WIP: Bostwick MX + Lidar tutorial

[Rom]

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

[Resolute Kraken]

Nice project!  Thanks for the info on your workflow - would be cool to get a quick tutorial on doing the Lidar workflow someday.

[Rom]

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

[MXB17]

Very cool project, I found quite a bit of lidar data on tracks and wanted to do what you had done. Found some of Tomacs ranch and Mountain view in Sandy OR and was thinking this would be a cool way of getting Heightmap data in game. If you get around to making a tutorial of your process that would be awesome, think for some folks might make it quicker on track building and open some new possibilities. Very cool seeing this project.

[Rom]

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

[Rom]

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

[Resolute Kraken]

Thanks for the Lidar tutorial!