VW Scirocco race simulator

[nicolas]

My first TV3D project will be a race simulator of the good old Volkswagen Scirocco.

As it will be the first thing I ever do in TV3D (I come from 3DState) and Milkshape, I'm sure I'll have lots of problems. So this will be a questions thread as much as a showcase.

Anyway, I've started out with creating a circuit in Milkshape. It's far from finished (I just spent 1 evening with Milkshape...).

But I've got one question already. For some reason, the stands are textured much darker than the track and the grass. Even when using the same texture. I have to make the stands texture self-illuminating to get them as bright as the rest. What could be the problem here? How can I be sure my faces face the correct direction (one guess is that I am looking at their back side...)? I haven't fired up TV3D yet. Will the lighting in TV3D be alright (I don't know how it compares to milkshapes 3D view when using standard settings in TV3D)? And what settings should I use for materials (ambient, diffuse...) as "standard"?

I want to start out with basic settings. Nothing fancy but everything visible and balanced. Later I can start playing with some (metallic) materials and the like, but for the moment I just want the basics to be correct. Seems like a smart idea, as -in Milkshape- I can't get even that with these dark stands...

The screenshot below shows the track. The stands use the track texture (same dds file as the track, but a separate material in milkshape). They're equally bright in the shot atm, but for this I had to turn self-illuminance way up.



I like Milkshape. The track has lifted curbs and everything, so I'm quite pleased with the result. Of course this is unfinished, I'll add more objects and better textures later. And I'll try to keep the poly count down. (somewhere at 11000 now, as the track takes quite some polys). Yes, the hills will get smoother. Yes, there will be more hills and everything. Patience. This is my first day of 3D modelling in Milkshape and basically 3D modelling in general.

[scottpipper]

hi Nicolas, I can model you a track fairly fast, do you have any layout you would like to make?, what is your programming language?

[nicolas]

Hi Scott,

Thanks, but I'd like to do everything myself, so I can learn it.

Is there a way to combine some faces (for example in the straights of the road, where I don't need a division every 25 meters) in Milkshape without messing up the texturing? That would seriously reduce the polygon count. If that can't be done, I'll try to find another way, because I have to reduce the poly count to stay within Milkshape's limit. I'd like to make the complete circuit as one Milkshape model. So that limits me to 16000 poly's.

I'm programming in VB6 btw.

[scottpipper]

I don't know much about milkshape, but I believe there are some programs that can optimize some formats, anyway if you can split your road into several models you can do some optimizations when designing each one.
 

[Zaknafein]

How can I be sure my faces face the correct direction (one guess is that I am looking at their back side...)?

Usually the back-faces are culled out by the graphics card. There's an option for that in TVMesh and it's usually a good idea because the normal will be inverted, you usually don't want to see inside things and not rendering it will save you fill-rate.
I don't know about how this works in Milkshape but I'd assume you are looking at the right faces.

Will the lighting in TV3D be alright (I don't know how it compares to milkshapes 3D view when using standard settings in TV3D)? And what settings should I use for materials (ambient, diffuse...) as "standard"?

The standard matte material in TV3D/DirectX would be (1, 1, 1, 1) for Diffuse and Ambient and (0, 0, 0, 1) for Specular and Emissive. The Power value doesn't matter since you don't reflect specular light.
If you set ambient to white, you need to control how much ambient light is emitted globally (SetGlobalAmbient) and by each light (its Ambient value). When using shaders (and I assume the built-in shaders like bump-mapping modes too), the light's ambient value will have no effect so you will need to use material ambient to balance it out. You should make sure that the total Ambient+Diffuse is equal to 1; usually it'll clamp to 1 but I've seen problems with overbrightened textures because of that.

[nicolas]

Found another two hours to work in Milkshape. Good results:

Back faces issue solved: you can set Milkshape 3D view to not render backfaces. Now I'm sure everything is facing the right direction.

Polygon issue under control: I swapped three straights for a low poly variant (instead of 800m of straight road in 10m sections, it's now just one 800m section). Polygon count went down from 11000+ to 8194 for the track with stands and terrain (hills, skybox). I can lower that with a few hundred extra if really necessary, but I think it'll be sufficient this way. So that means I've got 8000 polys left for the rest of the scenery. With low poly trees, that should be enough.

