Messages

Dstien updated the Wiki solving the riddle of how the angular culling bytes (Unknown1 and Unknown2) work - a very cool find, I'd never have the insight of looking for bit-level data structures!

Additionally, after struggling quite a bit I found a way around my issues with rear lights and other details placement. Z-bias was not working correctly for me because I had not realized it is sensitive to polygon order. If you need to overlay details over a body panel with Z-bias and it's not working, ensure that the relevant body panel is placed ahead of the details in the polygon list. Another weird problem I had was with rear wheels - their orientation didn't follow the rest of the car when the camera was rotated. That problem had to do with which coordinate values you use define the different radii of the wheel. Quoting Dstien's (attached) scheme for the wheels, we have:



Points 3 and 6 define the inner radius of the wheel (or the radius of the wheel proper) on its internal and external faces, respectively. They are the points which are off-center in the z-axis with respect to the rest of the wheel. In order to have the wheels rendered properly, the z coordinates of points 3 and 6 must be set according to the table below. "+" indicates the z coordinate must be larger than the rest of the wheel (that is, it must be ahead of), and vice-versa for "-":

Wheel	Point 3	Point 6
Front/Left	+	+
Front/Right	-	+
Back/Right	-	+
Back/Left	+	+

Hopefully that can help CTG with the "minor display errors" and "wheel disorders" he was having on his Lada Laika... 

Ouch, I was busted!  I only got to do my shots yesterday very late in the night - while waiting for the GP to start, and by then I (foolishly? arrogantly?) underestimated the importance of the loopcut, thus preferring to spend my time and energy improving on the other sections of the track. Several minutes later, when I realized a decent cut would save me at least 2 seconds, it was way too late for me to find a reliable way to pull it off... Anyway, congratulations to Mark (OMG, the gap is halved!! ) and Chulk - analysis of this one will be very interesting 

OK, I must not panic now - 4 points is still a manageable gap, and after Rijad I finally learnt to drive the Corvette adequately...

(err... *shivers* [insert anxious-looking smiley])

Round 1 results:

1º Mark L. Rivers - 1:45.70 - +10*
Felipe NEMESIS - 1:45.70 - +10*
3º Daniel DUPLODE - 1:48.50 - +6
4º Marcelo THYASROCK - 1:59.05 - +5

*Drawn pipsqueaks (!!)

Edit: Stupid me, I deleted the old post instead of adding a new reply...

There's a rather odd "bug" on the Wiki. When one clicks on "Save page" button after making some changes, the following message is displayed instead of the usual confirmation page:

A database query syntax error has occurred. This may indicate a bug in the software. The last attempted database query was:

    (SQL query hidden)

from within function "SearchMySQL4::update". MySQL returned error "145: Table './stunts/searchindex' is marked as crashed and should be repaired (localhost)".

The edit, however, is correctly saved, and the page loads normally afterward...

Is there any site for uploading and downloading new cars?

As Dstien said, the demand will eventually call for it - for instance, the recent improvements in Stressed coupled with Zak's new car contest means we'll probably have at least four new or vastly overhauled cars by November 30th 

(sorry for asking too much but this topic is more than interesting!  )

Yeah, it is well on the way to #5 spot on number of posts... 

Now Dstien, I have a quick feature request for Stressed: could you change the 3D shape exporting function so wheels are exported as hexagons and spheres as lines? That way the information about which vertexes were connected to form the special shapes wouldn't be lost while working with the .OBJ on an external editor, and when we would import the shape back we would just need to change back the primitive types to wheel or sphere.

Here is the current situation: bodywork is done, color set will be changed. I still see some minor display errors in the game and it also has some wheels disorder. Dashboard edition is coming soon and the last step will be CarBlaster...

Really nice work, CTG! I need to deal with some of those "display errors" on the Skyline too, which in my case amount to lamps and details which do not show from all angles and such stuff (both of us will probably need to understand better the flags and unknowns of the 3D shape).

The Stressed view is promising, I miss only the 3D bumpers. According to the game pics bodywork is a bit too long and the rear lamps are overlapping with other elements.

That is a curious point: the shape always looks shorter/taller than it actually is when editing on Stressed or Anim8or, so CTG probably should overcompensate the height a bit. That left me quite puzzled while working on the Skyline (using near-exact coordinates grabbed from those 2D models), as the car looked way more boxy than it should on Stressed, but in game it looks almost perfect.

