Tips and tricks for conversions from gtr2 to rf1

[anels99]

AI not to bounce:

Usually the AI cars will bounce from a gtr2 convert, so this edit in the hdv will fix this (as far as ive tested)

you have to change these values in the hdv file (starting from the [FRONTLEFT] section)

BumpStopRisingSpring=1.25e9 change it to BumpStopRisingSpring=1.25e7

BumpStopRisingDamper=2.19e7 change it to BumpStopRisingDamper=2.19e5



change it for the 4 wheels



To get brakelights and lights working:

you need to have the textures blights, blights00, blights01, & blights02.dds



headlights (material name lights / event set to lights00 (off) and lights01 (on)

brakelights (material name blights / event set to blights00 (off),blights01(off) and finally blights02 (on) so you can see them!



make sure you use for the Lights00 and Blights00 and 01 transparent textures.

Lights01 and Blights02 then must be the textures with lights on.

make the blights02 texture brighter than the lights01 texture to see the brakelight effect.


Trouble with a milky or dark looking windscreen/headlamp covers.

from the interior, try putting the graphics settings to "Diffuse" in 3dsimed, had some issues with the windscreens so had to do lots of fiddling.
from the exterior change the alpha channel under the window from white to black.

Example:

If you work with photoshop you need click to channels:


Than hide layers and uncover alpha channel,then paint in alpha layer


and if you finish painting, back hide alpha and uncover layers, save as DDS


I think this is for reversed mirrors? Anyway, another tip
load the material in 3dSimEd and choose Re-Scale Texture, then add a minus in front of the Scale V which is the vertical plane. Scale U represents the Horizontal plane.



Info regarding skins and how to get them to work:



Make sure the body1.dds (Livery) is setted as wccarbody in simed, if not it will load only the default skin assigned to that material.



for extra stuff like windows, driver, wings etc..



set the window file as wcwindow and all the extra files like wcextraxx where xx are numbers between 1-unlimited. Ingame as usual, xx_window.dds and xx_extraxx.dds. If you want to have different liveries also for driver set his material as wcdriver.



call the wing texture like WCEXTRA1 or 2 or 3 or whatever.

then copy your basic livery and rename it to xxxxxextra1 or similar to avoid texture mismatches.

[anels99]

All these tips are from kind people who know what theyre doing lol. Any hints or anything anyone else has, please feel free to add.

This topic is to help peopel but also a personal reminder for when i forget how to do something, lol.

[marvinwankerstein]

Here are two PDF files. One is a tutorial on converting from GTR2 to RF and the other is on how to make lights work. Unfortunately, it's not always as easy as described.

Attachments:

Converting from GTR2 to rFactor.pdf (347.14 KB)

Light making tutorial.pdf (627.49 KB)

[marvinwankerstein]

Here is a list of all of the WildCard textures that can be used in rfactor. WC stands for WildCard.

WCCARBODY
WCWINDOW
WCWING
WCDRIVER
WCHELMET
WCARMS
WCRIMS
WCEXTRA0
WCEXTRA1
WCEXTRA2
WCEXTRA3
WCEXTRA4
WCEXTRA5
WCEXTRA6
WCEXTRA7
WCEXTRA8
WCEXTRA9
WCSPINNER
WCPITBODY
WCPITHELMET
WCLOLLIPOP


The way the wildcard textures work is you define a "DefaultLivery" in the car's .veh file. This will override the default file for the material named WCCARBODY. Then each of the other files will be named based on what the DefaultLivery is specified as. As an example, here are a few textures that will be used if a car has a DefaultLivery of MyCarSkin.dds :

WCCARBODY = MyCarSkin.dds
WCWINDOW = MyCarSkinWindow.dds
WCWING = MyCarSkinWing.dds
WCHELMET = MyCarSkinHelmet.dds
WCEXTRA0 = MyCarSkinExtra0.dds

What happens is the letters after WC are appended to the filename that is set as the DefaultLivery.

This can also be overridden in the .veh file. The V8factor mod is one that overrides the default names. Here is a sample from one of its .veh files :

DefaultLivery="GRM_33.DDS"
Extra0="livery"
Extra1="livery"
Extra2="net"
Extra3="cpstrip"
Extra4="cpscreen"
Extra5="wheelts"
Extra6="wheelfs"
Extra7="helmet"
Extra8="window"
Extra9="board"

This means that for the car skin GRM_33.dds, its WCEXTRA7 material will use GRM_33helmet.dds. I'm not sure why they didn't just use WCHELMET and WCWINDOW and the standard names for those but that's what they did.

