WIP Beta released The Tennessee USA Roane County 0.71 Beta Discussion/Suggestion/feedback Thread 19.3.1

Thank-you for the feed-back, I mean that. The tutorial(s) will be quite helpful surely. I need to get this down, making something BeamNG can import. I've gotten static mesh automatic collisions (built in), imported fine, the forest brush is giving me a run around. closest thing into the forest brush I got was a curb standing on it's back face - upright, more like a fence, then a sidewalk (it's a sidewalk, not just a curb). I mean at this point I might as well make a fence out of it, since it takes 'offense' to me making a sidewalk out of it. Slow and Steady, they say. Yeah, well, I am not even fast enough with this to go the speed of slow. When I get to 'slow' it will be a milestone.

Yes, pieces of puzzle you say, yes entirely, that is a good analogy.
Just wish we didn't have this arbitrary 4096 object limit.

--Will keep you folks posted.

 

Fence sidewalk sounds like if it would be coordinate system issue, check those XYZ axis options of export, if there are such, sometimes it can be different order of those letters which then show sidewalk rotated in game. ZXY would cause weird effects for sure, but lazy might just rotate object in 3D editor for 90 degrees to get it land as a sidewalk.

Oh and indeed, first we go speed of 'learning', slow comes sometime in a future, that is just way of things are

 

Yeah I've got all those options checked. The game isn't properly importing the models - just in the forest brush - when it comes time to handle axis. If I remove the rotation, it ends up looking like a concrete fence, upright when it should be flat, but it handles the object otherwise fine (collision matching).
If I add in 90 degree rotation - to both the visible and collision mesh, the forest brush rotates the collision mesh fine but NOT the visible mesh. It's consistent no matter what coordinates I edit. I tried 40~50 times last night, for 4.5 hours, changing one option each time, much to the dismay of my SSD.
The only consistent thing I found, after ruling out my converter, after ruling out my settings in Maya, and after ruling out by testing in Blender (which came up FINE), was that BeamNG is cranky and is having it's time of the month/year/whatever.

--TY

 

I have successfully worked around the issues with BeamNG having issues importing visible meshes correctly.
Forest objects imported with native collision and visible meshes, ignore visible mesh coordinates and rotation. This normally goes without issue until the mesh is slightly off-set or rotated from normal 0,0,0.

Just words to the wise there. Don't be like Bob.

Model creation continues.

 

Congrats on some positive news Bob! After reading all this I just may have to give Maya a shot myself, merely as a litmus against Blender. I just wish I had the damn time to invest in learning modeling before I croak. Oh well, I will learn what I can when I can. Keep us posted bud!

 

Alright. Make sure your axis is set to Z for up in Windows>preferences (click) under SETTINGS there's Z for up.

On the larger shot, in Maya LT (not the settings panel).
Where it says TRANSFORM ATTRIBUTES *DO NOT* USE either:
TRANSLATE
ROTATE
You shouldn't need them as you've already set Z for up under settings. If you use them the visible mesh will be skewed. All items WITH native COLMESH_1 (can't use the 'dash' - symbol) are best used in the forest brush so it doesn't count against your final 4096 max object count.
Make sure all values for TRANSLATE or ROTATE are zero'ed out *after* you combine your meshes up into one, and ship the item export out.
Export (all) as FBX 2013, Z for UP under coordinates in the EXPORT settings, again, in FBX 2013 format.
If you use Maya LT (either from CNET for a 2016 or older version which I believe is free), or the current Maya LT 2018 that I use (which is 30$ USD a month or 245$ a year), you can also get Autodesk's FBX Converter 2013. Using that will allow you to export the FBX to DAE (it will bulk-convert all models at once, too).

