Question about maximum entities - someone said "There WAS a max"

You have probably checked this already?
https://wiki.beamng.com/Creating_static_objects

It has some links that might be useful, this for example:
https://wiki.beamng.com/Exporting_static_objects

But T3D docs had some bits more of it, like explaining a320 etc. Underscore was minus actually or then I'm remembering wrong, it's a while since I tried to wrap my head around that stuff.

Anyway UVs is area where I give up, it is far more complex, only Bob here probably really knows how to make performing UV maps. Game kinda ignores polygons, UV map is what makes or breaks performance.

Also textures and use of shaders can break performance very easily, much more easily than adding extra polygons, these days polygons are almost free, except makes pain in the butt for one that has to make UV map.

You should team up with Bob, two could make far bigger worlds made than one or huge argument over minor detail, humans kinda are like that
--- Post updated ---
Oh and this link might be useful https://www.beamng.com/threads/opti...nd-others-differences-has-lots-of-info.57689/

 

OKAY. You want to use Maya. First, Maya LT is pretty cheap per month, but it's still a cost. Keep in mind it can take many many months or even YEARS to make a good BeamNG map. This is okay if you're retired, disabled, or otherwise 'stuck at the computer'. It's not good if you have a wife, life, or pets you don't wish to starve. If this is fine, let's continue.
You want to use Maya. Yes I said this above. You poor thing. I never punched the tower, until I used Maya. That being said, there's a reason it has a female's name. You'll find that out soon enough (no offense to nice females out there, but if you've used Maya, you'll understand soon enough).
I will attach an outliner photo below to see how your object can be setup.
Textures in Hypershade UV editing are mapped to the name of Materials.cs MAPTO fields. You know, where it says MAPTO = "name_of_texture_in_Hypershade";
So yes, keep that in mind. I generally name all my graphics inside Maya source images folder my MAPTO name + a T.
In Hypershade, the 1st tab is your materials that have to have the names match MAPTO fields, the 2nd tab is all the files and which ones connect to what materials.
The T is easy to delete once you load it in - but Why go through that? You'll want to introduce the file with the name T (on the '2nd tab) and when you apply it to something it will look like Concrete_plainT-material (on the 1st tab). You'll want it named Concrete_plain (in 1st tab) because that's the MAPTO field name. So if you had introduced it without the T in the name, you'd end up with duplicate names and Maya would call it Concrete_Plain1 or something like that, and the game would show no texture with the object.
DO NOT TRY TO LOAD IN NON-POWER-OF-2 .DDS TEXTURES INTO MAYA OR IT *WILL* ***CRASH*** !!!
This also avoids it reading the compression wrong on the DDS file and coming up all in the wrong garbage colors in Maya.
Use PNG textures in Maya and use .dds textures in the map itself. I think the latest compression of textures is BC7 but there's more about that on the dev blogs and somewhere around here. You have to dig for info (that stinks, I think they're working on that though).
Only .DDS textures are supported inside BeamNG. Please do NOT try to use other texture formats in your map.

Don't copy-paste objects within Maya. Use DUPLICATE. You can either duplicate faces or duplicate objects, if you copy-paste it messes up and creates duplicate texture entries, which is really really STUPID and almost never useful.

Beware if you taper ends of objects (on things you use multiple objects to make like a road kit or something like I've made) as it tends to smooth edges ALL THE TIME by default, even if you don't want it. It just sucks like that.

You'll need FBX converter to convert to DAE from FBX export, if you use Maya LT. If you have the full Maya educational or standard version, you won't have to use FBX Converter 2013 at all and it saves a hurdle.

ALL objects must have *NO* rotation, and scales of objects should all match, to avoid odd issues with an alpha-release game engine. If you object disappears randomly, your object is TOO FAR from it's 'center'. The origin (the center) is where the visibility is calculated from, and the game won't render your object when the center of it is too far off the screen or too far behind the player.
So make sure to set Z IS UP in the options. Back up your preferences, too. Never hit random keyboard buttons, either.
DO HAVE KNOWLEDGE OF VERTEX NORMALS AND HOW TO WORK WITH THEM. This is a PAIN in Maya and is the bane of my creations now and then. I still have some pieces yet that aren't perfect.

