TFC's Track Creation Tutorials

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

No GH release date yet :p

Do you need the bulldozer tool Phil? That's what I use to make paths. 0 edge width, always make it wider than you want as it's easier to remove than add.

[philiaN]

https://www.twitch.tv/philian89/v/63660408

Here you can see how it looks at the moment. That track is completly in a hang.  This is what i mean with terraforming

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

Sorry mate you've lost me.. In a hang?

[philiaN]

Wrong word in a slope/hill ? that should be the word

80% of the track path should be flat, how i do this?

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

Ah, as in your tracks on a slope, tilted? You have plenty of tools that can help, try the raise brush, something like 5% strength and make it big, then apply it along the lower side of the track edge, you can do the same with the lower brush on the raised side.

Some of this stuff just takes practice, have a play around with the tools and see what works, tweak the settings see what they do, but remember L3DT isn't for everyone. Don't feel like you have to use it if you don't like it

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

Wow that does sound good.. Looking forward to seeing it!

[BadStar]

Speaking of trees, bushes, minor objects... im not an object maker but am making a terrain that could use some trees, bushes, bolders.. any ideas for free tree objects or anything??

I can delete this soon if its off topic, let me know

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

I don't touch trees much, had no luck getting the alpha sort order to work properly so all my trees end up with white halos around the texture.. No good

[GDUBMX]

wow

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

If it delivers I think it will be a must have!

[philiaN]

Hey Fats,
i need your help again  if you add jumps in psp/gimp do you have to smooth the complete track again in l3dt? its really annoying i think i learned so much in the last couple of weeks that i can finally make a replica track, but the workflow with gimp and l3dt is so frustrating. Do you have any tips? i tried to work with .raw in photoshop, but its protected.

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

Yes unfortunately you do have to smooth once importing an image. I'm no expert on the .raw file type but I've always figured it's because a .raw isn't processed like a bmp, tga, jpg etc.. It can hold so much more data as a .raw is more like a digital negative. So where a gradient might look great in Gimp and complete, the raw might make finer use of the black to white range.*

If I make a sx track in gimp, I don't soften or blur / blend the edges of the track - leave them blocky and flat. In L3DT I just run a quick smooth brush over them each time I want to test.

You can also do 'heightmap smooth' or something from the operations menu... Curvature or Gradient. I've used both on bigger worlds, increasing the max iterations gives you more smooth but does bring it's own artifacts.

This is mainly why on national tracks I do the whole thing in L3DT.

* this is purely an educated guess. I've never looked in to it.

[philiaN]

Yeah, i think my biggest problem is that my base heightmap is a 8bit png - so i will start (again) from the beginning and will save as a 16bit png with gimp 2.9

[Mace-x]

Fats, i have a issue with l3dt.
if i import my heightmap.raw it doesnt read it right, when i convert it to .png i can import it and work on it but it´s stepped like this.


Any tips?
to export it is fine, works great.
i´m digging the terramodeling tools, if it had a better viewport performance would be a great program.

[𝖙𝖋𝖈]

The stepping issue is what I was talking about in my last post.

What happens when you import your heightmap.raw? Should work OK, what settings to you enter when you import it? What goes wrong?