TEXTURES: DON'T until you are *DONE* shaping the model. If rotating or moving one texture moves another you've already set nice, make sure to select the object, and goto menu UV> Cut UV Edges (do that before texturing much).
Texture movement is done inside the 2d texture window, just fyi.
If you copy a model that's textured, it will create a copy of the texture, too, and you'll have to change it.
Keep in mind my textures for some reason save file-names into DAE because of the way I linked the bitmaps, which isn't 100% right, but I text-edited the DAE's so the textures come up matching my MAPTO fields in Beamng, and worked around it.
Name your materials inside HYPERSHADE (the texturer), what you have your MAPTO fields in materials.cs in BeamNG named. You can feel free to use any/all my textures you want.
So yes, and one last thing. Don't have trailing numbers (numbers at the end of it) for your visible mesh name!!! You will bomb BeamNG to desktop. Took a while to figure THAT out. DERP!
It's a nice program once you figure it out. Hold ALT and use one of three mouse buttons to move camera, left-click to select, and right click to bring up a quick-menu. DONT BUMP THE 2 OR 3 KEYS. UNBIND THOSE IN MENU! You will irreverseably make your object ROUND and have to delete it.
--Cheers!

Again, feel free to steal all my textures you wish, that's what they're there for, besides my map needing them and all. What I make is made for everyone.
Oh, and yes, set the curb size min/max to 2 or 2.5 and it should be close to good in Beamng forest editor.
I worry about scale after the fact.

I believe you can move the visible mesh into detail##, and make various detail levels etc, and such.
Maya has autoLOD creation, but I haven't toyed with that at all. I darest not touch it, and on simple things, like curbing, you can just make a flat 2d plane horizontally and use that, as often, you'll see only the top from above if THAT far away. I made these to eventually get rid of mesh road curbing, I-beams etc, that plague the map. I will be putting the bridge/curb models in So-Cal Interstate (which is going extinct soon!), and Roane County (this map) at about the same time. The bridge model will also make it into Nevada but not too much will be changed there.
TIP: Your collision mesh can also make a great quick & simple LOD! Just put a copy that is textured, where it goes under detail50 or something if your main mesh is in detail200 or detail300.
Detail levels from furthest to closest use INCREASING numbers, that loosely relate to the FILL rate.
An example is one of the Occam's Razer's houses that I used from Garfield Heights, in the latest 0.9 of Roane County, a block+ away they have bb_autobillboard50 (that can have trailing number!) flat billboard sprite (auto-generated by the game engine at run time, while it's caching models).
Then there's a detail level around 100~200 pixels that is plain-Jane that looks like just a box with colors, basically, would have looked fine in Hard Drivin' or Race Drivin' or Road Rash / Virtua Racing / Stunt Race FX etc.
Then there's the medium middle detail around 300~500 pixels. This has most of the features of the home, you see this around a half-block away.
Then there's the highest detail of the home, around 700~1050 pixels of fill rate, that comes in when you're within a quarter block or so (about 2 properties away; or if it's across the road, the transition would happen as you walked onto the back yard across the street from it, while facing it).
There's also a nulldetail10 or nulldetail25 that prevents rendering the object altogether. Don't use these on grass or bushes in combination with an auto-billboard, or the bushes and grass will blink and flicker in and out as you drive up or away while facing them. I don't know why this happens but it's only with the plants that appear on the medium and higher detail levels. So, only use this on buildings and large pieces of infrastructure. If it's grass or small/medium decorative bushes and other plants, it's safe to replace auto-billboarding with nulldetail as they don't need to be rendered from afar (I did this in Roane County, the manually placed grass edging on the roads and lots, will fill as the terrain grass does, the way I have it set, which is much more efficient than ECA's files they were taken from).

 

Daaayam your quick. Tonight balls deep in this:

When I get a chance to tackle Maya I'll check in. Meanwhile I will follow your activity and see how you like it moving forward.

 

Yes, I updated the post, too, with lots more info. If you have other questions send me a message. If it's between 5~6pm and midnight I am generally going to see the message relatively quickly. that's central standard USA time.

Your scene looks nice, a lot nicer than Hawaii looks right now, where they're [expletive] deep in a real-life game of 'The Floor is Lava'...

 

It's Terragen, for skyboxes mainly. Man, you wanna' talk about complicated! Anyway, thanks for all the info and the file. At my current level of abilities in Blender I feel no loyalty
to it and am definitely open to exploring options. Perhaps Maya is a bit more intuitive it sounds like and I like that. Good too there are a couple of knowledgeable community members who
know Maya.
One way or another I will get settled down with something and start populating worlds with my creations.