[anels99]

cheers marvin, this is a HUUGE help!

[marvinwankerstein]

You're welcome.

I'll add another note about SearchPaths in .gen files since this seems to be something that confuses a lot of people.

The SearchPath tells the game where to look to find mesh files (.gmt which stands for GMotor Triangles) and .mas files - I don't know what that stands for.

They can use two pre-defined directories : <TEAMDIR> and <VEHDIR>. TEAMDIR is where the .veh file for the car is located. VEHDIR is the vehicles directory as defined in the .rfm file. By default it is in Rfactor\GameData\Vehicles.

Another important thing to be aware of is ".." in a directory path. That means the parent directory or one level up.

In the last car I did, the Probe GTP, it had a directory structure that looked like this :

Vehicles ─── Probe_GTP ─┬─ Teams
                       └─ mas


The car uses Probe_GTP.mas and then some files were in a subdirectory called mas. The .veh files were all in the Teams directory.

I wanted this car to be easily usable with any mod so I set the SearchPaths to be :

SearchPath=<VEHDIR>
SearchPath=<TEAMDIR>..
SearchPath=<TEAMDIR>../mas

For this car, <VEHDIR> can be anywhere but for me it is GameData/Vehicles/ and <TEAMDIR> is defined as GameData/Vehicles/Probe_GTP/Teams/

The first SearchPath line is probably not necessary but I do it out of habit.

The second line, <TEAMDIR>.., means one directory level above the Teams directory which would be GameData/Vehicles/Probe_GTP/. It doesn't need a slash after the > because <TEAMDIR> already has it included.

The third line, <TEAMDIR>../mas, is the mas subdirectory relative to the SearchPath in the second line. This will be GameData/Vehicles/Probe_GTP/mas.

All of this means the game will look in one of these three directories for the car's .gmt and .mas files :

1. GameData/Vehicles
2. GameData/Vehicles/Probe_GTP
3. GameData/Vehicles/Probe_GTP/mas

This is really pretty simple once you get the hang of it.

[anels99]

Another great piece of info! Thanks marvin!

I still make the simplest of mistakes that makes me laugh. But i tend to learn something new almost everyday.

[marvinwankerstein]

A note on .gen files and GenStrings. I am including this because I was looking at the March and I see two .mas files and two .gen files which are used to choose between two sets of wheels and two body types.  There is an easier way.  The GenString can be used to choose those parts and then we need only one .gen and one .mas file.

Here is a note I found in the .gen file of a car :

// All information except tokens are copied directly.
// Tokens have the format "<value>" where value is one of the following:
// ID - this is replaced by the slot identification (000, 001, etc.), or
// 1,2,3,etc - this is replaced by the first 1,2,3 characters of the vehicle filename
// VEHDIR - this is replaced with the proper vehicles directory (e.g. E:\Data\season01\vehicles)
// TEAMDIR - this is replaced with the proper team directory (e.g. season01\vehicles\williams)
// SPIN - for the vehicle spinner in the options only
// NOTSPIN - for everything EXCEPT the vehicle spinner
// LOW - low detail only
// MED - medium detail only
// HIGH - high detail only
// MAX - maximum detail only

The VEHDIR and TEAMDIR tokens were covered previously. The ID is a slot number chosen by the game. The SPIN and NOTSPIN tokens are really useful. You only need to have one .gen file for a car and if you use those tokens you can specify meshes to display in the spinner only or things to omit from the spinner. This is my preference and what I did with the VetteGTP.

The GenString can be used to select unique parts for each car. A GenString is just a string of numbers or letters. What really matters is how it is used in the .gen file. In the .gen file you will see mesh specifiers that look something like this :

MeshFile=march_body_1.gmt LODIn=(0.0) LODOut=(350.0)
MeshFile=march_tr_1_lf.gmt LODIn=(0.00) LODOut=(350.0)

These could be specified as :

MeshFile=march_body_<1>.gmt LODIn=(0.0) LODOut=(350.0)
MeshFile=march_tr_<2>_lf.gmt LODIn=(0.0) LODOut=(350.0)

and what will happen is the <1> is replaced with the 1st character of the GenString and <2> is replaced with the 2nd character of the GenString.

