I'm not sure if this is a bug or if it's intended. When I model something in the "build" mode, half of the triangles always end up facing the wrong direction. Even when I use a fixed viewport - like for example Back - the half of the triangles will still end up facing Front. Am I missing something about the way how this is supposed to work?

Vehicle mod: ANTIVAX GT
Details page: https://www.lfs.net/files/vehmods/CE44CE

SHORT DESCRIPTION:

Quote :

Stretcher will get you to the finish line before it's too late

DESCRIPTION:

Quote :

Fast and agile stretcher featuring:
- powerful electric motor
- AWD
- custom driver animation with 26 handcrafted frames
- squeaky wheels
- accurate shadow thanks to detailed LOD2 model with a driver dummy

Started as a meme, but it turned out to be really capable and fun to drive.

COVER SCREENSHOT:

Would be nice to be able to see the collaborators, full description and changelog within the ingame-mod-browser.

Hey Scawen, maybe you should jump in on the sanctions and stop selling licenses to russian players?

https://www.lfs.net/attachment/307458

EDIT: mpr in attachment, happens around 4 minutes in.

EDIT2 (by Scawen): removed IMG tags on the image as it is too nasty and prominent.

Last edited by Scawen, Sun, 6 Mar 2022 18:02.

Quote from VladM :

You have to understand that Eric modelled the VW with permission from VW, and with their approval for the use of the likeliness and badging of the car. Just because it was available in LFS Viewer does NOT mean that you are free to use it. The cars available in editor are the ones the developers have given permission to modify, and the VWS is not one of them. Firstly you would need permission from Eric to edit it, as he modelled the mesh, and I doubt you'll receive it. Just because it's in viewer does not make it free to use.

Then explain why did they publish KORAMA R mod (VW Amarok) today, which uses steering wheel 3d model and textures, as well as the gauge cluster texture from - the very same - Eric's VW Scirocco? Unlike me - he didn't even give any credit to Eric Bailey. Looks like their made up rule applies only to me.

Can you please add ability to install ROAD tires on the Buggy V2?

Quote from Scawen :

How about Russians getting rid of Putin?

Everyone who tries gets either shot, poisoned or lands in prison. I suggest watching "The Man Putin Couldn't Kill" documentary if you haven't yet.

Quote from Scawen :

I can't think of a definite way for you to find the offending triangles, but you could switch on triangle buttons then look for triangles built on magenta points. See if those triangles are set to "mirror" (which they shouldn't be).

I don't think I can see any, or maybe I don't know what I'm looking for...
If you don't mind you can take a peek at my vageen, it has 250 corrupted triangles.

Anyway, I've been noticing that some mods have problems upshifting in Auto. LANKOCLOUD ONE is a perfect example of that behavior - it will happily ride in 1st forever if you won't upshift manually. Now I've ran into this issue with my own mod and started investigating what might be the cause. I came to conclusion that this has to do with the engine. If the curve looks like this (see attachment) - where horsepower continues to raise past the redline. What I think is happening - the gearbox is waiting for the engine to reach peak horsepower before upshifting, but since peak power is past the redline - it can never reach it so it sits at redline. Is that correct?

One more question - if I see someone is using my model without my permission on his mod, where can I report this?

With every old .vob created with LFS Car Imported I get this message in the Modeller "Corrupted triangles: X"
I can't see anything wrong with any of the triangles on the model, let alone with 593 of them. When there is a "point with bad normal" you get that red line which shows where it is, but in this case there is no indication which of the triangles are corrupted - as far as I tell. Is this anything to worry about or is it safe to just ignore it?

Quote from Sponge :

To be honest, I can't understand why you even started on this mod... If it were that easy to just put the vws in the game, the devs would have done it a decade ago. Now you're acting all surprised and upset that you've "wasted" your time and try to justify it by naming all kinds of totally different cases..
Sorry, but are your really that ignorant? You could and should have seen this coming waaaaaay in the beginning before you invested even a second into this mod.

Majoirity of LFS mods currently available are licensed cars with badges either removed or altered, so I didn't see why Scirocco would be exception from the rules.

