Tracks Spa Francorchamps 2022 Track Update

[guigui0256]

Hello !

As you may know, Spa Francorchamps is undergoing heavy modification for 2022 in the aim of hosting the 24h EWC motos race. This will involve the return of many gravel traps around the track, expanding the distance between the track and guard rails in several locations, and specifically at the top of the Raidillon.

Keeping an eye on these modifications and gathering the pictures published in the media, I started to mod the current in-game Kunos track to bring it up-to-date to the 2022 spec.

Obviously as the real building work is still in progress, changes will still occurs and I can't be sure about details placement for now, but that will come as the real circuit takes shape. I will update the in-game track.

For now I work area by area. Started by La Source, adding the green paint and gravel trap. Moving on to the 24H starting line where the guard rails are moved about 10 meters back. There will be a brand a new grandstand here but I have absolutely no details so for now it will stay as dirt. After that I reworked Les Combes, adding the blue paint which was already present in 2021, and adding a gravel trap on the right side along the guardrail. Bruxelles hairpin got a new green paint strip which was already present in 2021 and again, adding a gravel trap all along the outside of the track.

Currently in early progress for the Raidillon and Speakers Corner new layout.

I will upload the track once all parts will be completed in at least in early stage.

I must specify that I'm using a great mod by Johnr777 - SPA - Remastered 1.0.
This is a must have to have a fresh new realistic look to the track. However his gravel trap texture is way to dark so I kept the original one in game, but it create a weird transition between gravel and asphalt/grass, don't pay attention to that. Here is the progress so far :

 

[Mark DENNY]

Hello !

As you may know, Spa Francorchamps is undergoing heavy modification for 2022 in the aim of hosting the 24h EWC motos race. This will involve the return of many gravel traps around the track, expanding the distance between the track and guard rails in several locations, and specifically at the top of the Raidillon.

View attachment 542616

Keeping an eye on these modifications and gathering the pictures published in the media, I started to mod the current in-game Kunos track to bring it up-to-date to the 2022 spec.

Obviously as the real building work is still in progress, changes will still occurs and I can't be sure about details placement for now, but that will come as the real circuit takes shape. I will update the in-game track.

For now I work area by area. Started by La Source, adding the green paint and gravel trap. Moving on to the 24H starting line where the guard rails are moved about 10 meters back. There will be a brand a new grandstand here but I have absolutely no details so for now it will stay as dirt. After that I reworked Les Combes, adding the blue paint which was already present in 2021, and adding a gravel trap on the right side along the guardrail. Bruxelles hairpin got a new green paint strip which was already present in 2021 and again, adding a gravel trap all along the outside of the track.

Currently in early progress for the Raidillon and Speakers Corner new layout.

I will upload the track once all parts will be completed in at least in early stage.

I must specify that I'm using a great mod by Johnr777 - SPA - Remastered 1.0.
This is a must have to have a fresh new realistic look to the track. However his gravel trap texture is way to dark so I kept the original one in game, but it create a weird transition between gravel and asphalt/grass, don't pay attention to that. Here is the progress so far :

View attachment 542625

View attachment 542626View attachment 542627View attachment 542628View attachment 542629View attachment 542630​

Looking good keep up the great work. Will it be an alternative or will it over right the original track ?

 

[guigui0256]

Looking good keep up the great work. Will it be an alternative or will it over right the original track ?

This update is setup as an alternative layout. So the original track will remained unchanged.

 

[Johnr777]

Interesting!

Went back to my remaster project last couple of nights, a few things were bothering me, like the messed up normals at the top of Eau Rouge on those striped lines. That all got cleaned up now, not sure how compatible it will be.

I see you are rebuilding the main KN5, the trees are a lost cause if they are re-exported.

 

[guigui0256]

Interesting!

Went back to my remaster project last couple of nights, a few things were bothering me, like the messed up normals at the top of Eau Rouge on those striped lines. That all got cleaned up now, not sure how compatible it will be.

I see you are rebuilding the main KN5, the trees are a lost cause if they are re-exported.

The modifications at the top of Eau Rouge for 2022 involve pushing back the barriers about 10 meters behind so this part will be redone from the original file. In fact I already started, and the mesh in kinda messed up at one point so I may do a quick retopology and unwrap.

What do you mean with the messed up trees if re-exported? I'm curious. I have a good experience working in CGI, but this is in fact my first time modding ever so I don't know all the quircks working with Assetto and the KsEditor.

 

[Johnr777]

The modifications at the top of Eau Rouge for 2022 involve pushing back the barriers about 10 meters behind so this part will be redone from the original file. In fact I already started, and the mesh in kinda messed up at one point so I may do a quick retopology and unwrap.

What do you mean with the messed up trees if re-exported? I'm curious. I have a good experience working in CGI, but this is in fact my first time modding ever so I don't know all the quircks working with Assetto and the KsEditor.

When the trees were originally exported by Kunos from 3DS Max, they were all single objects, and named a certain way to enable automated grouping and proper normals. Going back from KN5 to fbx, they are no longer single objects, so their normals look broken, like in your screenshots.

To fix this, you would have to separate all tree objects again, manually, or re-scatter new ones

 

[guigui0256]

Update 01 :

Recently I worked on the "Speaker's corner", just after the Bruxelles hairpin. This section sees the biggest change track wise as a new portion of the track is added for the motorcycles. The original track however is preserved. I added a darker shade of asphalt for the newly done surfaces for a bit more realism. The track-side area on the inside will probably need work but I don't have details for now, so I'm moving on.

P.S. Also like pointed out above, the trees are indeed shaded wrong because of being merged from the kunos .kn5 file. This is an issue that I will solve progressively or at the end when the main track modifications will be done.

