I'm interested in this task of matching a reference image.

I think the approach is to start by aligning the reference image with the edge of the visible tyre.

The way I have done this, in order to reduce the number of flexible tyre triangles (which are very expensive as they are downloaded to the GPU every frame) I have started the visible tyre at a level which is the same as the outer diameter of the wheel rim. Not the "rim diameter" but total diameter of the wheel, including the "rim flange" that holds the tyre on.

So you can actually see that in the spoke editor if you go to "wire" view. You could align the reference image so the outer part of the rim is just visible inside the visible part of the tyre.

I understand there appears to be no simple way to continue to align the various "rings" of the rim with a reference image. Maybe there should be an equivalent of "wireframe" for the rim object.

I don't know if my rambling text can be followed. But this may be good stuff to include if I make a video.

To illustrate what I am trying to say, here is the reference image aligned so the wheel rim is *just* visible inside the LFS tyre.

I did find this hard (and it's probably not accurate) because the reference image is so dark, and the tyre cannot be viewed as a wireframe.
[EDIT actually my alignment is quite bad, I start to get better results by repeatedly pressing "show wheels"]
[EDIT2: added a second attempt. This is tricky, especially with a black wheel!]

I'm wondering what could help, if the tyre and the rim could have a "wireframe" image option for 2D views, in the rim editor and the spoke editor? That wireframe view would appear simply as circles, for the LFS tyre and the user defined rim points.

Quote from Scawen :

I'm wondering what could help, if the tyre and the rim could have a "wireframe" image option for 2D views, in the rim editor and the spoke editor? That wireframe view would appear simply as circles, for the LFS tyre and the user defined rim points.

Not sure I would use that, I use the reference mostly in blender to accurately model it, and then I need it in the rim editor, but I don't know how to use it because it's a side view in a cut. And not so much the reference itself as the visibility of the spoke mesh, as I've shown in a pic, it would help more. But maybe not worth spending time on it if it's complex to develop, and I've kind of learned in rim editor to compare result to the rim in vihicle editor view and it works out pretty well, it's a matter of getting used to it.

The trick is to get the right size spokes, and if you have found the dimensions from the reference it will help a lot, I did not find them, so I had to sweat a little bit.

P.S. The same picture shows my progress on getting closer to a more correct rim shape. I reduced the diameter of the spokes and now it's better. And it's still pretty close to the reference.

Quote from Aleksandr_124rus :

The trick is to get the right size spokes, and if you have found the dimensions from the reference it will help a lot, I did not find them, so I had to sweat a little bit.

One thing is that the flange height is 17mm (for cars - for bikes it is 14mm).

These are based on real flange specifications and real flanges will be about the same as that plus or minus 1mm. That is for road cars and bikes, by the way. My investigations are not yet complete for racing cars, lorries, buses, tractors.

So if you cannot measure the real wheel but you know its specification then the calculation is like this:

Suppose we want to find the OUTER RADIUS of a wheel rim.

Wheel rim diameter is X inches.
Wheel rim radius is X * 12.7 mm.
Add rim flange 17 mm.

So, if you know the rim diameter X inches:

CAR: Outer radius of wheel including flange: X * 12.7 + 17 (mm)

BIKE: Outer radius of wheel including flange: X * 12.7 + 14 (mm)

I cannot really speak fluently about this, also I'm kinda lost about new features that added recently on 7E, so pardon if my speaks kinda OOT from this thread

but imho, based on 1600 tris limit rules, I would say, I didnt have problem with that except when it comes to very complex rims, i.e. BBS rims (for someone who willing to make it from scratch), 1600 tris definitely cant really make a good visual to it (image attached)

I would say, 3200 (doubled from original limit) would do, and probably didnt really hit much to performance (i.e. lagging when somebody out from pit), but you might be consider it when new physics and graphic was updated already

I think problem like lagging when somebody left the pit are because LFS still run on single-threading CPU ? hope it might be sorted when multi-threading CPU, so you could adds more limits later on the new system

Quote from ivancsx :

I think problem like lagging when somebody left the pit are because LFS still run on single-threading CPU ? hope it might be sorted when multi-threading CPU, so you could adds more limits later on the new system

But then the CPU might be even busier with the new 1000Hz physics / graphics. Probably no one knows until the new version it's released as test patch. And if everything runs smooth, then there maybe is a chance for raising the limits.