 

If I can learn Maya not knowing my rump from a hole in the ground about modeling, and not create a black hole where TN, USA is currently (much to the delight of the other folk who live here), you can learn it too.
No, really, it's very easy, and you can either pick an older version like Maya LT 2016 off CNET download site, or pick up a current version of Maya LT 2018 (yes the newer features might be worth it for more advanced things!), for 30$ a month / 245$ a year after your free 30 day trial (do I sound like I'm a salesman yet?). It's actually very easy to get started after watching just minutes to a half hour of tutorials. I have watched hours of Blender tutorials, and still didn't get it. Blender is an unmitigated disaster (largely due to it's interface) and just the methods it uses are all (beep)-backwards and don't make logically any sense what-so-ever to me; and I am but 1~2% away from the most intelligent humans tested in this country (not bragging, but I AM in the 98th percentile). So if it doesn't make sense to me... there's not much hope for most folks without a college degree of some sort in it.

I will gladly answer any questions you might have, that I know how to answer, and the best part about Maya LT is that there's a whole HEAP of questions AND ANSWERS on the website at Autodesk.

I am being sponsored for my Maya LT subscription at a whopping 245$/year, so I am really trying to learn it, because I WANT to do this SO bad for 25 years on a PC. Not too shabby of a program I will say.

Remember, CTRL+Z is your friend!

For what it's worth, I looked up the type of bridge I am making for So-Cal and Roane County.
It's your typical bridge with Type 80 Bridge railing - yes it has a name, learn something new every day!
I'm likely one of the only modders who looks up the actual DOT references/spec sheets.
It makes the difference, since this is a simulation and not a game.
--Cheers!

 

It's really hot in here, so I had bit more time yesterday, it did not take very long to end up with this in Blender, but I have given up with interface and am using solely key commands, after learning those Blender is really fast to use, I can do much more in blender than in 3ds max, but it took time to give up left mouse button and interface.


That is bit over 50 meter long pedestrian bridge, I did not check any sources, but just crafted it out from my head, so of course it can be quite bit off, railing is close to 1m high and path width is around 4 meters wide. Those end pieces are separate objects.
Also there are some WIP versions, which you can spy from how it is constructed.

I was lazy with railing though, to build it well I should of made railing connected to supports and supports connected to bridge, but I did not had much purpose in mind, just fooling around.

Handy thing that might be some use for someone at some point is vertex groups, I believe that Maya has similar possibility to assign selection groups, at least 3ds max has:


So I selected vertexes making center of the bridge, then from the bottom buttons I select dark circle thing and adjust options to enabled and type of selection falloff I want, with mouse wheel I can set distance of falloff when moving bridge center up from blue arrow.

So that allows me easily to make arc to bridge, in Maya there probably is selection falloff option someplace. Now if I would of not been lazy with that railing it would bend bridge perfectly to shape I want, but because I took a shortcut and did not connect railing, supports and bridge in proper way, this bending results railing to be bit broken when bending, but this is just to show you how something like making curvature to bridge, can be made quite easily without adjusting every vertex manually.


Another time saver is bevel function where you select edge and then bevel function (in Blender that is in Mesh->Edge menu or Ctrl B), saves lot of time when you can easily make bevel of desired size accurately for several edges at once. In bridges for example there rarely is sharp edges, making small bevels can sometimes aid a lot with visuals, but of course one need to experiment to see what works best.

It might be clever to make very short section of bridge and use array function to build full length bridge from small pieces, then modeling one time a bridge would work for all bridge lengths, but that also takes bit more of planning. There are so many handy ways that saves a lot of time that sometimes I feel stupid that I did not thought such easier way before and probably as I'm so beginner, there are even more of such tricks.
There just is no tutorial that tells easier ways to do some parts, array, lathe, mirror and falloff/soft selection do have tutorials, but learning to see when to use them can sometimes take time.