 

[Amir Vodokotlic]

That looks amazing.

I was thinking someone could have done same with Barcelona. It would require less change since only one corner changed and scan data is there to just add barrier and new ai lines.

 

[Ben Lee]

There are some really harsh looking material transitions at Spa, which admittedly you can't see so much when driving. I was always kinda hoping that something could be done about the trees at all tracks, but particularly Spa when they are such a key feature. Having just 2 main tree textures for the entire track (not including the evergreens pine trees) is pretty poor.

 

[Johnr777]

There are some really harsh looking material transitions at Spa, which admittedly you can't see so much when driving. I was always kinda hoping that something could be done about the trees at all tracks, but particularly Spa when they are such a key feature. Having just 2 main tree textures for the entire track (not including the evergreens pine trees) is pretty poor.

2 textures but there's what 4-6 different trees in each? Pretty common practice on most Kunos tracks...

But to add any more textures, you would need to deal with unmerging of the kstreegroups. Not fun.

Lots of project managers here lately

 

[Ben Lee]

2 textures but there's what 4-6 different trees in each? Pretty common practice on most Kunos tracks...

But to add any more textures, you would need to deal with unmerging of the kstreegroups. Not fun.

Lots of project managers here lately

Hey John, its common practice on most (all?) Kunos tracks, but doesn't mean its a good thing. Seeing the same tree repeat over and over again is a bit immersion breaking. I think Brands Hatch has 4 main textures for the majority of the circuit and that just about passes the immersion test.

I think from memory Nords has 2 textures of 8 trees (plus pines) and that is a far better variety as it helps to avoid repetition.

 

[Johnr777]

Hey John, its common practice on most (all?) Kunos tracks, but doesn't mean its a good thing. Seeing the same tree repeat over and over again is a bit immersion breaking. I think Brands Hatch has 4 main textures for the majority of the circuit and that just about passes the immersion test.

I think from memory Nords has 2 textures of 8 trees (plus pines) and that is a far better variety as it helps to avoid repetition.

We are talking about a 10 year old game that has been improved over time, Nords and Brands being released later, a lot was done differently on them to help modernize the graphics... so things did look better. But its time to make peace with the fact the older ones will just end up looking the way they currently do.

The odds of competent people going back to revisit the older tracks are slim to none in my opinion... I know I wont. Did my upgrades on Spa because I like it and happy to see Guillaume going a few extra steps to update it to 2022 specs!

 

[guigui0256]

I see what you are referring to. I took the time to isolate every trees and the lack of texture variety stand out with only two types.

But as John said, the way trees work in Assetto will require me to split every single mesh of tree for them to work correctly. Which is a humongous time consuming and boring task to do for a feature that is not game breaking in any way. To be honest I will probably process the most visible ones, along the edges of the track, but I won’t do the totality like the outer edges and inner track.

What I can maybe do is extract tree textures from the Nurburgring and assign them randomly to some of the trees.

This is not a priority for now. But the progress looks good. I will post an update later today.

 

[guigui0256]

Update 02 :

New progress ! Every track modifications are done ! So this time I redone the double left of Pouhon, the first turn in the "pif-paf" with a full gravel trap instead of asphalt. The Stavelot curve as well as Blanchimont also gain the addition of a gravel trap, with is enlarged to have better clearance for Blanchimont. The exit of the 24h pitlane at the top of Raidillon now also has a gravel trap with extended clearance. That's for the big modifications.

I also added some small details, like the green concrete at the bus stop chicane, a new patch of asphalt in Eau Rouge and added all asphalt joints needed, including the masking of the old paint at the pit entry.

Now for the invisible part. The entire collider mesh has been modified to fit the newly track modifications, grass, guard rails, etc... So basically, the track is properly usable from now on.

Next steps that comes to my mind are RainFX compatibility for the new materials, polishing of 24H start line and Raidillon grandstand. And then I will start splitting all the trees.

 

[guigui0256]

Here are the details preview...

 

[Mark DENNY]

Here are the details preview...

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That looks fantastic, keep up the good work

 

[Bozian]

Here are the details preview...

Wow, wow, wow! This is so cool to see

 

[bob76]

looks great

 

[guigui0256]

Update 03 :

Quick update guys. I am not going to be able to progress this week and the next after, but I wanted to tell more about what has been done since the last post.

I split EVERY SINGLE TREE around the track, so now each tree is an individual mesh that can be merged and get proper shading by Assetto when loading the .kn5 file. I have also done a little color grading to them to have a more darker shade of green based on photo references.

I have cleaned up the 2 area with new grandstand (24h start/finish line and Raidillon) so that will be more pleasing to the eye before having proper models. At the moment I placed Silverstone grandstands as placeholder.

I reworked the pitlane area with a new texture, changing a fence to the right one and adding guiding tapes to the ground that are used to place the car on pit stops, it was already there but for one garage only.

And finally, more new pictures have been released by Spa about the building work, so I will be updating the speakers corner as there is some differences from what I have done so far.

I will add screenshots if I have time.
That's it for now. See you in 2 weeks folks.

 

[Johnr777]

I split EVERY SINGLE TREE around the track, so now each tree is an individual mesh that can be merged and get proper shading by Assetto when loading the .kn5 file. I have also done a little color grading to them to have a more darker shade of green based on photo references.

Been there... what a pain

Now that you have them separated, maybe worth looking into how detailed they are? Being one of the original tracks, I'm thinking it has the simpler 3 plane configuration. Would be wise to subdivide them a little more for better normals (newer Kunos tracks)

Left is what you want, an edge in the middle of the planes