. Ideally, you'd want to use as few materials as possible. Try to keep an eye on that :) .
     
  4. Johannes Rojola

    Johannes Rojola Registered

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    Really? I thought realroad needs alot more.
     
  5. Luc Van Camp

    Luc Van Camp Track Team Staff Member

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    You're right; it does need more polys in that last screenshot. Third screenshot is quite fine ... on the low side, but it should still work reasonably well. If that had been from scratch in Max, I would have recommended 1-2 extra segments width-wise, but this should still work.
     
  6. Sub

    Sub Registered

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    Thanks very much Johannes Rojola and Luc Van Camp for the responses! This has me feeling a lot more confident in moving ahead. Before slowly working from section to section, i'll probably just focus on the track itself and add those 2 extra polys to the width. I'm sure i could fix it up just right between a bottle of wine and a few hours of work. :)

    As for the texturing approach. The original track had a lot of the same textures that it reused throughout the town areas. I plan to do all of the same duplicating so that i don't end up with a gazillion unique textures for everything. It'll just be a matter of figuring out how big to recreate those textures and how many LOD levels to make of them. I'm thinking a basic store-front should probably be 512X512, but maybe that's too small? I could experiment between that and 1024X1024 when i first start out, but if there's a known standard i could adhere to, that would be great to know. I unpacked one of the current rF2 tracks, but didn't find anything that was quite like what i'm doing. I do believe i saw 3 levels of LOD on some of the buildings, so that's something i'll plan on.

    Thanks again for the help!
     

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