Track Creation Help and Advice

OK so basically I've never modded for rFactor (either) before and am hoping to start. I've been looking at some of the tutorials but don't always find them as helpful as I would like (I'm stupid like that ;P) anway so I've been trying to write up a start to finish process for myself but am currently coming unstuck regarding textures, so I thought I would post what I have so far and hopefully continue updating it so newbies like myself can check it out, sometimes its easier to look at a doc than try to follow a video....sometimes .

Anyway the start is below if you experienced guys spot glaring errors or things I need to adjust let me know and I will adjust the post and hopefully get it correct...eventually!

I've just numbered it so it's easier to point out what needs changing i.e number 20 should be: xxxxxxxx etc.

Most of the information to date is from Freew67's tutorials hopefully he wont mind me typing this up, though ultimately his tutorials do go into more detail re adjusting widths etc, this is supposed to be a start point.

Word doc has images here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/iyn6aivvpif1h6l/XAOFjVPU98/tutorial.docx

• RF2 mods only so no rfPlugSwitch described here, it is in the first tutorial linked though.
• 3ds Max must be 32 bit version. This is for 2011, not sure how different earlier versions maybe :*(
• <TextHere> indicates the text is dependent on your pc or your choice at that point.
• Anything in single quotes ‘stuff’ will be what you will see/how it is worded in the program or the key on your keyboard.

1. So first of all I set up my 3DS Max with the plug-ins for rFactor2 using freew67’s vid9eo tutorial
( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_klLNai_ZNE )
2. Basically get the Converter.dlu, Material.dlt, Texture.dlt files from: Documents/rFactor2/Support/Tools/Plugins/<YourMaxVersion>/
3. Then place them in: <wherever you have Max installed>/Autodesk/3ds Max <your version>/plugins/ NOTE: this is NOT the 3dsMax folder in Your documents.
4. Then grab the CoreShaders.mas file from: Documents/rFactor2/ModDev/Shared/
5. Place it here: <wherever you have Max installed>/Autodesk/3ds Max <your version>/hardwareshaders/
6. Open Max.

In Max – Set-up

7. Click on ‘Customize’ at the top of the Max window then select ‘units setup’ from the drop down.
8. Click the top radio button in the window which appears which should read ‘Metric’ and ensure the dropdown box immediately below it is set to ‘Meters’.
9. Click the ‘System Unit Setup’ button at the top of this window and check that the ‘System Unit Scale’ (at the top of this new window) displays: 1 unit = 1.0 Meters*
*the meters part is chosen from a dropdown.
10. Click ‘ok’ in each of the windows to close them.
11. Now open the ‘Utilities’ tab (hammer icon) on the right hand side of Max below the close window ‘X’ icon.
12. Click on the ‘More…’ button and select ‘GMT Converter v2.52i’ from the list.
13. OPTIONAL1 To permanently add: Click on the ‘Configure Button Sets’ 2 to the right of ‘More…’ and then either drag the ‘GMT Converter’ onto one of the buttons on the right of this window, or add a new button by increasing the ‘Total Buttons’ by one and then drag ‘GMT Converter’ to the new empty button at the bottom.
14. OPTIONAL2 Type in a unique name in ‘Sets’ and then click ‘Save’.

Making a Basic Track

15. Ensure you are on the ‘Create’ tab, opposite end to the ‘Utilities’ tab.
16. Just below it and slightly to the right click on ‘Shapes’, the dropdown immediately below should be set to ‘Splines’.
17. Click on the ‘Line’ button below the dropdown.
18. In the ‘Top’ viewport, using six clicks of the mouse create a basic loop, the clicks should be 2 along each side (for the start finish of each straight) and one at the apex of each corner, at this point it will be made up of straight lines so will look more like a hexagon. A seventh click on the first vertices you created should give you the prompt ‘Close Spline’, click yes.

19. Now click the ‘Modify’ tab, next to the ‘Create’ tab and below ‘Selection’ click on the ‘Vertex’ icon.
20. Marquee select all the 6 vertices in your viewport by Left click and dragging around them then Right Mouse Click in the viewport and select ‘Bezier’.
21. Whilst they are still all selected Right Mouse click again and select ‘Reset Tangents’ you should now have an oval track.
22. Ensure ‘Select and Move’ is active (hotkey = ‘W’) and adjust the 4 highlighted vertices shown below so their handles are horizontal if you want to create some straights.