If you find yourself doing same thing over and over again, there probably is a tool that makes task faster, figuring out which is the tricky part, but those mentioned I slowly am learning to be key time savers and it really does not matter which software one uses

 

The bridge span and end sections are in and successfully tested out 100%.
Eradicating mesh-road objects, one bridge at a time. Keep in mind the pillars are not part of the new bridge, I will make nice pillars, abutments, and K-rail (Jersey Barrier, stuff in center of highway) pieces too. Everything will be modular objects. Not too many to overwhelm the game engine's cpu core, but enough that I can use them pretty freely - and then so can others. So we all can have maps that don't suck. No really, I don't want another ECA, we already have like 40~80+ of those, don't we?
So hopefully, when these finally hit the wild, there will be more variations to maps in the future.
This will also be models for my up and coming city map. As things stand now, it looks like it will be a few weeks before there's much pictures of that coming up. Nevada will likely get these bridge bits too.

Still have to make highway variants AND curved variants... The beams under this bridge (that run parallel to the bridge), are not very large, as to the real life counterpart, as the spans aren't very long at all, just enough to span one side of the highway at a time. I will make separate version with different sets of I-Beams (girders) that can go under them, such as concrete, steel (maybe a few paint variations).

Basically, when this is done, you'll be able to apply the textures to your map, all 2 of them currently , and then go ahead and add this bridge into your forest brush, and mix & match pieces of each set together as needed. So if you wanted to make a whole map of nothing but bridges, or you wanted to make an entire length of the bridges across the Florida Keys, you could, or across the swamps of Louisiana, you could (and they'd look the part, too). There will be sloping variants, also.

This is what happens when someone throws a little money at the project. Expect LOTS more in the bridge department, not just the full kit of concrete bridges with 'Type 80' 32" (inch) rails.
Models are both visibly efficient (though lacking LOD's right now), and have very simple collision with no narrow surfaces. Everything should be within 0.5 inch of it's actual collision if it's not spot-on, even if it's sized up or down a bit.

Again I want to thank folks for helping out in any way they can. I appreciate it. I only have so much sanity, and folks chiming in at exactly the time I needed encouragement, helped & meant a lot. I am only human, after-all.

For what it's worth, there will be periodic snapshots as I do backups that come with some custom models and such, of this map, So-Cal (under existing or new NDA'ed name), and possibly Nevada Interstate too at some point - That map could use a little polishing, and signs too. That won't be re-released until I have some decent progress on the city map and also have industrial park model scenes made for it.
--Cheers.

 

My car aspen on the road ! someone know who to solve the problem ?

 

DERP? What? ASPEN is a type of tree. Do you mean SPIN? I don't know what you're saying. Try to say it another way, or if English is not your main language, use google translate and post it here. If it's Spanish, I might be able to read it enough to not need translation (lots of Spanish folks where I was from).

---

That being said, new bridge is in today, also made for the future city map. Deflates the item count by 20 objects per pair of highway bridges replaced. It's a 4 piece set right now (I haven't made fancy abutments - which are supports for under the end of the bridge - yet). The four pieces consist of, 1 beginning piece, a long span (I've used two spans here per side), and an end piece. There's also a set of pillars. Works awesome and crashes great too. Collision is built in so it can be used in a semi-limitless manner in the forest brush. These will be FREE BEER when an update to one of my maps comes out that uses them.

So yes entirely, you'll be seeing car accident videos on Youtube one day where cars nail those end-pieces, you can really fly when you hit them, and they're designed 100% with that in mind.

This almost mirrors my post in development screenshots - I hope that isn't a bother.

--Cheers!

 

Just getting scale right for my city map. It should be golden now, I think I've got the scale 100%.
Testing these pieces in Roane County makes short work of the whole deal.
Do expect to see these pieces used in some sections in a future update. Might not be the next one, but the bridge pieces will make it in a lot sooner.
Currently testing the 'cross-slope' of the roads, also called the 'cant' of the roadway.
Keep in mind this won't be where or how the pieces will be arranged. I am just testing them (again with basic textures only!!!), to see how they'll work out. These all have native collisions (this is to be assumed from now on).
Will use the West Coast sidewalk textures for these in the city map I am making.
Still have to make ALL KINDS of intersection pieces. There will be full intersections and likely modular bits for pieces of intersections, too, in the later future.

