Slow Times - 908 in progress

Well as I said , ADD kicks in, as well as starting a new contract. I probably won't be doing much for a while, a real job has started. Fun while it lasted. Jaguar is half baked, on the way. The Audi revamp is underway, there are some interesting changes, small but significant and I am currently looking at it. The RS Spyder is further along ... but as I say time is disappearing. And there you go I start a new one, the Peugeot 908. As if there wasn't enough that I want to do, I find another that just "needs" to be done. The game cry's out for it ....

I will wander in the weeds for a while. then refocus ... basically the story of my life. So many cars, so little time. Stay tuned, there probably won't be a lot during the summer but I will be picking away. Oh, BTW, picture is a preview of the 908 under construction ...

LMP Clean-up

Comes to the end of a project and am ADD kicks in ... what's next. Well I started to clean-up some of the work I did last year on the the ALMS 2007 cars, I have started the Porsche Spyder RS and the Audi's. I have learned an awful lot doing the 90's project so I want to apply it to these cars. Probably do the 2008 versions as well. To begin with, I deconstruct them, break them into parts and clean up the polies. I hope to reduce them to about 2200 each. They sit up around 2700. I will remap using standard sized bmp's, the original large ones chokes the game engine. I will also construct the low res VE file. With the 90 Group C mod I am now running 18 cars on the laptop, (a smaller machine than my racing one". The game is built for 16. If I get anything more than that, it is a bonus. I don't know how far I will go, but the new Le Mans coupes look pretty cool for sure....mmmm maybe.

Jaguar XJR-11 Model Done

Was a bit tough without a proper blueprint. There is a lot of eyeballing involved but I think it is going to be okay. Might be a bit "choppy" over the fenders and I think the front radiator duct is a bit high up on the nose. I may look at it, but the poly count is up there now so I am reluctant. I may do an automatic simplify by 90%, then add some to smooth the fenders. I put the wheels and driver in the libary, pretty useful. Will keep this feature in mind for the future.

Jaguar XJR-11 Model Started

Haven't found a proper blueprint, so I am using a pretty generic, (poor) one and going to have to eyeball the differences. This is one one my favourite cars, I have a bit of connection through a friend, with one of the Jaguar drivers and he always loves to see any Jag that I produce. (Don't they say, "Six degrees of separation to anyone on the planet"). The XJR-11 competed in the World Championship races, the XJR-12 was used at Le Mans. There are visual differences in the body but I beleive the engine was the key change.

Completed first Spice

Finished up the first Spice. Pretty good results, a bit blocky in a couple of areas and I may have mapped it a bit different but it looks pretty good in th egame. It is a bit quick, but I am not very good at .veh files so i don't know how to sloe it down. the car isn't really competitive with the big boys but I guess I am allowed to make my own reality. I have to do the low res version, and am still playing with to see what is best.
Next up the sister, 22 car, just a clone basically then the 30 and 40 cars. They do not have the skirts so I will be deleting that aspect of this model. As well they are a bit different, as I said before this is a bit of a comprimise in design. Hey, squint your eyes they look great.

Spice SE90 Mapped

Finished the modelling and the mapping for the Spice SE90. As I say it is a bit of a composite because there was no single definitive configuration i could find for vents and what not. It looks pretty good. I will construct it today, then paint the first one. I am planning about four actual cars. Two with skirts, 2 without. Even if the modelling is a bit dicey for accuracy it will be an interseting edition to the field. When these are done ... back to modelling, (I am looking forward to the break from graphics and colour), and it will be a bit of time before there will be new ones complete.

Nissan's all done.

Finished both the 23 and 24 cars. Spent some time building a low-res model by which I hoped to be able to smooth the transition a bit. It did, somewhat. I noticed that the transition was really noticeable around the windscreen so I started to build the LR from that point. It did actually yeild not a bad rendition of the full model, about 200 polys.

The other thing I did was to use the original maps and graphics for the model. I was concerned that the "double rendering", (by using in game screen shots), was causing a change in the colour of the car, shading it too much and darkening it up. The results were better, but not great. The shape is better, less abrupt, but there is still noticable transition from low to high res.

Colour was more interesting because there were still differences in the colour, although they are the same original value. I am guessing that the rendering game engine has a different process for the low and high-res. Probably a simpler one for the low res. You learn something every day. The extra, hour or two is worth it, but again this is a very old gaming engine, you can't expect too much.

In game there are now 13 cars running, and I am not seeing a perfromance hit yet on at least my test tracks. The game can handle 16, within the original spec's of the cars. It has been modded, so that some tracks can handle as many as 24. It gets a bit flakey after 16 on some tracks so my goal would to have 16 performing, additional is a bonus. I have at least 10 more cars I would like to see in the game, but we will see how it goes.