Jungle River Track

[Narann]

Hi all!

I will try to do a track with Maya (I'm CG artist and don't know Blender, even if I'm sur it's great! )

Intention
I would like to do a track inspired of the famous track of Mario Kart 64: DK Jungle Parkway.

WIP - Log

07 - 06 : Th blue circle is what I don't know to do to have a good gameplay there:

Notice I'm on a kart for now, I will update this soon.
07 - 05 : The road is almost done: http://dl.free.fr/q7yJanoQu (.mov)

[qubodup]

This looks very nice but if I remember the track correctly, this is a re-layouting rather than just 'inspiration'

[Narann]

This looks very nice but if I remember the track correctly, this is a re-layouting rather than just 'inspiration'

Not exactly. Yes it very look like the MK64 one but I will use another mood and a train will be there. Hope this will remind the old one but with another mood...

[hiker]

Hi,

Hi all!

I will try to do a track with Maya (I'm CG artist and don't know Blender, even if I'm sur it's great! )

besides the things we have discussed on irc already: using Maya is basically fine, assuming that you can import the model in blender. The track export script allows to define a lot of additional track-specific settings (animations on the track, drivelines for the AI and the minimap, also item distribution, moving textures, ...).

Using Maya+blender will have some problems with the pipeline: i.e. you might have to use blender to set certain blender-specific properties (e.g. settings for materials, besides graphical things like blending it also includes physical settings like kart slowdown etc). If after setting those properties you go back to model in Maya, and reload the model in blender, you might have to set those properties again Auria, are you aware of any way that certain settings could be saved independently (e.g. the data that creates the materials.xml files?). Certain track specific properties (as opposed to object or material specific ones) could probably be handled by loading a previous .blend file, then manually deleting all meshes, and importing the new model from Maya.

So the best option is to do as much work in Maya as possible, then export using blender with minimal changes (e.g. accept the fact that AI karts might not be able to drive, and that some graphics are not displayed correctly) - just so that you can test drive the track. Once you are happy, then it's probably best to switch to blender.

Note that all settings are exported to simple XML files, so you can also just save (and potentially edit) the xml files to avoid setting properties in blender again and again.

Of course an exporter in maya would be good, but the amount of effort is significant (i.e. the current exporter has >2000 lines, and that's all for exporting STK specific settings, it does not include the b3d exporter itself).


...

07 - 05 : The road is almost done: http://dl.free.fr/q7yJanoQu (.mov)

I think you are already doing this, but make sure that you finish the actual road first, and try to drive on it in stk. We often have tracks that are just too narrow, and changing this later is always a lot of work.

Cheers,
Joerg

[Narann]

Thanks for your complete answer!

I'm aware of this "probs" and have this to some trick to keep a good workflow.

I do mutch track-specific things in Blender (driveline, object position etc), and the rest (mainly geometry) in Maya that I export.

I will also add stk properties to my maya objects and do a little Maya script wich create a blender script to execute wich just do "set properties" in my blender scene.

This way, I suppose I can do many works in Maya and "replicate" properties via the generated blender script.

About the road, there is only one element wich is not definitive: It's after the jump. I really don't know what to do because the more evidente way is also too "as MK64". I have to think about that...

[Auria]

Maybe learning blender would be simpler than writing Maya scripts to export STK tracks

Otherwise, nice idea But indeed i think it's best to avoid direct copies. Personally I like the temple and the hut village from the current track; maybe the ideas can be kept (but models improved)?
And contributions are always welcome so hopefully you'll have fun

[Narann]

Maybe learning blender would be simpler than writing Maya scripts to export STK tracks

If there was a b3d export plugin for maya, this is not sur.

Otherwise, nice idea But indeed i think it's best to avoid direct copies.

I will try...

Personally I like the temple and the hut village from the current track; maybe the ideas can be kept (but models improved)?

There is no hut for now (trees?) but this gave me an excellent idea for the missing part of the road!