I've updated my mods rims - they look good enough with the only downside that they are now single sided. I can try to add a very simplified version for the back side, but I'm gonna need to reduce the tris even more.

I understand that type of rim can present a different challenge, but I would like to understand more. So if I may ask some questions / propose suggestions and you could explain if they may be reasonable, difficult or impossible?

Is it possible to make the rim part using the rim editor, or is there a problem with material types or some other problem? I mean, do the black parts and the silver parts need a different material?

If they use the same material but only the colour is different, then I think the rim parts could be made in the rim editor using colours and smoothing groups. By careful alignment I wonder if they could then appear to merge seamlessly into the spoke part? Or does that not work out?

For some of the rims types I've managed to merge it seamlessly into the spoke part.
But for other types is just acceptable.

In Rim Editor I'm only missing that I can't choose the materials - to match the chrome/shine/matte parts of the spokes.

I don't have an answer about the materials at this time, or seamless merging, but I want to comment about the wheels on the left (in the first 3 screenshots):

I can see the 30-around polygons of the tyre. But the rim provides 60 around which should look smooth, like the wheels in the two screenshots on the right. If the rim would protrude as it should - covering the steel rim profile, as described above - then you shouldn't see the tyre polygons at all.

But the wheels on the right look odd as well because you should be able to see the edge of the rim flange. That wheel has the look of an old-style LFS wheel from before the recent updates.

I'm not getting the message across very well so far, that the rim cross section needs to exceed the "steel rim" guide profile shown in yellow in the rim editor. I've done quite a bit of studying of wheels to produce the new system, but I have not yet made enough effort to explain it, and the thinking behind the new rim editor and how to make realistic rims.

Some examples of following (and always exceeding) the guide in different ways:

Steel rim style:


Alloy example 1:


Alloy example 2:

Thx for tutorial, For my spoke, this is only square without one face, same group and it make the job. The wing nut need to be another object i guess?

Quote from Scawen :

But the wheels on the right look odd as well because you should be able to see the edge of the rim flange. That wheel has the look of an old-style LFS wheel from before the recent updates

It's because I don't like that shiny edge sticking out of the tyre, I prefer a cleaner look with a rim protector, but with that option set to YES, the tyre polygons are always visible (attached RB4 screenshot).

Now I do understand how to do it properly, my only issue is that "horizontal line" is shiny and there is no option to make it matte. In the first attached shot I've added this horizontal line in the spoke editor as matte and it looks cleaner.

EDIT: added Hirochi rim screenshot from BeamNG, which is done as it should be (with the exception of the shine line ). Maybe that's down to preference (irl too I guess), I've seen (mostly online) "messy" rim/tyre situation and also a very clean combinations (latest shots).

I'm pretty proud of the result

@R_evolution, maybe you can modify a specific texture with spoke editor. After that, maybe you can attach surface at the texture in rim editor with the same name?

I did have a go on BBs rims it's for sure very difficult and time consuming but if you do it properly it works and just about the limit. so I can confirm it's possible but I don't think many people can do it easily

Quote from NENE87 :

@R_evolution, maybe you can modify a specific texture with spoke editor. After that, maybe you can attach surface at the texture in rim editor with the same name?

I've tried, but matte doesn't work, chrome sometimes is working, but not always (not sure why).

EDIT: Now I'm thinking wouldn't be better if the spoke and rim editor are merged into one 'wheel' editor? Some time after the big update of course. This will probably make it much more easier for modders I think.

Some thoughts...

First 2 paragraphs are just "history of last few days" you can ignore and go to "Summary of some issues" below.

1) Although I didn't want to get involved with mods again this month, I ended up falling into it when we discovered the exploits some people were using. I'm not talking about moderate amounts, but some ugly abuses of the system. In conjunction with reports of pit-out glitches, it was important to act. We need some sense in the mods. I became aware of some terrible low quality mods, for example: (a) massively high polygon model, with stripped out main config to pass the export check (b) wheels with over 10,000 triangles. So we had to do something and the obvious starting point was to enforce the limits that have always been there and are allowed in the current editor.

2) Discussion, participation and cooperation on this thread has done at least two positive things (a) increased awareness of the Rim Editor that has improved a lot since the older version and (b) increased my understanding of some of the limitations of the Spoke Editor / Rim Editor combination (especially when using the proper limits).

