Quote from Mr. Apex :

So A seems to be 32-Bit PNGs. I have tried tons of exporting options already, nothing seems to work.
As far as my limited understanding goes PNGs do not have separate Alpha-channels like a DDS, right?

They do, if you export with transparency turned on.

Yeah I'd also vote for a slight name change as "GTR" in the LFS world denotes full race track specials with aero etc like the FXR, XRR and FZR.

Maybe more like RB4 S2 or something?

You do really good work with this buggy!

I mean if its on cgtrader it's ok to use, supposedly, but I can't help but see this being a rip from some racing game like an older Forza or Need For Speed.

They have a bunch of these in the museum I worked at a few years ago, really interesting. Variants for people with one leg, or one arm, or no legs at all.

so you just modelled three full cars in two days?

Quote from 98LS1 :

I don't have the skills to create from scratch but could definitely import and edit. I was curious for myself not making for public

yeah no issue thought you were like asking if it's even possible to make these things to a "photo real" quality with no apprenticeship or special schools many professionals in the craft started as hobby modders first, honed their skills on mods and turned it into a job at some point. Your first model will not look great immediately, but it's a very satisfying thing once your selfmade thing finally becomes drivable in a game

Quote from 98LS1 :

Are people hand-drawing these entire cars? I feel like you'd have to import the model from somewhere

I mean, even if you "import" them from somewhere, at some point an artist must have made these 3D models. You can't just import a CAD model from like the car manufacturer as the type of model is much too different. So yes, every car model you see in a game somewhere has been handmade by an artist at some point. The original LFS cars were all done from scratch by Eric I suppose, same as the tracks.

Good mods are made entirely from scratch by hobbyists, with no commercial model as basis. Needs a lot of work and time, no question. I made 4 full car mods from scratch (for Assetto Corsa), and roughly needed a year of leisure evening modelling per car.

As such, as you can imagine, we the "true modders" don't quite like people just usíng whatever model they can find and presenting them as their own. I know this sounds snobbish, but compare it to a musician writing his own music and someone just copying beats, melodies and lyrics from unmarked sources.

Plus we don't know how sketchfabs, or any other model repository site's vetting process is like, there was at least one modern F1 car released here earlier with a model from Sketchfab, which I would not be surprised if it was ripped from an older Codemasters game.

The good thing with Blender is also that there's so many tutorials and help out there, tho sometimes it is hard to find methods and tutorials aimed at game modelling. Most are towards renders where poly count and topology are negligible.

Once you make bigger things like full race tracks Blender appears to be much more stable and offer better in-house modifiers and functionality.

I'm not sure if I continue with this. For one, it doesn't seem like anyone likes this car, and the biggest issue, mapping everything once the model is finished.. I just took a closer look at the new RB4, especially its dash texture, as that is on first glance reasonably close to what I would want with my interior and dash.

Tiled carbon fibre.
Simple.
In a normal modeller tool its a matter of setting a few sensible seams during the modelling process, than clicking a single button, adjust scale, done. 5 minutes of extra work.


It appears that to make something resembling this in the LFS Editor, I'd need to make like a dozen "cameras", then hand select each individual triangle fitting to its orientation, do this for all triangles (lucky me, currently its just 860), than go about adjusting the whole dozen mappings by size till all have the same scale


That's beside the fact that this forbids external AO baking, or for example high res to low res baking, which for these low poly, high efficiency models would be a very welcomed feature.

It's like telling me to light up a camp fire, letting me stack the wood up high, then taking my matches away to instead send me into the woods to fashion a fire bow. I don't get, yes it was explained to me why and how the whole system was done like this, I still don't get it as whatever gets handed to the GPU will be in this UV format. I've done modelling for a few different game engines so far, and none of these threw away imported UVs.

I'm just venting here and don't need answers.

Pretty sure the steering wheel in this wasn't aligned with the seat, neither were the pedals. They talk about it on a Top Gear feature on the car.