23. In the ‘Front’ viewport go back to the ‘Create’ tab and create a new line using 5 points in the shape below, after clicking the 5th point click right mouse button to end the spline. This is the profile of the track.
24. Click on the ‘Modify’ tab then under ‘Selection’ choose the vertex icon again
25. Starting with the far left vertex follow, the spline and adjust the values of each vertex using the co-ordinates at the bottom of the screen and change the values to the figures below:
#1 = 0.0m, 0.0m, 20.0m
#2 = 10.0m, 0.0m, 20.0m
#3 = 10.0m, 0.0m, 22.0m
#4 = 11.0m, 0.0m, 22.0m
#5 = 11.0m, 0.0m, 20.0m
26. Click on the Hierarchy Tab then click ‘Affect Pivot Only’ under the ‘Move/Rotate/Scale’ section, now alter the co-ordinates in the same way to 0.0m, 0.0m, 20.0m
NOTE: The oval we created earlier is the inside of the track, this pivot needs to be place where it will be in relation to your track, if the track shape (in this case the oval) had been create at the centre of the track then your pivot on the profile needs to be at the correct point in relation to it, which would mean it would be at 5.5, 0.0, 20.0. Hope that makes sense!
27. Now click back on the ‘Modify’ tab and click on the ‘Segment’ icon
28. Now click on the main part of the profile between vertices #1 and #2

29. Scroll down below the ‘Segment’ icon to ‘Surface Properties’ and overtype ‘Set ID’ with the number ‘1’ and hit the ‘Enter’ key.
30. Select the other three segments of the profile and ‘Set ID’ to ‘2’ and hit ‘Enter’.

31. Now click the ‘Create’ tab and select the original oval spline again.
32. Click the ‘Geometry’ button directly below the ‘Create’ tab and click the dropdown below it and select ‘Compound Objects’.
33. Now select ‘Loft’ from the buttons that appear below the dropdown.
34. Now below where it says ‘Creation Method’ select ‘Get Shape’ just below it and then select your profile spline.
35. Now open up the ‘Skin Parameters’ ‘+’ below where ‘Get Shape’ was to view more options.
36. Check the ‘Flip Normals’ box.
37. Set the ‘Shape Steps’ to ‘6’ I think they are supposed to be around 1.5m wide, and set the ‘Path Steps’ to ‘15’.
Ref: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JUkzGzw3lXI

Textures (THIS IS WHERE I NEED HELP!!)

38. Open the material editor in Max, Hotkey = ‘M’, click on ‘Modes’ at the top and then ‘Compact Material Editor’ to make sure you are using the correct one.
39. Where the dropdown in the centre says ’01 –Default’ click on the button next to it which should currently say ‘Standard’.
40. In the new window which appears select ‘Multi/Sub-Object’ by double left clicking it.
41. ‘Discard Old Material’ select ‘OK’.
42. Below the ‘01-Default’ dropdown you should now see a list of 10 different materials, the number under the ‘ID’ column refers to the ‘Material ID’ which you set in your scene, so we set Material ID 1 to the track in our profile spline and Material ID 2 to the outside wall.
43. So beside ‘ID 1’ in the material editor click the button to its right which will say ‘Material #<number> (Standard)’ the window where we chose ‘Multi/Sub-Object’ earlier should re-appear. This time select ‘gMotorMaterial’.
44. Now as this is for the road texture click the dropdown below ‘Shader’ which may currently show ‘T1’ and then select ‘Road Shader Two Diffuse Maps’.
45. Below there now you should see lots of (gTex) textures below in the ‘Texture’ Section all with red boxes next to them. This material will not work until we make all the boxes green by adding textures.
46. Looking at the Joesville scene the textures are set to:

47. The only place I could find these was in: Documents/rFactor2/ModDev/Locations/Joesville/Assets/Maps/.. however I cannot find the PLNR_REF Texture.
48. Add these by clicking on the relevant button below ‘Texture Stage’ then in the new window click the large button below ‘Bitmap’ and navigate to the correct file as per point 46 above. Once you have done that open up Coordinates at the bottom and ensure the Map Channel is correct. It should be 1,2,1,3,2,2,3 as per the rFactor pdf here: http://isiforums.net/f/attachment.php?attachmentid=960&d=1328039952


