Tracks Nelson Ledges (WIP) 0.2

[dmarkojr]

dmarkojr submitted a new resource:

Nelson Ledges (WIP) - Short Track Road Course

Nelson Ledges Road Course located in Garrettsville, Ohio. Currently a rough draft phase. The course is based off of old satellite data, and needs to be updated. This is probably going to take a while, just given I'm currently in school.

Right now:
General layout of the course, with some track side objects. Alot of placeholders. By no means accurate to the inch. Can be used to get a general idea of the course. No ai or cameras set up. Simply copied the kn5 into another track folder...

Read more about this resource...

 

[Bobc2103]

dmarkojr submitted a new resource:

Nelson Ledges (WIP) - Short Track Road Course



Read more about this resource...

Please continue to build this track, raced on it many times years ago. Historic in early sports car racing, many famous people including Paul Newman raced there. New owner making many improvements.

 

[dmarkojr]

Please continue to build this track, raced on it many times years ago. Historic in early sports car racing, many famous people including Paul Newman raced there. New owner making many improvements.

Thank you for the interest in the project. Honestly was expecting maybe 3-5 downloads over a few weeks. I am aiming to continue work. It's just balancing school and this. First final of the summer semester this Friday. Jumping into another course immediately after that I know will be demanding for 6 weeks.
Made some more progress since the intial upload, but not worth uploading as an update yet. Mainly trying to get better at making assets for the project.

 

[dmarkojr]

This will be where progress stops for the week. Went through the turns and adjusted some. To give an idea of where they are at precision wise:

I'll try and push an update here next week. Main goal will be to get the road matched up perfectly (at least as much as google maps will allow me). This way I can work towards adding bumps/elevation changes. When this update gets pushed, things will probably look a little green. Going to have to go in and work on the background google texture. Currently it's throwing off any texture/color I add. Though I'll focus more on visuals in a future update.

 

[LilSki]

FYI there is some older data available for this track as well as it was scanned again in 2019. Usually takes about a year to go public so I would expect it to be available later this year.

 

[Nuck Fitzsimmons]

I hope you can complete this project.

I raced motorcycles there in the mid-70's when I was (much) younger.

In those days there was a saying about the track; that you could be standing knee-deep in in the mud and have dust blowing in your eyes.

 

[Paranoid_Andr01d]

Watching with excitement! I'm originally from the area and would love to see this fully developed. Progress looks great so far!

 

[dmarkojr]

So just to update everyone following this thread. As I kind of expected, my current course has left me not alot of free time. Since the last track alignment post, very little progress has been made. As I'm typing this I have another 3 partially done assignments due at midnight (9pm local right now). I am planning on doing some work on the track this weekend. I just wanted to let everyone know it's going to take longer than what I was planning. Rather than doing big overhaul updates, I'll focus more on small weekly/biweekly updates. So this weekend will be focused only on track alignment. Next weekend I'll go more for bump details (might get spread over 2 weekends due to it being alot of trial and error testing).

 

[dmarkojr]

Just a quick update. Track alignment is pretty much there. Inside segments of the track are completely lined up. Outside is about 50%. Despite saying I was going to work on one thing, I continued multitasking. One of my biggest issues was trying to export assets from blender over to RTB/Assetto corsa. Some things would come out great, others would fight me tooth and nail to not appear correctly. The biggest one was actually tires of all things. I originally spent a multitude of hours back in May. After countless errors, I decided to just avoid making my own assets for AC.
Recently I gave it another go, and...I felt the need to celebrate a bit:

left/everywhere is my first working set. Right is default RTB

Now back to Nelson Ledges.

 

[cohle]

Thanks so much for working on this. I grew up near this track but have since moved away. I've never run it, and I may use this to prep for a future track day with my dad who still lives around the corner from it. Just to get the layout down and such. Good luck with school!

 

[rmi_wood]

Are you still working on this? There are people who can help you with AI, cams and other things at
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/assetto-corsa-pc-mods-general-discussion.307899/

dont be shy

 

[dmarkojr]

Are you still working on this? There are people who can help you with AI, cams and other things at
https://www.gtplanet.net/forum/threads/assetto-corsa-pc-mods-general-discussion.307899/

dont be shy

So yah, a bit of extended silence on my part. Sorry everyone for that. I made some more progress since the last post, although it came to a standstill probably back in August once school picked back up. Was hoping to just pop up in December with a fully completed track as a gift, but that obviously didn't happen. I've so far just been using my break from school, as well, a break. I had a bunch of things on the back burner that I wanted to get out of the way during break. One of those things is this project. I need to dig through and figure out where I was at, and what all is left. I can't promise a completed track over my time off. I can however say I head back to class on the 11th...