According to the Scirocco presentation video they were provided with a "highly detailed 3D object of the car", but Eric created his own less-detailed 3D model based on that. So Eric is the author of the 3D model, not VW.

I think the main issue here is that they don't want anyone to release it before them. If I would use a free model from Sketchfab with CC license, they would probably still deny it for whatever reason.

I really wish they could get it together and finaly release it by themselves, but it is what is

Quote from Evolution_R :

I wonder what would be the official VW answer to this if they are asked?

Probably - "Are you trying to tell me you still haven't released it after 13 years !?!"

Quote from Scawen :

VW didn't give us a contract that says we can freely share their model with other people to use for their own purposes.

I don't want to use it for my own purposes, I want to upload it to LFS servers so that LFS players can use it in LFS. The model was obtained from LFS Viewer and exported into LFS with the use of LFS Editor.
It's not like I'm trying to make a paid mod for GTA out of it - now that would be "use for my own purposes".

Oh look, someone took your model and customized it to create a render outside of LFS with the use of a 3rd party software:
https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1332155#post1332155
But no problems there

Snowrunner - for example - also has official support for vehicle mods. People modify licensed trucks from the game and release it on the official mod repository:
https://snowrunner.mod.io/
Players put custom wheels on them, bumpers, engines, paintjobs and attachments. Some even turn licensed vehicles into monster trucks

But in this case I didn't even modify the model (other than the badge textures which I thought was necessary).

Quote from Scawen :

we don't have any reason to believe we have the right to distribute editable copies of them.

Then explain why people are allowed to wrap Formula BMW in a Mercedes AMG livery? They can upload the skin to LFS servers, post it on LFS Forums and drive it like this online in LFS?
https://www.lfs.net/forum/post/1973475#post1973475

Quote from Tomfuel :

"...would replaced FBM with ..." FBM is a jewel to race !! please, do not touch at this one

Thank you for not reading past the first sentence. After all this mod was nothing but a huge waste of time, just like reading this thread is.

Already denied because "we can't permit LFS models to be used in LFS".

God what a waste of time. I worked so hard to make it perfect. Should have released it back in 2010

Let's wait a few more decades, maybe they will finally release it into the game as part of the Historic Cars Pack

We can drive trashcans now, but Scirocco with physics slightly off (yet way ahead of what would be possible in other games) - unimaginable

I've submitted it for review. Please go upvote it if you want to see it in the game. Let's hope it goes trough without issues
https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/97516-VAGEEN-SI-COCCO-2-0-TITS

Back in 2009 I've created a mod which would replaced FBM with The Forbidden Hatchback. The mod was made in a way that it didn't overwrite any of the original files - it had it's own exe, vob, eng and dds files, so you could still launch the unmodified game with the original exe or the modded game with the second exe

Texturing with the unofficial "LFS Car Importer" was nowhere near as easy as it is now with the LFS Editor so I had to take some shortcuts and skip a few smaller mappings. Seats were the hardest part since the front seats alone are made out of around 50 mappings. I took a screenshot of the seats in the LFS Skin Viewer and mapped that onto the seats instead, reducing the amount of mappings to around 8. Brake lights used 1 mapping instead of 3... and so on. I even got the red LCD in the middle to work, but it wasn't functional. Time was always 1:18
Here is some screenshots of the original mod from 2009:
https://i.imgur.com/4VRZ6g9.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/11xFzrZ.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/SYEUUJP.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/XqSPyuZ.jpg

I must have spent a few hundred hours on it. Most of that went into analyzing which values in the exe do I need to change to get the specifications correct - weight, weight distribution, horsepower, driver and steering wheel position, wheel/tyre position and size, transform rear suspension to double wishbone, etc.
In the end - I never released the mod and barely shown it to anyone. I guess I didn't want to anger the devs. I even modified the exe so that it would require S1 license to use the car, but still...


Fast forward to 2022 - vehicle mods are now officially supported. Despite a catastrophic failure of my harddrive in 2021, I was able to find the mod on my old decommissioned HDD and I've started the resurrection of the project. This time with the proper tools I was able to create a 1:1 copy of the car you can see in the LFS Skin Viewer. I had to redo all the mappings (250+):



Redone smoothing groups from scratch, traingle by triangle...


