*****GP4 Track editing*****

I'm just gonna throw a bit of info I've discovered today into the track editing ring... found since editing existing tracks just isn't enough :P

when you import an object, there appears to be some limit to the polygons it can either be made of or that the entire track gp4-file can total to - importing a single object of 15000 polys causes the track to not load, but cutting out a part of this and making this a low-poly single object (about 30 was what I tested) and importing is absolutely fine..

I know there's quite a range between 30 and 15000, more testing required obviously, but a bit more info nonetheless..

@ Six degrees

Have you done or will you do something new with France circuit that you started

to edit earlier ?

THe problem with France is that the CC line does not match up properly, which makes it very ciddicult to edit that particular track. A few of us tried it, but we were unable to do much with the CC line.

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my magny cours works ingame (thanks to laurent finding what was wrong - extreme elevation changes :P), and I rebuilt the cc-line as well and it 'works'...I've only edited the dat tho, so you can't really 'see' any changes as such, the bin and col files need rebuilding (or generating in the future)

to edit anything graphical I really need to get the .gp4 file in zm one way or another, because while 3ded works, and is very powerful, zm is less "clumsy" and somewhat more user friendly than 3ded :p

as for my earlier bit of info, turns out that could well be wrong, since I tried importing a different low-poly object (a leyton house 1991 rear wing endplate, massively upscaled) and the track doesn't load - it freezes at 50% loading, which is quite bizarre.

@Ali:
Track Editing order:

1-.dat : manualy in 3DED
2-.gp4 : manualy in ZM or 3DED, compare with .dat in 3DED
3-.bin : manualy in 3DED, no easy comparison yet or auto-generated in next version (but with little troubles)
4-.col : manualy in 3DED, no easy comparison yet, maybe an auto-generated way in future

@Six Degrees: Hmm, interesting it's either a 3DED bug or a game bug but it needs more tests anyway...

Layout is not hard to edit, you can even edit it with your mouse. The main point is to keep sector size constant as often as possible.

you mean cc layout?

sector size constant? is this all in the manual?

____
Tony

Yesterday I made a new cc-Line for Brazil, but it did not really work. maybe I have to rebuild it again, because in 2 or 3 corners the CC-Line left the track

hm but you start... thats a nice message..

@ Six Degrees: Are you able to email me your rebuilt CC line for Magny Cours then?

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@Ferrari_Fuhrer: well I could, but it isn't perfect as you could see from laurent's posts a few weeks ago when he was showing the .bin generation there were groups of cc cars :P dunno if that was due to the lack of .col modifications, that's a possibilty.

@Tony: keeping sector size constant isn't in the manual I don't think, it's something I discovered when I was messing about with magny cours - you can actually stretch sectors quite a lot, but there is a definate limit, so being "reasonable" with stretching, or even constant, is a good idea. I'm also not sure, if any, what effect sector stretching has on laptiming, since in the default tracks all sectors are of "1 unit" length....

@Laurent: yeah it's a strange one, one thing I did notice tho was when I imported the leyton house's endplate in imported as a new object, as expected, but came in two 'parts' (like many of the default objects, of course) which seemed to be split either by horizontal or vertical axes or by normals seperation, I'll need to test that later - I'm not sure whether it was a random problem or whether imported objects just won't work in 'parts', if this is the case I can work around it.

but about the "poly limit", that needs more testing also, how it came about was I made a track layout in zm and imported into 3ded in order to make the dat match up exactly with the graphical part of the track.. just seems a bit more logical for massive track reconstruction.

oh, and object names don't seem to matter as such, or rather they don't cause the track to not load - obviously for the objects to behave correctly (whatever the behaviour is :p) they have to be labelled in the right class and in the correct scene (I assume).

Hmm, I think I must have missed the post. I'd quite like a look at it if you don't mind. Address is in my profile.

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sent

do with it what you like, I've no interest for 2004 tracks right at this moment, I'm trying something really quite different (hence my rather strange posts in this thread recently :P)

Well yes, I quite agree. I'm not striving for 2004 tracks either, I'm just trying to play around every now and again when I have the time rahter than striving for realistic tracks. I think it's better to play around and learn more about the whole thing before we go out to produce life-like tracks.

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Yeah quite similar to what I'm doing, but I'm rather trying to develop a method of full track editing using a combination of tools :P

@Laurent: I'm sure you've already planned this, but for the next release of 3DEditor, would you be able change the ShiftAngle value of the CC lines initial section from an integer to a float?

care to tell more about your 'method' nick?

Lo2k - if i didnt mention already i guess its possible to import a flat 2 poly shape mapped with the new layout as some sort of work around for a background image

____
Tony

b-tone Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> care to tell more about your 'method' nick?
>
> Lo2k - if i didnt mention already i guess its
> possible to import a flat 2 poly shape mapped with
> the new layout as some sort of work around for a
> background image

that's something like what this 'method' actually is tony, but with the track layout actually built in 'flat 3d', so you get the correct layout in the dat and later when you build up the 3d stuff it all fits nicely together - needs a lot of testing tho, and obviously recreating a track into another track is a massive undertaking...

object deletion is going to be a must I think :P

ok. sounds good. oh, if possible i'd like a look at your france thing too - specially if you've tweaked the cc line.

about the 3d models, i tested a while ago and it seemed any 3d model would work in game. so a one object thing worked fine. problems with reflections, rain, and goodness knows what else, but what i'm getting at is once cc line is easier converting other tracks should be a piece of cake.
should be as simple as:
get a f1c track into zmodler
export as gp4
open that and some gp4 .dat
remake the cc line etc and you've got a new track - sounds easy

____
Tony

Shame it's the ONE thing we're having to work on, eh?

[Website]

@B-tone :
By layout, I mean track layout, and thus track sector position/orientation, not cc-line.
Constant sectors are not in the manual, i can just assume it because original tracks have constant length sectors and when i did some tries, i got ctd in GP4 that seems to be due to too streched sectors. So I advise to use constant sectors.

@Six-degrees :
What is in the guide anyhow is that the import function only import the first object and all its sub-object if any from a ZM scene, all other object will be discarded. That might be a reason why some of your meshes are not imported completely...

Object deletion might need some time and I think you've better put them aside with settings to never draw them (look the clipping settings in the user guide) for the moment.

@B-tone and 6-degrees : Yep, you can create a new flat square and map it with a high-res texture of the new track layout. It's a good idea

@Xero : Well, I could do that in 3DEditor but this won't be better because in the .dat file, value has to be converted to integer anyway. So it would only look better in 3DEditor but won't be usefull to make better cc-lines because what you see in 3deditor is not exactly what you get in game (due to initial value but also to other calculations for every cc-line segments).