Contribution for STK - Las Dunas Stadium's 3D objects & song

[GeekPenguinBR]

These are the objects of Las Dunas Stadium released for use on the new samuncle's arena. The link bellow contains the following objects:

Caravan (trailer).
Flammable barrel (contains fire particles).
Giant Sunshine cola can.
Dirigible of the TV channel.
Monster truck.
Red and white tyres.
School Bus.
TV Van.
Wilber, the cameraman with a camera and a lader.



All the 3d models were made by "GeekPenguinBR" and "TuxKartDriver" and are released under CC-BY-SA 3.0:
(c) 2016 supertuxkart.

[GeekPenguinBR]

Continues:

[GeekPenguinBR]

The song
Author: GeekPenguinBR.

"Jumping to the stars" used in "Las Dunas Stadium" track is released under CC-BY-SA 3.0:
(c) 2016 supertuxkart.

[samuncle]

Thank you very much. It will take me some time to include everything but I can already tell you, the blimp, wilbert (with a different vest), and tires are included right now in the core stk game. Which means they are available for everybody.

I have a few questions:

1) Can I include your name (and which name do you want) in our AUTHORS.TXT list
2) Maybe you can yourself replace some of the objects of your stadium with the one in the library. It will means if we update an object, your stadium will have the updated version

[GeekPenguinBR]

Thank you very much.

I'm happy to contribute.

It will take me some time to include everything but I can already tell you, the blimp, wilbert (with a different vest), and tires are included right now in the core stk game. Which means they are available for everybody.

Nice to kown. I (and my brother too) am glad to have our objects included on the main game.

1) Can I include your name (and which name do you want) in our AUTHORS.TXT list

Yes, for sure: GeekpenguinBR and Tuxkartdriver.

I need to remind you about the song I have composed. It's not in the folder and I don't know where's the right place to upload it and how to include it on the track. I not even know which is the Auria's opinion about the song.

[0zone0ne]

I need to remind you about the song I have composed. It's not in the folder and I don't know where's the right place to upload it and how to include it on the track. I not even know which is the Auria's opinion about the song.

Just put the .ogg and .music files in the track's folder with everything else. As long as the "track.xml" file points toward the .music file, and the .music file points toward the .ogg file, the music should play.

[GeekPenguinBR]

Just put the .ogg and .music files in the track's folder with everything else. As long as the "track.xml" file points toward the .music file, and the .music file points toward the .ogg file, the music should play.

Tuxkartdriver did this and didn't work. In this case, I should re upload the track to the add-ons website or some developer could insert the song in the proper folder on the right directory. Am I right?

[samuncle]

A quick thing

While I'm including your objects, I noticed some of them aren't optimised. For instance the TV VAN has an insane amount of polygons on top of antenna. You should reduce the number of side in circles to a minimum.

After some quick and dirty cleaning, I went from 4900 tris to 2900, without affecting too much the quality of the object. So you should take these advice into account for future objects.

[GeekPenguinBR]

Ok (and STK 2.0 will look like this: https://youtu.be/wTP2RUD_cL0?t=2m36s).

[GeekPenguinBR]

The texture on the Las Dunas' big screen is wrong, because it shows current weather data in standard system instead metric and no windspeed , but I will be glad if some developer insert it to the proper folder on the uploaded track. . This is the correct texture:







arena_big_screen 2 was made by "GeekPenguinBR" and released under CC-BY-SA 3.0:
(c) 2016 supertuxkart.

[hiker]

The texture on the Las Dunas' big screen is wrong, because it shows current weather data in standard system instead metric and no windspeed , but I will be glad if some developer insert it to the proper folder on the uploaded track. .

*grin* We should replace this with location dependent, correct data - downloaded from a weather server somewhere

[GeekPenguinBR]

*grin* We should replace this with location dependent, correct data - downloaded from a weather server somewhere

[samuncle]

Ok (and STK 2.0 will look like this: https://youtu.be/wTP2RUD_cL0?t=2m36s).

Nope it will look like

Well you are free to take my advice or not. But your objects have an inconsistent polygon density. And you definitely added too much polygons on some useless places.

While you won't likely find troubles in a simple track, supertuxkart aims at a high quality and optimised track. Which means if you waste polygons on a small detail you won't be able to use them where they would be better placed.
The removal of 2000 polygons on an antenna allows you to put roughly 2 palm-trees without a performance impact

[GeekPenguinBR]

Hi.

It's obvious that the antenna has many polygons. I'm aware that we built some objects with a big amount of them and we are both in favour to reduce the edges/faces/polygons to a minimum number if this doesn't affect the basic shape and the visual quality. This was our first track, so, we can improve our method to make tracks - if the community appreciates our work, of course - and I have already done this in other projects like Trelleborg .

I hope the STK community really likes our work on this first track. In this case, we will continue to contribute to the project with other new tracks with high quality (and less polygons, for sure).

[Auria]

I hope the STK community really likes our work on this first track. In this case, we will continue to contribute to the project with other new tracks with high quality (and less polygons, for sure).

Hi,

contributions are always welcome! One thing that I must strongly recommend is to make spend time on the gameplay to make sure the track is fun to play and drives well (and don't hesitate to ask for advice from others) before spending a lot of time on the graphics. That will save you a lot of frustration. People who make their first tracks often make a few common mistakes like making roads that are too narrow or bumpy or jumps that don't work on all difficulties, etc. So my biggest recommendation is to make sure to sort out gameplay issues and have the track tested before spending a lot of time on the graphics, and that may save you a lot of frustration - it's much easier to improve gameplay early one before all the graphics are done

don't give up

[charlie]

For instance the TV VAN has an insane amount of polygons on top of antenna. You should reduce the number of side in circles to a minimum.

After some quick and dirty cleaning, I went from 4900 tris to 2900, without affecting too much the quality of the object. So you should take these advice into account for future objects.

LODS, no? I mean, seriously, your antenna looks considerably blockier/worse - but how often will a player be close enough to tell? But isn't that what LODs are for, right?

[samuncle]

LODS, no? I mean, seriously, your antenna looks considerably blockier/worse - but how often will a player be close enough to tell? But isn't that what LODs are for, right?

Ok maybe I went a bit harsh with the parabolic dish which could have more poly, but I maintain my claim of too much polygons used for the feed antenna (for your information the feed antenna is this.

The question is using appropriate polygon density depending of the location on the map. Will it be near or far away from the player ?

In this case I think mine is a good approximation of an antenna. It's important to keep the polycount "low". If I had to do the dish it would look like this

And it's not only the antenna who is too high poly. For instance the camera used by gimp is also wayy too much detailed for the usage we do in SuperTuxKart.

[charlie]

You ignored my wider point. Surely performance is best served by having appropriate LODs for objects, which then allows the object to still look decent on the rare occasion a camera pans close by.

[samuncle]

Because LOD isn't free. Yes LOD can and do help, but with LOD instead of 1 object in memory it will be at least 2 but usually 3, which means more VRAM usage and then you have to compute if the LOD is there or not. LOD can help but it's not a golden hammer.

[XGhost]

LOD in STK uses very little VRAM, even with bigger objects. Even an old Intel GPU can afford that much of space.
When it comes to performance, LOD is not the first thing you want to skimp on.

[leilei]

Because LOD isn't free. Yes LOD can and do help, but with LOD instead of 1 object in memory it will be at least 2 but usually 3, which means more VRAM usage and then you have to compute if the LOD is there or not. LOD can help but it's not a golden hammer.

Terrible excuse. More geometry data for less polygons to render overall is nowhere near the vram cost of a 1024x512 texture for Sara's panties. That's 2mb of vram wasted right there