Trailmappers

[uncut hull]

Expectation vs reality

Anyone know a fix/reason this is happening?

[lone bane]

hmm only thing i can think of is that normals are inverted on the other part

[uncut hull]

Oh lemme check

I'm new to blender so I could have messed a bunch of things up

There is also no collider here

[uncut hull]

We are getting somewhere....

[livid wigeon]

how many triangles?

32767 is the tri limit for each model

and 32768 for tris with collision

[uncut hull]

No idea, what happens when I hit the limit?

[lone bane]

usually crash, but sometimes the mesh gets corrupted before being fully loaded leading to some missing faces

[uncut hull]

Odd

There's a good chance of too many faces, doesn't matter too much though cause I've got other things working now

[lone bane]

yea doubt the donut was a priority lol

[livid wigeon]

for me if its <200k tris it usually is corrupted; although the higher it is over the limit, the longer it takes to corrupt(??)

for example, the unoptimized trailcargo map mesh was around 131k tris and took idek 10-15 seconds to load in

keep in mind this was with the server (singleplayer) entirely frozen; it barely survived on my mid-high end hardware

[lone bane]

roade

[uncut hull]

Any tips on making the track follow the black path?

[lone bane]

what modifiers do you have on

[uncut hull]

Just array and curve deform

[lone bane]

make sure array is before the curve modifier, very important
mess around with the 'Deform Axis'
and another weird thing with the curve modifier, make sure the coordinates of the curve and the mesh are the same, sometimes it acts weird when its not

[uncut hull]

ok that last point might be the issue

thanks I'll try all of those

so far no good :(

[uncut hull]

Working for no apparent reason now, I don't know what I did wrong before but I shall be happy and move on

[dreamy inlet]

ooh formula one type track?

[uncut hull]

More of a GT street circuit, it's where the Gold Coast 500 is held (Australian supercars/carrera cup)

[dreamy inlet]

ooh that seems like it'll be fun

[uncut hull]

Hopefully!

[polar kayak]

How can I make custom models not have a glossy texture?

[inner nacelle]

Make sure the texture is PNG and has an Alpha channel. Then make the alpha channel almost completely black. That will make it have almost no reflection. The whiter the alpha channel the more reflective it will become. Also you can add detail to the alpha channel if you want some parts to have more or less reflection than other parts.

[deft mango]

i'm aussie and i'm shocked i've never heard about this event

I remember Bathurst but i'm surprised I wasn't aware of this event

[polar kayak]

how do I do that? I tried some online tool but didnt seem to work

[livid wigeon]

GIMP is pretty good and if you use some of the tools just right you can automatically make fancier alpha setups

i use gimp and its easy

for uniform alpha modification, modify this. make sure the layer has an alpha channel

for normal pngs it should already have an alpha channel so dont worry too much

[polar kayak]

I've tried adjusting the opacity but still doesnt seem to work

[livid wigeon]

the opacity slider that i circled is still 100.0

?

[polar kayak]

yeah I tried at like 20 too didnt notice a difference

[livid wigeon]

right click the layer, if "Add Alpha Channel" is grayed out, dont worry about it

[polar kayak]

it is grayed out

[livid wigeon]

then dont worry about it

it works just fine for me

[polar kayak]

oh! 😮 it works now 40 seems to work better than 20, the floor looks a lot more normal now tyy

[livid wigeon]

editor grid plane makes invisible things and "decals"(what do you call those markings on the carrier?) disappear

[livid wigeon]

putting in the extra time to minimize seams between prefabs can really go a long way. do it

[livid wigeon]

im pretty sure vehicle repairing is based on vertices and so if you want vehicle repairing to sort of work on custom assets, cram as many vertices as you realistically can into the model, where players will be seeing

this applies even on flat surfaces

[uncut hull]

It's nowhere as big as Bathurst but it's still cool, I haven't had the joy of visiting Bathurst yet but I've been here with a formula student team, if you visit sat hi to the people at Griffith

[uncut hull]

I am having trouble getting this to not crash trailmakers, any common issues that I can sort through?

Does this hurt the tm?

[warm venture]

are trailmakers maps loaded with chuncks, like minecraft?

[lone bane]

that doesn’t really make sense for a non voxel world, and TM isnt procedurally generated

[atomic plaza]

No, everything is loaded when you start the session or enable a mod. The game uses LOD (level of detail) to reduce the complexity of geometry and texture detail of distant objects to save on resources instead

[livid wigeon]

shouldn't

[livid wigeon]

some peoples models just dont work, and we dont know why. try simplifying the model?

[lone bane]

a ton of road models i make tend to crash for no reason whatsoever, even being far under the limits

[livid wigeon]

@shadow path hmmm per chance would you want to collab on a map? or PER CHANCE even just help do some detailing on trailcargo's map

[shadow path]

both can be fun 🙂

[livid wigeon]

seems like a win-win to me. you learn neat fancy techniques and i get work done for me

[livid wigeon]

discord's new ui is confused

[livid wigeon]

lava emits light at a very weird angle.

hmm

can i make a purple light...

[livid wigeon]

we love LODs on something that is already only 2 triangles
its fine though because this will never be seen from afar

[polar kayak]

I have designed a floor that stops people from spamming repair, repair in motion still works tho so i effectively made repair have a cooldown without making the terrain difficult to navigate

Heres a sneak peak of my pvp arena, still a lot of detailing has to be done but i got the mechanics down

[lone bane]

you can just add a line of code to the map spawning code to disable repairs

[polar kayak]

From my experience adding scripts/mods makes the game unstable, I have tried a mod named repair restrictor and it had lots of issues

Having it fully vanilla seems much less hassle especially because I plan to make the server auto run with macros so the server stays on when im away

[fervent sun]

maps are mods, and as long as mods aren't continuously doing heavy work they don't impact performance/stability for the most part

[polar kayak]

tachnically yea. and I guess a few lines of code wouldnt be felt, how would I begin to write what tools are needed?

[fervent sun]

add this to the end of the main.lua file generated for the exported map:

function disable_repair(player)
    tm.players.SetRepairEnabled(player.playerId, false)
end

tm.players.OnPlayerJoined.add(disable_repair)

[livid wigeon]

what do i fill this garage with

[livid wigeon]

default tire is crazy bro

[livid wigeon]

hmm these grassy prefabs dont look great

[livid wigeon]

dont know how the cubemap got rotated but GOD DAMN that is pretty

[deft mango]

is that a kitchen grill and a tomato sauce bottle lol

[livid wigeon]

it's a workbench in a garage

[inner nacelle]

Don't let my amateur coding put you off mods! 🤣 Even so I do need to revisit Repair Restrictor to see if I can optimize it a bit.

[livid wigeon]

might want to improve the ux too, sounds/subtle messages for example

[inner nacelle]

Yep agree. Twas made in the old API days before we even had luxuries such as subtle messages or IsPlayerInSeat 😂

[livid wigeon]

damnn

could definitely also have a keybind for toggling on/off the ui and maybe some presets(??)

[austere aurora]

@sly mantle is it possible to have the actual trailmakers maps like danger zone in trailmappers so that we could put stuff in it?

[old kestrel]

Technically yes, but it would require a fair bit of effort to place everything correctly. Still, I think it would be cool to have it in trailmappers!

[livid wigeon]

most of what you need on most maps is just the terrain mesh(es)

stuff like stranded and danger zone might more heavily rely on pfbs for some scenery but it gets the job done

[old kestrel]

One could probably make a mod that auto teleports the player and then sample the height at that x and z coord in a 100 x 100 grid to figure a rough guess of it

Or we could beg the devs for the heightmap 🥺

[knotty lily]

You wouldnt need to use the player, you could just raycast no?