Lighting problem of the stands solved: I game them a separate smoothing group, et voila.

Tomorrow I'll try to make a low poly 3D tree. Sometimes I do feel that this (creating a complete race track) is stretching "a bit" what Milkshape was intended for, but still I like it. A limited amount of functions gives me a good feeling of control. Polys end up where I want them. Texture placing remains a bit tricky, but so far it's quite OK. I'd love to see a faces selector that doesn't require you to select vertices though, but just a click in the face you want to select.

Today's screenshot (directly from Milkshape):


Obviously work in progress. I tried new curbs on the road texture. They needed to be thinner. They are thinner now, but now they're too shaky. Will (hopefully) improve in the future. Unlike what the perspective of the screenshot suggests, at this moment the road itself is horizontal. The hills surround the track, but the track itself runs flat.

Does TV3D recognize the groups I make in Milkshape? That would be handy, as that way I could make a "road" group and use it to control the tire friction (if it goes off the road, it skids more).

[ZaPPZion]

I don't know if TV supports the groups that you set in milkshape. If it doesn't, you can solve it by separately export your groups and load them in separate meshes in TV.

[nicolas]

I doubt TV3D will recognize the groups, so I'll split it into two models. I hope placing them correctly won't be an issue in that case. Any thoughts on that? I make them as one model and export both groups separately as meshes. But if I load them separately, will they have the correct relative position or would I need to translate them relative to each other?

If the circuit is to be a separate mesh anyway, I'd have 7000 extra polys to create the scenery. But it's a bit hard to create the scenery when you don't see the track, so I'll try to stick to 16000 poly's in total, to force myself to do some efficient modelling.

[ZaPPZion]

I don't exactly know how milkshape handles pivot points, but as long as you have the pivot points at the exact same spot, it'll automagicly place the object correctly I believe.

[nicolas]

I assume Milkshape will keep the origin where it is, and if TV3D uses that origin and not a centre of mass, it will be fine. Cool!

So that means I'll make two meshes: one for the circuit and one for the scenery. Still, I'll try to stick to the 16000 poly limit for the sum of both, just to practice some low poly modeling. And to make sure it runs smooooth on my not so fancy PC.

[nicolas]

Today's update:

-updated the textures. Stands now look as stands, and got split into two groups to give their roof a concrete look (not visible in screenshots)

-removed some more unnecessary polys.

-did my first attempt ever at a 3D tree. It is about 120 polys IIRC. Not photo realistic, but anyway.

-I also made a 2D billboard (non rotary) version of this tree based on a render of it. You can see it being used in some of the screenshots. This should help to create a "forest" patch without blowing up the poly count.

I know, I'm not the world's greatest 3D artist. And on top of that, I have close to zero experience. On the plus side, I start to find my way around Milkshape pretty well. That also means I find some of its limitations. Placing multiple trees can be quite the exercise as there isn't really an elegant way to do it...

Today's screenshots, again straight from Milkshape (some 8900 polys now):









(@scottpipper: I told you my game would look sooooo 2002 compared to yours. )

As you can see, the edge of the road is slightly raised. I've done this because I think it will give a cool effect with the physics. A small "problem" for those who want to cut a corner at top speed, for starters.

edit: looking at this screenshot, I realise they might be rendered with drawn backfaces. I'll have to check tomorrow whether the trees look "full" enough without drawn backfaces. One day I won't be a NOOB anymore.

[nicolas]

At home, I use a fantastic "so bright you'd need sunglasses  " Acer 1952 monitor. At work, some crappy dark monitor. My screenshots look really dark on this screen.

I've calibrated my Acer and this monitor as good as possible, but the one at work simply has insufficient brightness while the Acer has excessive amounts of it (which is good, because at a low setting it's fine, where the one at work is still too dark at max).

When I go into TV3D (this is just Milkshape itself rendering), I'll try to get the lighting of the scene such that it looks bright enough on any screen.

I'm not happy with the way the canopy of the trees look. I'll try to make a variant with one separate polygon for each branch tonight (which would be about the same number of polygons, considering they'd need to be double faced), if I have time. I've placed only 8 trees, so at this moment I can still change the geometry without having to redo too much work.

