SimRacingPL Shader Pack - discussion

I was wondering if I could use this for our mod and give credit to you? also what i am trying to achive is a better look over all with shaders and stuff ill look at the read me and manuals.
 
gpfan said:
Where can i find those cubmaps??? Are they included in the srlp_shader pack???

Found it, srpl_envmap06.dds it is!!
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Yes. It's used in "Showroom" sample project, so you can find material settings there (they're a bit unusual to create strong showroom reflections).

kidx86 said:
I was wondering if I could use this for our mod and give credit to you?
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Please provide some basic info (or links) about the mod. Basically I'm not giving permissions for illegal conversions so I need to know where it's from and how it ended up in your hands :)
 
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Well Nathan Ritchie was the orignal creator of NSR for rfactor i was working on making it better and showing him how awsome it can be we were talking and all of a sudden his mod went down and site and i have no contact with him i am still working on improving NSR for rfactor and at this point Nathan Ritchie cant be reached but he knows i was working on it to better it.
 
Then I guess it's ok. I'll leave matters related to release of mod between you and Nathan.
Have fun with shaders :)
 
Did you know VHR is using your shaders and i mentioned showing you respect and my post went down lmao kinda funny if you ask me.Not one mention of SRPL in the mod i have tried it and not seen any where or sign of SRPL yet SCE has SRPL on there loading screen SCE has respect and Class thats a great mod.
 
Here are some screenshots of our 2013 release of Stockcar Evolution.
We have gotten nothing but tremendous feedback on what the shaders did for the looks of SCE.

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mschreiner said:
Here are some screenshots of our 2013 release of Stockcar Evolution.
We have gotten nothing but tremendous feedback on what the shaders did for the looks of SCE.
Click to expand...
Thanks for sharing these screenshots :)


You may want to consider not using tone mapping shaders on mirror surface, though.
At the moment you have tone mapping applied twice to what you see in mirrors (once when 3D world is being rendered to mirror texture, and then when mirror itself is being rendered on screen).

It's best to exclude mirror surface from project, when using shaders with tone mapping. If necessary, extract mirror surface to another GMT file.



Also, I get the impression that reflections are a bit overdone. Try using a bit lower fresnel base / a bit higher fresnel power and see how you like it.
 
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I don't know if you applied cubemap to dashboard. If so, then try to brighter up specular texture under windshield. It should make cubemap reflects more simulating reflection from sky - it will be always brighter under window, doesn't matter direction of the sun.
Of course it will require to lower specular parameters to help with overbrighting sun light spot.

I mean effect like this: CLICK
 
MaXyM said:
I don't know if you applied cubemap to dashboard. If so, then try to brighter up specular texture under windshield. It should make cubemap reflects more simulating reflection from sky - it will be always brighter under window, doesn't matter direction of the sun.
Of course it will require to lower specular parameters to help with overbrighting sun light spot.

I mean effect like this: CLICK
Click to expand...

I did apply one. I used the spec map to darken the sides of the dash and allow the tops of the dash to be brighter(reflecting light from sky.) I dumbed that down a tad as it would get too bright when the spot light would hit it. Would be so much easier if rFactor was not dumb in cockpit mode and would cast shadows on itself. :)
 
My shaders add specular reflections from omnilights. It's controlled by "Spec. omni." parameter in your material. If you decrease it, you should hav no problems with interaction between spotlights and specular map.

Reflections from other car's hadlights are unsupported in rF2, so that spec. omni parameter is all you have to deal with :)
 
K Szczech said:
My shaders add specular reflections from omnilights. It's controlled by "Spec. omni." parameter in your material.
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Dropped by to say: stellar job, K Szczech. *thumbs up*

Documentation, tools, shaders, the packages - I can only imagine the amount of work that went into it, my hats off to you sir.


M.
 
EnvMap problema modificado para que sea oscuro, me tira error de rfactor textura carbody
 
Just a quick question:
I have a object, add shaders as always, but when I export it, I dont get the shading file, just for this specific gmt file. So when I try to add the shading file manually by renaming a existing one, rfactor still want load the shading file for this .gmt file. Why?
 
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When you add shader to some object, then during export editor will do the following:
- put reference to shader into GMT file
- generate Shading...tga texture to parametrize this shader
- add reference to this Shading...tga texture to GMT file

You can use GMT debugger to see what's really exported in that GMT file and does it properly refer to shading....tga file.

Those Shading....tga files contain fresnel and specular curves.
 
