AC Modding Questions Thread

[AccAkut]

Has anyone done anything that replicates a nice "edge lit" effect in AC?

Just thinking about how to achieve such an effect and I'd like to see some examples that others have done to evaluate

I would make the outer edge a separate object and material, as double sided mesh. Could cause a bit of headache in regards to Priority tho if it's to use alpha_blend

 

[Fuzo]

hi guys, what is best practice to generate and UV map transition meshes between asphalt and grass areas in 3Dsmax? I tried railclone which required a lot of manual mesh fixes and tried to make spline from edge and set it rendeable as a cube and deleted all meshes except the one facing up, then conformed it to the mesh, but I think there has to be more effective approach

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I just use the same spline as my road, and create loft objects with different cross-sectional shapes for road, kerbs, grass verges, white lines... anything that follows the same path as the road, basically.

 

[Ryno917]

I'm probably overlooking something real basic here, but, I can't figure out the scale of an imported LIDAR mesh.

I imported .LAZ files into CloudCompare, trimmed out unneeded areas, made it a mesh, and exported that to FBX. I've imported that FBX into Blender and the imported mesh is too small. It imported at a scale of 0.010 (way too small). I scaled up to 1, and it's still too small. A simple scale looks like the correct scale should be somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6, and I'm just trying to figure out if there's a mathematical way to make sure the scale is 100% accurate. Might be tired brain, but I can't find any combination of imperial-metric conversion that might get me into that ballpark.

Any tips? Obvious glaring issues I'm missing?

The original .LAZ files are listed at the source as being in meters, as is my blender scene. I'm assuming CC applied a different unit to the scene but I can't find any sort of settings for the scene units.

 

[ohyeah2389]

I'm probably overlooking something real basic here, but, I can't figure out the scale of an imported LIDAR mesh.

I imported .LAZ files into CloudCompare, trimmed out unneeded areas, made it a mesh, and exported that to FBX. I've imported that FBX into Blender and the imported mesh is too small. It imported at a scale of 0.010 (way too small). I scaled up to 1, and it's still too small. A simple scale looks like the correct scale should be somewhere between 1.5 and 1.6, and I'm just trying to figure out if there's a mathematical way to make sure the scale is 100% accurate. Might be tired brain, but I can't find any combination of imperial-metric conversion that might get me into that ballpark.

Any tips? Obvious glaring issues I'm missing?

The original .LAZ files are listed at the source as being in meters, as is my blender scene. I'm assuming CC applied a different unit to the scene but I can't find any sort of settings for the scene units.

Not saying that my workflow is better than yours, but I take .laz files and put them through LAStools to make them .tif files, and then use BlenderGIS to import them into Blender. However, my method requires the XY axis to be manually scaled because every time it's too big, probably due to BlenderGIS reprojection issues. To cut the mesh down to the correct size, I use QGIS to clip the .tif file. Also, sometimes the mesh imports in meters when it should import in feet and vice versa, which is just a simple task of multiplying the Z axis scale by .3048 or 1/.3048.

 

[Ryno917]

Not saying that my workflow is better than yours, but I take .laz files and put them through LAStools to make them .tif files, and then use BlenderGIS to import them into Blender. However, my method requires the XY axis to be manually scaled because every time it's too big, probably due to BlenderGIS reprojection issues. To cut the mesh down to the correct size, I use QGIS to clip the .tif file. Also, sometimes the mesh imports in meters when it should import in feet and vice versa, which is just a simple task of multiplying the Z axis scale by .3048 or 1/.3048.

I'll have a look into the tools, thanks!

I've since figured out that the scale was actually correct, it just threw me off how small the overall space was compared to the known length of the route. Once I built the base curve for the route and measured it, it came out to about what I expected so everything is good

 

[NightEye87]

I'll have a look into the tools, thanks!

I've since figured out that the scale was actually correct, it just threw me off how small the overall space was compared to the known length of the route. Once I built the base curve for the route and measured it, it came out to about what I expected so everything is good

Since you mentioned the 1,5-1,6 scale factor I figured you'd have tried to measure a point to point on your track. But judging from above reply I think not?
Open Google Earth or similar, measure a straight line from, say, a marshall stand at the South-West corner to one at the North-East corner; then repeat the same in Blender (or similar).

With regards to TIFF files: I've used one since the early stages of Assen and once I finally figured out how to properly import point clouds (or their respective generated mesh), I found out my track scale was off by about 1,5%. Hardly noticable; but TIFF files just require a lot of measuring to get absolutely right. This applies to vertical scale as well, ofcourse.

 

[Ryno917]

Since you mentioned the 1,5-1,6 scale factor I figured you'd have tried to measure a point to point on your track. But judging from above reply I think not?
Open Google Earth or similar, measure a straight line from, say, a marshall stand at the South-West corner to one at the North-East corner; then repeat the same in Blender (or similar).

