I'm trying to fix a missing sign texture problem and some other things on Yoshi Falls but I cannot figure out how to get the map to load without zipping up everything again to exactly match the original zip? Is there no way to make iterative changes to a map from a regular folder and skip having to re-zip it every time i want to check something? Does anyone know what 3d program the original author was using to clean up objects before exporting to the DAE file? The DAE imports into Blender at an absolutely huge size and at have to set my viewport clip end value to 1000000 m to be able to see anything and I get really bad visual glitches with such a big value. Should I try another program? I was able to use the Bevel in Blender to smooth out some of the really sharp angular transitions on some of the jumps without distorting any of the original textures. So it drives smoother without looking any different at all. I'm going to try to smooth out a lot more stuff using Blender's dyntopo feature if it doesn't mess with the original texture mapping, if I can get the right verts merged first, if I can get Blender to let me properly see what I'm doing first. I fixed the hard edge shading on the giant egg but might have messed up the shading elsewhere. How hard would it be to change the map to have multiple DAE files? That way I could have more control over which objects are shaded sharp or smooth. Do the objects named base00 and start01 need to be exported in the DAE file every time? [NO]--[WRONG]--[YES!!!] https://www.beamng.com/threads/tutorial-creating-lod-and-collision-meshes.29990/#:~:text=The collision mesh is parented to base00.,the details panel, and renames it 'colmesh. Without base00 and start01 Empty/Locator objects in the DAE export, you can't set the collision to Colmesh-1 even if you exported it along with the main visible mesh (I think) https://www.beamng.com/threads/beamng-easy-export-for-blender.85294/#post-1471040 https://documentation.beamng.com/modding/levels/export_dae/ https://www.beamng.com/threads/adding-ai-to-map.41416/#post-624781
[DS yoshi falls (wii)] - fixed the missing/invisible sign and the sign that was cut in half. - added a little real geometry to 1 of the small bridges so it rumbles when you drive over it. - experimented with using dyntopo in sculpt mode to add geometry and rough road detail to specific areas but dyntopo still destroys UV map data so that won't work. - experimented with duplicating a part of the road mesh, making it invisible, subdividing it, and using noise texture to randomly displace the geometry for a rougher road feel. I'm hoping making the road rougher is just something that can be changed in the material settings of the game but I have no idea. https://www.beamng.com/threads/groundmodeling-mod-question-physics-of-grass-and-sand.90113/ - fixed some face normals pointing the wrong way under the guard rails of one of the bridges that were black-hole sucking in the car when I crashed into them just right. [started over from scratch] Scaled the DAE file in game up to [1,1,1] and scaled the object in blender down to [0.005,0.005,0.005] so now the Blender viewport displays everything properly. Got frustrated trying to figure out how materials work. This system is impenetrable to my feeble brain.
[ wiidksjungleparkway ] I'm struggling to understand how the invisible bridge was achieved. Its material is a_dash001 is identical to the other material a_dash but it's completely invisible in-game. I don't understand how. Why the choice to have the object in game scaled down to 0.000001 and in a 3d editor like Blender the 100% sized version of the mesh is 20 billion kilometers wide and crashes the program because the viewport cannot handle the draw distance? Were you using something other than Blender that does not have any issues with objects that big? I'm going to need to change the in-game object to scale [1,1,1] and get the object in blender to match and then apply scale so that it is [1,1,1] in both environments. This is because I want to use Blender's non-destructive Bevel modifier to just slightly round out some very rough edges that make driving in some spots much rougher than they need to be. I'm going to try to use the existing bridge in place of the invisible bridge I think a_tuchimichis the main road texture _outside of the cave_. I think I want to change its ground type to DERBY_DIRT. But, other materials use the same texture image: c_michi at the exit of the cave. it looks like another mesh with the main road material extends directly under that so those faces can be deleted probably. c_michi_001 a_road2 is the road inside of the cave. a_iwa is the dirt next to that. z_doro is the mud hill next to that a_iwagake2 is the rock wall inside and outside of the cave I want to set all the secondary materials inside the cave to a very slippery Ground Type. I don't understand why there are so many duplicate materials. There seems to be no way to just click on a surface and have the appropriate material become active in the Material Editor window. It's all guesswork. I can't find any property where I can mess with its values and see the effect of it in the game to try to help me figure out which material is used on which polygons. The only mildly useful thing I've found is Ground Type Beach Sand makes the car's wheels drop into the polygon. You don't have to save the level for this to happen but you do have to run Edit > Rebuild Collisions. Advanced > All Layers > Alpha blend mode > Mul is one way to get a visual change to see where a material is being used somewhat quickly. Animation Properties > Scroll Animation is another good one. You can set different materials using the same image texture to different speeds to figure out which one is used where. HOWEVER, it does not always produce an effect. I have no idea why. Wave animation without the Scale property active only works if there is also Scroll animation active. I am extremely confused. Material a_tuchimichi is set to Ground Type DIRT and has a scrolling wave animation and I'm definitely driving on that material, but the wheels are sunk into the ground as if the Ground Type was set to BEACHSAND. Material a_tuchimichi_001 IS set to BEACHSAND but it has no animation set up on it. Very confusing. List of individual maps in alphabetical order for reference: ----- Actually DERBY_DIRT seemed no different from DIRT. I'm liking SAND ground type at the moment, NOT BEACHSAND.
