Track modding in 2019

[BrunoSardine]

I looked into this back in ~2016 after using Bob's Track Builder and wanting to move to 3Ds Max for more creative freedom. I ended up shelving sim racing all together at the time for other reasons and never got far into it. But now I'd like to go back and try it again, and I'm noticing the resources out there seem to be pretty fragmented and maybe even out of date. For instance, a lot of 3Ds Max specific stuff I'm finding mentions the need for 2012 or older, which I can't seem to find even on Pirate Bay. And, according to Studio 397's roadmap, it almost appears like the engine has changed since those tutorials were written, so I'm wondering if those resources are 100% obsolete now?

If things have changed, does anyone know of any start-to-finish guides that are more recent than the ones Jka did on Google Hangouts back in 2016? Are we still limited to 3Ds Max 2010 - 2012, or can we use things like Blender now?

 

[AlenC]

There's a new plugin available, for 2017 version of 3ds max, but it is possible some bugs are present. I haven't had time to test the latest version yet, but one beofre that seems to have problems with specular values on materials...

I started to make track mods recently myself and I found the old tutorials still valid. I export scene directly from 3dsmax to rf2 dev mod. Some new techniques (real road/kerbs, rain effects, night light) are explained here:
https://docs.studio-397.com/developers-guide/tracks/track-art

 

[roberteker]

I am in the same seat, so could you please link what tutorials are still valid, because every tutorial mentioning "gjed" is not, and seemingly all of them want to go through that route, even if they include the old Max plugin in their workflow (I'm hoping I missed a tutorial amongst the heaps of obsolete information on this forum).