Sandtrack improvement

[STKRudy85]

Subject proposed by kalado ...
sandtrack.tar.gz

You can find something interesting here :


http://opengameart.org/content/tombwoof

As I said you can also add the camel I made for this track, which one you can find here :
http://opengameart.org/content/animal-bestiary

You can add palm tree and an oasis for example

[Dakal]

We discuss about improvements with kalado and we have ideas like:

- ruins: houses or columns (already did)
- a better bridge (already did)
- a better sphinx
- a better access to the pyramid
- statues of anubis
- cartoon textures

Here advancements:

http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/origi ... 251093.png
http://pix.toile-libre.org/upload/origi ... 252126.png

An animated camel will be very great! like crossing the road to interfere players.

[Arthur]

Any plans to do something about the track shape? That would probably mean it would no longer be the same track, but still, the driving fun of the track is really really low...

Whatever you do, it will probably be for the better though.

[Auria]

Agreed, all improvements are good, but what this track needs most of all is to improve the shape of the road

[kalado]

Here's a work in progress, I tried to work a bit on the track shape, we're currently mainly modelling ruins and other things like that. Critics are welcome.

[Arthur]

Hey, that looks really nice!
Keep up the great work.

[Auria]

Nice improvement, in many areas you could make it narrower too perhaps?

[hiker]

Here's a work in progress, I tried to work a bit on the track shape, we're currently mainly modelling ruins and other things like that. Critics are welcome.

Looks great! If you want to test bump mapping (since you mentioned this in the other thread), let me know - just create a very simple example, and post the blend and all textures here, and I'll see what we can do.

Have you considered a shortcut/secondary way? E.g. you could move the pyramid on the right forward a bit, add a ramp (perhaps slightly off track, so that people would need some nitro to drive there quickly enough). Then people can jump into a tunnel into that smaller pyramid, which will cross over (with a bridge, or undergroun) to the big pyramid, and rejoin the main track. Just an idea I had

Cheers,
Joerg

[charlie]

I think the 'flat' slopes of the pyramid make it look very dated.

Pyramids should be made out of steps.

[Auria]

charlie: actually, I think, originally the pyramids were straight, it's only in later times that the exterior filling that made it smooth fell of So yes, this makes them look very dated, but perhaps by a few thousands of years more than you meant :P

The other main reason is that making them out of steps would use a whole lot of vertices

[Dakal]

A little update on ruins and a new texture for palmtree.

EDIT: CC BY SA, i forgot again ^^

[Auria]

Nice little models

[kalado]

Thanks for the feedbacks.

Looks great! If you want to test bump mapping (since you mentioned this in the other thread), let me know - just create a very simple example, and post the blend and all textures here, and I'll see what we can do.

Have you considered a shortcut/secondary way? E.g. you could move the pyramid on the right forward a bit, add a ramp (perhaps slightly off track, so that people would need some nitro to drive there quickly enough). Then people can jump into a tunnel into that smaller pyramid, which will cross over (with a bridge, or undergroun) to the big pyramid, and rejoin the main track. Just an idea I had

Cheers,
Joerg

I joined a blend file with the bump map, it is for the pyramid and I added a texture within blender, like this you can see how it's looking in the 3d view, thanks for your help.

[hiker]

I joined a blend file with the bump map, it is for the pyramid and I added a texture within blender, like this you can see how it's looking in the 3d view, thanks for your help.

Thanks, downloaded, I'll try to have a look soonish.

Cheers,
Joerg

[kalado]

As you can see, I haven't been here for a long time, I had lot of things to do, nut now I've got time to work on this track, I've finished a monkey statue, for the entry of the pyramid:

I know I'm using bump mapping but I will transform the normal map into a diffuse map with gimp to fake bumps.

If you have some ideas for the track, they're welcome.

[Auria]

Hi, looks nice

Keep the bump map around though, STK might get bump mapping support

[Kinsu]

I did not know there was monkey statues in ancient Egypt, but you managed to make them look good in the "pyramids atmosphere" !

An animated camel will be very great! like crossing the road to interfere players.

This would be really cool ! Maybe you can take the farms' horse and modify it a bit to get a camel . Or get one from an open library

what this track needs most of all is to improve the shape of the road

I agree, but I sometimes like open zones on a race, I think we could keep at least one ?

[kalado]

Ok, here is the camel:

For the open zones, I think at least I will keep this one from the start.

[STKRudy85]

Is your camel texture under free license ?
Is your camel in full 3D or is it a plane ?

[Kinsu]

OK, the camel just needs a more credible pose (with the front legs like that it seems it is going to fall), and maybe a more precise texturing, but this is a good start

For the open zones, I think at least I will keep this one from the start.

Cool !

[kalado]

No, it's full 3d: 684 faces.
You're right for the texture, I used projection painting with this image:
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://img.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2007/08_02/camelREX_468x372.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-476349/Camel-killed-woman-trying-sex-her.html&usg=__a7kVNV3FnLt_SVaOBCiCX1aOfiM=&h=372&w=468&sz=58&hl=fr&start=27&sig2=lT2yws62YSOylqtlFrOUMg&zoom=1&tbnid=-f2RDWmcnI6c4M:&tbnh=154&tbnw=205&ei=LyecTduMGuDc4wbe1LzdBg&prev=/search%3Fq%3DCAMEL%26um%3D1%26hl%3Dfr%26client%3Dubuntu%26sa%3DN%26channel%3Dfs%26biw%3D1434%26bih%3D816%26tbm%3Disch0%2C513&um=1&itbs=1&iact=rc&dur=237&oei=JCecTZXGE4n14QaBmYn3Bg&page=2&ndsp=25&ved=1t:429,r:6,s:27&tx=156&ty=39&biw=1434&bih=816
And this one hasn't got a free license, thats why I painted a new one with the 3d paint tool, using the first texture as a reference, here is a screen shot:

EDIT: For the pose, I will take of it,when I'll animate it.

[Kinsu]

Looks much better ! For the pose, don't forget to apply the one you'll make as rest pose before animating it.

Note : maybe you could hide the image url like this (without any spaces between the brackets): [img= <image url>]this image[/img], I'm not sure it would be welcomed to have google redirecting towards STK's forum from some keywords in it !

[Auria]

Looks nice

And it's great to see that you care about licenses, this will make our lives easier
waiting forward to the new improved track. But don't forget to improve the shape of the road, I think that's the most important

[kalado]

I just noticed in the wiki at the page material xml that normal maps were usable as experimental tool, can I use them with the 0.7.1 Release Candidate 1?
I've got another problem with the sphinx, each time I export it, the model is deformed, I joined the file. Have you got an idea about where the problem comes from?

[Auria]

Hi kalado,

you can try normal maps by manually editing the materials file, but be warned that at this time normal maps don't really work correctly, materials with normal maps are very dark and have lighting issues

Regarding the distorted sphynx, the problem appears to be that you have two UV texture layers, it seems like the B3D exporter and/or the irrlicht B3D loader don't like that Also, the sphynx has a negative scale, use "Apply scale and rotation to object data" to make the transformation more reasonable