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June 10, 2010

Forum restyle and the future

Olá a todos que ainda nos acompanham após todo esse período de poucas notícias. Bem, enfim trago, de certa forma, uma boa notícia.

Algum dia após a Copa do Mundo e antes do GP da Bélgica, ressuscitaremos este blog. Não que ele esteja oficialmente morto, mas passou por bocados difíceis nos últimos meses. A parte ruim da notícia é que não há planos de comemomar essa ressurreição com uma pista nova.

Como prévia do relançamento, estamos abrindo uma nova seção no nosso fórum, aberta ao público, para um maior contato dos jogadores com os desenvolvedores (somos jogadores também, mas em menor proporção) e troca de informações gerais sobre criação de pistas. Só não vale perguntar sobre datas de lançamento. O link está na parte direita do nosso blog, ou aqui. Um registro gratuito é necessário para postagem.

Aproveito a ocasião para parabenizar o esforço dos brasileiros Plodekk e Cleberpister no trabalho dos Trackpacks históricos de 1988, 1991 e 1993. Boa sorte cambada!


Hello to all who still visit us after all these quiet days. At last I bring, from a certain point of view, good news.

Someday after the FIFA World Cup and before the Belgian GP, we'll be ressurecting this blog. Not that it was officialy dead, but let's say it's been on life support. The bad news is that there won't be any new tracks to commemorate the occasion.

As a small preview, we're opening a new section at our forum, open to public, to a greater contact between players and modders (although we're also players, but to a lesser extent) and information exchange about track editing in general. The link is to the right, or here. A free registration is needed in order to post.

And while I'm here, I'd like to congratulate Brazilians Plodekk and Cleberpister for their work on the '88, '91 and '93 trackpacks. Good luck, folks, because rock'n'roll ain't noise pollution!

June 01, 2010

Farewell good dog


Farewell, good dog.
Stay fine, stay alert.
We will always love you.

Adeus, meu bom cão.
Fique bem, fique alerta.
Nós sempre te amaremos muito.

RICKY
1999-2010

April 12, 2010

Sun Tower with no sun


Tem sido bastante interessante trabalhar e compartilhar conhecimento com o Sr. Spoodge. Tenho certeza que o nosso trabalho para Abu-dhabi será um dos mais realistas.

It´s been a refreshing and always surprising to share 3d knowledge with such a high spirit guy as Mr. Spoodge. I´m sure Abu-dhabi is going to be one of F1 Virtual most accurate jobs ever.

Melbourne 2010

Tinha algum tempo livre esse fim de semana e usei pra atualizar o belo trabalho realizado pelo TTM para Melbourne versão 2007.
Tive a grata ajuda do Ed Schueyfan, que me forneceu belas fotos tiradas durante o evento australiano nesse ano.

Espero que gostem.


I´ve got some free time this weekend to update TTM´s 2007 melbourne masterpiece.
I´m not sure if he will like it, since I´ve got no feedback yet, but I did my best, and with the big help of Ed Schueyfan, who feed me up with some pictures of his own taken during 2010 australian contender.
Now he´s gonna update Stands, Muppets and garages.

I hope you enjoy, mainly Tero in the end.

March 28, 2010

Sakhir 2010 - ainda dá tempo






A maioria das áreas de escape está pronta, assim como o posicionamento novo para propaganda. Tudo com a ajuda sempre valiosa de meu compadre Ed Schueyfan.


Most of banks is done, and so new adverts are placed properly with a big help from my friend Ed Schueyfan, whose cooperation is always so valuable. Hope next week we have an end.

March 08, 2010

Weekend party - Singapore



Imperfeições de asfalto e imprecisões de perfil talvez sejam os maiores desafios na reprodução fiel das condições reais do circuito de Marina Bay, em Singapura. Enquanto na maioria das pistas atuais a busca é por uma suavidade tamanha na mudança de nível, para este caso a perspectiva é bem diferente.

Por isso eu e Paulo conversamos sobre qual a melhor forma de sugerir toda a gama de solavancos e sobressaltos da pista e resolvemos elaborar esse eficiente método.