Normal contribution levels... I didn't even know this was a thing, but it made sense since my original mod didn't look right in some places. I had to do some guessing here since there is no way to see them in the LFS Skin Viever. I did them based on how they look on the latest Eric's creation - updated RB4. Looks much better in the game with them assigned.


I've made a pretty good LOD2, so the shadow is very accurate and the car doesn't turn into a brick at distance like some other mods:



This is how it looks currently in the game:






Of course it is fully compatible with all the skins created in LFS Skin Viewer since 2008:


Currently the entire body is assigned to a single color slider, I think I will assign the hood to a second slider like in most other LFS cars... or maybe hood and hatch?

I also did my best to get the specification as close to reality as possible. I found exact gear ratios, weight, fuel tank capacity, track width, etc. I did the engine curve based on the dyno charts I found on the internet. Front suspension is McPherson and the rear is Double Wishbone since this is the closest thing to the multilink suspension of the real deal. I've tried to get the arms length and pivot points somewhat close to where they should be, based on photos. Weight distribution from what I've managed to find should be around 64% front, I have it currently at 64.2%. I will need feedback on the suspension once I release it.
I'm not sure what to do with the diff. Real thing doesn't have LSD but does have Electronic Differential Lock (EDL) - which doesn't exist in LFS. I guess I will make it open-diff in the stock setup and let the players slap the LSD on in the custom setups.

Anyway, the mod is 97% ready to be released as WIP, since I'm starting to run out of things I can improve without feedback. I mean - it will probably get rejected by the devs... but let's hope Eric will bless this mod - since he is the author of this beautiful 3D model.

Hard to believe it's been 13 years since the December 2008 fiasco

Last edited by Amynue, Fri, 18 Feb 2022 23:09.

Quote from Scawen :

I think the best thing may be manual group assign. I think this may be easier than you think, if you use the "group select" function.

- CTRL+SHIFT and click on a triangle.
- Then assign that group of selected triangles to a smoothing group.
- Clear selection
- CTRL+SHIFT on another group and assign that.

Etc... well, it may be a bit laborious, but at least you don't have to individually select triangles.

This does indeed work great on freshly imported .vobs. Sadly the mod I'm currently working on already got smoothed by the LFS Modeller long ago and I've done too many changes to the model to now import the .vob again. I will have to select triangles manually on this one, but for the other mods I plan to convert to .veh I will definitely use the method you described to assign smoothing groups after importing the .vob, will save me many hours.

Thanks for the help!

Quote from Scawen :

When you first load your model, the vertices in what would be separate smoothing groups, are duplicated. That's not the LFS way - it wants to merge the duplicate vertices

There is no smoothing groups in Zmodeler so sharp edges were achieved by splitting the surfaces at the edge, so that you have duplicate verticles where you want the edge to be sharp. That way each verticle has normals facing in the direction of the surface it remains attached to (not sure if this sentence makes sense).
https://www.zmodeler2.com/docs/program/lessons/advanced/les2_normtools.html

Quote from Scawen :

I wonder why this isn't happening for this model. Maybe there are a couple of smoothing groups in the original loaded data? You can see by clicking "groups" down at the bottom right after loading the model.

As you can see in the attachment from my previous post (the middle screenshot), the entire main object is assigned to the smoothing group 0.

I think it will be best if you take a look by yourself so that you can better investigate this. I attached a fairly lowpoly .vob to the post (9700tris).

Quote from Scawen :

The page screen shouldn't really be so long, usually.

I imagine. The .vob was built over a decade ago using ZModeler and the "LFS Car Importer" (made by Magnot). Some pages repeat as much as 7 times and they look exactly the same. But I can't see a way to delete any of them, even unused (red) ones.

In LFS Car Importer you could only see the "maps" list, while the "cutouts" and "pages" were managed by the software. Only now I can see how much of a mess it is.

