The Cossie.

[C14ru5]

I've recently acquired a good relationship to the Racer/rFactor plugin developer FSR, and by helping him with engine sounds for his in-development car, I've also been granted access to his source files.

Only a very large technical obstacle: He works inside ZModeler, which only can export to .3ds, which Wings3D seems to dislike (a few edges get lost in translation, rendering the UV mapping useless). Blender seems to open the .3ds file just fine, but I have yet to learn that application.
At the moment I'm not asking for any help in particular, but I might very well do so in a post later on.

Anyway, a teaser picture:



Estimated release date? No idea.

[DonaemouS]

ummh is her a muscle car?

from rear spoiler she remember me the old ford escort... but i know it isnt...

[NoNameBrand]

Looks great!

You could import the .3ds, into blender and then export a .obj for Wings and see if that works any better.

[djpimley]

Ford Sierra RS Cosworth

This is the car English school boys in the 80s had dreams about.

[DonaemouS]

I thought that one:

[C14ru5]

Yes, it's the Ford Sierra Cosworth RS500 from 1987 (notice the rectangular headlights and the double lip rear wing). Three versions will be made: Road, race (as in the BTCC) and rallycross.

Thanks NNB, using Blender to export to .obj does the trick. Well almost. Wings doesn't like the fact that the model is full of holes, and just adds faces as it sees fit. I guess the best way for me to proceed will be to properly learn Blender and use it to create a uniform model with no holes in it. It's tutorial reading time...

Since I'm going to have to learn Blender, I guess it's time for some questions, even though I know these have been answered elsewhere:

1) I recall there being problems with certain versions of Blender. Any opinions about what version I should be using?

2) I can't seem to find the scale setting for the Blender Units, so when exporting my model to .obj, I can't see it inside Model Importer because it probably is 100x too small. When I imported my .3ds model, I remember there was a "scale down by 10 until size constraint [10]", which I left on at the time. Where and when do I set the export scale, or must I work around it by scaling my model up by 100?

[djpimley]

1) I recall there being problems with certain versions of Blender. Any opinions about what version I should be using?

2) I can't seem to find the scale setting for the Blender Units

1) I am using 2.45. Kenners and others are using 2.48 without incident. The difference is that in 2.48 the UV mapping tool has been incorporated into the edit tool.

2) Blender doesn't have "units" like Wings3D does - it uses centimetres as its base unit and that's that. When you import an OBJ there is a "clamp scale" option that will attempt to limit the scale of the model. Set this to zero to disable it and the model will be imported without interference.

[C14ru5]

Thanks, djpimley. Using 2.48, I scaled my model back up to proper size. This is all going too smoothly at the moment.

A quick and dirty result:


Why dirty? About 9000 polygons and full of holes. That's why.

Next up: Try to join the 8 different wafer-thin objects this model is made of. I believe that is the right thing to do, for some reason.
Question: Let's say I go ahead and join the 'Body' and 'Windows' objects. Since both objects have vertices in the same positions along the object borders, do you know if those shared vertices are automatically merged when I join the two objects? Or is that nothing to worry about?

[NoNameBrand]

Thanks NNB, using Blender to export to .obj does the trick. Well almost. Wings doesn't like the fact that the model is full of holes, and just adds faces as it sees fit. I guess the best way for me to proceed will be to properly learn Blender and use it to create a uniform model with no holes in it. It's tutorial reading time...

The added faces typically have the 'hole' material assigned. Hit tab for a rendered preview. If it were me, I'd just make a new model, but I'm possibly crazy.

[C14ru5]

Making a new model may turn out to be the best solution in the end. I'm trying this approach first - hopefully that will save me from having to re-make the 10 beautiful skins that I have.

[djpimley]

Since both objects have vertices in the same positions along the object borders, do you know if those shared vertices are automatically merged when I join the two objects?

The vertices that are already separate will not be merged, they will just co-exist in the exact same coordinates. If you want to merge overlapping vertices then in edit mode highlight a region you want to work on (or the whole model) and hit W then select "Remove Doubles" - this will merge overlapping vertices.

[DonaemouS]

Why dirty? About 9000 polygons and full of holes. That's why.

You need to half the polygons counts, at least. 9000, with the Redline engine, is just killing.