[ wiidksjungleparkway ] I unzipped the zip file and moved the contents of /levels/ into the game data folder's /levels/ folder C:\Users\thinsoldier\AppData\Local\BeamNG.drive\0.36\levels\joobles_wiidksjungleparkway I imported \models\jung\jungwee.dae into Blender and then exported the 3 objects without changing anything: base00, Colmesh_1, ID368. The car now falls through the floor in game. I tried renaming to Colmesh-1. The car still falls through the floor in game. Now I only export ID368 object by itself and set that in game to CollissionT visible mesh. Scaled the object in blender down to 0.01 and scaled the object in game up to [1,1,1]. In blender I made the map the child of an empty and rotated the empty so that the map is Z up, keyframed on frame zero and in its original orientation keyframed on frame one. It seems DAE files get exported as the state they are in on frame 1. This doesn't work if you forget to also export the parent empty object. I duplicated the bridge and used it as decoration in a few areas and used it to get across the water that used to be handled by the invisible collision mesh. I can't get the change to the GroundType to actually save. Changes to animation properties don't get saved either. The original tire mark texture is on faces that overlap the main ground texture but are a few inches above it in some places. This causes problems with trying to have the main road be a particular GroundType. Moved tire mark texture faces to a separate object and imported that into the game and positioned it at the world origin to match the rest of the map and disabled collissions on it. Editing main.materials.json directly seems to be the only way to set groundType permanently on a material. I was hoping there was a way to create more interesting force feedback by changing values in the groundType materials be it seems that's not a feature so I will need to manipulate the road geometry to make it more interesting. Working on a procedural noise geometry node group that applies only to the main road geometry. I need to figure out how to limit it to only the newly created points in the middle so that there are not as many big gaps between the main road and the side of the road or the cliffs. I did find a build of an old experimental sculpt branch of Blender that allowed for use of dynamic topology sculpting without completely erasing the original UV map, but I want to try this procedural approach first. To have a mini-map image you must have a terrain object in the map. I'm not sure what the best way is to get a perfect fit but you can tweak the size of the terrain using the square size property to get it close enough. I used a viewport render of the map from blender as the terrain height map image and a higher quality version of the same as the mini-map image.Then the painful task of placing the terrain exactly under the game geometry so that they line up as close to perfect as I could get it. It took a hell of a lot of extra geometry and messing with the noise texture values just to get a little bit of imperfection in the road. I really hope there's a way to get that just via the ground type material instead.
[ wiidksjungleparkway ] I created a DAE file of only the roads (materials: a_tuchimichi, a_road2, a0_kanban) and put that in the game, matching the location and rotation of the original world mesh. I placed the terrain object below the lowest point of the original level (under the water under the bridge that takes you into the cave) and then increased one spot on the terrain as high as it would go. It did not go high enough to match the height of the highest part of the original road so I needed to increase the maxHeight property on the terrain to 100. Then I used the Terrain Tools - Align With Mesh (up) to make the terrain snap up to the road mesh. Disabled all other mesh objects so they don't interfere. I added a decal road from the start/finish line to the jump ramp, set the drivability property to 1, pressed ctrl+shift+i, and the vehicle did not automatically drive anywhere :'( Ctrl + L to reload whatever that reloads did not fix it. Reloading the map didn't fix it. Quitting the game and starting it again did fix it. Ctrl+shift+i makes the player car automatically follow the decal road. I'm confused about whether the wheels are colliding with the DAE polygon roads, the decal road, or the terrain. Having the wheels poke through the SAND GroundType isn't helping. I'm getting constant 40fps dips in certain locations where the car is definitely going several feet through the polygons set to SAND GroundType. The Over Object setting on decal roads wasn't that hard to get working. you must have properly navigable terrain (if you imagine the terrain were going where you want the decal road to go over your custom object polygons) for the AI to actually follow the paths though. One vertex in the underlying terrain out of place and the ai will act like it's a canyon it cannot cross. The inability to grab a single vertex of the terrain to move it where I want it to go added 3 and a half hours of trial and error testing. There are still places in the terrain that are totally flat but the AI tiptoes around places as if they are huge pot holes they are trying to avoid. There are places where the decal road dips down a thousand meters and immediately comes right back up to where it's supposed to be yet the terrain in that location looks perfectly flat. Basic AI path works now. The decal roads over the 3 bridges are set to Over Object and all roads are set to 1 right lane, one-way. I don't know if it's the best way to do it but it seems to have helped the ai to get over the bridges. (snapshot 02)
[ wiidksjungleparkway ] Went back to the original unmodified road mesh. There are some hard transitions that need to be smoothed out in the original before trying adding more geometry and roughness. DIRT_SANDY is the best feeling GroundType for this after trying all of them, but, I don't like the insane amount of dust particles it kicks up.
Working on subdividing and detailing the roughness of the road with the new Gabor texture. Finally figured out how to have the very edge of the road not be misaligned with the rest of the original level's mesh no matter how much the road surface is pushed up and down. per-face attribute for Gabor texture rotation angle.