Ok, solved the problem. I had to use wcextra1 to get it to work, don't know why.

Other question, to create a realistic backlight-glow, is it best to use the common_blightflares texture shipped with your shaders? Does this texture gives good results on many different cars? Or should I use always the backlight texture of the car itself?

Does the default setting for the brakelight are already good/usable?
 
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MaXyM said:
Maybe I will try to answer cause I worked on cockpits a last few months. Results of my work you may see on Post Your Screenshots thread: https://community.racesimcentral.net/showthread.php/99-Post-your-Screenshots!?p=63823&viewfull=1#post63823

Basically, there is no way to get result found in Cars or Shift. It's because rF1 cant cast self shadows into cockpit. What you can see in most modern titles, is bright light (from sun) cut off by cockpit elements casting self shadow. That's where contrast comes from. It's impossible in rF1. Period.

However you may improve "feeling" while driving rF1 cars. I have plans to write some kind of tutorial of how create complex materials for cockpits using SRPL ShaderPack. But I try to write a few points now:

1. At first do not use shader with ToneMapping. It makes things very bright when sun is behind of a car. It is unnatural in case of cars with roof. It may fit more for OW cars or cabrios.
2. I used Unrestricted Shaders x1.0 to get results you can see on screenshots.
3. Think about where direct sunlight is operating at most - usually under under windshield, close to lower edge door's windows
4. Do not forget about sky reflecting in cockpit. It will be the same places as listed in #3. But to make it visible you have to give a lot of Fresnel base which affects also specular reflection. You have to tune it up.
5. Best way is to set spec texture for most exposed areas to high values (suggest about 240 avarage). The rest may be way darker.
6. Then set material without specular lighting (with texture but both spec scale set to 0) - to get required result of sky reflection.
7. Then add specular reflection - note - more specular (especialy more spec power), more glossy material you get, especially valid for close-up of material with normal map pattern. For matte materials like alcantara, it is enough to use only one specular, and set it very wide (low specular power).
8. Tune up specular parameters to get as bright result as acceptable when racing against the sun. Check it at 2pm, 4pm, and 5:30pm. Note, that more Fresnel scale - more changing reflection while sun changing position or car changing pitch (it's base rule of Fresnel effect, intensity of reflection depends on reflection angle). To get always a lot of reflection, I suggest to use low fresnel scale. it is not realistic, but without this "trick" you get hard reflection at dawn but too low afternoon. Unfortunately without HDR it cannot be done another way to get visible reflection of sky at noon and not over-brighten reflection later afternoon

In parallel, you may (you have to) mask internal areas of interior by making corresponding parts of specular texture darker. A lot darker ;). It will limits reflections inside of car (it is not quite real but very close to what we can feel while sun light is cut out by roof and other car elements)

What you have to remember (I made such mistakes so I will share with my experience)
1. Do not try to get more diffused reflection by lowering fresnel base too much and then applying high specular to get some light reflection. Firstly because it is not real. IRL if material reflects direct light, it also reflects surroundings and sky (KS words). So, better is to use most blurred cube, set some real fresnel base and some low specular scale. Second reason of this approach is calculation precision. In case of using 0.001 fresnel base, you will never get maximum (white) reflection doesn't matter what high spec scale you set. It is due to limitations of floating point calculations (especially with low precision like 8 bits used in that case)

BTW I have to make two notes:
Note, that SRPL Shader pack allows to create complex materials with two sets of diffuse/normal maps. Documentation says that first set is dedicated for main colour and second set for details. But it is not clear enough if it is allowed to use it in reverse order. Diagram says: yes. But watch out: second set of textures is not rendered when lit by another cars!!! This issue wasn't been known when writing manual I believe. I prepared some cockpit materials as AO texture in 1st set (texture expanded over whole object), and color pattern (ie alcantara, carbon) in second. Under lights I saw only AO, but not material texture. I had to recalculate UVs for all textures, which allows to use pattern in first set and AO-in second one - fortunately Editor provides such feature so it was not a case any more. Now only AO disappears when lit by other cars which is acceptable.

Another note that the same normal map texture used in second set gives slightly softer result. It is done intentionally (some maths) and difference is not such significant. But you have to know about it.

with regards
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THX Again for the explanation maxym - but if I only look at the frontbumper camera of gt5 and leave out the cockpit
(because iam not a cockpit fan) I notice the sun as a light source giving gt5 a lot of contrast on track -> this is not possible in
rfactor or is it?

cheers
 
in short you are right. There is no HDR in rfactor and also lighting/shadows system is very simplified.
However you can you can move forward a bit using tracks made to make use of SRPL Shader Pack.