I'm going to modify it to a mediorce speed car (top speed at about 170 mph, hopefully without the Audi/Lancia fast driving bug)

You'll probably need a low-revving engine then (along the lines of Carrera or LM002), as the fast driving bug seems to arise when aerodynamic drag gets temporarily turned off while the car is mid-air, thus allowing it to reach higher revs/speed than supposed at the top gear. With a lower rpm range (which probably makes sense for your car anyway) the effect will be less pronounced. And I'll be glad to help should you need any tips while dealing with CarBlaster 

Nice to see you around again, man   

[Anim8or]

Can you recommend a good 3d shaping tool?

That was exactly the topic I'd post about... Blender is way more powerful a software than we need, and takes long to learn, so I looked for an alternative, and found a pretty good one: Anim8or. Once you reach the site, look for the latest preview version (0.97d), as it has some tools useful for Stunts editors which are absent from the latest stable version (0.95). Why Anim8or is so appropriate?

• Freeware
• Runs on Windows, and on Wine too
• Imports and exports .OBJ files neatly
• Quick to learn - just a few glances at the manual available on the site were needed to get me started
• Allows for easy edition of vertex coordinates, so we can input exact integer coordinates (which in turn can be gathered from those 2D models CTG provided on the other thread... details to follow later)
• No need to start from scratch, as morphing an existing car into a new model is rather simple once you get the hang of it
• Supports material file (.mtl) importing alongside with the .OBJ files one can make with Stressed. By importing the .mtl file Dstien provided us you'll at the very least have a pretty nice preview of the final render.
  

There are a few issues you'll have to prepare dealing with, but all of them are (relatively) minor:

• As of now, I haven't found out a way to preserve wheel shapes, as it seems the program can't parse >4-gons (so only the vertexes remain). The raw solution to that would be adding the wheels with Stressed or editing the .OBJ directly after the shape is ready.
• If you enter integer values, Anim8or will export them without adding decimal points, which in turn will make Stressed fail to import the resulting .OBJ (as it expects input with decimal points). The current workaround to that is to use a macro-capable text editor (like Vim) to put the decimal points back automatically.

Anyway, by using Anim8or I made very quick progress with the Skyline car1 shape, created taking the Corvette as basis. Attached you have screenshots of Anim8or in action and of my half-finished Skyline under Stressed (only y and z axis dimensions are correct, wheels are obviously not inserted, etc.). When the shape is closer to completion and I have the small issues fully solved I'll post the detailed procedure I'm using to achieve those results.

CAn we create custom paint jobs? I mean with drawings or names or anything like that?

In principle, we can - the only limits are number of vertexes and polygons and, depending on which tools we use, .OBJ import/export capabilities. Detailed writings or logos might be a bit hard, but if you can provide the workarounds, sky is the limit. 

PS1.: It seems there's another SVN update for Stressed, I'm going to catch it 
PS2.: Dstien/Zak, could you please make this topic a sticky?

[Congratulations, overlord!]

Bitersweet taste for me after this race - when I manage to finish ahead of Ayrton (first time ever!!) and BJ on the Indy race I get beaten in the duel that actually matters... hats off to CTG for his three round wins - the fact it didn't propelled him any further than bronze only shows how tight those duels were. Overall, even if I failed to either reach a podium or defeat one of the ZakStunts champions, I feel very satisfied in having been part of such a contest at the highest level - and again Bonzai Joe shows all of his supreme class by taking the trophy home. Congratulations, overlord! 

Great news!  although I'll only start racing for real in a week or so (need to focus on FTT#8 and find the way on Z88 first...)

Mouse picking is implemented in SVN, it makes skinning a breeze. I'll make new Win32 build next time I boot into Windows. The vertex list is a fixed structure whose size depends on the selected primitive type. I guess I could make it more flexible, but you guys should really use a real modelling tool and use stressed only to finalize the shape and paint-jobs.

I just updated by SVN, and mouse picking is really a godsend  As for the vertex list remarks, there is another relevant characteristic of Stressed 3D editor associated to that issue: when you pick a polygon and edit one of its vertex coordinates, what Stressed actually does is to create a new vertex and replace the original one in the chosen polygon, instead of updating the old vertex position. Not only that makes it necessary to adjust all adjacent polygons to displace a vertex, it also means large-scale edition of complex 3D shapes with ~200 vertexes (some of the more detailed car0 shapes, like Corvette and Audi, have about that number IIRC) is probably impossible under Stressed. And while modifying the program to displace vertexes instead of cloning them would be really useful, it probably calls for a significant rewrite... so for the time being major 3D modeling work is indeed better done at another tool (I must try and learn some Blender once and for all...)

