Looking for people interested in car creation

[jjsca]

Hello everyone,

As some of you may probably know (or not ) I have been in touch with the devteam for some time now and contributed by creating some cars. Now that I have a bit more experience and know a bit more about how SD works and its physics, I wanted to ask you guys if anyone might be interested in creating cars. Are there people around with 3D modelling or 2D skinning abilities or interest in physics creation (or someone willing to create stuff but not experienced in any of those fields) ?

If there are any people in this case with interest, just post here and tell what you have experience in, what you would like to do (type of cars, skins...). My idea is the following: help people who would like to start a car/series or skin to find people with similar interest to come together and give them the info they need/help to realize their project. In the future, I also plan to release a tutorial on car creation explaining various aspects of it in detail with a step by step guide to create your first boxy car. For the moment various reasons delay the project but it is there and it will come I promise but as some things may change in the future I might need to wait still for a little while for the graphical part (for the physics though there will be the release of a spreadsheet soon, it just needs final polishing and debugging).

Last but not least: for all of you who might be interested without particular graphics or physics skills, don't worry, we all started with simple stuff. In fact SD is even probably the best sim to start modding. As everything is open, one can find the info in the code. And in any case you can post your questions in a thread and the community will help

Now that I have a more in depth understanding of the underlaying physics engine I can tell you it is serious stuff, maybe not the latest but still good enough for us to enjoy it and in terms of graphics there is planty of action behind the scenes. I really hope to kickstart something with this thread (and it might be a good idea for tracks too, there are very talented guys out there ! but unfortunately I am not experienced with tracks).

Cheers,
JJSCA

[Leopjing]

I can do some graphic stuff.

[jjsca]

Hi Leopjing,

Nice to hear you might be interested , when you mean 2D or 3D stuff (or both ?). What type of work would you be interested in (tracks? cars? which series ?)

If you are interested in skin creation and indycars or spec racer fords, I guess we could start building carsets for the mpa11 and mpa12 and the not yet released fun racer. I would like to build 20 to 30 skin grids for these series so getting a small group working might speed up the thing (I am not afraid of work but still 60 to 90 skins still sounds like a lot for a one man show... )

Anyone else want to join the train ?

Cheers,
JJSCA

[Arc676]

It's been a while... anyone still here?

I found a lot of REALLY great 3D models of cars online (https://3dwarehouse.sketchup.com/collec ... Cars-Bikes) but I have no idea how to convert these to the textures used by Speed Dreams (I seem to understand it has something to do with UV maps?).

I'd love to contribute to Speed Dreams; it's an amazing project and I would really like to be able to drive some of these cars, but I don't know how to create cars in this format.

[madbad]

Hello Arc676.
I don't know in what format those 3d models are but you would probably need to import them in Blender and than export them using the ac exporter from speed dreams.

You may find some useful information in the wiki: https://sourceforge.net/p/speed-dreams/ ... sts-garage

Cheers Madbad

[chad3006]

Arc676,

Those models in the 3d warehouse are in Sketchup's latest version, or they can be downloaded into Collada format. The Flightgear team has a Sketchup plugin that can convert Sketchup models to AC3D, which is what Speed Dreams uses ... BUT, as is often times the case in this world, that doesn't necessarily insure a good working model "in game."

I do my car modelling in Sketchup (the old version 8). I export them with the Flightgrear plugin. Then I have to import them into AC3D to optimize them (removed double faces and vertices). I also have to UV map them, (Sketchup doesn't natively support UV mapping, at least not complex UV mapping.) You could use Blender to do that as well, I think there is a Blender Collada import plugin floating around somewhere.

So anyway, the answer is yes, you can make them work, but there is a bit of work involved if you want it to be a "good" car in the game.

I'll be happy to help and offer tips/advice, firstly I'd start by downloading a free version of Sketchup and begin familiarizing yourself with it. I modelled my first car in 2012 and I'm just now starting to feel like I understand how to do it consistently well.

[Arc676]

Thanks for the replies, madbad and chad3006.

I'll look into the relevant tools to see what I can do.

At the moment, for some reason importing the Warehouse Collada files doesn't work in Blender. After importing the DAE nothing appears. It might be a clipping issue, I'll see what else I can find out.

[chad3006]

Seems like I remember someone having an "improved Collada" plugin for Blender somewhere.