You quoted my description about applying shaders to cars, which is not enough. You have to put such car on a track which is also modified using tone mapping shaders.

with regards
 
can you plz explain me where i can

maximize saturation and contrast in config file

and change brightness

because there a lot different contrast and saturation lines there

THX
 
What config file are you referring to?

I think you posted in the wrong thread. I have no settings for saturation / contrast in neither editor config, nor project files.
 
sorry I thought

you could help me

I mean the config file in the mainfolder of rf (the rf exe file is there as well)

because the question concerns how to make rfactor look better.

Nevermind I found this here but I guess no one realized this effect for rfactor so far..?

http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=226791

cheers
 
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@ K Szczech:

What is the better choise for the glass? I noticed that when I select "Glass" for wcwindow the glass shines "glassy" even when there is a shadow of trees or a bridge on it.

But when I don't select "glass", than the windows are getting darker under shader caster objects (which looks better), but then also the shadow caster sometime is much "layered" before the windows even the shadow is behind. I don't know if you understand this, if not, I'll do some screenshots later on.
 
From my experience: do not set Glass property for car windows. Glass property makes this material rendered after shadows. so as you said, there will be no receive shadow any more.
Note, that even with glass property disabled, you will still see specular reflection (however darkened by shadow). It is due to limitation of rF1 gfx engine which doesn't cutoff light, but but just put dark layers over the top of already rendered scene.

I'm not sure what do you mean describing your second issue. But remember to enable shadow receiver for objects inside the car. Otherwise it will look strange.
 
Thanks for you'r reply. With the second issue I was talking about this. Happens (sometimes) when I don't check the "Glass" box.



Could it be track related?
 
Looks like known issue in this gfx engine. Shadow is rendered over the top of windows (blended) material.
I believe this issue appears also with default shaders, however may be less visible due to weaker reflections from glass (especially when looking at from some angle)
You may try to play with double-sided flag for windows material, but I doubt it will help. I will try later to confirm if our mod also suffer with this issue.

with regards
 
Change texture LOD bias (those -1.2 values you see next to each texture).
Search for a good balance between sharpness and aliasing.

Refer to page 23 of documentation for more information.


@xoa - glass should never be a shadow receiver in rF1, since most part of it's appearance is reflection and reflection is the same, whenever you are in shadow or not.
 
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K Szczech said:
@xoa - glass should never be a shadow receiver in rF1, since most part of it's appearance is reflection and reflection is the same, whenever you are in shadow or not.
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But if you left it as non shadow receiver, it looks strange while car stay in shadow: glass will glow comparing to other parts of a car. It would be very well visible in garage.
I'm sure cars from our mod (out means my and K.Sz) have glass set to receive the shadow.

PS. Checked project files, and I have to confirm what I've said.
 
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Hi,

I just tried now the shader on a track, but i have an issue. I've just tried on the track surface, but if i try with the normal "materials" under the Edit button, the UV are correct (diff, spec, norm), but if i use the "Track Surface" the Spec map UV is lost. :confused:
 
Track shader is too complex and there simply wasn't enough room in GMT file for all parameters and independent UV coordinates.
Specular map and bump map coordinates are fixed - you can only use them for small detail maps.
 
You really need to post your material settings when you report problems like this one.
 
K Szczech

If you have any questions or comments on Shader Pack, you can post them here.
It's also a place to post permission requests for modders.

If you're interested in using these shaders in your mod, request a permission here.
You should provide information about the mod - especially about who made all the content.
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hello. :) I am interested how to make animation with shadors. I want to make flag animation and don't understand how to do it. Maybe someone can teach it to me or record little video how to make it ? I will be very proud and thankful for this kindness.

P. S. Sorry for my bad English.

Here is my topic: https://community.racesimcentral.net/showthread.php/10862-Object-animation-in-rFactor
 
I don't have any shader for flag animation in shader pack. Animating objects by means different than just texture is a completely different story and usually requires some support in game engine itself.

My recommendation to you is to just make a flag animation in some 3D modelling software and then render it to a series of images. Then just use them as animated flag in rF1.
 
The one from rF1 movie is probably an animated texture, like I described in my previous post.

So the answer is no - you can't add new features to engine using just shaders. It has to be the engine itself providing features. Shaders only change the way things look, but not how they act.
 
K Szczech

It's clear now. Thank you for reply and information. Do you know some topic about animated textures ?
 
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