[C14ru5]

Yes, reducing the amount of polygons is my main obstacle. The way I see it, there are several paths that I can take from here:

Plan A consists of deleting non-critical vertices, and being careful not to add a single vertex. (By removing the windscreen wipers and some underside details, I've already taken care of 2500 triangles!) I was afraid this would distort the UV mapping, but so far there has been very little distortion to speak of. I'm not sure how easy it will be when I move into the more complex areas, though.

Plan B is to make a new model from scratch, imitating this high-poly model to the best of my ability. Then, cut the seams in exactly the same way, and position the UV mapping just like in the original. I think it may work as long as each seam has exactly the same amount of vertices in the same spots, but a small-scale test is necessary before I try this method. I have my doubts...

Plan C is to re-make both model and textures. Bleh.

Well, at least this gives me time to make a pretty good .car file

[C14ru5]

Things are progressing quite nicely, the shadow model that I modeled from scratch is complete, and I have written a .car for the road version that I'm quite happy with. I'll post a development preview soon. I'm not rushing this, as I still have to wait for my co-developer to finish his part of the project.

The main reason I'm writing this post, is to share a slightly humorous and could-be frustrating fact about Blender:

So, I'm deleting lots of vertices one at a time. That's "Press X, click appropriate item to delete in the pop-up menu under the mouse pointer". After having done that more than once, Blender conveniently remembers your last option, placing it directy under your mouse pointer so that you don't have to move it a bit, even less think about what you're doing. Every now and then, I accidentally select and delete the wrong item. No problem, I have plenty of undos available.
So, here it goes:
X->click, X->click, X->click, Ctrl-Z, X->click, X->click, Ctrl-Z, X->click (repeat for 5 minutes or any amount of time less than your autosave interval)
X->click, X->click, Ctrl-Z, Ctrl-X ->click... WHAT!?

To the non-Blender users: The thing that happened was that I accidentally held the Ctrl-button down too long after I had performed an undo, and as we know, Z and X are next to each other on a QWERTY keyboard. When I did this, there was this tiny little popup menu (which technically is a modal dialog) where you could read some letters in bold saying "OK?". There was some other text there, but that was unreadable because it was hidden right beneath my mouse pointer. That text was "Erase all", which if we follow the lingo of GNU Emacs and similar applications, doesn't mean "Erase all with undo", but rather "Create new project" (no undo).

Seriously, I can't be writing a master thesis that discusses User Interface design and let this observation pass silently. No matter how powerful and inventive Blender's UI is supposed to be, you should never design a destructive keyboard shortcut (kill all) next to the "panic button" (undo).

It's time for me to write a serious bug report to the developers about this.

[C14ru5]

Now 3500 triangles without interior or wheels. I could probably make it down to 3000 if I really wanted to, but that would require much more fine-tuning of the normals, so I'm leaving it as it is for now. Still to do: Model the interior, re-model the wheels from scratch (the originals are 9000 triangles each!), and apply the Ford badges and indicator lights on the body side. When that is done, I still will have to wait with my release until FSR has released his final Racer version at RaceSimCentral (it's currently in beta).

Download the Developer Preview (3 MB)

I want to hear some feedback on the handling balance and the suspension. Also, I want to know if the dump valve horn sound makes any sense (it's very subtle, anyway).

[DonaemouS]

just wow...

nice start C14ru5

[C14ru5]

I'm glad you like it, Donaemous. The road version is getting close to done, so now it's time to move on:



The Group A touring car version (which I've shamelessly put a rally skin on for now) and Rallycross Div. 1 version are just intended as previews. I've only worked on their physics for around 30-60 minutes. Expect less terrifying brakes, better anti-roll bars, better differential, etc. in a later preview.

Handling feedback on the road version is still appreciated.

[C14ru5]

^^ I've just updated the archive linked to in the post above with new physics for the Group A and Rallycross versions.

(insert expletive) I was tuning the Group A car for half an hour before I found out that I was working on a copy outside the plug-ins folder! Here I was, sure that I could feel the minor differences that I made, and that the changes actually made the car drive better or worse. It was only when I tried to move the position of the steering wheel that I understood that I'd tricked myself Talk about placebo effect...
In other words, I think I've been blinded by my own modifications and would like some feedback on all three cars. The rallycross version still needs to be tamed, maybe even by adding the ABS effect to the brakes, I don't know.

I also removed the dump valve effect from the road version and put the default horn sound back in. It's a road car, so it should have a horn, and the horn has its uses during multiplayer.