If a car has a GenString of "HGFE" the meshes the game uses will be march_body_H.gmt and march_tr_G_lf.gmt because "H" is character 1 and "G" is character 2.

There is another way to specify unique parts for cars and that is to use the upgrades file. It is also possible to have multiple car component options and let the user select them from with in the game. You could specify the above meshes like this :

MeshFile=<VABODY>.gmt LODIn=(0.0) LODOut=(350.0)
MeshFile=<LFTIRE>.gmt LODIn=(0.0) LODOut=(350.0)

and then in the upgrades file you would do something like this :
UpgradeLevel="BMW Body"
 {
    Description="BMW bodywork."
    GEN=<VABODY>=march_body_bmw.gmt
    GEN=<LFTIRE>=march_tr_bbs_lf.gmt
 }
 UpgradeLevel="Buick Body"
 {
    Description="Buick bodywork."
    GEN=<VABODY>=march_body_buick.gmt
    GEN=<LFTIRE>=march_tr_oz_lf.gmt
 }
The user would then have the option to select either the BMW or the Buick body. If desired, practically every part of a car can be selected separately and the user can set up customized cars to race with.

One more thing, LODin and LODout are used to specify when a given Level Of Detail model is visible. LODin is the beginning value and LODout is the ending value. If a mesh's LODin is set to 50 and LODout is set to 200 then that mesh will be visible at distances between 50 and 200m. Outside of that range it will not be visible.

[marvinwankerstein]

One piece of advice for naming the parts of a car. Remember how names are sorted. Tire names are usually set like this :

march_tire_lf_bbs.gmt
march_tire_rf_bbs.gmt
march_tire_lr_bbs.gmt
march_tire_rr_bbs.gmt
march_tire_lf_oz.gmt
march_tire_rf_oz.gmt
march_tire_lr_oz.gmt
march_tire_rr_oz.gmt

They will be sorted in the Explorer like this :

march_tire_lf_bbs.gmt
march_tire_lf_oz.gmt
march_tire_lr_bbs.gmt
march_tire_lr_oz.gmt
march_tire_rf_bbs.gmt
march_tire_rf_oz.gmt
march_tire_rr_bbs.gmt
march_tire_rr_oz.gmt

That's rather awkward if you want to do something with all the meshes of a given type of tire. A better way is to name them so the tire types are sorted together like this :

march_tire_bbs_lf.gmt
march_tire_bbs_lr.gmt
march_tire_bbs_rf.gmt
march_tire_bbs_rr.gmt
march_tire_oz_lf.gmt
march_tire_oz_lr.gmt
march_tire_oz_rf.gmt
march_tire_oz_rr.gmt

[anels99]

thanks for that, never understood how upgrades work for cars

[marvinwankerstein]

One more note about the brake lights. Typically the images BrakeLights00.tga, BrakeLights01.tga, and BrakeLights02.tga are used and the animation sequence is set to 0,1,2. This differs from GTR2 in that only the xxx00 and xxx01 images are used by that game. Usually one has to copy the xxx01.tga image to xxx02.tga when converting from GTR2. Another option is to use the standard xxx00 and xxx01 images and set the animation sequence to 0,0,1 and this will work just fine. I saw this done in a mod I was looking at the other day and I think it is a great idea.

[seriousspy]

What about for the opposite, does somebody have a tutorial for converting stuff from rF to GTR2?

[gleippz911]

Hi guys, in the tutorial .pdf there is something described as a "NewModFolder", I think a basic one for new mods. Does anybody knows where to find it or something similar?

[marvinwankerstein]

I think it is something that you make yourself for whatever mod you are working on.

[chaoszero]

I am encountering a bug that I've never seen. The car loads fine in showroom but freezes the whole game while loading the track. No errors, all the files are where they should be with the names they should have, but for some reasons it doesn't work. I've done the exact same things as all my conversions, this is the first time that something like this happens.

This is the only thing that surfaces in the trace.

slot.cpp 439: Vehicle GAMEDATA\VEHICLES\xxx\xxx\xxx\TEAMS\xxx.VEH:
slot.cpp 440: CollisionBodyChecksum=-81672985