[livid wigeon]

ooh

[old kestrel]

Raycast would unfortunately hit prefabs/non-terrain, so if you instead set the player to a set x z pos, then allow the user to move up and down along the y axis until they are approximately at the terrain height, then press a key to record that height

Its probably the fastest way to do it semi manually

[livid wigeon]

@sly mantle got 42 errors whilse loading 8192x8192 image

edit: most likely cause is trying to read it while it is still exporting out of GIMP

guys how dumb is it to use a 8192^2 megatexture for the main island

it loads after like maybe a minute...

actually not that bad... is comparable to some of the vanilla pfbs at normal scale

[inner nacelle]

Out of curiosity have you tried exporting the terrain (from Blender) with smoothing groups to get rid of the faceted polygon look?

[livid wigeon]

no

[inner nacelle]

Worth a try

[livid wigeon]

absolutely zero flaws have been spotted

[old kestrel]

Why are there black sections?

[livid wigeon]

the parts I didnt draw on in blender

[uncut minnow]

what type of files does trailmppers nee for custom moddles?

[livid wigeon]

obj for models and png for textures. use alpha/opacity for roughness

[uncut minnow]

thank you

[uncut minnow]

is there a way to customize the tree colors in trail mappers?

[livid wigeon]

of the vanilla/default pfbs? no

[uncut minnow]

oof

[livid wigeon]

any assets that come with mappers are from the base game and can't be modified

[uncut minnow]

gotcha ok thank you wanted somre charry blossom trees

[livid wigeon]

besides like scale, rotation, static/collision/visible

[livid wigeon]

the brown/purple ones are OK

Purple could be out of season cherry blossoms

or brown

[uncut minnow]

ok since i have you here how do i take my map into blender to smooth it out?

[livid wigeon]

wdym?

[uncut minnow]

like i think italk to you befor about thrain tracks you said you could take the map into blender to smooth them out

[livid wigeon]

what?

[uncut minnow]

#1336886674734448681 message

[livid wigeon]

you don't put the map itself into blender. make a custom model using blender for the train tracks

[uncut minnow]

i see

ok thank you

[uncut minnow]

ok so iv imported some textures but they are all shiny how does one fix this

[livid wigeon]

set the opacity/alpha lower. the lower the opacity the less reflective the texture is

[uncut minnow]

can i do this with gimp

[livid wigeon]

yes. the quickest fix I know is to set the layer's opacity in the bottom right

there's some other methods for fancier alpha like using color to alpha but it's case dependant and highly finicky

[uncut minnow]

so i dont know how to do this lol iv never had to do this till now lol

[livid wigeon]

I sent a screenshot how before, lemme find it

[uncut minnow]

ok thank you

[livid wigeon]

.

[livid wigeon]

I replied to it above

[uncut minnow]

awesome thank you so much

[uncut minnow]

so i did thing and stuff but the texturs show up as stright up white in game

nvm it just took time like 5 min to load in the texture

[livid wigeon]

how big are your textures??

[blazing harbor]

4k

[uncut minnow]

oh could it be beacuse its 2048 x 2048?

@livid wigeon

[livid wigeon]

hmm for me that would only take 30s max. maybe you just have lower end PC hardware

[livid wigeon]

wtf bro

4k is too big unless it's a mega texture. and even then...

1024x1024 is a good middle ground

[uncut minnow]

i mean it loads fine now

[livid wigeon]

that's probably because it's gotten cached

[uncut minnow]

the first time took some time now it loads fast

thats me specs

[livid wigeon]

yeah the first time it has to actually load it. from then on, that version of the texture is loaded from cache which is much faster

oh you should be finee

unrelated to tm but that's a huge cpu bottleneck though?

[uncut minnow]

ya the computer was a gift from my uncle

[shadow path]

DAMN I LOVE TRAILMAPPERS

[uncut minnow]

how does one import a map into trailmappers it does not work half the time???????

also custom texters dont seem to work for other poeples eye balls

[dreamy inlet]

they do just requires a bit to load iirc

and if its too large it can take a long time

[uncut minnow]

gotcha ok thank you

[livid wigeon]

good

i approve

✅

[lean badger]

hear me out

just the heighmap is 17mb

what could possibly go wrong

[livid wigeon]

that will never load

[lean badger]

yeah ik it was a joke

the game crashed loading way smaller models

[high palm]

What map is that?

[shadow path]

new one im workin with @white kindle & @slow gate

[livid wigeon]

whats the blue beacons for?

also smh no guardrails(?) for those ocean roads on the right

[shadow path]

landmarks

[livid wigeon]

custom map overview menu when

[shadow path]

yep. we kinda like no guardlines cuz we like to drift till the edge XD

[livid wigeon]

put guardlines on the outer part of the turn maybe

or inner idk

[shadow path]

yeah maybe ill shove it into but idk, its already damn heavy so we will see

[livid wigeon]

thoughts on some work on trailcargo's map after that gets finished?

[shadow path]

indeeddd 💜 😍

[deft mango]

https://tenor.com/view/overheat-computer-explosion-boom-spark-gif-17323916

[livid wigeon]

nah it would just become an ice cube

[shadow path]

dedication / addiction @white kindle ? XD

deaddiction

[white kindle]

its insanity! 😮

[livid wigeon]

GOD DAMN

[slow gate]

Is there any way to cover whole custom irregular shaped model faster than placing TM models one by one? (I'm using grass topped flat rectangle). Also the connections between them are quite visible. Some tips how to hide them or make them less visible?

[livid wigeon]

nope

theres gonna be a sprinkle/mass object placer tool coming "soon" which would help

[dreamy inlet]

nope, also i recommend using a bunch of grass stuff to cover up the steams, Grass round is really good but i'm not sure if the colors will match up

found one that works i think, grass topped triangle and grass topped round

[subtle girder]

any idea on what's goin on with the Y axes?

[tacit rover]

there is a good chance that the model in trailmappers has messed up origin point compared to the prefab called in Trailmakers

[subtle girder]

Would scaling cause that?

[tacit rover]

no clue, if the model itself in traimappers then no

[lone bane]

oh you’re green now
nice

[tacit rover]

and you are.... diarrhea... nice

[lone bane]

its a decent salmon color

[atomic plaza]

What kinda diarrhea are you having that’s that shade and why haven’t you gone to the hospital for that yet

[subtle girder]

too easy

[tacit rover]

Did any new assets release with the update?

[inner nacelle]

Not that I'm aware of but we've actually lost some sound FX 😦

[austere aurora]

how do I make custom models not look like mirrors?

they're so reflective

[lone bane]

lower the alpha value of the textures you're using

[austere aurora]

how?

[lone bane]

any basic image manipulation software should have an opacity slider

you just need to make the textures very transparent,
the alpha value represents the roughness of textures in the API

[austere aurora]

oo ok

I'll try that on canva

[tacit rover]

get yourself Krita, its much better than anyhting you can do online. and its free

[trim cairn]

program misses way too many qol features

for me to do something like this

[subtle girder]

my God awful attempt at making an airplane with the trailmappers base material

[livid wigeon]

does he know about the crashed plane

[subtle girder]

yes
but i want something that will blow up lol

since i cant make the base dynamic

[livid wigeon]

can't make it dynamic but this sort of work

[subtle girder]

i want kinda a target practice map
so i need something that can get destroyed

[livid wigeon]

i present to you: fragile wooden crate

or if you want it to explode, explosive iron crate

[subtle girder]

lol already know about that

yeah thats what i used to make my dollar store plane

the iron explosive crate
both the vents (hoping i could've made them dynamic
and the windmill

[livid wigeon]

and the random explosive barrel on top for good measure

[drowsy burrow]

Do you build terrain by using scaled up rock prefabs, or is there a way to create your own custom terrain?

[inner nacelle]

You can do both of those things. You can use Blender to build custom terrain but there are limitations. Some of the other modders here can give you more details as they've done experiments.

[livid wigeon]

you can also use more, smaller rock prefabs to help preserve detail in each object

[fallen cedar]

hey guys, how do i make a picture onto a texture. Like i have an image of a race track, and i just want to put the picture on ground in the game so me and my friends can race on it. as a bonus i want to make it so that the grass actually feels grassy. and for a mega bonus the kerbs to actually be elevated

[spring oracle]

This would need to be done in a 3d modeling program like blender. I don't really know how to do it that much so i think you should use google and maybe some youtube tutorials to find the information you need.