Basically, what I am saying, is you'll be able to build an entire city road network out of these objects, almost infinitely.
Done list:
Bridges:
Two lane feeder road bridge done with pillars, completed.
Two lane highway/major + full lane shoulder (can be a third lane easily), with pillars, textured, completed.
Don't have bridge abutments done yet for either, likely will be concrete 'squares' and ones with keystone block (West Coast uses the same keystone block I had in So-Cal Interstate).
Surface road portion:
Four way intersection modeled with collision, but not textured or imported yet.
Three way intersection + three way & driveway modeled and textured.
Straight sections of full length, half, quarter and eighth length done and textured.
Need to make sections with driveway access ramp in sidewalks (usually called a curb cut & driveway apron)
Main route access (four lane with parking OR median, or five lane route) portions:
Tested and imported (modeled and texturing done) a test piece for scale - success!

Only rudimentary texturing has been done on surface and main routes (bridges are already done), nothing's perfect yet!

So yes, entirely, this is a bit slow-going but I am trying not to burn myself out on it, while still doing a good job as is to be expected. Still have to add in textures for storm sewers, manhole covers, the like.
LOTS OF TIME is spent looking up Department of Transportation diagrams to engineer the bridges, roads, etc.
THIS IS GOING TO BE AS TRUE-TO-LIFE AS I CAN MAKE THE MODELS (without plummeting the FPS - one 'Downtown Harriman FPS Trap' is enough for one game...)

The city I am making will get it's own thread in a few weeks - I will make sure NO ONE misses that showing up, I really want that #1 map spot!

Pic 1 is a cross-section of the main route, Pic 2 is a few of the modular surface-road pieces.

 

It seems like nearly all the bridges on the current update (0.9.0.1) are no clipped and cars just fall right through. Cleared the cache to see if that was the problem, but no luck... In fact everything seems to have no clip, buildings, trees, posts, sidewalks. Idk if trees were solid to begin...

 

Make sure you have vehicle 'collisions' enabled (if you click 'disable collision' to improve FPS, it may mess up the map). If there's a check box that's checked and says 'disable collisions', clear it.
It's in the options screen somewhere... not 100% sure where.

What's your system specifications?
like this example:
i7 4790k at 4400mhz
16gb system memory (RAM)
Rx 480 8gb
Windows 7 Home

It takes this much VIDEO MEMORY (also called graphics memory, VRAM, and this is separate from system RAM) :
1gb 'Low texture detail'
2gb 'Medium Texture detail'
4gb 'High Texture Detail' <--- I use this here and have often 3500~4100mb of RAM used including what Windows uses. Models are kept in Video RAM - just like textures - so this could happen & kill collision if you run out of Video RAM.

If it's still happening continue to read below.

There should not be any issue with the buildings, bridges, train tracks, trees etc being without collision.
This is only the second report of this, I would chalk it up to a bug with the game engine, or only happening because of 'Low System RAM' conditions. Have you gotten an orange message box with the message from the game that 'you have more than 80% of your system memory used, please click here to acknowledge this message' ?

There may be an issue with another mod, please consider disabling other map or vehicle mods, just leaving this one to test if it works fine without the other mods.

Lastly, the archive could be corrupted; please re-download this map from the repository, and make some dinner while you wait

Let me know how it goes.

 

Here are my specs:
Ryzen 7 1700 @ 3.2Ghz
8gb RAM
Gtx 1070 8gb
Windows 7 Ultimate

Obviously more than enough VRAM to run the map and I've never tinkered with the collision settings as everything runs perfectly fine. Maybe a little light on the system memory but I've never gotten any low system ram warnings. Disabling all my mods seemed to solve the issue and I probably should have done that first (duh). Idk which mod is conflicting and I'll probably do some testing to find the specfic one(s).

Thanks!

 

Awesome glad it's running now for you!
Hope it's worth all the trouble you went to. This map has more work than most anything else out there (just a guess, but I'd reckon I might have put over 2500+ hours into this easily. Lost count after 2000 hours about 8~12 months back).
Happy exploring buddy. You earned it. 8gb should be enough to run the map as I have often 40~70% of my 16gb used up when I load the map, what happens is it gets a bit slow as the game throws things in page-file (on a RAID 0 SSD array), which would be unbearable on a HDD, but on an SSD it's just 'a little laggy now and then'.

DO let me know if you figure out which mod is conflicting with your installation of this map.
--Cheers!

 

to get better fps says to delete cache but i cannot find it in the cache folder, that would help my system out a lot i'm sure lol