AC Modding Questions Thread

[Johnr777]

I've got Steam, all of its games, and most of the programs on my computer installed on a secondary drive instead of the main drive. I do have FileStream installed for working directly on my google drive, but that's all separate from my games install drive, which is a physical drive.

Avast updated today, and I'm assuming the update made it over-eager, and when AC CTD'd loading it probably nuked it. A verification got it back, but after another CTD during loading the exe was gone again, and this time I couldn't download it again (Steam wasn't able to access the drive). Uninstalling Avast allowed Steam to download the files again, and since I've gone through a few more CTDs while testing things without losing the exe again.

So, in the end, Avast killed my AC, but for some reason my old ai lines still cause the track to crash. Weird.

try loading the ai line in kseditor and save it from there.

 

[Fat-Alfie]

Does the track load with your current AI lines, but with CSP disabled?

 

[Ryno917]

Does the track load with your current AI lines, but with CSP disabled?

Ooo, good question, I'll check!

 

[Ryno917]

Does the track load with your current AI lines, but with CSP disabled?

Nope, still crashes.

It really don't make any sense. If a file was corrupted, copying the backup from a totally different drive should be fine, shouldn't it? These files literally have worked for over 2 years.

The logs seem to indicate an AI spline issue, and CM says "AI Spline may be missing or broken" in its error message. I have no idea what to fix here =/

[EDIT] Ok! I had another look, and it looks like I did do another export a few minutes after the previous successful sessions. I think it's possible that export was broken (maybe a single missing timing dummy or something?) but a new export seems to have rectified the issue. Huzzah!

 

[TimelyLimey]

So Mitch pointed out there’s photogrammetry data, which is just as good as aerial lidar.

This will show you how to grab it and import into blender:

Pro tip, to maintain the highest LOD when navigating google 3D, use the zoom buttons in chrome/edge

Thank you! You’re a lifesaver

 

[TimelyLimey]

Thank you! You’re a lifesaver
my only question is whether I should still follow Lilski’s guide or not… I should’ve mentioned I’m a complete noob at track making

 

[Ryno917]

Thank you! You’re a lifesaver
my only question is whether I should still follow Lilski’s guide or not… I should’ve mentioned I’m a complete noob at track making

His guide is full of useful information. You should probably follow it, minus the Lidar data processing stuff.

 

[TimelyLimey]

His guide is full of useful information. You should probably follow it, minus the Lidar data processing stuff.

gotcha, I'll try my best over the next week or so since ive got a bit of work to do over the next few days. I'll try and keep you posted!

 

[P_Cote]

His guide is full of useful information. You should probably follow it, minus the Lidar data processing stuff.

What's wrong with the Lidar tutorials?

 

[Ryno917]

What's wrong with the Lidar tutorials?

There's no LIDAR data for what they want to work on, so that portion (importing and processing the lidar data to then pull it into Blender) is completely irrelevant.

 

[TimelyLimey]

There's no LIDAR data for what they want to work on, so that portion (importing and processing the lidar data to then pull it into Blender) is completely irrelevant.

OK, I'm probably getting on everyone's nerves at this point, but I feel as if I'm understanding nothing from Lilski's vids and everything is going over my head. I've managed to get the 3D data from Google Earth via Renderdoc into Blender 2.8 and I've scaled it up to a 1:1, but I have genuinely no idea how to go from this point. I really feel like I'm in over my head and that I should probably stop here

 

[kuIich]

I have a question about editing a driver model - I unpacked the model, added a hat in blender, exported the fbx.
Now I loaded fbx in the ksEditor and it looks good until I try to change the shader - changing the shader to the ksSkinnedMesh the part of the model disappears

 

[MaSe87]

@KULICH: This has to do with vertex groups. The driver meshes body parts have to be assigned to vertex groups named after the bones that affect them. If you need an example, look e.g. for the Blender driver rig by stereo or the AC SDK fbx.