[drowsy burrow]

not satisfied with the pioneer campaign length, so how hard is it to make a custom one? 🤣

[inner nacelle]

Yet you made this which is a fantastic track 🙂
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3355601599

[inner nacelle]

For custom models we can't change the material so the track surface, curbs and grass would all be the same type. Another option is to create and edit the track in my Track Creator Plus mod.

[fallen cedar]

ok

[austere aurora]

how do I add sand

[livid wigeon]

if youre referring to the sand that affects wheel grip, it's one of the surfaces you cant use in modding

[austere aurora]

ok

[livid wigeon]

there are some built in prefabs you can use for things like grass and slippery grass

[austere aurora]

ok

what about sand prefabs?

[livid wigeon]

but you have to figure out how to cover the prefabs in most cases

there are no prefabs with the sand surface

or mud

or pebblesand

[austere aurora]

oo

ok

[livid wigeon]

theres niche prefabs with a mix of sand/dirt&metal but they are no where near the sand you'd expect

[livid wigeon]

@sleek scaffold unzip and put this in Documents\Trailmappers\Saves

this is the canyon demo i made just earlier you saw in #clips-and-screenshots

[sleek scaffold]

what for lol

[livid wigeon]

idk

i suppose so you can get a feel for the dimensions that i made work

btw if you want inspiration, go to rally (singleplayer > racing > rally) and just fly around in freecam
it has some of if not the the best map work in the game

[sleek scaffold]

kk I'll check it out, I havent spent much time on that map

will the "grass" (mushroom trees) get laggy if I do too much?

[livid wigeon]

on rally:

in mud/pebblesand areas (usually around coastlines in sand areas)

Desert Triangle usually is scaled between 0.1-0.2
Desert Small Rough usually is scaled between 0.25-0.35

[livid wigeon]

oh yeah, but thats after like 80+

although i am on a mid-high end pc so your milage may vary

[sleek scaffold]

that doesnt sound like much lol

[livid wigeon]

nah more like 150-230 maybe on my pc

actually sometimes maybe like 400-600 lol i dont know

[sleek scaffold]

lol

so yes but it takes a lot

[livid wigeon]

heres ridicolas' grass he used
you cant make it non collidable because modding is broken but as long as you dont have players go onto the grass it should be fine

v texture there v

[sleek scaffold]

nah I need it to be non collidable

[livid wigeon]

then your out of luck for custom assets

[sleek scaffold]

dont want to go slightly off the track and then get obliterated by grass

[livid wigeon]

unless you wanna do janky asf editing of the model

[sleek scaffold]

maybe for further away from the track

[sleek scaffold]

I'm not that smart lmao

[livid wigeon]

just dont immediately put grass, or swap from mushroom grass to model grass

[sleek scaffold]

right

[livid wigeon]

btw for the rock cascades like on treasure island, flashbulb uses Desert Tall Lumpy on 0.8-1.1 scale, 2/3rds of the way in the ground

[sleek scaffold]

that looks right

[livid wigeon]

if youre fine with "pebbles" going invisible at distance use Desert Layered on 0.3, 0.6, 0.3 scale with half of the upper part sticking out of the ground

these are about 1-2 nubs tall; truck-sized wheels are ideal for climbing

but in some cases or if you make the bump smaller, offroad-sized wheels can drive over most of the time

[sleek scaffold]

ah yes, "grass" 😭

[livid wigeon]

give it a texture

i put it alongside the model

[sleek scaffold]

oh, what do I do with that?

[livid wigeon]

put it in the custom models folder, tmmm will pick it up and you can give models a texture

[sleek scaffold]

k

[livid wigeon]

and a default one too if you right click the model in the object tray

[sleek scaffold]

I see

the mushroom tree is much nicer tho tbh

[livid wigeon]

its less optimized though and good luck trying to see under the ground level with 300 trees in your way

[sleek scaffold]

true

[deft mango]

I was scrolling past this and saw a beaver holding a potato chip

no idea how

[livid wigeon]

you're crazy

[livid wigeon]

add more checkpoints bro, only 2 is sad

also THREE entire sets of spectator stands

[sleek scaffold]

they arent really checkpoints, they're start and finish

[livid wigeon]

just use a multilap at that point 😭

[sleek scaffold]

uh

[livid wigeon]

by that i mean a regular start with checkpoints throughout

[sleek scaffold]

it could be multiple lap race

idk why I need checkpoints lol, the path is pretty clearly defined

[livid wigeon]

checkpoints aren't used to define where the race track is

theyre checkpoints

strictly by-definition its to record race time but it is often used for respawns and such in arcade games

[sleek scaffold]

its not a particularily long race rn tho

[livid wigeon]

still would be good to have one or two, even just as decoration

[sleek scaffold]

maybe one on the halfway point

[sleek scaffold]

@livid wigeon whatchu think

[livid wigeon]

hes still using the low res grass rocks
god save us all

i think the roots are a clever idea, and using the mushrooms is a bold but also kinda good choice

but also using a peach-colored rock next to the darker brown is a 🚩

[sleek scaffold]

the dark brown is specifically the path

[livid wigeon]

still

[livid wigeon]

that outer part of the bank could have a direct rock cliff (no grass edge)

cause youre already on a bank so why bother add padding

@sleek scaffold can you give me the map file i wanna experiment a bit

[sleek scaffold]

sure one sec

[livid wigeon]

its been a couple seconds

[sleek scaffold]

upload failed

[livid wigeon]

https://tenor.com/view/exploding-car-explode-cat-boom-bah-gif-5387928273689188008

upload worked fine for me lol

[sleek scaffold]

well thats not a map file for one thing, and it could just be me

it might be an invalid file type

[livid wigeon]

.json? no

.zip is fine

[sleek scaffold]

ah

I was sending the folder instead of the map itself

[livid wigeon]

yeah discord doesnt like folders

its fine with .zip though

rur rur rur

[livid wigeon]

does he know about end and start

[sleek scaffold]

I saw them

didnt really know what "challenge" end/start meant, and the red is nicer anyways

[livid wigeon]

also bro these roads in the straight is as wide as most americans

i disapprove

[sleek scaffold]

yeah Ik they're kinda wide

[sleek scaffold]

he was supposed to be underneath the stands, observing but I added the supports

so I gotta find somewhere else to hide him

[livid wigeon]

this is FOUL

never touch the editor EVER again ! 1 1 1!! !

[sleek scaffold]

heehee

[livid wigeon]

btw you can use local/global axis for rotation/movement if you wanna move stuff aligned on its rotation (e.g. extending stands on the same plane)

[sleek scaffold]

ye ik

[livid wigeon]

global/local axis rotation

[sleek scaffold]

what

I dont want all the trees facing the same way lmao

[livid wigeon]

ok bro this guy is using upside down rocks 😭

[livid wigeon]

that is selecting the rock

[sleek scaffold]

oh right lol

but its the same thing either way, it depends on the situation

[livid wigeon]

where is desert ledges lol 😭😭😭

desert chunky - 100%
desert ledges - 0%

[sleek scaffold]

it works

[livid wigeon]

noo

no variation in the walls

[sleek scaffold]

I rotate, invert, and change their size

[livid wigeon]

the difference

before | after

wanna know why theres a sticking out bit in the rock face about halfway throguh?

its to help people take the right line

jesus christ all the tires respawned

[sleek scaffold]

yeah they do that sometimes lmao, I should fix them

[sleek scaffold]

why though? the right lane has a jump in it, it's supposed to be optional

I dont want there to only be one path to go

[livid wigeon]

the jump literally just kills you because you cant get grip for the turn

[livid wigeon]

buddy then make this multiroute
1 road =/ multiroute

[sleek scaffold]

if your car cant handle it just dont use it lol

[livid wigeon]

btw i think this is nicer

[sleek scaffold]

not enough green tho

its all one colour

[livid wigeon]

the point is that i literally cant because the jump prevents me from steering, causing me to understeer and die