The outliner is below. This is important, this is your object structure.
Also, Detail_300 locator (blue icon) is missing. I left it out by accident (object wasn't done when I snapped this). The grey icons are meshes. This is the setup that works with the game. It's important the models are suffixed with _a1000 instead of _1000 or it WILL CRASH THE GAME to desktop. Also, if you name your locators detail_a1000 and the object mesh detail_a1000, the game WILL CRASH TO DESKTOP. So yes, keep your names as I have, and COLMESH_1 must always have that name. For sanity sake, no names with BeamNG should ever have a hyphen "-" character. They also can't have non-english letters/numbers in them or the game gets mixed up and your object won't work.
LOCATORS (blue icons) are the detail classes and the smaller numbered ones are used as the object has less pixel fill (is further away) on the screen. "bb__autobillboard##" (## = 1~3 numbers) will cause objects to billboard and does not get a mesh assigned to it (this is NOT pictured, billboard sprites are good for buildings & signs, bad for roads etc). "nulldetail2" is going to remove your object from rendering when you are so far away that it only fills in TWO pixels on the screen, this also doesn't get a mesh attached to it by the game engine.
The DETAIL_A#### (2~4 numbers here), is the detail classes again as they get further they descend in detail. Each DETAIL mesh gets a like-numbered locator. Not only do you wish to use less triangles/surfaces on your lesser detail objects, you want to have LESS DRAW CALLS (important!). While a computer can render millions of triangles at 30~60fps, 4000+ draw calls will take most modest gaming machines below the target 60fps mark. Look up LOD or LEVELS OF DETAIL on the net to get an idea what I'm saying.
Each texture (or set of CONNECTED texture UV's) on ONE object is a draw call It's called 'sew' command to connect neighboring UV's in Maya, FWIW. Using MOSAIC textures (combined piles of doors and windows, or buildings with the windows already on them, etc) will help reduce some of these issues you'd normally have with draw calls going through the roof. Try to connect as many UV's as you can on each and every object. If you save one draw call on every object, and you need hundreds and hundreds of objects to make a city, you will clearly save yourself much pain. You will hit draw-call limits long before you hit any triangle-fill limits today on modern or semi-modern hardware.
Collision meshes must not have skinny faces such as curbs or railings or poles with faces narrower than 2~3cm or the vehicle won't collide with it properly. If you're doing curbs or something similar, make the curb-face collision extend below the pavement & split it length-wise every 6 feet or so and you should be fine. Otherwise it'll eat tires and possibly stick the car. Tops of Jersey barrier are also similarly difficult to do collision for. So make them rather wide (6 inches or more) at the top and you should be fine.

Save regularly, and DO BACK UP. I just had a complete c: drive failure a week or so ago, and the machine was down for merely minutes because of that. While I did lose a week or so of work, I quickly caught back up to where I was in short-order. Back up Back up back up or DON'T BOTHER telling anyone you're creating anything. Whether it's through cloud drives, HDD's you unhook when not in use for backup purposes (they're worthless if they're connected 24/7 unless you have a single disk failure), or CD/DVD's you can burn. There's plenty of options out there. I just had to blow through some cash buying drives again (personal money, money I would set aside to upgrade the machine otherwise), so I have plenty of backups. NOT using Seagate HDD's is also helpful (they're the worst, I have one that's used as a spare backup about once a year - VS weekly like other drives, and it's clicking and banging away it's last hours telling me in HDD-speak not to ever trust SEAGATE).

I hope some of this rambling was helpful somewhere. Again the Outliner pic is missing a detail_300 locator near the bottom, but aside of that, it's helpful and shows what it needs to look like.

 

You are supposed to stay away from Seagate, Toshiba and Samsunng HDDs, their higher tier models might fare better, but in budget class you are supposed to go with WD, but even them Green models like to fail, Black, Purple or Red tend to be kinda ok.

It's just hard to resist that 50$ drive and hard to justify paying 70-80$ from same capacity.

I might try Purple, seen those with relatively low cost, Red would be great but so is price of it.

