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Ok, I have added a tutorial at the bottom of post. This is the second time I do some editing, this was quite painfull, so yeah not the most greatest video you'll see :p

Thanks ! It was a first time for me too. It is actually pretty easy. Hopefully I'll make a decent tutorial

Sure, I'll make one next week if you want.

[Update]

Hi !

I wanted to try building a track as it was a good opportunity for me to work with some LIDAR data.
It took quite a bit more time than I expected so I thought I might as well give you a few usefull info and share it even thought it is missing a couple of things (collisions, race not tested, props to give more life, textures that look too flat like the leaves).

Since I don't really know anything about bikes in general (just enjoying simulation games) I basically randomly took a track that was not done or being done and had a decent LIDAR point cloud. So probably not the greatest track... I let you the judge of that.



I probably have a less common workflow ( at least from watching some tutorials ) I can roughly tell you how I made the track as some of you might find something usefull in there. Feel free to ask for more details.

Here is a quick summary of how I did it:

-First to get some good LIDAR data the US is probably your best bet AFAIK.
I used this website LidarExplorer. It is pretty good because you can get an overlay over the map showing where there is LIDAR data and at which precision.

-Once you have your LIDAR point cloud I used CloudCompare, which is open source, to crop the point cloud to around the track and generate a mesh from it.

- My main 3D package nowadays is Houdini so I did most of the things in there. Cleaning a bit the mesh from CloudCompare like fusing close points to smooth things a bit and pruning floating trees. I got the heightfield by projecting it over the mesh and from there all I had to do is erase things like buildings or trees, adding a bit of detail on the tracks like racing lines, creating the texture masks and scattering my props. It is mostly procedural apart from delimiting the mask areas using curves.

For the trees I used Simplygon (free license for individuals), which is popular in the gaming industry, to build billboard cloud. For more info on this: https://documentation.simplygon.com/SimplygonSDK_9.1.34800.0/concepts/impostor.html#billboard-cloud.
Although they look better than standard billboards I fill like they still appear a bit flat right now, probably should bake some AO.


On mxb side I used Resolute Kraken's tool which was helpfull to not get an headache with all those files.

I think that's pretty much it. What takes times is understanding how to get things working for the game and all the builds you have to do because your textures looks bad in game :p. Also it takes less than an hour to get your LIDAR track as an heightfield once you know how to do things.

Hopefully you found some new stuff to explore


Here is the link: https://mega.nz/file/cpxA1TZZ#p2SU7vg4-JyLFRWRi7wSdR1eehXj15lVe7vu-xrl8MY

Update: Here a small tutorial https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKxZrXQN0pA

Yeah, you are right "Build ALL" does not take much more time.
Thanks for your tool btw, helps a lot!

I saw the explanations both of you provided. My question regarding thickness was maybe more about good practice in the end. Because at my understanding level it seems there is 2 ways to achieve the same thing and maybe one is less error prone or more performance friendly than the other.


In my case I wanted to do per material variations. For example two types of grass: dry grass and normal grass (could be more variations). They basically occupy the same material layer but requires two different texture layers.

From my understanding you could go with 2 materials layers,  use the mask for the dry grass on one material layer and for the other layer the normal grass mask.
OR you could have 1 material layer for which the mask is the sum of both the dry and normal grass. The thing is that it uses one more texture for that material mask and you have to be sure that the sum of both textures' mask is equal to one( I guess that also relevant for the first option so you don't layer grass on top of grass).
So one way uses more textures for the combined masks but requires less material layers, require more memory but be more performant on the game engine ?

That s why I am a bit confused and would have liked a more in depth explanation

Thanks anyway for your time guys.

Thanks again for answering my post TFC , I have added edited my post to include those informations. But yeah I forgot to update the collision part.
I use Resolute Kraken tool. I forgot to click on Build TRH :p

You were right Thanks !

Concerning my questions on thickness, what is the benefit of having it on the texture side as well ? Seems like a headache if you have let say 10 textures layers for a lot a texture variations but only 2 materials. 

Hi there !

I have a bit of a problem. While testing my track I found out that the wheels do not touch the ground as you can see in the attached image. Did you encounter that problem ?

I guess it might be related to the thickness which I find confusing.
Why is there a thickness for both the textures and the materials ? What does it do if you have a total amount of textures thickness different than the total amount of materials ?

Here are my .hmf and .tht files for which I have removed unrelevant informations.
Track.hmf

Code Select Expand

samples_x = 2049
samples_z = 2049

data = bostwick creek.raw

size_x = 475
size_z = 475
scale = 9

num_layers = 5


layer0
{
}

layer1
{
thickness = 0.2
}

layer2
{
mask = Masks/soilTop.tga
thickness = 0.1
}

layer3
{
mask = Masks/mask_grass.tga
thickness = 0.01

}

layer4
{
mask = Masks/mask_grass_dry.tga  <- if you sum mask_grass and mask_grass_dry it does not go over 1 ( or 255 )
thickness = 0.01
}


track.tht

Code Select Expand

samples_x = 2049
samples_z = 2049

data = bostwick creek.raw

size_x = 475
size_z = 475
scale = 9

num_material_layers = 4

material_layer0
{
material = compact soil
}

material_layer1
{
material = soil
thickness = 0.2
}

material_layer2
{
material = soft soil
thickness = 0.1
mask = Masks/soilTop.tga
}

material_layer3
{
material = grass
thickness = 0.01
mask = Masks/maskGrass.tga
}

In my understanding I have .31m of thickness so should be good no ?
Any ideas ?

Thanks for your time

hey, thanks for answering !


Yeah there was not the mesh for sure.
Well 700 mb is big but if you assume the geometry and the textures in the .edf are duplicated for each scene that gives:
127 trees * 4.7 mb = 596 mb

I guess I'll have to have way less 3d trees :/
That s too bad cause it seems I did not got fps loss.

Hopefully in the future this feature will be added, at least to optimize file size and loading times

Hi there !

Wanted to replicate a track for fun so I could play a bit with LIDAR data and see what kind of result we could get in-game.
Right now I have the heightmap done and wanted to put some trees to get something on the map.

First thing I tried was to export my 100+ trees but after 15 mins, fbx2edf was still not done so I tried to be more clever and instead exported only one tree but instead added a scene entry per tree in the .hmf. In my mind it would have embedded only one tree model in the map resulting in a low file size.

But what I got is a 700 mb file instead of a 100mb 

So my question am I doing something wrong ? Is there no instancing support in the game ?

Thanks for your time