Quote from fangio86 :

Very good idea! congrats!

Thanks, I am trying my best to make it as believable as possible.

Here are some screens of what I completed so far for the interior base mesh :





There is still a few things I need to complete :

- modeling front/rear seats
- interior doors details
- finishing the steering wheel details (buttons etc)
- interior central mirror
- seat belt
- interior floor mesh
- Maybe a separate mesh for button texture ?
- adjusting the size of some elements (windshield wipers..)
- and a lot of optimizations, right now the whole car is over 70k.


The steering wheel size seems a little bit small, when compared to the rb4 it doesn't look at all like a 35cm wheel, I thought the size I used was pretty standard for road cars.

Last edited by lfsrm, Sat, 18 Dec 2021 09:33.

Quote from raidho36 :

It struck me as odd decision to prevent your own hosting. Then I remembered that you're an indie company so you need all the money you can get, so I figured being extra tight on piracy is fine. But then I realized that your monetization policy was to one-time charge for content packs, that's obviously an unsustainable approach for a game that's meant to exist for more than a year. So it makes complete sense that you'd try to take money from online players who are still playing. Again, you need that money and your current monetization model only profits off of new players, not sustained audience, and it's not like you can exactly just change one-time payments to annual subscriptions. So I guess having exclusive ability to host online servers and charging for access to them works well in lieu of having a game subscription. Calling it anti-piracy measure was basically just so that no one thinks it was a scummy move, wasn't it? It's not like you're nickel&diming like EA. Just be sure to make the server package downloadable when your company goes out, otherwise it'll become impossible to play online a perfectly good game.

You can still host a server for free using the ingame (start new host), it's just non permanent.

Congratulations! Hopfully this will give LFS some popularity boost.

Quote from denis-takumi :

i tried. have some troubles to save string to char array with specific length. and i want know can vertices and faces having custom properties.

Thanks for your time, just thinking about 3DS licensing cost it gives me headache :'(.

Last edited by lfsrm, Thu, 16 Dec 2021 10:36.

Quote from ACCAkut :

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?

+∞

If someone could make the same thing for blender, it would be great !

Quote from loopingz :

Interesting work! Did you make any progress?

yea sorry, I thought it might be better to finish the interior base mesh before posting a preview.

I'm just stuck at work lately, can't make good progress outside the weekends.

I will try to post some preview when I come back home.

Oh nice update! very clean modeling as usual , must looks very cool with the new graphics update.

Personally I prefer the logo to be a little bit smaller.

It's me or there is no default skin yet ?

Edit : nvm, it's in the editor but not in the game directory, a simple copy/past should resolve this.

Last edited by lfsrm, Fri, 10 Dec 2021 08:44.

Quote from Eric :

I have to say, lfsrm, I'm pretty impressed with the car design and the speed of your progress so far! For constructing a fictional car, you really have a natural feel for it.

Car interiors can be fiddly to build without any frame of reference, but I've found that viewing your progress in VR can help.

I'm watching this project with interest.

Thank you,It means a lot to me! I literally grow up playing LFS, the game never left my hard drive!, you guys are an inspiration for many of us!

And thank you guys for letting us experiment with the game engine, there isn't many games that offers such accessible modding tools! it's definitively a great thing for the community !

The interior is trickier than I thought, especially since the model needs to be driveable in-game, I have only a rigged human body shape and some pictures for (rough) references, VR would definitely help (since it's also compatible with blender) if it was available for sale over here..

But again this is a great learning opportunity !

Quote from Flotch :

The master has spoken Wink
I agree, impressive

glad you like it !

Quote from fatalunfair :

I don't think I could do this if I had a gun to my head and 10 years of time, wicked stuff man.

Thanks for the compliment, I think with the amount of resources around the net now, it's easier and faster to learn something new compared to some years ago.

Finding time and motivation is still a big obstacle...

Yes! the possibility of importing UV maps would be a huge time saving.

Quote from Kova. :

Damn, this car is probably one of the best i've seen here until now.

Not that i'm kind of fan of its design, but of the way it's made.

First of all, it does look well made and designed
And second one, I like how it's keeping XFG's DNA :
-The overall form of the car
-The way it look like grabbing designs from some IRL cars
(front look like fiats stilo/punto, rear a mixture of a duster and 208)

Can't you try, for the interior, to take XFG's actual and make some slight modern changes? It's how most of constructors were doing in the past

Worst case scenario, you will make a gen2 of it with redesigned interior on the future

Thanks, I'm still figuring out the interior shapes and dimensions, so the only thing I can guarantee is it will retain the central "punto-like" air vents style with of course some (many) changes.

Plus there is some issues I (maybe) need to fix with the front window shape, when I tried to test out the car dimension in-game, I found the interior front view a little bit claustrophobic for my taste :



I need some opinions about that.

EDIT : I think it's actually fine when compared to an Audi A1, which is nearly similar in size :

Last edited by lfsrm, Thu, 11 Nov 2021 13:32.