Tudo o que precisamos descobrir, de antemão, é que é muito melhor simular saltos alterando de forma randômica o perfil transversal do traçado (track banking) e não o perfil longitudinal ao longo do eixo. Então esse é o passo-a-passo do processo:

1. No GP4 Builder, crie livremente alterações de banking por toda a pista;
2. Exporte um banco de dados da pista com valores de inclinação transversal (Real Bank Values);
3. Copie esses valores para uma planilha do Office Excel;
4. Gere gráficos de linha para trechos da pista, em nosso caso, do setor 151 ao 200. Os gráficos servirão para acompanhamento das alterações propostas no passo 5;
5. Altere manualmente e de maneira randômica os valores de banking. A princípio, pequenas mudanças até estar habituado;
6. Salve o resultado como texto sem tabulações (.txt) e importe diretamente no GP4 Builder.

Pena que não sei como criar um vídeo, mas acredite, o resultado é muito bom e balança pra dedéu.

PS: Seria ainda melhor se o Laurent criasse uma ferramente de edição de banking assim como hoje existe para alteração de altura.



Urban tarmac imperfections and imprecise heights remains as one of the major challenges on simulating singapore marina bay circuit. As for most of tracks we search for the Best tarmac level and smoother track profile, at singapore there would be a whole opposite approach.

That´s why I´ve been talking to Paulo about it, and we decided to create such a brand new “method” for bumping making.

All I have to discover is the fact that, in GP4 Builder, it´s way better to simulate bumping by randomic changes for track banking, and not track heights (Z values) as we first previewed. So, this was the step-by-step process:

1. At GP4 Builder, create track banking changes all along the circuit;
2. Export a track database text for Real Bank Values;
3. Copy these values into a Office Excel Sheet;
4. Generate Graphics for sector ranges (as we chosen, from 151 to 200). These graphics will help on visualize changing proposed on step 5;
5. Manually and randomic alterations on TBnk0151 to TBnk200 values. It does not need to be such great changes, but enough to simulate tarmac bumps;
6. Save sheet as a .txt file and import at GP4 Builder.

Pity I´m not able to release a video of these changes here, but be sure it´s fine and shaking all around.

PS: It would be even better if Laurent Lo2k would create a Bank Profiler quite similar as available Track Profiler. Only difference would be the fact there would be positive and negative values and a central axis.

March 04, 2010

Brand new liveries, not cars!



I´ve spent sometime last week on my very first painting job attempt. Base car was the superb RB6 made by Mr. Mitsuro "Andry" Sano for his not less than masterpiece 2009 car package released last week.

I´ve contacted Andry for unlock LOD files requesting and, as my job seems ok on his eyes, these cars are now on the way to his hands for future release.

Hopefully I get some free time for new Sauber and new Macarena (ex-Campos) liveries over the same base.

One knows 2009 RB5 does not suit 100% to these real cars but hey, I´m a track maker (yet). And it´s really funny to paint these beauties :)

Hope you enjoy.

February 20, 2010

The quest for the perfect Roof

About a week ago Mr. r@m decided to show us his sketches for Yas Hotel for Yas Marina Circuit Project (Picture 01).

I´ve noticed roof mesh should be a bit smoother, and had my own 3d making attempt, which result one can see at pictures 2 - 4.

In my point of view we should focus at face mapping on that roof, and a 2400 faces count would be a reasonable number due to GP4 PC spec demandings. Besides, mesh would be as smoother as we could get and there would be no harm for PO in the end.

So that r@m had a new look on to his job, improving its shape and face number just a bit. He got some of the original elevations of the hotel from Asymptote Architecture Website (http://www.asymptote.net) which helped a lot for better accuracy (pictures 4-8)

This way I think we pushed hard enough to achieve such a great result (Pic 09).

Hope you enjoy too.



Picture 01: Yas Hotel first impressions from R@m
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Picture 02: Gildoorf construction process at Autocad. Face number: 2400
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Picture 03: Mesh making
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Picture 04: Final object with some sort of mistakes that would take a lot of time to fix.
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Picture 05: R@m Process at 3dsmax: Create box + extrude shape + Rough out the contours + Meshsmooth to its final shape + face mapping = voilà!
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Picture 06: Mesh smoothing
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Picture 07: face number at this stage ~3000 faces and some boundaries to be mesh smoothed
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Picture 08: Final shape: 3632 faces and gorgeous!
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Picture 09: Test ingame. No harm to PO so far. Around 20% on my humble PC
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