Hi there, I want to create a top down picture like you see on the ingame minimap: But with a much higer quality like the this example: The goal behind this is to create paths in the map like you see within the race mode as track previews...: ...from ingame positions data, so the generated map also needs to be the same aspect ratio as the ingame map like the RoadAtlanta map from @Ewanc to get this result: I´ve already searched the forum and looked through some map modding tutorials, but I couldn´t find anything helpful. So if you know a way to solve this problem let me know
I'm not sure which step you have problem with. If it's to take the satellite pictures or drawing the path on the minimap. For the satellite pictures we use big screenshots. Then they get hand repainted by an artist. For the tracks highlight we use an internal script to draw it. You can redo it yourself using the waypoints or vehicles positions and the terrain dimensions.
Thanks for your reply. I have my problems with the creation of the satellite pictures. The drawing part is not the problem. I actually tried to take screenshots, but after a certain high the water looks a little bit edgy: So if I understand you correctly you use a car and drive it around the track?
That why the picture are redrawn, the terrain goes into low resolution because the camera is far away, then you see Z fighting near the coast of any water body. No we use the checkpoint data in the scenario file to draw the white line. You could also use vehicle position if you want. In any of those cases you would need to transform the world positions to the right pixel coordinate on the minimap.
What scenario file do you mean? I found some checkpoint data in the main.level.json file but I didn´t find any scenario related file.
I guess one could take several screenshots from lower altitude, stitch them together and then rescale resulting huge image?
no it's an example of what solution you can do, right now there is no plan to ship that tool because it was just to check some things
The main way I generate race layout mini maps is to load whatever image I have into my paint program and draw the paths manually. This is done by taking a high altitude screenshot, with the fog turned down and camera angle set very low. After that, I use Paint Shop Pro to trace lines over the roads I want. I use vector lines so that I have total control over editing the line's shape, color, and thickness on the fly, as well as cutting and adding to the paths for different layouts. It also allows for many layers of vector and raster images, so you can make detailed compositing easily. This is how Ive done menu images for most of my maps. Alternatively, you can make a quick and dirty mini map that is pixel per pixel perfect to the height map by exporting the terrain. It generates a height map image, along with all terrain paint layers. All the files are exported to the Documents/beamNG.drive/(exported map mane) folder. First the roads need to be traced out with terrain paint, then simply exported for instant road paths painted on a mini map. It will be a simple black and white image, but with some image editing tricks (depending on your image editing program), the background can be made transparent and placed over a color overhead image.