Quote from ACCAkut :

No, apparently you can't right now, that exactly was my result of those trials above. The moment I hit "Apply" on the Edge Split modifier in Blender, the mesh is split up according to the smoothing settings I created with those sharp edges. The LFS Editor imports this raw mesh with its Normals and bundles them into Smoothing groups according to each meshs Normals' orientation.

oh well, that modifier does indeed completely separate the mesh geometry.. I don't know if it's ok with the actual game engine, I am pretty sure it wouldn't do well with the future real time shadows if you want to do something for the long term.

Interesting, I didn't know that you could export smooth groups directly from blender!

Quote from FIZ :

Please don't!
Interior > Exterior while driving.
Imho, only the front and the back of the car should be detailed, leaving less detailed the other parts (top, sides, bottom) that are more rarely seen during a race.
Interiors in LFS official cars are sooooooooooooo empty.. 15 years ago was ok, nowadays nope, not at all!
Amazing work man, keep going.

You pretty much said it ! I will surely do some more optimizations after the completion the interior base mesh.

Quote from ACCAkut :

Is the X-shape of the front grill intentional? Really nice believable design, hats off for that

Yes, it's supposed to house a logo texture.

Pretty much finished with the exterior, but there is a slight issue ( major one in fact ), the exterior alone is 36k triangles, so I guess I must compromise in the overall shapes quality , unless I make an UF1-like interior .

Quote from Eclipsed :

Looks nice. Regarding technical specs,you should consider a "basis version" which could fit in the current GTi class - 3rd (and who knows,maybe in time 4th and 5th) car would make racing more interesting in that class. And maybe the top version (same engine,just turbocharged to make it real life like) could fit in TBO class? Aaand of couse a race-spec version could fit in NGT class and some crazy 4WD super version can be used as RX car...
Just throwing out ideas,maybe you're interested to fill some of those.

I might consider all these variations, after I get the necessary motivation boost by at least completing this first version.

Plus I'm worried about the texturing part of the editor, so we'll see how things goes..

Quote from Van Sterberkt :

Looks nice! Are you thinking about a XRG (RWD/saloon car) replacement with matching specs as well?

Why not, if I succeed to properly convert this car.

We'll only be able to simulate/mod from the late 90 early 2000" era, as LFS doesn't support modern complex electronics (yet).

Classic cars should be possible too, but we need old type of road/slick tyres if we want to mod something like an 70' F1 or touring car accurately, unless you could reduce the tyres friction/grip of the default compound which is an approximation but should be ok for the time being.

Quote from Tazka :

Wow that's really nice! You got some talent on car design!

Thanks , I just wish I could bring this project to completion.

I forgot to mention the car dimensions :

Length : 3.90m
width : 1.81m without mirror (2.01m with it)
height : 1.35m
wheelbase : 2.40m~

Last edited by lfsrm, Sat, 6 Nov 2021 01:04.

Hi,

I thought it could be a good idea to start something to kill time before the mod support test patch, so I started a project to test some ideas and why not a practice opportunity since I am not super comfortable in making low res assets.

It's a sort of concept for a newer version or a replacement for XFG, basically it's your typical everyday 2002~2008 small city car with a relatively powerful engine (GTI).

I am still undecided about of the engine configuration or other technical aspects, let's say it will have around 170 hp max (for now).

So here are some pictures of the design, I will probably change/add some details later when I make some progress but this is mostly the final version.

Quote from Federico Testa :

is anything like this then possible to be added for instance to mods? https://racesimstudio.com/gt-ferruccio-55
Of course made from scratch...

Totally douable.

Nice trailer, please consider to add the ball as default autocross object !

Quote from Bose321 :

I believe car manufacturers have rights on the design of a car, so that won't work. Only in China this would be allowed.

But I can imagine it is possible it slips through the cracks if someone checking the upload doesn't pay attention.

That brings up a question, what if an approved mod has to be taken down, for whatever reason, what happens then? Does it stay on our PC's if it has been downloaded and just get removed from the server which won't make it useable anymore?

I think it would be a problem only if the modder is selling the mod, changing the logo and the name should probably be enough.

Quote from ACCAkut :

Not being able to import UVs would be a serious oversight. But looking closer at the videos, I doubt it would be in any way feasible to downgrade these models to work in the new Editor.

I mean, those of us that have worked with Blender/3DSMax for years now would not want to switch to something else.

Well since you can import the base mesh I am somehow more positive about this, as modeling inside the editor is all but intuitive.

Personally I can manage with the editor texturing system, but people should not expect the same result as a fully modern texturing software (eg : heavy use of tillable without any variations, stretched textures etc ).

Quote from ACCAkut :

Ok, I will have to read up on everything in this thread here. As someone very active in another sim's modding scene for close to a decade now, it certainly reads like a great approach, especially the way mods need to be approved before they can be used online. My bunch could be ready rather soon. Apart from the tris count they fit your requirements rather well already. And ofc there's also the RaceAbout GTR resting on my HD for many years now.



Also can't state enough that you should not make it too easy, or else your servers will be flooded with 63485434843 Nissan Silvias ... ehm, "Nussian Sovokias", as in models ripped straight from Forza, Need For Speed and whatever games there are out there.

You have to redo the texturing part (Uv'ing) into the LFS editor, because you can't import the UV data.