49. Texture#1, ‘Track_Main’, under ‘MIP Mapping’ set ‘Bias’ to -2.0.
Texture#2, check ‘No Compression’ and ‘No Detail Reduction’, under ‘MIP Mapping’ set ‘Bias’ to -1.0.
Texture#3, check ‘No Compression’ and ‘No Detail Reduction’, under ‘MIP Mapping’ set ‘Bias’ to -2.0.
Texture#4, check ‘No Compression’, under ‘MIP Mapping’ set ‘Bias’ to -1.0.
Texture#5, under ‘MIP Mapping’ set ‘Bias’ to -1.0.
Texture#6, under ‘MIP Mapping’ set ‘Bias’ to -1.0.
Texture#7, under ‘MIP Mapping’ set ‘Bias’ to -1.0.
50. Go Up a level using ‘Go To Parent’ click the black box next to Specular and change it to white. Also ensure that:
Material Alpha: 255
Specular Power: 8.0
Fresnel Specular:
Min: 0.0
Max: 4.0
Exp: 1.0

Why is my material not appearing on the track?
Why is the material just showing as black in the material editor and not the actual texture?

 

ok so I thought I had applied the texture but now not so sure, so I drilled down to Track_Main.dds and clicked,'show standard map in viewport' and it did change colour though is still not showing the actual texture. However when I clicked render, just to see if it showed up in render but not viewport i got a window saying 'The following objects require map coordinates and may not render correctly: (UVW1): Loft1 (UVW2): Loft1 (UVW3): Loft1' so i'm guessing that refers to your 1st paragraph and I haven't done that, I was using the Assign Material to Selection button in the Material Editor, is that wrong, the "track" should be an editable poly by this stage or still a loft?

 

update: I opened the Joesville, unhid all (the full track is there) and then just deleted the entire track and built my trial in there and the textures work and appear on the mesh, however when I click render I still get 'The following objects require map coordinates and may not render correctly: (UVW2): Loft1 (UVW3): Loft1' so just 2 this time, so I'm guessing this is still an issue? Any idea what UVW1 and UVW3 are?

 

UVW2 should be mapping coordinates for map channel 2 and UVW3 likewise should be mapping coordinates for map channel 3.
The real road material uses three mapping channels and 3ds max will throw such skippable errors when your mesh doesn't have any second or third map channel coordinates.

 

So am i right in thinknig those are from the table in the ISI pdf. So Map channel 1 is: Diffuse Map and Normal Map, 2 should be Multimap, specular and Marbles & 3 is Racegroove and reflection is that right?

How do I actually apply the map channel 2 & 3? Sorry if this is basic stuff, i'm trying I just assumed as I have assigned the 7 stages (from the pdf) to the various map channels in the Material Editor that would sort it, but obviously not

p.s. thanks for everyones help btw

 

Use UVW XFORM make your settings for the specific channel then right click and COLLAPSE TO( i hope is the right way)

 

When you create the loft, in the surface parameters section, check 'apply mapping' then tweak the length and width parameters to suit.
For ch 2, usually uvw xform with a U and V value of 2 will do the job, this is considering that your detail and spec maps are 'half the size' (not meaning physical size, meaning resolution, usually detail maps are higher quality hence cover a smaller area)
Then for ch 3 you do the spline mapping.

Every uvw modifier has a 'map channel' selection, make sure when you do ch 2 and 3 that you have the correct channel selected.

If you have already done your track and collapsed the loft but haven't generated mapping coords, you can use the spline mapping technique to unwrap ch1 too, just loop select the centre edge on the track and create shape from selection, then use that shape to spline map it.

I recommend to do a search on youtube for '3ds max uvw unwrap' and '3ds max spline mapping', to get familiar with what's going on.
uvw xform is pretty straight forward, it just transforms the uv's to the value you put in.

 

I'm gonna try rFactor on the basis that its probably a better start point as all the tutorials are usually specifically for that and it's les likely to be patched etc due to it being more mature.

The bit I seem to be having problems with is how do I get existing rFactor textures/materials into Max to use, I tried using the Joesville example and that seemed to work.