[Tomte]

I somehow like the handling of the road car, but I don't know if the current handling is what you are aiming for.
The brakes are terrifying, right. I like the tendency to pull to the left/right under accelerating/braking (or the other way round). But the back is a bit too unstable for my taste.

Still, I think it is a good addition. And oh, I just found quite a good model of a BMW E30 M3... together with the 190 we might get a decent group together here.

BTW, the indicators seems to be inverted.

[C14ru5]

I don't know if the current handling is what you are aiming for

I also like the handling of the road car. The only thing that I'm not so sure about, is the tendency to go into an oversteer slide during turn-in after braking. It feels as if the inner rear wheel lifts, that's my best description. Maybe soften the suspension friction and make the rear wheels.maxSuspension longer?

There is no specific handling that I've been aiming for, so just now I Googled for some road tests of this car. I found this 1987 one for the car's little brother:

The Ford feels like a racer (...) The steering is so sharp at speed that it's almost hypersensitive: there's a go-kart like quality about it. Body roll is minimal. The brakes are superb. You can leave your braking to another car length or so nearer the apex...

Once on the [ABS] brakes (...) the car tends to dart around the road, nervously and eagerly, before it rushes into the corner.

Careful placement is essential when you swing the Sierra into a bend. You can't just heave the wheel, wait for the car to settle, then do minute steering corrections to coax the beast around. Far from it. The steering's so sharp, the car so responsive, that you have to work out the steering argle, and then keep the car on more or less a steady lock, as it whizzes around the bend, slot car style. (...) Back off in mid-corner when the revs are high, and then accellerate again, and the turbo comes in with a powerful, neck snapping bang...

So, it seems that I will need to make a few corrections. First, I need ABS brakes, hopefully not removing the car's tendency to "dart around the road, nervously and eagerly" while braking. Second, I need to be careful about increasing the suspension travel in the rear - I don't want to remove the car's excellent turn-in capability. I'll try softening the suspension friction and increasing the damping, or maybe play around with the load sensitivity.

the back is a bit too unstable for my taste

Is this comment limited to the car being unstable during braking, in other specific situations, or in general?

I've started to tame the Rallycross version by adding ABS brakes and increasing the wheels.stickyness (I've never seen a RX car skid-brake into a corner, so maybe they had ABS on those cars in the late 80's?). I think we're approaching the time for a first public beta release.

[Valentin K]

Are you sure about an RX special having RWD?
The road version seems fine so far, but Group A and Rallycross are too unstable for my taste
Group A.....I smell some ATCC Bathurst action

[Tomte]

the back is a bit too unstable for my taste

Is this comment limited to the car being unstable during braking, in other specific situations, or in general?

Ok, I made that comment from the top of my head, having driven the car a day earlier. I only remembered that something felt off when cornering.
After testing it again, I think my comments stem from how quickly it sways from one side to the other. Dunno, low Z inertia perhaps?
But it surely likes turning into corners. The front wheels seems to stick better than the rear ones (even if the skid marks tell me otherwise). Just turn the wheel and the rear needs to get a bit sideways before it settles. But I only notice this on fast corners, on slower tracks like Bardagi it actually seems to safel understeer most of the time. Rear Lift?

[C14ru5]

Thanks for the feedback, Tomte. I'll see what I can do.

Are you sure about an RX special having RWD?

The classes were not fixed back then, I think the only drivetrain regulation was that 4WD wasn't allowed in Division 1 (pre-1997 naming scheme). For example, the Lydden Div. 2 final of 1984 was won by two FWD Ford Fiestas, beating Audi Quattro's and Porsches that had more than 600HP!
I've seen some Golf GTI's raced in Division 1, but mostly it was all RWD: Merc 190, Opel Ascona, Renault 5 Turbo, Saab 90/900, Volvo 340/240, and different Bimmer models... To answer your question: Yes, I'm sure about it.

The racing versions are too unstable for your taste? When you or C.P. Frost say something feels too difficult, we have a problem. I'll make them more stable.

I smell some ATCC Bathurst action

The skins from FSR's beta version

[Tomte]

Talking of Group A, does that actually qualify Mercedes 190 2.5 16v Evo 2 and BMW M3 E30 Sport Evolution?

[C14ru5]

It sure does. Rule of thumb: Most touring cars from between 1982 and 1992 are Group A.

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