I know this has been done before (Trial Mountain map) and I want to start converting tracks from Rfactor to Beam.NG. Anyone know how to do that? Help would be much appreciated!
First step: - Asking original authors of a track for permission. Most RFactor moders take this very seriously, as they spend incredible amount of time on those mods. Do not even bother starting without an explicit permission.
Sorry for the late reply. I want to convert one of the vanilla tracks in the game: Alabama Superspeedway (Parody of Talladega) Since ISI is I think out of business, who should I ask for permission?
Is the game still being published? If it's still sold somewhere new, then it's being published somewhere. If you're copying (read:converting from assets in a game outside of Beamng.drive) assets such as a track and it's furnishings from another game, that's essentially plagiarism, in a nutshell. At worst, you're violating the copyright of the game because the EULA of most games forbids copying assets from that game for use in another competitor's (or anyone elses) product. However, there's another way around this. If, without copying any assets, you can re-create the environment, with no sounds, textures, or models, from the other game, in the Beamng.drive environment, feel free to do so! I recreated Tennessee this way by making my own assets as needed, and with-permission used assets from other authors (usually donated to me by the author themselves), to help with the map furnishings (as it was a huge undertaking and I realized this from the get-go). However, if the game is classified as abandoneware (sic?), being no longer published AND the publisher is out of business (and the IP is not sold to someone else actually publishing it or about to), no damages will be able to be proved by use of assets, so technically, no laws are broken (damages must be proven in most countries, including USA). Laws differ by country, so it's your due diligence to check these things out. Again, it's always best to bring all your own assets - however - this being said - if you convert some of the landscape assets to use in a template for personal use - and don't distribute them (and instead, your finished or beta product will have your OWN assets, not converted works of others), you will be fine. The game-company / publisher's EULA (for RFactor) is where you look for the answers here in this case. Does the clause exist that says "No derivative works may come from this game's assets" = no you cannot use the assets. Also: "No part of this software may be copied in part or in whole except to make one copy for archival purposes..." = no you cannot make a copy of some of the assets to use in your map on a DIFFERENT game.
http://imagespaceinc.com/ There is even rather large text saying Contact, use that or they will sue you and you will carry tag of that when applying jobs etc. I can't find anything about ISI being out of business, where you got that from? Even first rFactor is still sold in Steam, how you come up with a conclusion that it is abandonware (and even if it would be, still someone will hold the rights), is rather unknown to me. Even more, they have this on their site: http://rfactor.net/web/termsofuse/ rFactor 2 is developed currently by Studio 397, it does not mean that ISI is out of business though and still, even if they would be, you would need to contact Gjon Gamaj to get permissions for first rFactor and I'm not sure if Studio 397 have rights to give permissions for rFactor 2, but you must ask around. Of course you can release stolen content and be a thief, but do realize what you are doing, no excuses. If you are serious and somehow get permission or decided to start career as a thief (I don't judge, but do know what you are doing and be honest with it), then you need to start figuring out how to make mesh road in 3ds max for Torque 3D, rFactor tracks are build whole lot differently though, but with 3ds max you might be able to make required changes for track to work in Torque 3D, so that you would have terrain and meshroad, then read about roads in content creation to find out how to get nice decal road out from that. It will be lot of work, practically you will build whole map again and then some, so it is not just few clicks and poff you have a new track to drive on, building track from scratch might make more sense, then you might enter up into gray area and use rfactor track only for guide, making own models and textures, you would have scratch made track that is made after rfactor track.
Guess I better chime in, since I'm the rF guy. I didn't have to convert anything to make Trail Mountain; I had the original project files in 3DS Max from my WIP for rFactor. It allowed me to work with my source FFD meshes, and perfect it for this game. BeamNG's collision system hates sharp 90 degree corners for walls and other vertical objects. Unfortunately, all rFactor tracks have very rough edged for walls which are optimized for its bounding box style collisions. If you try to use the raw meshes with no collision objects designed for BeamNG it will look fine, but will eventually show flaws, when people start getting their cars stuck in the walls. There are a dozen tracks i'd like to convert myself, but even with my connections, its hard. Permissions are impossible since most 3rd party developers left the scene a long time ago and you can't just message them and say: "Oh hey if you get this message this century, I'm converting your track, thanks." Also, the tools are there to convert, but even then its hard because materials have to be totally rebuilt, and the material names NEVER match the texture names, so you end up having to rename 100s of them so they will load.
Erm, Since when has ISI been defunct? They handed off development of rFactor 2 to another studio, but they still own it and rFactor 1 iirc. (and are still in business)
I'm sure you can still get a hold of the ISI developers even if they aren't working on rF anymore or you can just shoot Studio 397 a message to get permission for a project. It's still difficult to convert GMT to DAE due to the material naming complication. The great thing about ISI was that they were super hands on and always available to help the community, just like the BeamNG Team. That's what attracted me to this community. I used to chat with Gjon (the former head developer of ISI) on Yahoo messenger all the time. I don't see them being different now. I sourced the elevations for my version of Lime Rock Park from the rF2 mesh. I did it to showcase what the align to mesh tool in BeamED is capable of. Its based on a publicly available LIDAR map though, and im redoing the whole thing with additional LIDAR map area to include more land - uphill where the mountain course is.