Summary of some issues and possible solutions, future and present:

1) The Rim Editor suffers from lack of material selection. This isn't a problem for most rim designs but there are still a lot of rim designs for which this is a serious limitation. Rims use the first mapping in the Spoke Editor, for their texture and material settings. A mapping selector could be added in an incompatible version at some point, but that is not desirable at this time.

2) In cases where Rim Editor does not provide enough flexibility, Spoke Editor's limitation of 1600 triangles can be a problem. Rim editor actually allows 22 surfaces * 60 around * 2 triangles per quad = 2640 triangles. Today I have been thinking that the triangle budget could be shared between rim and spoke object, a total of 2640 + 1600 = 4240 triangles per wheel.

3) This budget sharing suggestion allows an empty rim object and up to 4240 in the spoke object if that is the way you prefer to do it but this has a limitation that the "steel rim guide" (yellow in rim editor) cannot be seen in the spoke editor. This is a problem in my opinion because in the real world, wheels of a certain specification must have a rim flange in the right place and the right size. This is necessary so that different manufacturers' tyres can be mounted on different manufacturers' wheels. The shape of the rim flange (on the inside, where it meets the tyre) is specified by standards organisations such as ETRTO. Road cars use a "J Rim Profile" in case you want to read about it (though information is scarce). This is not easy to enforce properly in a freehand editor. I've been wondering about a 3 dimensional version of the rim guide that is currently visible in the spoke editor, for the spoke editor, showing in a bright colour the minimum amount of material that you should cover to produce a realistic rim for the given wheel dimensions.

4) Additionally the editor needs to check limits properly before export to avoid confusion when uploading. I don't see it as a big deal to release an editor test patch if the output is fully compatible with the public version of LFS.

Quote from Scawen :

[whole post]

That would be just amazing.

Quote from Scawen :

"..(a) massively high polygon model, with stripped out main config to pass the export check"..

I felt guilty because since you've made "hub object" things, I put selectable rims via config, just for people to select their own rims, and those rims I put are massive amount of tris

Should I chop down my mods qualities (on my recent mods) just to make sure the tris with all config combined arent exceeding 65536? Or maybe I misunderstood something about this

I just want to make sure I didnt do something wrong against the rule, that's why I need to clarify this since you've mentioned it

=========

For the wheels that exceeding 1600 tris limit on some of my mods, I'll take care and probably rebuild that so it's under limit, hope it's still look good with ultra low poly model

Quote from ivancsx :

I felt guilty because since you've made "hub object" things, I put selectable rims via config, just for people to select their own rims, and those rims I put are massive amount of tris

Should I chop down my mods qualities (on my recent mods) just to make sure the tris with all config combined arent exceeding 65536? Or maybe I misunderstood something about this

As the hub objects are subobjects, they are counted as part of the main object so they are counted in the 65536 for the main object.

If you go in the modeller and select the configurations in turn, you can see the total triangles for each configuration and it goes red if you are over 65536. If any configuration is over 65536 our system will now reject the mod after upload.

So hub objects can be used as extra detail for wheels but they consume triangle budget from the main object rather than the wheels. Also note that hub objects do not benefit from the special spoke and rim lighting system that shading depending on the angle and depth inside the wheel.

Quote from ivancsx :

but imho, based on 1600 tris limit rules, I would say, I didnt have problem with that except when it comes to very complex rims, i.e. BBS rims (for someone who willing to make it from scratch), 1600 tris definitely cant really make a good visual to it (image attached)

and that "mesh" styled wheels like BBS are generally compatible with turbofans/aerocaps so that at least requires one more 1600 again imo. (in the case if putting them as hub objects exceeds 65536 tri)

Following on from what I suggested yesterday, this morning I've coded this 3D Rim Guide that is visible in the Spoke Editor.

It represents a minimum rim (like a steel rim) that should be covered to create a realistic rim.

New LFS Editor 0.7E2:

Spoke and Rim limits:

New triangle budget of 4240 is shared between Rim and Spoke objects
- rim objects produced in rim editor are convenient for most rims
- each surface of the rim object contains 120 triangles
- some wheels may be built entirely as a spoke object

Spoke editor:

A wireframe of the tyre and rim are shown in "wire" view mode
A new 3D rim guide is included, representing a minimum wheel rim
- the shape is similar to the rim flange of a thin steel rim
- alloy rims should exceed the guide as they are thicker

When exporting for upload:

Rim and spoke limits are checked when you export the model
Model limits are checked in all configurations

https://www.lfs.net/forum/thread/106792