[sleek scaffold]

and yeah ofc the jump is going to kill you in that thing lol

[livid wigeon]

then put trees on top

[sleek scaffold]

I'm definitely going to raise the rocks up more, but I think I want the grassy rocks there too

[livid wigeon]

when driving it flows better

btw im losing grip in the downhill so even without taking the jump im almost missing the turn

[sleek scaffold]

thats just a skill issue lmao

[livid wigeon]

wow the downhill is too steep for tm and is very low poly
"skill issue"

[sleek scaffold]

thats not what you said

[livid wigeon]

wowie you have a highly tuned and optimized monster truck, and i have timmy's second car

[sleek scaffold]

what

the point is that im not designing this map for timmy's second car lmao

so of course it wont be able to handle the track well, same as if you took an f1 car on it

[livid wigeon]

an f1 car is never supposed to see a blade of grass hello

[sleek scaffold]

but that doesnt mean I should change the track for it

[livid wigeon]

at least make it usable

[sleek scaffold]

.

im not even a good driver

and you dont need to hit the jump if you dont want to lol

[livid wigeon]

mf is 1 inch away from the inner wall "im not even a good driver"

[sleek scaffold]

I smacked into the wall at the end

[livid wigeon]

its literally where the inside line is; where you want to be in that scenario

youre basically punishing people for trying to take the best racing line

and then saying "skill issue"

[sleek scaffold]

the inside line has a jump so maybe it isnt the best racing line

[sleek scaffold]

I took the "best racing line" quite fine

[livid wigeon]

i think you missed the point again

going on the inside, where the jump currently is, is the best racing line for the upcoming turn, and you punish players who go there by putting a jump there

[sleek scaffold]

but this isnt an f1 track, if the inside line is rough terrain that would make it slower to take, then the inside line is not the best line

[livid wigeon]

on the track, without the jump, in that spot, the best line is to go on the inside. you've put a jump there, which punishes players for going on the best line

[sleek scaffold]

ok but then how far does that logic go

[livid wigeon]

going on the outside or in the middle gives you an awful setup for the sharp left turn that immediately follows

[sleek scaffold]

should I remove all turns from the track?

[livid wigeon]

do you not understand

[sleek scaffold]

I do, but I dont think you do

[livid wigeon]

those two turns flow best when the first one is taken with an inside line, because it makes the next turn far easier

[sleek scaffold]

should the track change for the players, or should the players change for the track

[livid wigeon]

and so what youve done is prevent that

so now it flows much worse, because you have to do a sharp >90 degree turn

[sleek scaffold]

also, keep in mind that this isnt supposed to be a competitive race track, its a track that is supposed to be fun to drive

[dreamy inlet]

i'm gonna poke my head in and say, yes it isn't an f1 track but smooth racing lines do not need to be dedicated to exclusively F1, a track with terrible flow is no fun to drive

[sleek scaffold]

I dont think this is terrible flow

[sleek scaffold]

am I not allowed to have a sharp turn?

[livid wigeon]

youre also drifting at a 55 degree angle or so, which is HIGHLY abnormal

[sleek scaffold]

do all turns need to allow the drivers to be at full throttle?

[sleek scaffold]

again.

[livid wigeon]

@dreamy inlet i think youre better at explaining than i am, do you mind poking your head in again

[livid wigeon]

no? >90 degree turn going from a somewhat fast bank is generally a poor design choice

[livid wigeon]

so you're just skipping the banked turn you made and saying yeah its fine

if you give someone a banked turn after a fast straight i think people are gonna take the bank

[sleek scaffold]

random race track image I found, this is a very tight turn, and it has a long stretch that would allow for very fast speeds

[livid wigeon]

this is f1 no?

[sleek scaffold]

sometimes you need to slow down in racing

[livid wigeon]

or something to that effect

[livid wigeon]

dude

[sleek scaffold]

idk, I just know its an actual race track

[livid wigeon]

are you allergic to acknowledging the idea that youve created a >90 degree turn

[sleek scaffold]

no, I think that the >90 degree turn is fine

im not saying I didnt create a sharp turn

[livid wigeon]

i don't think you understand track design then

[sleek scaffold]

im saying theres nothing wrong with said tight turn

[sleek scaffold]

I never claimed to

[livid wigeon]

this mushroom sounds like rock/metal

i think thats why my vehicle is struggling

it might also be that every single angle change is a mini jump because it hasnt been smoothed enough

and this thing weighs as much as a feather

[sleek scaffold]

all I know is it has relatively low traction, so my vehicle can slide instead of flipping immediately

[livid wigeon]

it has the acceleration of road with low grip

i think this is reason for concern

[lone bane]

are there any objects that have the "sand" properties, like with the dirt kickup and stuff

[sleek scaffold]

dont think so

[livid wigeon]

no

[lone bane]

aww unfortunate

[livid wigeon]

not full enough sand to kickup dirt from wheels or have such grip

theres grass and slippery grass

but not dirt/sand

[sleek scaffold]

mushroom is good enough for me 🤷‍♂️ lmao

looks like dirt, feels like dirt, must be dirt

[livid wigeon]

it is literally not dirt

it is making metal sounds

and i have the acceleration of road

[lone bane]

i was just making a monster truck stadium and needed hopefully some sort of dirt kickup but i guess not

[sleek scaffold]

ah, mud would be nice too

maybe it will be added someday

[livid wigeon]

omg the one from the original/custom models update background in tmmm

[lone bane]

??

i dont remember that video as much lol

[livid wigeon]

keep in mind im not even taking the bank, i'm doing what mono did in the 2nd gif where he just hugs the inside

60-80 mph and i think in one of them i slow down to like 25-40

[sleek scaffold]

im not building my track for that car though 😭

[livid wigeon]

this is basically identical to the offroad vehicles that are used in rally

[livid wigeon]

WOW I COULDNT HAVE IMAGINED THAT

[sleek scaffold]

also, thats the reverse

[lone bane]

oh shit i could actually use this with some of my trucks

[livid wigeon]

are you actually ill in the cranium? you were taking the same way around the track i was, to prove your point

[lone bane]

which is slippery grass?

[livid wigeon]

the high seas rocks with the grass

[sleek scaffold]

yeah the track is supposed to go both ways lmao

I was just letting you know that was the reverse

[livid wigeon]

yk whats REALLY funny about that

[sleek scaffold]

are you gonna say the other way is worse?

[livid wigeon]

the best racing line on this side is also blocked by the cliff made from the jump

[sleek scaffold]

omg he did

[livid wigeon]

and because of the sharp sideways uphill

you cant really steer up very well (its not impossible)

[livid wigeon]

and guess what? theres another long straight right before it

[sleek scaffold]

"you cant steer up very well"

[livid wigeon]

going into, you guessed it, a >90 degree turn

[dreamy inlet]

what am i meant to explain here other than the jump turns a potentially interesting turn with plenty of juicy flow into something enpar with unseasoned chicken

[livid wigeon]

dawg you are DRIFTING
and also all the way on the outside

if you took a proper racing line youd be at least 4 seconds faster

[sleek scaffold]

how many times am I going to have to explain this 😭

[livid wigeon]

how many times am i going to have to explain this 😭😭

[livid wigeon]

read what slushie said istg

[dreamy inlet]

also i want to add, jumps are cool, this is just not the spot for it

[sleek scaffold]

I am designing the track in a way that I find enjoyable to drive on, its not supposed to be a competitive race track,
I am designing the track with my vehicle in mind

[livid wigeon]

a potentially interesting turn with good flow
puts jump in the middle
messes up flow
its not good anymore

[livid wigeon]

you could have said this an hour ago

[sleek scaffold]

...

[sleek scaffold]

.

[livid wigeon]

btw, just because its not meant to be competitive, doesnt mean you have to ruin the flow of turns

take a more outside line and drift if you want! the majority of people arent gonna be drifting and so theyll want to take an inside line

[sleek scaffold]

this is epic tho

the majority of people is me.

[lone bane]

also uh why is this thing missing some textures...

