GP4 Track Editing - new new thread

Hi guys,

not sure whether this is of any interest (or already known), but I'll just leave this in here:

I guess more or less everyone knows this annoying pitstop bug when cc cars get stuck in front of their pitcrew. Usually the reason is a wrong pitlane sector length. Recently I noticed that the wheelbase (that's at least my current understanding) can also influence this behaviour. A couple of circuits work fine with the standard gp4 wheelbase cars but e.g. the rather long 2014 cars get stuck in the pitlane both in FP and qualifying (cannot be moved back into the pits after a stint) and in the race. The wheelbase set in the physics file has no influence, it seems to be related to carshape itself. Changing the pitlane sector length does not help in these cases and so far I have not found a fix for this problem. I suspect the sector and/or banks width could be responsible but I have not looked into that in detail.

---

used to be GPGSL's Nick Heidfeld

This could also happen if you don't set Verges Description commands (F7) or use 0m wide verges for pitlane garage sectors.

I see, thanks for your input! I'll have a look at the circuits that show this issue

---

used to be GPGSL's Nick Heidfeld

Hi,

i made a fictional circuit, but i cant connect the start sector with finish sector, its my first circuit i made it short. Is there any tutorial? Or how can I connect it?

landex schrieb:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi,
>
> i made a fictional circuit, but i cant connect the
> start sector with finish sector, its my first
> circuit i made it short. Is there any tutorial? Or
> how can I connect it?

Just give the last sector of your track the direction straight towards the first sector. Then make a straight as long as it needs to be to match the first track sector again. Both, first and last sector are allowed to overlap up to one sector lenght. And no, there is no tutorial available for it, because it's so easy .

If you think, that a longer straight back towards the first sector will destroy your track layout, well, a better planning is the only solution to prevent this issue .

klausfeldmann Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> landex schrieb:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > Hi,
> >
> > i made a fictional circuit, but i cant connect
> the
> > start sector with finish sector, its my first
> > circuit i made it short. Is there any tutorial?
> Or
> > how can I connect it?
>
> Just give the last sector of your track the
> direction straight towards the first sector. Then
> make a straight as long as it needs to be to match
> the first track sector again. Both, first and last
> sector are allowed to overlap up to one sector
> lenght. And no, there is no tutorial available for
> it, because it's so easy .
>
> If you think, that a longer straight back towards
> the first sector will destroy your track layout,
> well, a better planning is the only solution to
> prevent this issue .


Thanks Klausfeldmann, i did like you said but it seems not to work form, look:
http://imagecurl.org/viewer.php?file=12350758011954976423.jpg]



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/21/2014 10:25PM by landex.

Problem solved, Thanks!'

landex schrieb:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Problem solved, Thanks!'

Very good .

But now i have a lot of Missing(F5) Bank discription, in the pitlane . Cant solved.

landex schrieb:
-------------------------------------------------------
> But now i have a lot of Missing(F5) Bank
> discription, in the pitlane . Cant solved.

Of course you can: Watch this pic and you will see, how it can be fixed in about 10 seconds .
[www.directupload.net]

By the way:
Reading the GP4 Builder's Manual will help with a lot of issues .

klausfeldmann Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> landex schrieb:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > But now i have a lot of Missing(F5) Bank
> > discription, in the pitlane . Cant solved.
>
> Of course you can: Watch this pic and you will
> see, how it can be fixed in about 10 seconds .
> [www.directupload.net]
> if.htm
>
> By the way:
> Reading the GP4 Builder's Manual will help with a
> lot of issues .

An big thanks, klausfeldmann! I didnt notice the manual. It works.

landex schrieb:
-------------------------------------------------------
> An big thanks, klausfeldmann! I didnt notice
> the manual. It works.

No problem . We are always thankful for new modders, so it is in our own interest to help all the newbies .

the cc-line it´s complicated, some times it works wunderfull, sometimes not. The game crashes when i click in drive.
I made exprimente another circuit and only made a liltle modification in the last cc-line sector and it still crashes. If i just modi only the grahic.(gp4) file, it works fine.
By the way, I didn´t put any magic data in it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/24/2014 05:18PM by landex.

landex schrieb:
-------------------------------------------------------
> the cc-line it´s complicated, some times it works
> wunderfull, sometimes not. The game crashes when i
> click in drive.
> I made exprimente another circuit and only made
> a liltle modification in the last cc-line sector
> and it still crashes. If i just modi only the
> grahic.(gp4) file, it works fine.

Yes, we see quite often cases in which the cc-line causes problems. To be honest, I don't know how to handle them, because I've never had any CTD due to the cc-line. Maybe, GP4 handles the cc-line quite different on different computers, I don't know.

Maybe someone else can explain this phenomenon a bit.