Quote from martin18 :

Looks fast, stable and with good suspension movement! Keep up the great work!

it actually was none of that lol, that was, except the rear suspension, just the stock RAC suspension setup. I'm on a Simucube wheel here, so I can correct spins very fast if needed lol I also made the error of changing the export name, so for a few hours I was tinkering with the suspension and wondering why none of it made the car better.. I was loading the wrong version the whole time.

I've since redone the front too, again adopting a well working layout from my AC Lotus build. The car is still very twitchy especially under braking. I'm thinking if I should try releasing it earlier to enable other users to test it, as my goal is making a car that is usable with the stock GTRs, and I can hardly do that on my own.


...and next to that I started a 100% fantasy build of yet another GTR.. like the polar opposite of the RaceAbout... I combined a Japanese, a French and a Swedish car for its appearance, V10 TT powered

Really cool project!

I somehow managed to get the car into the game. This is an old import of the model missing the roof scoop, engine detail and rear lights etc. But it's got new rear suspension. How can I add aero to the car? The buttons are blue and can't be changed.

Am I correct that LFS can't do antisquat and antidive? I see the stock LFS cars with "invisible" suspension only have one upper and one lower wishbone anchor point, the Formula cars have two for both, but they are both at the same height and I can't change their height individually.

Very small suggestion: Open the "right click on coordinate point (R F U) to enter precise number" dialog with the current value displayed, and not empty.

Quote from denis-takumi :

some updates

Curious. So your exporter can translate the 3DSMax made UVs into the form the LFS Editor uses? Would love to have that for Blender.
And most of all, does it work for non-projected maps? or does it work from those "camera positions" in Max?

How about Kuypers T16? Tony Kuypers was apparently a Belgian rally cross champion.

How did you widen the track? Just by using "virtual spacers" or did you rework the suspension by moving something else?

Quote from Scawen :

Though I know it can be overwhelming at first, and that is probably worse when you are used to a more advanced editor.

that's probably the biggest thing getting my first car working in AC took many months, and then I stayed in that environment for many many years... now it been barely two weeks with this whole new development here of which I spent one away from any computer. Much to "unlearn". Overall I don't want to sound ungrateful but may just be my (english) writing style.

I'll keep at it, thanks for the replies

Quote from Scawen :

No doubt you'll tell me that is very easy but it's actually not.

yeah I guess I'm known to you as the heckler by now, but no. I don't know anything about coding.

Will probably just have to simplify my "vision" for the car. Or do something else.

thanks, this will come in very handy. But I guess I should only do this once the model is finished in Blender, or I'll have to repeat it on every import. Plus I'm still hoping for UV and Material import (..as that really is the industry standard...). Project from view will cause stretch and tear everywhere on every model that is not a perfect cube ALso much much easier to use space very effective. This is the UV map I made for my KRB Lotus in Blender ofc. No overlapping edges, no excessive stretching.



(the 155 TI V6 was build from the PRV engine, Peugeot-Renault-Volvo. Alfa used it in some models so it was legal to use in the 155, which apparently was like the worst V6 ever made In my head "my" engine here was build by a Saab engineer locked into a CNC workshop with blocks of billed aluminium, some buckets of GM parts and lots of coffee)

Last edited by ACCAkut, Mon, 22 Nov 2021 16:50.

Quote from martin18 :

Can I make you the 155 engine and see what you think?

I'll probably try that myself first, but thanks for the offer

I still can't wrap my head around the Editor, I looked at some of the Kunos cars but really don't understand what I'm seeing. What's a cutout, whats page? I tried watching some of Scawens videos but have a hard time following them, plus I only have a single screen here and would be alt-tabbing between both. Maybe I'm just too old.

meanwhile I continued a little of what I understand, modelling

Are you building this solely in the LFS Editor?

As those dark streaks on the corners mean the Normal orientation (the vector that decides how a triangle receives and uses light) is twisted