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Old 16th September 2014, 10:07 PM   #1
Glen
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Default Creating Game Models for gMotor 2 Engine (rFactor etc)

Hi folks,

I'm developing a track for rFactor and I'm having some problems with my buildings; they're not working ingame. I've been told it's related to 'polybombs', but I'm not too sure. I am, however, quite sure it's something to do with the meshes.

Right now, I'm in a 'clean slate' situation, as I lost my other projects from my old PC, so I'm wondering if anyone can advise or tutor me on creating VERY highly detailed buildings for this purpose, please?

My next step will be the pit garages and race control building, which are to be steel frame and concrete block constructions. I'm looking for bolt head and cable conduit levels of detail here; nothing can be overlooked.

Thesoftware I'm using to create the venue itself is called Bob's Track Builder and it uses a feature called 'string objects', which basically takes an object, or objects and puts them together into a string. The good part of this feature is that it includes optional morphs to make the object(s) follow splines and even the terrain mesh, making things like barriers and curbs a breeze, as all one needs to do is create one object, then string it along where it's needed. The pit garages will use this technique, so I'll be making two pairs of garages with a communal lobby between them and a set of stairs on one end, making the pattern 'garage, garage, lobby, garage, garage, stairs' and so on...

I made a reasonably highly detailed grain shed for a farming game years ago as my first project but didn't quite get it finished. I mention that because that's the kind of construction I'll be trying to create here. If I can find the screenshots I took, I'll post them, to give an idea.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Obviously, being game models, I'll need to remove faces that aren't seen and keep the polycount as low as physically possible but, as I said, the detailing must be huge.

Thanks,

Glen.
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Old 18th September 2014, 06:10 AM   #2
Andy
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Default Re: Creating Game Models for gMotor 2 Engine (rFactor etc)

I'd check that the normals are facing the right way. A good way to check is to select everything and set all surfaces to single-sided ('1S' button on the AC3D control panel). If anything disappears, the normals need flipping (in 1S, the surface can only be viewed from one direction).

If you can post an image/s of the problems, we should be able to help more.

You can easily add as much detail as you like to a model (have a look through the AC3D Gallery) - it just takes time
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Old 18th September 2014, 10:46 AM   #3
Glen
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Default Re: Creating Game Models for gMotor 2 Engine (rFactor etc)

Hi,

Yeah, I'm not sure it's normals, to be honest, but it is odd. I've accidentally loaded 'inside out' models into it before and it's had no problem, but it seems whenever I try to do a boolean on a model, it doesn't accept it. Also, when I do get models into it, I sometimes end up with odd lines through some of my faces, which look like creases. It's as though shading is being applied to one face on a flat surface and not the other and it looks ugly.
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Old 21st September 2014, 07:27 PM   #4
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Default Re: Creating Game Models for gMotor 2 Engine (rFactor etc)

I'm getting black faces on parts of my model which I've cut away. Optimising vertices and faces isn't fixing it.
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Old 24th September 2014, 12:55 PM   #5
Andy
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Default Re: Creating Game Models for gMotor 2 Engine (rFactor etc)

Black surfaces: You may have surfaces with more than three sides where the first three vertices form an acute angle. These three vertices are used to calculate the normal so you can either triangulate the surface or rotate the vertices with Surface->Change-vertex-order. That should fix it.

Booleans require very clean shapes (i.e. fully closed, with all normals facing out) and any 'faults' in an object will probably cause problems.
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Old 24th September 2014, 07:01 PM   #6
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Default Re: Creating Game Models for gMotor 2 Engine (rFactor etc)

I'll take a look at that, thank you!
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