With regards to TIFF files: I've used one since the early stages of Assen and once I finally figured out how to properly import point clouds (or their respective generated mesh), I found out my track scale was off by about 1,5%. Hardly noticable; but TIFF files just require a lot of measuring to get absolutely right. This applies to vertical scale as well, ofcourse.

The scaling was to bring it closer to the scale of the imported GID data, but I've since realized that the GIS data is quite distorted to match a mercator projection so it isn't accurate anyways. I scaled that data to match the original size of the imported LIDAR data and now my road centerline spline is the measured length it should be

 

[NightEye87]

Ah that makes sense Glad you got it sorted!

 

[Ptryyy]

Do you think it would be ok if I would use some parts from a kunos car for my mod?

 

[Ryno917]

Another dumb question: What's the best way to build intersections for circuits in Blender? The roads themselves are easy to lay out, but stitching intersections properly is something I haven't figured out a good method for, yet. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

 

[AccAkut]

Another dumb question: What's the best way to build intersections for circuits in Blender? The roads themselves are easy to lay out, but stitching intersections properly is something I haven't figured out a good method for, yet. Any tips would be greatly appreciated.

Cutting one of the intersecting tracks roughly with the Knife tool, then making a vertex group out of the mating surface, than using the Shrinkwrap modifier set to "Surface" of the other track works rather well here on my end.

 

[Ryno917]

View attachment 513717
Cutting one of the intersecting tracks roughly with the Knife tool, then making a vertex group out of the mating surface, than using the Shrinkwrap modifier set to "Surface" of the other track works rather well here on my end.

That's roughly how I did it for the other circuit I'm working on, but in my mind I'm having trouble applying it to something more complex like a normal road intersection like this:

The little slip roads aren't too challenging, but the actual curves that blend the two directions. I'm not sure how to best handle building these areas with the uneven terrain, and still have a nice UV, and a smooth surface.

 

[Stereo]

I'd probably map them in a way where the UV has room to spread out (like the tire-worn pavement only being middle 1/3 of the texture), pin that part of the UV layout (P in uv editor, vertices turn red), extrude faces on either side in the parts where it's useful, probably using vertex snap to manually click them onto the neighboring road mesh's vertices (for no holes), then after getting rid of any unneeded doubles, use UV unwrap so that the unpinned side parts can spread out correctly.

On the track I was doing that's similar, I depended heavily on the multilayer shader which doesn't use UV coordinates at all, so as long as my base diffuse map was the same shade of grey, the multilayer details would be seamless across those edges.

 

[Ryno917]

I'd probably map them in a way where the UV has room to spread out (like the tire-worn pavement only being middle 1/3 of the texture), pin that part of the UV layout (P in uv editor, vertices turn red), extrude faces on either side in the parts where it's useful, probably using vertex snap to manually click them onto the neighboring road mesh's vertices (for no holes), then after getting rid of any unneeded doubles, use UV unwrap so that the unpinned side parts can spread out correctly.

On the track I was doing that's similar, I depended heavily on the multilayer shader which doesn't use UV coordinates at all, so as long as my base diffuse map was the same shade of grey, the multilayer details would be seamless across those edges.

Oh man, I forgot about that auto tiling on the multilayer shader. That certainly helps. Thanks for the tips, mate!

 

[Mitch9]

Here´s an example from another track, bunch of squares and a few triangles at the corners where needed.
What´s that autotiling option in the multilayer shader? does it help breaking up the patterned tiling?

 

[Ryno917]

Here´s an example from another track, bunch of squares and a few triangles at the corners where needed.
What´s that autotiling option in the multilayer shader? does it help breaking up the patterned tiling?

The multilayer shaders use a top-down projection for the UV mapping of the detail textures. The mapped UV you create for those objects only applies to the non-tiling textures (diffuse, mask, and normal I think?).

Thanks for the wireframe shot. I'm probably just over-complicating this, that looks much simpler than I thought it might.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

I use the same method for my tracks, too. I single continuous loft for the road, with individual sections for each side road.

 

[Ghoults]

Also it is good idea to match the vertex normals in that seam if you have two separate road objects there. Also vertice locations should match on edges. Otherwise you may get bleed and flicker at the seams. If you use shrinkwrap in blender then better to use vertex mode instead of the other ones. You can also use white lines and actual road sealant as alphamasked textures to hide the sharp transitions. Or to make them stand out.

https://imgur.com/7dkEWIo

Also with uvmaps you want to make sure the big eye catching details are continuous. Here I have just aligned the longitudinal road markings which deceives the eye enough to not catch it unless you look for it:

https://imgur.com/0NYcvYH

 

[NightEye87]

Good tips

Also with uvmaps you want to make sure the big eye catching details are continuous. Here I have just aligned the longitudinal road markings which deceives the eye enough to not catch it unless you look for it:

https://imgur.com/0NYcvYH

This is actually not how asphalt is layed down in real life, usually. In most cases, the "main trajectory" is fully layed down, and any connecting pieces of road are layed down against it.
Patterns can also occur due to bad rolling with those cilindrically wheeled trucks. But this is more rare than natural markings due to the laying down process.