But if I am starting from scratch and want to use existing rFactor textures (I presume this is ok) where should I get them from, where do I need to put them in srelation to the .max file (does it matter?) do I use them in tga or dds format, there doesn't seem to be a specific tutorial which mentions this or how to set up the texture properties in the material Editor in Max as in the Joesville example they dont seem to be default settings and only the maps channels are mentioned in the real road section. (though I can't find a similar doc for rF, though I know rr is new to rF2 i think)

Does such a tutorial exist, I've watched http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AjrHlfZa_M4&feature=plcp but it doens't really show you how to set up materials, i.e. where to get them, where to put them, it seems to be more how to apply them, or am I missing something?

Also is the method for using the GMT converter for getting the block in the above tutorial how you would get an entire track in as well or is there a specific tutorial for that knocking about?

Apologies for the wall of questions/text.

 

I suggest DDS files and in certain situations tga's are sometimes required (in RF1 at least). Someone else can chime in if that still holds true for RF2.

To export the track its the same concept as how I did the box.

Where to get them, where to put them? Im guessing you mean the textures themselves? For me, some are from the ISI RF1 tracks and some were created by me. That is if thats what your asking. Where you put the textures is up to you. I personally put the textures in a folder in the tracks folder. I also put the gmts in a sep folder. Just makes it easier to sort and find things when needed. Some folks put them with the max file in a folder outside of the RF track folder. Everyone probably has their happy place for them. They dont have to be with the max file. Max will save the location of the textures. If you need to move them, max will ask you where they went next time you open it. Unless you turned that alert off.

Hope any of this helps...

 

Thanks for the info Freew67. Once the track is exported to the rF format does it refer to the same textures as you are using in Max or does it generate dds files within the track folder?

I've now posted further here: http://isiforums.net/f/showthread.php/6567-Importing-Track-from-Max-to-rF?p=80679#post80679

So as not to hijack the rF2 forum with my rF ramblings, thanks, any help appreciated.

 

Can anyone help by following the link on the above post?

 

It was a holiday week in the states, at least most Americans are still trying to sober up.

 

ah, thought it had gone deafly quiet after a rapid response to a (possibly simpler question ) on another post last week :O

 

Ok so thanks to everyones help I actually have a track in rFactor (w00t). However the track is vibrating up and down and I can't move the car. Even though the track is set to 0/0/0 in Max the car is above the track, I've tried altering the height of the track in Max and re-exporting but nothing changes even when it gets to the point where the car is then clipping through the ground.

I saw this: http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/exporting-track-on-rfactor-vibrating-track.19641/

But wasn't sure where the "driveline window" is mentioned by the 2nd post.

I'm using Freew's Track/File setup so his AIW etc wasn't sure if this may be an issue, I tried loading up the AIW editor to see if it worked and I got a couple of errors:

Error Loading Texture WP2 for Material SWP... &

Error Loading Texture WP1 for Material UWP

Which I can ok through and get to the AIW editor but is the same vibrations as in normal rF.

Am not sure what those two errors refer to?

Thanks in advance.

 

update, I hadn't made the Mesh files for the X-Secotrs :O

 

Track gmt's have to be collision and hat = true, the material name must correspond to a material in the tdf usually road_etc_etc_etc I recommend using road_main_wet for rf2.
Remove the AIW file completely and fire it up. You don't need an AIW to start it in mod mode, it will spawn at 0,0,0 by default if no AIW is present. If your referring to rfactor and not rf2, then start it up in the AIWCAM Editor.

 

Hi,

Yeah I am in rF not rF2 (apologies for wrong forum but as blakboks pointed out this has a bit more activity ) the naming bit was an issue, my infield "grass" was working as luckily it matched one of the materials in the tdf (which i never knew existed till the above post ) but my track was broken but now works as it's renamed to "roads" which is sweet.

I just tried to load it up in the AIW editor but am still getting those errors mentioned in my last post and when I went to record the path it crashed, the program not the car

Also my texture resolution in game isn't matching the one in Max, they are sharp and look good in Max but are blurred and tiled incorrectly in rF I presume I may have messed this up using the UVWMap / UVW XForm

 

Verbii you need to let us know if your messing about with rf1 or rf2. Posting in the both forums the same thing is getting confusing! lol There are slight dif to get things to work in rf1 vs rf2, so to help folks need to know what you messing about with.

Edit: see happened again, 1 min before my post. lol

 

lol, sorry I was doing it initially to get as big an audience as possible