SOLVED Why so shiny? rFactor 1 -> rFactor 2 vehicle porting

So I've got the car working. But it's... shiny. It's so shiny it's glowing. It's weird.

Anyone know why that's happening?

 

thoraxe,
you need to read this:
https://docs.studio-397.com/developers-guide/cars/car-art/guidelines-for-car-artists

 

Couple of things:

"Try to use real time texture formats as much as you can; try to limit the usage of TGAs to just system/target files, and use .dds/BC for the entire main art. We will give you a complete set of optimized DX11 texture format as soon as we move to the DX11 optimization task."

Where can I find this?

Also:

"
The devmode version of the car, to be loaded in the viewer (if without physics) or devmode (if with physics)
An export of the body in .3DS format/Max Coordinates, so that you can import the 3D model in Photoshop CC
A TIFF/TGA storing the UVW unwrap wireframe in native 4096x4096 px resolution.
A TIFF/TGA storing the Ambient Occlusion Baking to be mixed in the skin, in native 4096x4096 px resolution."

I am porting from rFactor1 to rFactor2, so I am lacking a lot of these things. Unpacking the MAS gives me some DDS files and the GMTs. I'm assuming the GMTs are the "export of the body"?

How does one import a 3D model into Photoshop? Photoshop is a 2D program.

Also, I'm stuck with Gimp/Blender. I know there's a blender plugin for loading some of these things.

 

Gimp is a image editing software like Photoshop
Blender is a 3D-Mesh Editing (and much more) Software, the same as MAX, for which an offical plugin exists (I think only 2012 MAX).

dds are image files, gmts are mesh files, the gen files define which gmts are used (and other things, it is a text file)

For the task you need to use Blender/MAX to select a different shader and add Albedo Maps.

 

OK, cool. I will try to install the blender plugin and see what I can make happen.

 

Albedo range:
Black and white range:

rF2's black and white range is a bit different as you would see in photoshop/gimp.
Especially the white range:

Anything from 210(grey) to 255(full white) will show as full white in rF2.

To put is simple:

- white / light grey (210) = white in rF2
- anything above (210 white) = overexposed white (aka washed out colors)

If you already have a dark car skin or your car skin doesn't overexpose in DX9: You are OK. :thumbsup:


What's new for DX11:

The 210-255 overexposed white range in DX9 will be get a bloom effect in DX11.

 

Yeah, the dev information is scattered about in many places. I will try to dig into some of this this evening and report back. My guess is it's a combination of the shader and the skin.

 

I would get this shininess when I used the cube reflection. It would look good in the Spinner but when I got on track, it would be really shiny. This might be the same case and it seemed like it was the track setting when using the cube map reflections would be different so I change it from the cube map reflections to the live reflection within the 3DSimED program. I think you can set this in the Plugin for 3ds Max. This may not be the case for you but you could try looking into that. There might be a different method for the cube reflections but I spent too much time trying to fix it so the live reflection map kind of normalize it across tracks at least how I see it.

 

I... don't even know where to begin trying to figure out how to change the shader on the GMT via Blender

 

So this page has a "carscene":
https://docs.studio-397.com/developers-guide/cars/car-art/guidelines-for-car-artists

But it's a .max file. Not sure what to do with that.

I am able to open the chassis GMT in Blender using the plugin, and I can get to the materials place where I can start to mess around with shaders, but then I'm lost on how to add an albedo map.

 

I changed the actual skin of my car to fix the glow. Basically reduce the RGB values down to recommended values. Read the Color Gamut section and the Hue-Saturation-Lightness and Brightness adjustment windows on this page . I use PSP for image editing. It has the adjustment windows. I presume GIMP would have it as well.

 

Changing the skin has no effect. The skin doesn't appear to be the issue. The skin I already had was well within the limits suggested on the designer page. I'm sure it's a model/shader issue, but I don't know what to do to fix it.

 

By far the easiest solution for you would be to download 3DSimED and use that for material/shader adjustment. The program is fairly straightforward to use, at least compared to exporting/importing to Blender or 3ds Max. In 3DSimED you can basically load and export any GMT file with one click, it has native support for all sims.

 

I used 3DSimEd to import / export the GMTs from rF1 to rF2 in the first place. That's how I got GMTs that work with rF2.

Are there instructions for the required shader/material adjustment? At this point I'd need to pay for it. Not that I don't want to support them. But I'm also probably just going to pay someone to fix the 3D model because it needs some additional adjustment.

 

Hi, I recommend opening the model of the skipbarber that comes in the devmode, to get to know how each shared works, it is not complicated to use, it simply reproduces and copies what the skipbarber uses.
3dsimed is very simple to use just need to know it, I recommend playing with the program and review game files to be able to perform better in what you are looking for.
it is likely that the car is in the shader T1 should change it to the one that has to do with the image, but should generate the specular and bump map files

Sorry for English, I hope you can understand something

 

In blender I can add a different shader to the car body, but:

1) I have no idea what shader to add
2) The one I tried that had "car body paint with damage" caused an error:

Code:

Error getting stats for texture __DIFFUSE_.BMPError loading texture __Diffuse_ for material WCCARBODY.

@Traveller any thoughts?

 

So after I switch the cube shader to Cube Map Specular Map T1 + Damage + Masked Rain/Dirt it looks like more... uh... somethings... appear in the list under the WCCARBODY thing. Given the error that I saw earlier, my guess is that I have to change some of this stuff around. No idea how, though.

 

As I said, check the isi car in dev mode, you can not move forward without knowing how the shaders work,
the shader that I told him to use uses more files like the specular and the bump, if he does not configure them correctly he will throw error

 

With 3dsimed, open the .veh of the skipbarber, then inspect the wccarbody material, please take your time to thoroughly check each textures channel to know what you need.