When you export the unknown culling values are discarded. When importing all bits are set. Maybe it helps to set these correctly? I think I've figured out roughly how the unknowns works, and stressed should recalculate these values automatically once implemented.

Well, I'll keep my current custom GT3 on hold until that gets implemented for further testing then - thanks 

Zak: I suggest to open a new subforum for game editions, I think it deserves - and there will be plenty of new car projects soon! 

I second that - this thread will be overflowing with previews, screen shots and announcements very soon (It's already #9 on "Most Replies" stats ) With a separate space for editing projects, this topic can be reserved for updates on Stressed and further hacking breakthroughs.

After an hour of edition I was fed up with coordinates, so here is the first fragment of Lada VAZ 2105 (of course the colors will be modified if the bodywork is okay for Stunts)!

Ha, I know this car! A number of those funny-looking boxy sedans were imported to Brazil in the early 90's under the name "Lada Laika" 

How I would like to drive in DOSBox at 20000 cycles....!     Over 9000 I have a drastical reduction of fluideness... 

Yes, indeed I'll have to rework the GT3 from ground up staring from car1 in order to make it feasible... BTW, 9000 cycles - I never managed to set up DOSBox perfectly on my old computer below 10000 cycles. Mark, could you please upload your dosbox.conf to the DOSBox Wiki article? Looks like it will be quite useful 

In a short try, I exported my car0 to .OBJ file and then imported back to car1. It worked - but with a huge size car on the track (16x bigger than expected). How to decrease the values of the coordinates without re-writing every single numbers manually?

Actually, it's exactly 20x bigger than expected - if you check the vertex list you'll see all numbers there are divisible by 20. The shortest solution to rescale the car0, which I used for my GT3 tests, is to open the exported .OBJ (it's just a plain text archive), copy the vertex cordinates table to Excel (in the .OBJ, they are the lines starting with v), divide all values by 20 there, then copy the new coordinates back to the .OBJ and finally import it back into stressed.

What about the the rear lamps when braking?

My (unproven) theory to explain the rear lamps is that they are painted with specific materials (mostly #45, but also #12 and #14 for GTO) so that the game knows it needs to lit them up (that is, change to another shade of red, likely #47) under braking. Maybe we should paint the car body as a whole with #45 and check whether it glows when braking... Anyway, the instruction to make the lamps glow is, in all likelihood, hard coded.

And nice Lada Niva there, CTG! For the historical record, it is the first new car-shaped model built from scratch...

I'm not sure to have understood entirely your comment, Duplode, so I need a clarify.
1) Are you saying that a high number of polygons for car0 (showroom) affects the fluidness of the game?
2) Are cycles you talking the value that appears on the window bar of DOSBox?

1) Not really - what I did was to downscale 1:20 the 'Vette car0 model in order to use it as car1, so we could have a more detailed car1 shape. car0 is never used while racing.
2) Yes, I meant that value. I lowered it progressively from 20000 (the default value I use) to evaluate the effects on slower computers (which usually require 10000-14000 cycles for fluid framerates).

I studied NSX and Indy to try to find a "relation" of their settings and the powergear, and I found nothing clear. It seems the game engine has more than 1 way to produce powergear bug effect.
I don't know the mass and drag coef, I must check at home (I'm at my job right now).
As far as I remember, I decreased the car mass and the brake effect (to implement a bigger inertia), while I increased the aerodynamic resistance a little. I reduced the grip too.

I asked about mass and drag because, back when I was doing experiments for the Skyline, I noticed that it appears that some mass/drag combinations can trigger powergear and anti-powergear effects. I tried to formulate a theory, which you can find here. It sort of worked in about half of the cases, and with a bit of luck it might lead to an adequate set of parameters...

Just a little help for car designing, "blueprints" of many-many cars are available here: http://carblueprints.narod.ru/

That's really helpful, thanks! I was wondering about using Gran Turismo screenshots as basis for the Skyline model when I get to do it, but this can make it much easier