 

MX500's are decent for price/speed, just added two more to the system to make a Raid 5. Have 4 of the 500gb model now. So much for my going-out-to-eat money, but ah well. What matters is I did *NOT* waste a cent of Patreon money on it. It comes out of my personal money for now. I've had 1 the longest, a year, a second 5~6 months or so.
Got a 2TB 7k3000 HGST/Hitachi hard drive, too (using it for backups, get disconnected when not in use). They're pretty good even though they merged with WD. WD bought them because of steadfast reliability. Seagate though is utter rubbish, while they are improving a little bit, don't trust them. As-per what Fufsgfen (and I) said, Seagate is bad, however, Samsung (if they even still make HDD's) and Toshiba are far from worst as-per BACK BLAZE drive stats. Toshiba is closer to HGST quality than Seagate's anyways, but can't speak as much for Samsung (but from when I used them in the industry years back, they weren't bad, that's not in the last 10 years though). Samsung's solid state is generally reliable, though the older 840 evo models with TLC (and older models from 2014 and before) did get slow with old data, that was fixed in firmware updates (backup if you do that, firmware updates can but doesn't always wipe drives clean). Your 970 Pro should be completely immune to that slow-down on old data, but may get slower when it's 80% full or more like all SSD's do.
Try sticking your broken drive in the freezer overnight and then plugging it in the next day hanging outside your pc case a bit or on the bottom of it (in a manner that won't short it if it defrosts a bit). It will thicken the bearing oil by making it cold, if that's what's going on it. It might buy you 20 minutes to retrieve data.

Enjoy you modeling stuff.

 

If they like to hit walls, use plenty of NODES in your decal road paths for the AI path. The more nodes around the corner, the smoother the AI will handle the corner, think of it as a straight line from node to node (regardless of the road texture or it's representation in-game). More sharp corners & more hills require more nodes. Yes it matters if there's a crest or a quick dip in the road, those get nodes, too. If you're making a bridge, put one node at one end of the bridge, then the next node at the other end, so it draws a straight line from bridge end to the other bridge end. My Roane County does this extensively. That can work for tunnels (if they're straight) if you do it right. Curved bridges or tunnels will require use of scripted AI object path thingies, forget what they're called at the moment. I think they're path nodes or something but they have a fancy name & are done from the f1 object editor, and then manually scripted by order into the map.json file I believe.

I actually pioneered the use of clear AI path nodes made of decal roads to get the AI around the map, over bridges, and through tunnels almost 3 years ago in Nevada Interstate map (which may or may not work for you depending on mods loaded). The developers ended up using this trick in West Coast and newer maps as it really gives you a lot of control over the AI. I used the heck out of this in Roane County also and the deprecated So-Cal Interstate (this became Los Injurus city map, currently in production).
I also was one of the first to use mesh roads as walls and not roads, and as bridges, too (until I got better with bridges as objects). They do work, though, and hit the performance much less than they used to. I say one of the first because while some maps used the mesh roads as roads, they really weren't used as walls anywhere that I remember prior to Nevada Interstate in 2016. I don't miss the days of maps made of only mesh roads, though, not one bit.

Good luck with your map and send me pictures of it sometime.

 

It looks nice, I am sure it will be welcomed with open arms. Glad to have someone making nice maps around here, the ones who do are few & far between (not to insult others outside of this group, but not many people can bring their own objects).

--Best of luck!

 

Look for OPEN Collada, that is free exporter for DAE that works in Maya and Max, should do the job much better, that is what I have read from some other gamedev forums.

 

Send me in private, the object you have that goes invisible on you if the following does not fix.
I had an issue where my sunken subway platform was doing that, and it did it because of the origin located too far from the 'center' of the object scene (in Maya). When I fixed that and moved the origin to 0,0,0 and then moved the faces (not the object itself, but all of it's faces) to make it 'centrally' located around it's origin (pivot), it was fine after-words.
TLDR: Make sure you're objects origin is located near 0,0,0 (the center of the grid) and that if you have a large object, everything is centered relatively close to 0,0,0.
When you want to reload your objects, add it into the map, if you're not happy with it, hit CTRL+Z, and it un-does adding the object in. Minimize the game (while you change any resources, minimize game to prevent lockups or locked resources file-wise). This goes for road textures, building textures or models, etc. Then drop your new DAE file into the game folder, and add it back (or look for your existing model to update if it's already in). Most times it will update. Sometimes it's glitchy and won't update but often if you keep it minimized while you change files, you should be fine. Just DO NOT delete something & not replace it before you un-minimize the game window, you'll CTD (as of an older version, anyways, they may have fixed that).

I hope that helps. It's 99% likely your origin is too far away. Converting to and from DAE (especially from DAE to FBX) can mess with that or mess with size etc. Often if you object is centered, and it's pivot is centered, your base00 or start01 may NOT be centered, and that can throw everything off.

 

Okay, well best of luck. I'll go back to finishing my Brewster-Douglas towers for my map.
If you need assistance, I'll be lurking around here somewhere.
--Cheers