Hello - (TC6)

[zimluura]

hello, this is my first post but i've been lurking for a bit.

i recently got my TC6 into an accident (no-one was hurt accept her). and have been going through tc6 withdrawal. so i've been playing around in truespace5 with a model i started a long time ago. and i was thinking it could be cool to bring it into blender with dxf import, then maybe into vdrift.

she's still pretty rough around the edges, but mostly shaping up.








it looks like it will be around 10-14k polys cause i'm doing separate body panels, some interior, and it's just a very curvy car.

is this just way too much to be feasible in vdrift? i've read forza1 has about 15k polys per car. and that forza2 and the next gran turismo are 10x that much. the only thing i've read about vdrift suggests that 3k is what i should shoot for. 3k is something i can't really hit with this model, i think.

also i'd really like to try to add some primitives for rigging special surfaces (lights, body panels that fall off withdamage, door/hatch/hood hinges, etc.). is there any vdrift model support for this kind of thing yet, if not is it planned soon?

[Kricor]

Not bad, not bad at all. I like it. Just put a few more hours into it and it should be looking really good. By the way, how long did it take you to learn Blender to that level? I want to be that good or better, but I just don't have the time

[zimluura]

i don't know blender very well at all. i built it in trueSpace (caligari.com) which i've been using on and off since 97 or so.

i'm also using an old version (5.2, and their at 7.5 or something now) and truespace is known for every tool being a little buggy. as far as i can tell blender is a much better piece of software to learn because it runs on every os, and it's free. i need to spend more time with it. and now i don't feel bad, cause with all the import options on blender i can use it in tandem with truespace.

ps. i heard a few days ago that there is an old version of truespace available for free now on their website.
http://forms.caligari.com/forms/ts3all_free.html

not sure if the 3.2 version had the slick polygon drawing tool though.

[joevenzon]

I've had the best luck using the wavefront obj format to import things into blender. Does truespace export that format?

VDrift doesn't have any hard limit on faces. Most cars so far are pretty low poly, but if you want to go higher, that's fine. There's one car (the CT) that's maybe 15K. People with slower computers might beg you for a low poly version, though. :-) I've been meaning to add some kind of LOD system.

No, there's no vdrift model support for hinges or anything like that. The vdrift model format is similar to the MD2 format (but improved slightly in some key areas). There's no car damage yet.

[xTs]

For car damage we need either a fixed crash model or a dynamic one which could be pretty hard to realize (because we dont know much about the structure of the cars and how they'd react on an impact)

But would be fun to destroy some cars
(dont let the big companys catch this... they dont like seeing their cars beeing destroyed...)

[TF]

The model looks great! The lighting not so much. When modeling a really curvy object I always smooth the normals across all the faces and then on edges where I need a sharp edge I double that edge so that there is a thin line of polygons right next to it.

That said, it's a work in progress so I'm sure you realized that needs to be updated.

I'm having issues with the polygon count in my models too, 100 000 or so would be a nice limit to work with =)

[zimluura]

truespace 5.2 exports to 3ds, asc, dxf, and x
so no .obj but getting it in through dxf works (iirc blenders truespace import doesn't seem to work with this version of the ts file format)

for dealing with the car companies i like the idea of just having a few official vdrift cars that are fully destructable. and eventually fully rig-able with opening windows, doors, antena, hoods. visual engine swaps, body, exhaust, all of that. that way the car data format will evolve to be very powerful.

then car packs can be distributed by 2 separate servers (neither officially part of vdrift); one server for car files (with the real names) and one for the car models (perhaps in a common blender format). so a company getting litigious can't harm the project overall. and can really only complain about the .car files which, since they are text, will be pretty hard to suppress because 100 cars could still be under 1mb. and people could also just write their own if they really wanted to. this way you could also have real manufacturer names and whatnot.

for getting the body to look better on curvy cars (and curvy women for that matter) i temporarily paint some tiger strips so in the 3d view i get a better view of contours. i'd always thought about the thin edge of polygons thing, but had been unsure if a texture map or something would do a better job of fixing it. i've never built a facemap in my life, saw it done in lightwave once, and it looked scary.

[joevenzon]

You definitely want to smooth the normals of the car for the curvy bits, but keep some edges sharp -- as TF mentions. One way to do it is like he said. The newer versions of blender also have another way to do it (which is similar, but might be easier for someone coming from a different modeling program):

http://wiki.blender.org/index.php/Manual...t_Modifier

So, set the car to smooth with the "Set Smooth" button. Everything will look smooth, but too smooth. Use the edgesplit modifier, and set it to "from marked as sharp." You can then manually mark edges as sharp.

[zimluura]

thanks. that sounds like how it's done in ts. the "auto-facet" tool is set at 32 degrees for all surfaces in this car at the moment.

what amount of vertex normal smoothing will make it into vdrift? a few years back i built a 3d engine with a friend and with the ogl lighting we used we had options like:
* use only face normals (flat cartoony look)
* vertex lit with face normals (good for angular things like cubes)
* vertex lit with vertex normals (forced smoothness)

and anyways, i was assuming vertex lighting in vdrift would be all or nothing like that. do the painting options in blender affect how the vertex normals are stored when the car goes into vdrift too?

hopefully i'll get to put in some studying to get competent with blender soon.

[joevenzon]

Blender's Autosmooth option (where you set an angle) is just for rendering and doesn't actually change the model normals. The edgesplit modifier can be set to a mode where it auto-smooths based on the angle, however, and that *does* change the model normals... although it's better to define your sharp edges manually. Basically, what you see in the 3D view mode in blender is what the normals are set to.

VDrift uses per-vertex normals from the model file (and the model file gets its normals per-vertex from blender). The per-vertex normals can be any direction (whatever blender sets them to). So, VDrift supports whatever mix of smoothness or solidness or sharp edges you define in blender.

Some more links:

Edgesplit (see section 3.5):
http://feeblemind.tuxfamily.org/dotclear...g-problems

TF's method:
http://blenderartists.org/forum/showthread.php?t=61087

Anyway, your model looks great -- we just gotta get it smooth in all of the right places. :-)

[zimluura]

mmm, cool.
thanks man.
* pushes learning blender higher up the list *

[kidrock]

Not bad so far! much better then what i can do in well... anything! Keep at it.


Thinks about putting blender BACK on his list....... oooh Halo looks fun to play! (forgets about blender)

[Kricor]

It's a great game, kidrock. Take as long as you want.
But first, search YouTube for some Halo 3 glitches, cheats, and other fun stuff like that. Some of them work really well.

[kidrock]

im a glitch master. was in the infamous GE clan in COD2. I was talkin about halo 1 (im on a mac). lol

[Kricor]

Oh. Halo 1 is still a great game, though.