 

[Bakasan]

Quick question about CSP carpaints, is there a way to have both a metallic and gloss finish on the same material? For instance a car with intricate two tone paintjob or racing livery that combines both metallic and gloss paints.
I see most mods with two tone paints are split into two materials and shaders are replaced independently, instead I want to control the metallic effect via a texture/bodymap somehow.

 

[MrDK]

Deleted

 

[ohyeah2389]

I'd appreciate it if someone took a look at this question:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/268502/is-there-a-way-to-split-these-meshes-in-a-way-that-modifiers-can-still-affect-th

I realize that the answer is "just use 3DSmax already for the love of everything holy, you don't need to keep hurting yourself like this" but um

no

 

[rup.car]

I have a very non-practical question, just a curiosity if you can answer. I understand how cars are modded into the game, as there are good tutorials on those, but what scratches my head is, how does Ilja and Peter mod the game?

It's so mysterious to me, what do they go for to extract the data and inject new stuff on it?

Of course I don't need a complete explanation, just something to satisfy my curiosity and my admiration to their work. Because right now I have zero idea, even though I have some coding experience in python for many real life applications.

 

[LilSki]

I'd appreciate it if someone took a look at this question:

https://blender.stackexchange.com/questions/268502/is-there-a-way-to-split-these-meshes-in-a-way-that-modifiers-can-still-affect-th

I realize that the answer is "just use 3DSmax already for the love of everything holy, you don't need to keep hurting yourself like this" but um

no

The answer is covered in one of my videos I think. The concept is you have a master single piece road that has all the mods in place and AC will never see. Call it something like "master shrink". Make a duplicate road that is broken into pieces. They should have no modifiers with the exception of a shrinkwrap modifier to the master shrink object. Any changes you make to your master shrink will be reflected on the multi piece road that is shrunk down on top of it. That is the model you will export to AC.

 

[ohyeah2389]

The answer is covered in one of my videos I think. The concept is you have a master single piece road that has all the mods in place and AC will never see. Call it something like "master shrink". Make a duplicate road that is broken into pieces. They should have no modifiers with the exception of a shrinkwrap modifier to the master shrink object. Any changes you make to your master shrink will be reflected on the multi piece road that is shrunk down on top of it. That is the model you will export to AC.

That would also work, but someone already answered the question, and their answer uses Blender's Geometry Nodes system to calculate and dynamically hide parts of the track mesh based on some configurable parameters. This also works for the immediate surrounding grasses. A modified version of it also works on the terrain, but it makes the normals seams very obvious. This map will have tons of trees though, so it shouldn't be a big deal.

Two more problems to solve for this track, though-- attaching the terrain to the surrounding grasses, transferring at least the material index from one mesh to another to control different road materials (light, light cracked, patched, dark, etc.), and adding on extra bits of asphalt to the main road. I think from there, I know how to do everything (materials map creation, road signs, buildings, bridges, trees, etc.)

 

[Ryno917]

Started the journey down the suspension animation path for my little '68 F3 car project.
Super overwhelming overall, so I'm trying to figure it out one piece at a time. It looks like there's still some level of baked animation for the suspension, so my current question is: Does it matter how much travel I animate in?

The way I understand the pipeline document, in a 20 frame animation, frame 10 is the neutral position. 0 is lowest, 20 is highest. It reads like the hub's vertical position is measured from the physics as a delta from it's resting position, and the engine finds the frame in the animation that is the closest value to that delta, and then interpolates from there.

So my takeaway is that, as long as my baked animation has more travel than the suspension is actually moving in physics, it doesn't really matter how much travel I animate. Correct?

Are there any tricks to getting this animation right? IE: figuring out the travel arc of the hub position, or is it just all eyeballing it?

Does the origin/rotation of the mesh matter at all? Right now my suspension arms all have an origin of 0,0,0. Does the origin need to be aligned with an empty instead?