 

[dmarkojr]

Well having covid may suck because I'm trapped inside for new years, but at least it's giving me time to sit back with a rum and coke and work in blender:

I also started just winging it on extras. Originally was trying to get it down to the most minute detail and that made things take forever. The actual road will be as accurate as I can make it, but side objects don't really need everything.
Picking up from where I left off. I had some tire models done (more than just the one uploaded here). The bridge was just barely started, but enough to where I could just rush through alot of it. Still have to add the ramps/support, but mostly there. I did alot of work to adjusting the track, although it will still need some drive time to see if everything is done correctly. Colors are off still. Probably will look into exporting the ground and working on it in blender. Not sure if that would cause any issues with AC/performance, but I'll get to that when I get there. I do recall running into a max polygon count issue with all of the tires imported, so I may need to smartly address that. Probably just render 2d images to use for far off tire walls, or mix a 2d image as filler with a couple tires out front. I think that's everything so far. Going to be busy with other things tomorrow, but I have nothing else to do tonight.
For anyone curious, it was just a mild case of covid 19. Already over the main part and just quarantining for a few more days.
Happy New Years!

 

[dmarkojr]

Just to keep everyone up to date progress wise. Now that I have the file format figured out, I can just work in blender. As you'll probably notice, there are basically no tires. I removed most of the old tire types to import my custom made ones. I left in a string object version of the original just to see how they were set up in the fbx file. Camber was added directly in RTB. Helped out alot, but will need a touch up in some areas. Mainly focused on getting the track driveable in the areas that really need the work. Also filling in random holes into the void that RTB made. Some objects that came from RTB are just black masses in assetto corsa. Not sure if I'll have time to get to them before school starts up. I figured getting the track driveable with no voids into nothingness would be better than a delayed update. Also should have time to fix little stupid things, such as the left most I beam sitting int the cement supports for whatever reason...Just noticed that.
Here are the tires I made:

Figured they would work a bit better than the default ones. Same model as I showed a while back, but more textures.
And I guess why not throw in a bridge render:

I beam is alright there for whatever reason...

 

[NightEye87]

I like that bridge!

Concerning the tyres: the mesh makes me assume you're making it double sided? That will double polycount (+100%). You could also do just an inner cilinder, which will only add about 30%.
Depending on how many tyres you want, that can seriously reduce polycount (and with the 65k vert limit of ksEditor, reduce object count if you reach way higher than that).

 

[dmarkojr]

I like that bridge!

Concerning the tyres: the mesh makes me assume you're making it double sided? That will double polycount (+100%). You could also do just an inner cilinder, which will only add about 30%.
Depending on how many tyres you want, that can seriously reduce polycount (and with the 65k vert limit of ksEditor, reduce object count if you reach way higher than that).

I have a few ideas on how to work around the poly count with the tires. I figured for areas where you are actually going to be around them up close, the higher quality ones I have up above would be used (mainly pit area). Ones you'll basically never see up close could just be solid cylinders mixed with background images to give the appearance of density. Still not 100% on what exactly, but that seemed like a solid bet. Thanks for the input.

 

[dmarkojr]

So still working on things. I didn't get too much done this week mainly due to school doing as much as it can to raise my blood pressure. A couple sleepless nights, but I should be set to resume this weekend. I left off getting a poly count error with the terrain when exporting from blender. I had a few guesses as to what would solve it. 1 being I probably set it to flat shading instead of smooth without thinking about it. 1 fence also has the issue, although I never edited it, so not sure why. I did also have a texture not found issue when importing to KSeditor, so I'll dig through some forums on that. Probably just folder format. I have 1 guess I'll give a go. Road is mostly good to go.
Some more tweaking on camber.

Green is adjusted and ready to test in AC. Unmarked is what appears to be good without needing adjustment. Red is still in need of work (camber auto set to the opposite it should be. So it will toss you out of the turn instead of holding the car in). Pits have been setup and are ready to test in AC. No tires added yet, as I want to at least get the export figured out before I add more variables.
For anyone curious about the texture issue, it wasn't just the bridge. I believe every object had the issue.

 

[NightEye87]

If you need any help, just ask or post specific errors and whatnot

 

[dmarkojr]

Okay, so figured out some things. 1. I pulled a stupid and set that terrain to flat shading when editing. Should be only the vertice count expected. 2. Texture missing error was from not having the file named the same as the RTB export. RTB made an fbx.ini file to tell KSeditor where the textures are and for what. That said, I didn't find anything on how to get blender to export a new version of that. I can guess at the file structure for adding in new things, but that seems wasteful time wise for new things. I did find a tutorial for going from blender to AC for tracks, so I'm checking that out now. Thanks everyone for the patience and support on this. As I said way back when posting initially, I expected only a handful of people to actually have any interest in the track. I've done 3d work for a while, but making assets for games is all new for me.

 

[NightEye87]

That said, I didn't find anything on how to get blender to export a new version of that.

If you open up the FBX in the ksEditor, whatever you edit there (either material properties or object properties) can be saved in this ini file. It's called a persistance file and it is saved manually by choosing File > Save persistance.
It is loaded automatically the next time you import that same FBX file. Providing nothing has changed (like material names or object names), everything will be as you left off.