BTW:
Make sure, you use the current GP4 Builder-version. In older versions, you had to recompute the cc-line manually. Nowadays everything might work automatically, thanks to Lo2k .

klausfeldmann Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> landex schrieb:
> --------------------------------------------------
> -----
> > the cc-line it´s complicated, some times it
> works
> > wunderfull, sometimes not. The game crashes when
> i
> > click in drive.
> > I made exprimente another circuit and only
> made
> > a liltle modification in the last cc-line
> sector
> > and it still crashes. If i just modi only the
> > grahic.(gp4) file, it works fine.
>
> Yes, we see quite often cases in which the cc-line
> causes problems. To be honest, I don't know how to
> handle them, because I've never had any CTD due to
> the cc-line. Maybe, GP4 handles the cc-line quite
> different on different computers, I don't know.
>
> Maybe someone else can explain this phenomenon a
> bit.
>
>
> BTW:
> Make sure, you use the current GP4
> Builder-version. In older versions, you had to
> recompute the cc-line manually. Nowadays
> everything might work automatically, thanks to
> Lo2k .


Big thank, klausfeldmann! I did the a new cc-line and now it works! Its not prefect but for mine very first .dat, its ok. The graphic file as only 1 scene for testing converted from the .dat file. Thanks again

Hi guys,

I've assembled a track in 3ds Max - cobbled it together from various default tracks - and want to, naturally, be able to drive it.

So far, the only way I've been able to get it into GP4 Builder is to export the entire track as one piece - I've joined all the track sectors together as one mesh - but I'm not sure where to go from here.

I've had look through the user manual, but cannot see how I'm supposed to go about breaking it all up into sectors.

If exporting it as one mesh isn't the correct way of doing things, could someone tell me what is?
(When I export to with all the track sectors separate they are, on importing, all over the place.)

Also, the only way I was able to import the .3ds was to open a helmet model, and create a new scene there; am I able to import my .3ds into a track .dat that I've opened?

Sorry for all the questions.

Cheers,
Doug.

---

F1 Graphics Swapper --- Lensdump - Renders and Screenshots --- GP4 Performance Generator

hi Doug,

There's indeed a feature for that in GP4Builder described in the User Guide in Action Menu\Get .dat from .gp4
Basicaly :
- You can only convert one stripe of sectors from 3D to a .dat. So if everything is merged in 3ds max, yuo have to at least export the ribbon of sectors as a single .3ds and the rest as another .3ds.
- As far as I know, no need to open an helmet to be able to import a .3ds file. In fact you have to open an existing track (gp4+dat) if you want to do the conversion into .dat later. The only restriction to import .3ds is that you need to be at object level, so inside a scene (new or existing) and in that case, import .3ds won't be greyed.
- once you imported the ribbon of track sectors, rename this object as "trackbase"
- optionally you can double click this object and go to edit\weld (it will weld vertices together, wich will be easier for conversion then). Also if your track is closed, removing the last sector could help the converter to determine the first sector.
- then go to Tool\Get .dat from .gp4 and the ribbon of sectors will be converted into a basic .dat layout (note that verges and banks width are values from the opened track sectors)

It's far from perfect and you will most probably ends with some twisted sectors facing backwards, but it's the best I was able to do thus far.

PS : you can of course import the rest of the track as a second .3ds and retexture it to be displayed as any .gp4 object.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/28/2014 09:03AM by Lo2k.

Awesome, thanks for that, I'll have a look at it later today.

---

F1 Graphics Swapper --- Lensdump - Renders and Screenshots --- GP4 Performance Generator

Okay - that's perhaps not the newest thing. But there is an easy way to get "fake 3D" rails/fences (and other two-sided objects) which I haven't seen used in tracks, at least not on regular basis.

Lets start with a simple rails object (done with the great FenceBuilder of GP4Builder). The normals of the faces point toward the track and the material option "two-sided" is enabled. You have a nice rail texture and all is well. On the downside though
- you see the same texture from the front and back,
- you have the same shading from the front and back.

The "downside" may be visible from some tv cams but also from cockpit view. To address it is quite simple:
- change the material properties of the rail object/part to one-sided (the rail is now only visible from the front, ie from the track),
- duplicate the object/part,
- invert faces creation/direction and normals direction for the duplicate and assign a new texture (back of rails) (this rail object is only visible from the back).

So no big deal (except for painting the texture of course). Should work also for fences, marshals etc. All in all a way to add a bit more 3D feeling to the track, with no great costs. I did this for all rails around Jerez (gp4central.com) and didn't have any issues with PO or flicker or any other adverse effects.

I make the track objects like, houses veicles on 3Ds max, the problems is the texturing. What is the texturing method used? I use UVW Map, but when i export to .3DS, 3ds max rename the tga files to 8.3.

When imported in GP4 builder there is only one texture.