Announcing Automation & BeamNG.drive collaboration!

What do you really expect for something that exports a car model from another game and builds a jbeam around it? It's going to be russian quality, but the fun is being able to instantly drive your creations.

 

You can add basic state of jbeam to that 20 minutes, powerline, engine tuning etc. I think that 20 mins in modeling time is only very small part of total time it will take to get mod to this 'simple' stage.

Then you can put as many hours as you like to model and jbeam to bring vehicle up to level you want, that saved time is still saved time as adding 30% of beams is going to be faster than adding 100%, to get suspension sorted out automatically, well that might be big for some, less for others etc.

After all, model is just small part of the mod, surely most visual, but research and technical parameters alone take same amount, then add beams, managing weight and weight balance, stability of construction etc.

I'm not certain how long people generally spend making a mod, but I would guess 100 hours is quite bit on short side for good quality mod where internal workings don't need complete overhaul because being totally wrong (think of mods at certain sites for example, which of some surely are pretty, but...).

 

Guess the next Steam achievement is about to make a car and export it...

 

You can take an existing car's jbeam though and modify it...

 

man, first off, a round of applause. You guys, the whole BeamNG -and now the Automation team- deserve it!

it's still gonna be funny when these automated j-beam vehicles still crash better than some of the vehicles on the repo right now

 

They have engine bays, engines, animated suspension, some removable parts.

They do not have removable panels or interiors.

I'd be pretty surprised if you could throw one together in 20mins though, given it takes a good 10hrs or so for an artist to build the body meshes we use

They're definitely not as in depth for crash physics as the stock beamNG cars, but the point of this is not to be a replacement for modding. You'll still get much better results by putting loads of hours into manually crafting a mod car.

The point of to be able to make a bunch of engineering choices in a car design simulator and then get to drive the result of it in a driving simulator and find out how it feels/performs.

 

So on paper they're very moddable and adjustable to improve the jBeam, and very FPS friendly out of the box, right?

 

Of course, in both cases. Also many succesfful mods have had model taken and modified, so it depends a lot of skills and goal of the modder.

To really become good, at some point you just have to start making everything from scratch, but to get there small first steps are better and for example improving these exported vehicles could provide motivation and learning platform as well as just fun driving experience. Just think about how you can get to test difference of different suspension choices or engine types etc.

Also without really not having hands on of how exported vehicles are, we can't debate much about it being whatever our views or opinions are about it, hands on experience is required first, so I try to look openly of all possibilities this might bring and then create some new ones

 

Do they have modeled pillars, door jambs, firewalls etc? Do they have any thickness or are just one-sided meshes?

 

Kinda a weird hybrid, most of the body shell is one sided, but then underneath that is a chassis which does have a firewall, door sills (but not jambs), floor pan, some subframes etc.

Its a unique setup that only makes sense because of all the different sizes and shapes of car, as well as chassis and suspension choices that it has to work with in Automation.

Like I said, it's definitely not a super high quality mesh in terms of deformation, but you might be able to use it as a basis for a more detailed mesh for if you didn't want to do everything from scratch. I suspect it'd be a good headstart for anyone who isn't quite experienced in Beam modding.

They're going to be quite good in terms of exterior quality, sound, performance/handling/mechanical attributes though. And that is fundamentally the aim of the project, to get those things right.

 

I just want to say, on the purple van you should move the handle to make the door open like a Suv. I'm pretty sure that the car's won't have minivan doors, and it would look strange if the door was flailing with the handle on the side it was connected. Also, Will parts be detachable?

 

I have 3 questions on my mind...

1. Will there be interior meshes added to these vehicles at any point?

2. Will the glass textures on the headlights, taillights, and windows break on impact or just deform?

3. Will will body panels fall off?

 

1. There won't be interior sadly as I read on a Dev post.

2. I'm going to say it will deform like a mesh.

3. No, not that I'm aware of, correct me if I'm wrong.

 

1. The interior is not going to be made, the Automation team is very small and they can't try to make that, as I see in one of these posts

2. I think they will break in impact, (you have to make the damageable glass textures tho)

3. Perhaps not

 

For me this sounds that exported cars are really big head start as engine alone takes good amount of time to build in BeamNG, especially with Turbo engines it takes long to get them tuned.

Actually I bought Automation now, before discount to support that project bit more, just need to free some disk space to have fun with it now

 

This might be dumb to mention, but it would be nice if you can design interiors in Automation, not just the bodywork, otherwise it just kinda defeats the purpose.