[livid wigeon]

because flashblub

[livid wigeon]

do you not want your track to be better

[sleek scaffold]

I think this is better

[livid wigeon]

you can literally just take an outside line if you want, you made the roads so god damn wide, use it!

[sleek scaffold]

and since 100% of the target audience thinks its good, I dont think thats too bad

the roads are wide so there can be variety in where I drive

[livid wigeon]

EXACTLY.

[sleek scaffold]

I dont care about improving times by a fraction of a second

[lone bane]

cmon why

[livid wigeon]

scale them to like 0.001

the particles are unaffected

[lone bane]

custom models block the fire

[sleek scaffold]

where does trailmakers even have fire?

[livid wigeon]

you insist on a poorly designed turn

[lone bane]

rings of fire?

[sleek scaffold]

yeah, Im pretty dumb

[livid wigeon]

i can tell

[lone bane]

the fire particle doesn't scale (which is being blocked by custom model for some reason), but the spark particle (which isn't blocked) does get scaled

[sleek scaffold]

holy bro, why are you getting so mad at me for designing my track that I am building for me to drive in my vehicle the way I want to 😭

[livid wigeon]

oh whenever i use the flamethrower i use it for the fire or the light

[livid wigeon]

because it is objectively poorly designed and you insist otherwise

[lone bane]

the fire is getting the "convex collision treatment"

no idea why it collides
and i want it not to

[sleek scaffold]

but what is objective about it

[livid wigeon]

"its not an f1 track"
5 minutes later

uses f1 track as an example

[sleek scaffold]

what is the purpose of the track

[livid wigeon]

to be a drivable track

i dont know

[sleek scaffold]

I was thinking maybe it would help you understand

[livid wigeon]

what if you make the flamethrower non collidable i dont know

[sleek scaffold]

again

[sleek scaffold]

I am having no issue driving it, and am having lots of fun

[livid wigeon]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-cat-meme-silly-cat-goodbye-jumping-cat-gif-15335071336372316409

[livid wigeon]

yo i just realized when the player goes through the fire, it redirects the particle
its way more noticable at the start of the flame path though

i dont know what i did but now the object tray is shifted downwards off the screen lol

oh fixed it

[lone bane]

yay tracks

[livid wigeon]

mhm

i wanna guess how you did it

[lone bane]

its not that hard to figure out

[livid wigeon]

you put custom model (non collidable) like 0.002 above a prefab with grip

[lone bane]

no way

you got it right

[livid wigeon]

no way

ive used it before

[lone bane]

no way

its a pretty basic technique

[lone bane]

wait i actually didn't do this

i just put an invisible prefab with grip slightly above the custom model

[livid wigeon]

guys i dont think slippery grass is real

i think its just that the high seas prefabs are bumpy

[lone bane]

ok this looks pretty cool

[livid wigeon]

what about this

[lone bane]

prefabs get boring at times

[livid wigeon]

actually this is very claustrophobic im gonna open it up a bit

[livid wigeon]

its the grass, trust

[lone bane]

stranded

[livid wigeon]

exactly

stranded looks nice ish

@lone bane

[inner nacelle]

Dude your comments are literally subjective! Not to mention quite rude. Give him a break!

[knotty lily]

Why are you hating him so much? Its literally his track and he is very much free to do it anyway he wants to.

[latent remnant]

rainlesssky has been warned.

[livid wigeon]

treasure island

size: ~2000x2000 (1000 blender)
center: 512,512 horizontally

danger zone (excluding snow island)

size: 2040x2040 (1020)
center: 0,0

great carrier reef

size: ~4460x4460 (2230)
center: 0,0

stranded in space

size: 4000x4000 (2000)
center: 0,0

airborne

size: ~5800x5800 (2900)
center: 0,0

race island (excluding extra islands)

size: 1500x1500 (750)
center: 0,0

[livid wigeon]

postion 😭

i will never unsee this

[livid wigeon]

besides some weird seams this looks good to me

[livid wigeon]

i think trailmappers has done an oopsie (memory leak)

[median beacon]

does trailmappers have any assets from 2.0 yet? and if not, when will it?

[lone bane]

honestly i dont think any were added afaik

[median beacon]

awww i wanna spawn in a megadrill

[livid wigeon]

for when, could be in april? custom models update was in early april and that is fast approaching

suggestion: move "Arrow Sign", "Yellow Arrows", "Blue Arrows" from Miscellaneous to Racing

suggestion: if object tray is updated to be like the new TM build menu, add search/tag functionality.
e.g. all high seas prefabs have the "High Seas" tag and you can search for that tag
e.g. all desert prefabs have the "Desert" tag
e.g. all danger zone buildings (catapult, grinder) have the "Danger Zone" tag

[vivid laurel]

i wonder if trailmappers understands multiple object groups as different meshes

could be useful to make an autosplitter

where it just automaticly splits objects based on distance

[vivid laurel]

window in window coming in clutch for circuits made out of already existing map geometry

[left latch]

I'm trying to load my map, but every time it gets to around 90% and then its just stuck

[tacit rover]

using custom objects? sometimes the game has trouble loading them for some god forsaken reason. try to delete it and reexport, see if that fixes it. youll probably need to redo your object, make it less complex or remesh it. i never quite figured out why exactly it does that

[left latch]

I litterally have ZERO custom objects

[tacit rover]

huh

can you send a screen of your map from tailmappers?

using any of the chirpos?

[left latch]

yes

4 of them

[tacit rover]

purple?

[left latch]

yes

[tacit rover]

that used to cause some issues afaik

try to delete him

[left latch]

I'll try that

IT WORKS NOW

also I finally figured out a way to light up a room without making it look like hell

[tacit rover]

yeah theres something wrong with calling him in, not sure if the error is in the game or trailmappers

[tacit rover]

using salvage?

[left latch]

yes that

[tacit rover]

you could also try lava for some red-ish lights, but i dont know it you can turn it upside down and have it emit light that way

[left latch]

thats what I meant by "making it look like hell"

[tacit rover]

from what can deduct, it might be appropriate

[left latch]

this is a part of the map I made earlier, but decided it doesnt match the style so I put it away for later

also there's a big ass sheep in the sky as a placeholder

also there's this area on a mountain

[livid wigeon]

you can turn the object but the light is really strong

[left latch]

does anyone have any ideas on how I could make this area look less strange?

its supposed to be unaccesible

but it looks too open, and you can see where it ends

[tacit rover]

I would suggest you use the mushroom tree asset, but it can get pretty heavy when spamming it, so expect worse performance when on screen

[left latch]

what do you mean by using the mushroom tree?

[tacit rover]

There is an asset called the mushroom tree

[left latch]

I know, but how did you mean to use it?

[tacit rover]

It has grass on top for whatever reason. Just stick it underground until only the grass pops up

[left latch]

oh ok

oooh you meant that mushroom tree

that actually works really well

did you mean like this?

@tacit rover

also I meant like the back part

[lone bane]

yep!

[left latch]

do you happen to know anything I could use to make a desert area's floor?

[blazing harbor]

add big bushes

[left latch]

I ALREADY DID THAT TWICE

[blazing harbor]

not enough

like really big

so big they reach the leaves

so it looks like theres more trees but its just a bush

[livid wigeon]

a 2d tree texture would also work

[left latch]

I just found the air vents

[left latch]

I thought of that too but idk how to really make it

[austere aurora]

is it possible to have different textures in one object?

[dreamy inlet]

you can select different textures per object if thats what you mean, if you mean like multiple stitched textures no, but you can use just one massive texture image for it

[livid wigeon]

or split the mesh into different models

[deft mango]

how can you open tm maps in Trailmappers? Like how would I modify an already existing in-game map?

[livid wigeon]

you can't

you can add stuff onto an existing map by just placing stuff at given coordinates

but you cannot modify or delete stuff that already exists in the map

[deft mango]

so how do I know what coordinates to place stuff at?

