Racetracks and Orges
Hey all
So I recently was accepted as a finalist to work on a very exciting game project. The project entails build several true to life race tracks circuits for a pc racing game. I haven't yet received all the details about the game but I wanted to do some advance research on the project and processes involved in creating such large meshes and their renderer.
One of the key features of this project is that they are using the Ogre rendering engine. http://www.ogre3d.org/. I have a little bit of experience producing some height, and detail maps for some stills that were done using this engine but have not done any game models for it.
I am wondering if anyone around here has any knowledge of/ with Ogre in this capacity? And if so, what are some of the things I should be aware of when creating meshes for it?
I don't need to do any textures. I am just creating the meshes and maybe some light uv work, so I don't need to get to indepth on the engine but I do need to be as aware of its processes and pitfalls.
The other area of concern is the size and scale of these models. Obviously I will need to make as many modular pieces as possible and keep it organized on layers and such. But I have not made a mesh of this size and magnitude before. What process or work flow, start to finish, would you use to successfully build this kind of mesh?
If anyone has any insight on either one of these areas I would very grateful.
So I recently was accepted as a finalist to work on a very exciting game project. The project entails build several true to life race tracks circuits for a pc racing game. I haven't yet received all the details about the game but I wanted to do some advance research on the project and processes involved in creating such large meshes and their renderer.
One of the key features of this project is that they are using the Ogre rendering engine. http://www.ogre3d.org/. I have a little bit of experience producing some height, and detail maps for some stills that were done using this engine but have not done any game models for it.
I am wondering if anyone around here has any knowledge of/ with Ogre in this capacity? And if so, what are some of the things I should be aware of when creating meshes for it?
I don't need to do any textures. I am just creating the meshes and maybe some light uv work, so I don't need to get to indepth on the engine but I do need to be as aware of its processes and pitfalls.
The other area of concern is the size and scale of these models. Obviously I will need to make as many modular pieces as possible and keep it organized on layers and such. But I have not made a mesh of this size and magnitude before. What process or work flow, start to finish, would you use to successfully build this kind of mesh?
If anyone has any insight on either one of these areas I would very grateful.
Replies
1) The road surfaces and the walls can be created with splines such that the engine can dynamically adjust the number of segments in the curve in front of you (also UVs are easily automated).
2) You can use the editor to place track side objects without having to create a giant/difficult to update max scene.
@AlecMoody - track editor you say.. Only off-handily familiar with such a thing, how would one go about building one or are there any pre-built ones? Maybe the team already has one since they have a few tracks already built, but building one sounds intriguing to me.
Although might I suggest checking out project aftershock they also use ogre but have built a track editor.
Their blog is probably your best bet for the information you need.
http://liquidrockgames.blogspot.com/
http://www.bobstrackbuilder.net/
its a professional track editor with some useful tools. Though if you want to create something more unique look up some of the many track modeling tutorials.
I would have a look at the Ogre gallery and study some of the race game screenshots to get a feeling of what it can do.
http://www.ogre3d.org/gallery/album/72157613447657691/Featured_Projects.html
I love that track editor you posted renderhjs, watched the videos on it and man does it look like a lot of fun. Wondering how much it is, I am sure it is well beyond my means though since you have to log in and stuff just to get to the pricing.
http://www.bobstrackbuilder.net/faq.aspx
(~ 74.297535 US$, I think it converted it for me since I am living in Australia). Which is imo. rather cheap but I don't know if you really need it though it is kind of super professional and very narrow to just what it does.
But I really like many of the ideas he added to the package - definitely a nice editor inspiration. I myself would probably script some Tools in MaxScripts to build the tracks if it were more than just 1 track.
I am going to d/l their demo and fool around with it and see where I get.
Wasn't there a Polycount member here that worked for Turn 10 on Forza Motorsport 3? He wrote somewhere that they worked initially with Google earth images and later some other references to start shaping out the tracks. Maybe dig that up via a google search using
I haven"t played with it yet but It would also be nice to able to import custom prefabs or meshes (trees, buildings, decoration stuff) - but then again that might be something to do in max or some other tool to finalize it.
For textures name the material the name of where the texture will be located in the game. For textures to show up in my project I had to name the material the relative path where the actual texture was found. If not you have to open the xml file and edit it. There might be other things you have to edit as well, but I forget.
Digital tutors made a tutorial on how to import things from XSI to ogre, and it covered everything including how to set up normal maps.
I will look on digital tutors for that tut.
thx for the info!
and ill look and see what I can find for grabbers, but always leery of adding in extra export/conversion steps.