[nicolas]

Today's updates:

-made the tree canopy using branches instead of spheres. Same amount of polys, much better result.

-changed the 2D baked tree accordingly. Similarly better result

-placed a guard rail around the outside of the track. This will reduce the possibility of crashing way out there somewhat (unless you crash yourself over the guard rail, of course...) but it looks realistic. And of course I left some nice crash possibilities, such as having a tree inside of the guard rails instead of behind them. 

Today's screenshots (directly from Milkshape, 9000 polys):









The branches, 2D trees and guard rails are double sided polygons to avoid "disappearing objects" when looking at them from behind.

The problem with the dark screenshots is simply Milkhape's "camera flashlight". The Milkshape rendering window is optimised to light 1 small object in its entirety, not a detail of a complete racetrack. The textures aren't too dark.

All textures (except for the sky) are drawn from scratch in Paint.Net. That noise function is gold. I'll move to The Gimp in the future, and may also use photographic material then. Though I must say, for hand drawn trees from Paint.Net they don't look too bad.

And for those who wonder: I will get TV3D up and running in the future and import the model into it, but atm I'm having too much fun just modelling the passive parts of the track in Milkshape.

[Zaknafein]

I think you'll find that Milkshape renders stuff differently from TV3D. For example it probably won't recognize your double-sided objects, you'll have to set them manually to the DOUBLESIDED cull mode, and then your normals will be inverted from one side.
So test on your target platform often

[nicolas]

I make them double sided manually: duplicate + inverse  vertices of duplicate. So they will certainly be rendered.

The lighting will be different in TV3D, but it can only be better than the Milkshape "camera flaslight".

I will port to TV3D when I find the time, hopefully this weekend. I'd first have to install VB6 again, install TV3D, and get TV3D to work in VB6 and as exporter for Milkshape before I can attempt to load the level into my first TV3D program.  Not a priority at the moment, as I don't do anything fancy in my models, so I don't suspect too much surprises. But it'd be nice anyway to see the real result, especially to judge things as texture colours. Lighting really starts to be a problem in Milkshape now. My tree trunks really aren't as dark as they look in the shots.

[nicolas]

Today's updates (all screenshots still from Milkshape. Polygon count still about 9000, as creating the bridge actually SAVED me some polygons )

Some experimenting in creating a low poly forest with 2D and 3D trees. Seems OK! With adding some more 3D trees close to the track, collisions will be OK and it will look like a full 3D forest.



The circuit didn't have height differences, so I create a bridge. Well, hill crossing. Anyway. A height difference close to a corner. MUHAHA. It's even a bit bumpy, so this should be real fun with the physics.



Finally, I made a plethora of textures for road signs and commercials. I only imported two, and then noticed that my round Gulf sign was corrupted. So it's all round VW signs for now. But tomorrow I'll add a nicely worn Gulf sign alternating with the VW signs. The other commercial signs will be standard rectangular ones.



I increasingly feel the need to check out rendering by TV3D, for lighting issues. In Milkshape, the hills leading to the "bridge" sometimes are in large contrast with the surrounding hills. I think it's just a Milkshape thing, but I'll have to check. And if it's not Milkshape, I'll have to get creative there.

[Zaknafein]

Nice!
You might want to consider using TVLandscape for your landscape. With splatting you'd get it much better looking from up close. But making the road follow a landscape you don't control 100% can be tricky.

[nicolas]

A quite strong variant of "tricky" indeed.  That's the main reason why I do it like this. But I still can try splatting some textures onto it if I really feel like it one day. First things first: getting the thing to show up correctly in TV3D would be a nice start. Fingers crossed, I hope it'll be fine on the first attempt!

[nicolas]

No update today. Just placed more objects. And found that the new copy of the Gulf sign was corrupted AGAIN. 

[nicolas]

I mainly worked on two things:

-improvement of the textures. Still "hand" (well, "mouse") drawn in Paint.Net, but with better results. Even if these are not the final textures, they are good template for the layout of the final textures.

-improvement of the scale. Scale is quite Ok now: track is about 3.something km long and between 14 and 20m wide between the curbs. That is quite realistic for race tracks. The other 3D elements are scaled to realistic values.