[livid wigeon]

you can use the velociraptor mod to get coordinates

use altitude instead of the y coordinate though

[deft mango]

alright thanks

[livid wigeon]

i usually use velociraptor to get approximate coordinates and then trial and error until i get the precise position

[livid wigeon]

this works very well for "upgrades" where the tmmm map adds detail to an existing tm map (e.g. my Treasure Island Upgrade v2)

[deft mango]

so it begins

https://tenor.com/view/joker-dark-knight-batman-gif-3438276

[shadow path]

why?!?! why those triangles?! where they came from??

[livid wigeon]

model LOD?

[shadow path]

ohh maybe i should scale up the object?

not in mappers....the og scale of the object

nope. same situation um

[dreamy inlet]

increase poly of it should help

[shadow path]

didnt solved 😦

[versed moat]

Add an additional polygon in the mesh file somewhere far above the existing mesh.

[livid wigeon]

ridicolas probably will return any day now

[deft mango]

making progress, slowly but surely

[lone bane]

i dont think i have to ask but...
new york recreation?

[deft mango]

yeah

mid 70s to be specific

[lone bane]

are you gonna texture the buildings at all? custom models?

[deft mango]

I don't have any blender knowledge so probably not, I am gonna attempt to do the best I can from what trailmappers has to offer, rn I'm just getting the overall layout of the city planned out, although custom models aren't fully out of question

[livid wigeon]

oh god you used individual scaffolding pfbs for that thing on the right didnt you

[deft mango]

nah that's the centrifuge

a developer might've done that idk

[livid wigeon]

officially placed | trailmappers placed

the mini desert shrubs placed around are actually different (simplified) (and dont cast shadows) than the pfb

[livid wigeon]

those better not be individual objects

and ic youre nitro booster now

[deft mango]

https://tenor.com/view/what-gif-2773712783314774774

[deft mango]

i'm actually going insane rn

there is not a single external 3d model in this picture

this is all done using stuff in trailmappers and trailmappers alone

[livid wigeon]

why

[deft mango]

this turned out looking way more realistic looking then I thought it was gonna look like

[inner nacelle]

Nice!

[odd sluice]

i dont know if im just doing something wrong or if its busted but the "Import Map" function does not seem to be working. currently trying to just put in the map data file from my mod to test the import feature and it does not wanna open it

[lone bane]

iirc that is for importing maps from trailedit

[odd sluice]

ah

figured out how to update my json file. chillin now

[mortal wharf]

How do people make desert floors? All I have in terms of models is that flat pancake looking thing which doesn't seem to scale well

[mortal wharf]

It seems this observatory object has no collision? Anyone else encounter this or know how to fix?

[inner nacelle]

Yes it's missing collision on most of it. I think the white dome part does have collision though.

[livid wigeon]

its a fire map when trailmappers starts lagging

treasure island upgrade

[odd sluice]

Wait. Trailmappers not lagging is normal?

[livid wigeon]

lemme guess your pc has a lime for a gpu, lemon for cpu, and orange for ram

[odd sluice]

No

I have a monster of a machine so I just thought the codebase wasn't great

But yeah no. It takes several minutes to open a map

It might be the several thousand assets I have in my custom models folder

[livid wigeon]

IT IS THAT

[lone bane]

thousand??
how tf

i only have a couple hundred and im struggling to open the model menu

[livid wigeon]

I have a couple ten but I think like 4 of them are max vertex limit

if not more

I wonder how much texture contribute to load time

[lone bane]

i have a lag spike upwards of 30 sec opening the texture menu for the first time in a session

[livid wigeon]

mine is like 4s iirc

[odd sluice]

Yeah mine takes actual minutes to load into the menu and then even more minutes to load each folder

[knotty lily]

That is normal i think atleast its the same for me

[mortal wharf]

I was under the assumption that there was some sort of limit to the number of megabytes of custom models you could have in your map but reading this I think that assumption was wrong

[livid wigeon]

per-model yeah a rough limit because of vertex limit but across all of the loaded textures and models no limit

[odd sluice]

I use large atlases for most if not all my textures so I can confirm they do not limit size

[livid wigeon]

if only i had the patience to do atlases

[odd sluice]

Yeah I just auto atlas in blender

There's a plugin to auto atlas

[livid wigeon]

https://tenor.com/view/cat-ask-cat-cute-ask-gif-16856346609288868500

gimme now

also how tf does that work across multiple files

or is it like per object type deal

[odd sluice]

https://github.com/Grim-es/material-combiner-addon

And all it does is it adjusts the UV mapping to be on the atlas

So in trailmappers you apply the texture as the atlas instead of as the standalone texture

Watch your atlas sizing though because sometimes it can get pretty large depending on your source texture sizes

If your source texture are like 4k pixel lengths you might not want to atlas because then it's having to load a massive as fuck image

[livid wigeon]

if the atlas is 4k then it good

the atlas itself is 4k

[odd sluice]

I generally limit my atlas sizes to 4k yeah

It does take a bit because TM initial texture loading is absolute ass

[livid wigeon]

4k textures (few of them though lol) in general load pretty fast

[livid wigeon]

for me a 4k texture (4096^2) took lets say 5s although i think it depends on the filesize for 4k textures alot

[odd sluice]

Yee

But if you try and atlas those without adjusting atlas size it will slap those 4k textures onto the same atlas making a massive abomination

That's why I didn't atlas IronWood

Because my atlas was gonna be like 20k by 20k

I do atlas small textures though

Like my signs and doors are in atlases

Also sometimes uv mapping for atlases does mess up between TM and blender so make sure it's loading the uv properly

For some reason when I was trying to do atlases for my ground and water textures my waterfall was loading my grass texture

[livid wigeon]

god save us all

[livid wigeon]

PFB PFB_Rock_Detail_Med_Mud_01Test is missing

has proper collision as far as i can tell, unlike these two

suggestion: mismatched collision warning as a tooltip in the object picker (like block description/stats in TM). currently its only forced no collision displayed but that is a different issue

for things where their collision mesh is different from the visual mesh

PFB_BlueBerryShrub_02_Noco is missing from trailmappers
PFB_BlueBerryShrub_01 is still broken in TM however

PFB_CatapultStraight is missing but is broken in multiple ways:

• no longer launches the player
• nonstatic removes center plate collision
• animation always active

[livid wigeon]

the display name of any object is saved in the file... why lol

[livid wigeon]

intense lag + memory leak

[compact yew]

IS there a way to import the trailmakers treasure map into trailmappers so I can use it as a reference for a race track? or is there a way I can find coordinates using a mod?

[livid wigeon]

wdym? if you're trying to show the official maps in trailmappers that isn't easily possible. but I myself use a mod called Velociraptor to display coordinates.
using Velociraptor: use the XYZ coordinates line for XZ, but use the altitude line for the Y coordinate. optionally use the heading option for yaw rotation.
I also use Fly Mod to keep my position after exporting a map while it's enabled and to get around the map faster

[compact yew]

ty

i wanted to import the official map so i could jsut build a track, delete the map then load the track over the official map

[livid wigeon]

often I just make a small change in trailmappers, export, check in-game, and repeat small edits until I'm happy

[inner lotus]

how does one add textures to imported models?

[lone bane]

first load a png into the custom model folder, under 1024 x 1024 is a good spot for no crashing,
select the model and click configure,
press the texture setting and select the image you want

[inner lotus]

thank you

[knotty lily]

You could use the sprinkle tool mod to sprinkle a giant amount of objects onto the treasure island and get a rough outline of the terrain

[inner lotus]

this model is not showing up in game, is it too big?