Quote from Scawen :

But anyway, there is a text size button "text" down at the bottom right that may help, if you reduce the text size, you'll see more pages on screen.

That did the trick, now I can see the end of the list Thanks.

Quote from Scawen :

I don't know why smoothing groups have been lost on your model, I haven't heard of that before. Have you tried "compress groups" in subob mode? Maybe the originally imported model has an 'illegal' number of smoothing groups.

I tried a few of my simpler .vob mods from the past and they all have this issue. When you first load them into the modeller they look perfect, but when you switch into the "groups" view, you can see that the entire model is actually one group. When you make any change to the model, save the .sre and load it back in, it all becomes smoothed (see attachment). Only the original untouched subobjects - such as brake calippers have proper smoothing groups.

Quote from Scawen :

There should be descriptions of the buttons down at the bottom of the screen when you hover over almost every button in the modeller (but not the vehicle editor, yet). If you are not seeing the tips, maybe your text is too big?

Oh wow. I was using the Modeller in windowed mode and couldn't see them. Only now when I decreased the text size to see the pages, I'm now able to see the descriptions Thanks for the tip! Will make things easier for sure.

Thanks for the answer.

Quote from Scawen :

1) I don't know what's up with the mirrors, you'd better have a close look at the official vehicles and see how things are named.

I had 3 mappings - one for each mirror. After long trial and error I figured out that the interior mirror have to go into a sub-object and the side mirrors have to be be mirrored and use one mapping. Now all 3 mirrors are working, but there is a problem with side mirrors (see attachment). Frame of the mirror somehow gets reflected in the mirror, not even near the edge the mirror. I saw this issue on another mod - "SV EVOLUTION V12"
Can anything be done to fix this (other than remodeling the mirror)?

Quote from Scawen :

2) A crash with a matching description (due to incorrectly formed VOB model created by external software) was solved for one user by clicking "clean object" in subob mode of the modeller. Just a few posts up from here.

Clicking "clean object" did stop "page" tab from crashing the editor but the list is so longer than the screen and there is no way to scroll down the list , so I can't see all of it.

I've also noticed that after importing the .vob renamed to .sre, the smoothing groups appear to be working - edges are sharp where they should be. But after you make any change to the model (for example move one point) and then exit from modeler into the main editor, the entire model becomes "smoothed". So I will have to redo smoothing groups on the entire vehicle from scratch


By the way, your tutorial videos are very useful. I hope you can make more - you could cover some of the mysterious buttons like - what does "clean object" or "magic triangle sort" even do...
Would be nice if the editor could display some tips or short description when you hover your mouse over certain buttons.

I'm trying to convert a .VOB mod I've made in 2011. I was able to load it into the editor by renaming the file to .SRE
I've ran into two issues.
1) Mirrors appear black in the game. I can't figure out what is wrong. They appear to be properly mapped with "s_mirr" texture They worked in the past, back when it was a .VOB mod
2) LFS Editor always crashes when I click on the "page" tab in the main model view.

I couldn't find a way to save it with Photoshop without losing Alpha channel, but GIMP did the trick. Thanks for the tip.

Why does the editor use .png instead of .dds? I get error "Colour type RGB but A is required"... yeah but how am I supposted to get Alpha channel saved in a .png?

Quote from Scawen :

A few pictures of British 'recycling':
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=uk+plastic+malaysia&t=ffsb&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

Well they kinda left it there on a big pile which was a mistake since it's not very effective. To get it fully recycled you need to dump it into a river. Then the trash will be carefuly transported to the oceans via natural system of canals, where it will begin a lenghty but effective recycling process away from the country of orgin. Still a good effort UK, but you need to take some notes ✍️

Quote from Scawen :

On topic, neither the UK alone nor the EU has been anywhere near strong enough on protecting the environment.

Yes, UK and EU could do a better job at protecting the enviorment, but hey - look at the bright side - there are countries who care very deeply about enviroment and are able to more than make up for our mistakes. Just take a look at that hearwarming video from Peru where they use cutting edge technology to recycle trash without polluting the enviroment, we could learn a thing or two from them:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wVnMBGXVVUI