[lone bane]

it may need some time to load, give if a few minutes

[livid wigeon]

can't super reliably reproduce but this happens when exporting and tabbing out of the game at the same time
errors continue until export is pressed again

[livid wigeon]

lol what

[blazing harbor]

"rotate along individual origins" ahh

[livid wigeon]

at this point you can smell the shape of treasure island solely with how many extra pfbs i added

[knotty lily]

did a little thing with some of my mods

[livid wigeon]

amazing use of that space wreck! and GOD DAMN those cables 🔥🔥🔥

do you want the same orange sand texture the devs use? it isnt perfect because its missing a normal map but it looks pretty good

[versed moat]

Mad max vibes

[livid wigeon]

thoughts on my treasure island update map? ive been working on the grassland for the past couple days

[versed moat]

Looks good aslong as them trees aren’t hurting performance

[livid wigeon]

i don't think theyre hurting perf too badly

[versed moat]

Btw the prefab with the trees attached to some rocks doesnt seem to impact performance as much as individual trees

[livid wigeon]

can't scale or rotate (roll/pitch) it a lot though

[knotty lily]

This is only a little experiment to use my mods in the process of actually making a map. So i dont really plan on finishing or releasing this map and thus i dont really need the accurate texture

[livid wigeon]

btw on most maps theres a time during morning where it transitions from green horizon to blue horizon and its very pretty

the further towards morning the darker- and then greener- the sky gets

[livid wigeon]

i would use the replied one for cinematics or basically anything to show off, it just looks nicer

[versed moat]

I guess it depends on the vibe, sometimes the classic dusk settings work well

[livid wigeon]

yeah, if its a mid-day shot then i would for sure use the first one. i like the less intense blue

[versed moat]

The amount of time If I’m making a map I spend individually rotating trees and tilting them so they are more natural than just all being the same

[livid wigeon]

frr samee but also with every single rock and bush and other plants

[versed moat]

Yup lol

[livid wigeon]

my maps, even updates to existing official maps, take so long because i cant just have a tool automatically place everything like flashbulb does

so i have to become the automatic tool for each and every object

besides that almost every tree is yaw rotated the same, it feels empty?

like the ground feels bare despite the shadows and bushes; which stranded also has

maybe because the grassland on stranded is so incredibly flat? unlike stranded

[versed moat]

Stranded has a lot more rivers and separated islands

[livid wigeon]

sad that i cant add those to existing geometry

[versed moat]

Unfortunately

[livid wigeon]

also sad that a lot of the fancier rocks and special grass shapes are inaccessible too

[versed moat]

Treasure island would look pretty damn cool if we could use the waterfall effects from airborne aswell

Waterfall into a small river the winds it’s way through the terrain

[livid wigeon]

theres some messed up blending between grass and rock on stranded and god it looks soo bad, could they really have not been able to fix that for years?

[versed moat]

When I was making bannerhold I found the moon prefabs make really good natural rocks/cliffs. just a nice texture to look at

[knotty lily]

Would it be helpful to be able to sprinkle objects based on a "heatmap" which indicates how many objects go where? Or is that just unpractical?

[lone bane]

yes

[versed moat]

Does your sprinkle tool have settings like spread and individual rotations etc?, I use the array spawning feature in TrailEdit since I still create all my maps in trailedit

[knotty lily]

No, its only got individual scaling and optional individual offset. The rotation is currently always random on the z axis

But those are certainly features i think would be good to add

[versed moat]

Take a look at the array spawning setting in trailedit, might give you some ideas

[knotty lily]

I also tried to add a snap to surface normal option but that didnt work on first try

[versed moat]

Think I’m the only person using trailedit lol

[knotty lily]

lol probaply

I also still find it weird that Trailmappers keeps freezing when i try to load one of my generated cables, i think it has some kind of memory leak bug with my models
Maybe it has a issue with how the faces are generated twice in the same spot to be visible from both sides

[versed moat]

Possibly

[lone bane]

for the sprinkle tool, could an in game brush type thing be better? I could be a little more selective on where to place things, instead of having them where I dont want them like on top of other structures or steep mountains (for trees mostly) without needing to use trailmappers.

[versed moat]

I ain’t touching the source code, that’s Ridicolas thing to sort whenever he comes back

[knotty lily]

Yeah, i was thinking to also be able to adjust the starting height and distance the raycasts go, which would enable to make trees be only on land above water or such

Oh now that i think about it a Brush might actually be more possible than i thought, dont we already have the option to detect where the mouse is?

[versed moat]

Not constantly

Has to be every click

[knotty lily]

Aw

[lone bane]

i noticed that too while working on a map, even with them rotated differently
my solution was to scale the tree on the y axis and just place them in the ground, feels way more full

[versed moat]

You could do something really workaround to get cursor controls

If you see my minigolf mod the ball is controlled by the player moving their mouse

[knotty lily]

Yeah you are using a structure

[versed moat]

You put the player in a seat, wherever the player is aiming is translated into controlling a 3d mouse cursor

Use servos or the aiming sensor for moving the player

[knotty lily]

Btw how did you make the camera?

[versed moat]

The camera was just created to always set to position of the ball

Using addcamera

[knotty lily]

Ah ok because it looked so smooth, i expected it to feel a lot more rigid

[versed moat]

It has some smoothing to it via lerp

[knotty lily]

Ah

[versed moat]

Only a small amount but enough to stop the camera being jumpy

[livid wigeon]

if you want a more official flashbulb map look the red-er rock shapes' underside are good for cliffs

[livid wigeon]

i despise that a minigame mod won a mapmaking contest

still high quality mod but grr...

[versed moat]

I mean it had maps aswell in the bg

[lone bane]

it was more mod than map imo
no hate to terrorsoul, just i feel more of the wow came from cool mod minigame

[livid wigeon]

werent those really low poly mountains or something? i'd argue a pretty high detail ocean map far ahead of what flashbulb has done is better than some mountains which are only a low poly bg for a MINIGAME

[versed moat]

Nope, some of the bgs I spent some time making

Anyhow the Chirpo I gave to lukkram

[livid wigeon]

as i was saying earlier, i really dislike how stranded has so many areas with awful grass blending

and itd be difficult to fix with mods, because of the non-flat geometry paired with the grassy surface property on some of them

[versed moat]

Bushes

[livid wigeon]

idk, this doesnt feel that empty

i think it really is just a lack of verticality, and by extension the sand slopes

ohh theres some really short trees that break up visibility, could try that

[livid wigeon]

i dont think that would do a lot, because there isnt even any fancy grass on here

replaced an object in my save to be PFB_BlueBerryShrub_02_Noco. on the first attempt at loading, tmmm removed the object and carried on fine. on the second attempt at the same thing, and tmmm froze and i assume a very severe memory leak, because memory usage immediately spiked to ~16gb.
if memory serves correct, trailmappers previously had PFB_BlueBerryShrub_02_Noco but it was removed at an unknown date

trailmappers seems to have a lot of memory leaks, with reloading custom models and map loading even

[tacit rover]

howd you do the cables? looks so cool

[knotty lily]

with a mod i made that generates a line between 2 points and exports this line into a obj mesh. But currently i havent released it yet since it still crashes Trailmappers as soon as i try to load one of the generated models in there

[austere aurora]

why isn't my map loading propperly?

[lone bane]

have you given it time to let all the models and textures load?

[austere aurora]

it's been like 20 minutes

[lone bane]

can you try reloading the map maybe?

[austere aurora]

I already did

or maybe I should just decrease the amount of vertecies?

[lone bane]

yeah how large are the models?

[austere aurora]

yes

[lone bane]

yeahh then at higher tri counts the game doesn’t exactly enjoy it too well

[livid wigeon]

how many vertices are there? or if you can't check, how large in mb are most of the models?

you can have a maximum of 32767 vertices which i forgot how large that is in mb

[austere aurora]

10 mb

is the file

size

[livid wigeon]

oh yeah that's too big, should be around 4-8 maximum iirc

[austere aurora]

I figured out that the curbs are the biggest problem

lemme check

THE CURBS ARE 6 MEGA FREAKING BYTES

[livid wigeon]

curbs? like road curbs right?

[austere aurora]

track curbs

I'm making a track

[livid wigeon]

mhm

[austere aurora]

for a tournament

[livid wigeon]

what I would do is make smaller parts like a straight, x angle curve parts

rather than one huge one

it'll be more performant in every regard

load time, file size

[lone bane]

even then you want like less than 0.7 for decent loading times

[austere aurora]

I'll just reduce the vertices on the curbs

[livid wigeon]

1mb is fine for sp idk about multiplayer or with many 1mb files

[austere aurora]

ok it'll be for 8 people so I think I might have to decimate it

[livid wigeon]

probably good too for wheel collisions, but do like 3 or 5 for the curve I'd say, and optimize straights which don't need extra verts

[livid wigeon]

no like, 8 files that are 1mb each. distributing to multiple players is not that bad

[austere aurora]

oh

ok

but the walls are still 2 megabytes

AND THE GOD FORBID CURBS

[livid wigeon]

like the modular blue/gray road parts that are used in danger zone

[austere aurora]

mmhmm

but the track itself is still performant after testing tho

[livid wigeon]

not in function, this shouldn't affect function if you place each part right. the performance is in loading time and file size as I said

[austere aurora]

oooo ok

aww man

[livid wigeon]

and with smaller parts you can do higher vertex count because it's just multiple of the same model and not one big model

but wheels may collide poorly

from what I've seen it seems edges/vertices are bad for collision and repairing?

it may actually be vertices/edges that cause the bulk of collision bugs in the game, I'd have to look at the geometry for the official map terrain to see if it lines up

BOO HISS DYNO

X = vertices
_
/_\

this so the top is a face and so wheels should collide better

[odd sluice]

Yeah. I split my models up as much as I can to save on performance

[livid wigeon]

LOCK IN YALL

[spring oracle]

I'm making another race track then, this time more formula one style then nurburgring

[livid wigeon]

@fallen oar

[fallen oar]

oh

[livid wigeon]

flashbulb really had to leave me with ALL of these flat empty cliffs that i'll have to detail FOR them 😭

[abstract sage]

what map is that?

[versed moat]

Only the best map

[abstract sage]

ah treasure island

some of these assets didnt age very well

[hardy nexus]

do i have to learn modelling if i wanna make a map look good?

[livid wigeon]

in some ways yes, but if you're really slick with it, you might be able to get away with it

[spring oracle]

You can use trailmappers

[livid wigeon]

this is the trailmappers thread

[hardy nexus]

never knew

[spring oracle]

Also if you want to make really good maps you can use 3d models and blender

[spring oracle]

I read modding instead of modelling

[hardy nexus]

blender is a 3D modeler, right?

[hardy nexus]

makes sense

[hardy nexus]

get away without using a modeler?

[livid wigeon]

get away without custom models yeah

[hardy nexus]

alrt

so is there anywhere i can get a type of model or would i have to make them?

[livid wigeon]

you could look for free models on sketchfab, a lot of those are too complex for TM though

it needs to be under 32767 faces I think

[hardy nexus]

alrt
ty tho

[blazing harbor]

explain

[abstract sage]

triangulation may have screwed the model up

[livid wigeon]

the game hates you

[tacit rover]

try to recalculate outside on the whole mesh and triangulate the faces. also the loading engine hates n-gons try to make sure to fix those

[slow gate]

any tips on how to efficiently make a snow map by using TM models? I have a custom model of the terrain elevation of the place I wanted to recreate ( the targeted size of the map is full size of the great carrier reef map which is 15x15 km )

[livid wigeon]

copy and paste

[slow gate]

@livid wigeon wdym copy and paste? if I will place the custom model into TM its surface would be as rough as tarmac

[livid wigeon]

copy and paste snow prefabs

[slow gate]

ah

excellent

[livid wigeon]

1186 objects

we meet again

[runic jackal]

How do you get stats like that?

[fervent sun]

Open the map on a json viewer, like your browser

[runic jackal]

I'm not seeing a summary of objects anywhere, just each objects size/coordination/etc

[fervent sun]

Correct. Json viewers might display the length of the array

[runic jackal]

Is there a recommended item limit, or an absolute item limit for maps?

[hoary temple]

I have some issues with making my 3D models work in game. I have made some Buildings in blender and I was able to import them into trailmappers but when it came to loading in game it would not work. What could be the issues and how do i fix them?

[livid wigeon]

not really but trailmappers starts to lag when selecting more than like 750 objects at once

just don't stack a lot of them on top of each other

[livid wigeon]

lowk i might make my own freecam + coordinates mod for trailmappers

[atomic plaza]

Technically speaking it should be made of triangles but not too many triangles … I think… (I have no idea, I’m surprised someone who actually knows what they’re talking about hasn’t piped in yet)

[hoary temple]

Ok that can be one reason

[tacit rover]

sometimes the models just refuse to load you may need to reexport the .obj, or make some topology changes such as triangulation or just limiting the vertex amount and face. i havent exactly figured out what causes these refusals to load, so you are invited to join and investigate for yourself

[hoary temple]

Thank you very much

[knotty lily]

the linux experience

[mild rain]

That’s through proton? Try the experimental branch, it should render everything correctly

[knotty lily]

experimental branch doesnt fix it, but it doesnt matter since its just the main menu video that doesnt play correctly

[austere aurora]

how do I make lights in trailmappers?

[livid wigeon]

the only way is to use objects that have light on them.

• ring of fire
• flamethrower objects
• power core crate
• chest
• lava
  there might be a couple more I missed

you can stack lights to create blends of the colors

[livid wigeon]

@swift surge guy welcome to 300+ hours of tedious rock placing

[livid wigeon]

aw hell nah im not working in this

oh i fixed it

[austere aurora]

lol

[livid wigeon]

fear me

HOW DID I DO ALL OF THIS IN LIKE AN HOUR???

[inner nacelle]

"Middle Finger Island" perhaps?

[livid wigeon]

Finger Island, tell nobody

[austere aurora]

another picture taken in the dragon autodrome

here's the map if anyone wants to try it https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3486088525

[livid wigeon]

@elder moat map feedback:

• rock pillars and generally most objects could use some random rotation

  • breaks repetitive patterns, especially with more notable things like pillar tops
  • some cliffs that use Desert Ledges especially need random rotation
  • ive seen quite a few beginners forget this

• objects are scaled too large

  • use more and smaller objects for texture quality and geometry detail (less low-poly terrain and better cliffs)
  • i'd say my limit for scaling most objects is around 4,4,4
  • this is a mistake ive seen just about every beginner make

• cliffs use very unevenly scaled objects (use more and 1:1:1 scaled objects)

  • it looks really stretched and generally bad
  • this is also a beginner's mistake

• hole in cliff at -3387,-272

• hole in cliff at -3596,-409

• hole in cliff at -3479,-237

• hole in cliff at -3375,-187

• hole in cliff at -3188,-276

• hole in cliff at -4218,-640

• hole in cliff at -4326,-469

• hole in cliff at -3050,741

• hole in cliff at -3036,920

• hole in cliff at -3138,1022

• hole in cliff at -3348,1057

• hole in cliff at -846,480

• hole in cliff at -647,428

• hole in cliff at -146,572

• hole in cliff at 53,514

• hole in cliff at 137,976

• hole in cliff at -97,-1029

• hole in cliff at -291,-1081

• floating rocks around 270,-805

• floating rocks around -2915,378

• floating rocks around -2638,1212

• floating rocks around -279,-532

• floating rocks around -12,-429

• floating rocks around 727,-56

• floating rock at -1880,-1670

• sunk rocks around -1796,1588

• sunk rocks around 450,-990

• sunk rocks around -2283,-2368

• sunk rocks around -2930,2228

• see-through pipe at -3242,73

[elder moat]

thank you

[livid wigeon]

also,

• not enough color variety
  • poo brown and blue shadows don't work well together
  • some grass rocks (rocks living category) at the top of tall pillars or plateaus would be good
  • make sure theyre usually inaccessible by land because their textures are low quality no matter what you do
• other landmarks besides shipwrecks would be really nice
  • grass rocks also contribute to this

i do like the truss towers, they are very well made 🔥

[elder moat]

well it was intended to be a map based on the Game and there are no plants but some city's

[livid wigeon]

if the map looks bad when it's forced to be an semi-accurate recreation then i don't think it should be required to be the same

notice how bad the one stretched rock looks right beside a slightly more detailed one

i would use way more of these red rocks btw, theyre really good as they can be scaled up without loss in texture quality (geometry does get bad after a point, though much larger)

[elder moat]

i think i will give the map a complete rework