New vehicles look great but they all seem to be left hand drive - and there are no large trucks with trailers, only the prime mover.

There also seems to be an issue with the colour of vehicles -  the initial rendered colour is nothing like what was displayed.  I could change the colour using the Dynamite tools - and it changed colour in the display - but the rendered colour did not change.

Just one other thing that I thought of with the new vehicles - we probably need to get the wheels to rotate - the cars look great with mag wheels but if they don’t rotate in an animation they just look stupid. 
There is a tutorial from Autodesk about rigging a car that explains how to get the wheels to rotate as a vehicle moves along a path - but it uses the path length which you measure in the model - OK for 1 car but not so good for 100’s of vehicles on different paths. 
Maybe cars could be pre-rigged with a path length variable that Dynamite updates when the vehicle is added to a particular path.

Ian Urban - 09 July 2010 02:37 AM

New vehicles look great but they all seem to be left hand drive - and there are no large trucks with trailers, only the prime mover.

There certainly is a different vehicle library in the Autodesk release of DVSP. The library is larger in general terms, but yes - you might find that the coverage of vehicles is different, and you might be missing something which was there before.

As a 3AM Solutions DVSP user, you have the luxury of using your old DVSP vehicle library with the new one. Just copy it across from an old installation and merge the contents of both vehicle libraries into one folder.

The left hand drive thing - that’s a good point. The older 3AM library didn’t have any interior detail, so this is a disadvantage of having better, more detailed models! I’ll put together a quick tutorial showing how to mirror image them manually - you could do the whole collection in 10 minutes easily.

Ian Urban - 09 July 2010 02:37 AM

There also seems to be an issue with the colour of vehicles -  the initial rendered colour is nothing like what was displayed.  I could change the colour using the Dynamite tools - and it changed colour in the display - but the rendered colour did not change.

Which renderer are you using?  Could you provide a simple max file that shows this behaviour?

Ian Urban - 09 July 2010 02:37 AM

Just one other thing that I thought of with the new vehicles - we probably need to get the wheels to rotate - the cars look great with mag wheels but if they don’t rotate in an animation they just look stupid.

There are no plans to change this at the moment. The way that we got around this in the 3AM release is that the wheels had no detail - just a silver disk - which meant you couldn’t see the lack of rotation.  For now, I would suggest using the contents of the older vehicle library in projects where you are likely to see the wheels side on, on a moving vehicle.

Here’s the steps you need to follow to change left hand drive vehicles to right hand drive (and vice versa):

1) Start 3ds Max Design, preferably without Dynamite VSP running.

2) Open one of the max files in your vehicle library from the current DVSP Country Resource Kit.

3) In the 3ds Max Design main toolbar, ensure that the current Reference Coordinate System is set to “World”.  This is the drop-down list to the right of the Move/Scale/Rotate icons.

4) Select the vehicle object in the viewport.

5) From the “Tools” menu in 3ds Max Design, select the “Mirror” option.

6) In the Mirror dialog box, select “X” as the mirror axis, then click OK. The Mirror Dialog closes.

7) (VERY IMPORTANT!!) From the Hierarchy tab in the 3ds Max Design command panel, press the “Reset / Transform” button. This sets the current orientation of the object as the base orientation.  If you don’t do this, the vehicle will be reset back to its original orientation when you insert it into another MAX file via DVSP.

8) Save the max file, then move on to the next vehicle in the library and repeat.

See attached for a screenshot highlighting the relevant parts of the 3ds Max Design user interface.

Thanks Bruce for the info and help
Ta Ian

Bruce, here is a sample file and an object placement style to place the cars on the Line001 element (a file with cars already in it is too big to post here)

I am using the AU Country Kit and mental ray to render the cars

All cars in this sample render with the wrong colour except the Mustang, which works as it should. You can change the colour of the other cars but they always render the same colour.

Also, I made the cars in my AU Country Kit RH Drive using your method.  It worked fine, although I had to reverse the “License_Plat.tga” file in the Globals/VehicleMaps to get the license plate to be correct.

Ian Turner - 12 July 2010 01:59 AM

All cars in this sample render with the wrong colour except the Mustang, which works as it should. You can change the colour of the other cars but they always render the same colour.

Ian,  I can’t reproduce this - when I render this all the cars come out correct (see attached).  I will actually need to see your max file to work out what’s going wrong there, although you can remove everything else and just send a max file which includes the vehicles and parent shape perhaps.

Bruce

Here is a file with one car - displays red in 3DS MAX, Dynamite Vehicle Body Colour - [7] Body (Red)

The car renders a silver/grey colour

Reguarding the image you posted with the 8 cars - I get exactly the same render colours for the cars as you do, except for the Mustang which gets a random colour.

I have also included a screen grab of my 8 cars in 3DS MAX with the resultant render

Thanks for the tute on the left hand drive to right hand drive conversion Bruce.

One question (perhaps it warrants a new topic but its sort of relevant to this) -
Is it possible to set a minimum distance/clash detection between vehicles that are auto placed at random intervals?  The reason I ask is that sometimes you will have a sparsely populated path but even so you will get cars that are generated either very close to each other (tailgating) or directly on top of each other (so the cars merge into one).  The way I currently get around this is generate the traffic and then delete any of the cars that are too close manually.

Bruce Harfield - 19 July 2010 06:09 AM

Ian,  I can’t reproduce this - when I render this all the cars come out correct (see attached).  I will actually need to see your max file to work out what’s going wrong there, although you can remove everything else and just send a max file which includes the vehicles and parent shape perhaps.

I experience the same as Ian.  The colour of the material for the paint doesn’t adopt the random colour set for the vehicle so when you have three same models with three different colours, they all render the same colour.

Chris - 20 July 2010 11:35 PM

One question (perhaps it warrants a new topic but its sort of relevant to this) -
Is it possible to set a minimum distance/clash detection between vehicles that are auto placed at random intervals?  The reason I ask is that sometimes you will have a sparsely populated path but even so you will get cars that are generated either very close to each other (tailgating) or directly on top of each other (so the cars merge into one).  The way I currently get around this is generate the traffic and then delete any of the cars that are too close manually.

I thought that this was something that was looked into ages ago.  This is my workflow too.  Populate, cull and respace a few.

Peter Cook - 21 July 2010 01:59 AM

I thought that this was something that was looked into ages ago.  This is my workflow too.  Populate, cull and respace a few.

Yeah, the vehicle spacing thing is not working quite as well as was intended.  It’s on the list to be addressed for the next Autodesk release.  Have you switched yet, or are you still on DVSP 4.x?

Peter Cook - 21 July 2010 01:59 AM

The colour of the material for the paint doesn’t adopt the random colour set for the vehicle so when you have three same models with three different colours, they all render the same colour.

It does indeed appear that there is a problem here. The problem is in the material which is stored within each max file in the new vehicle library in the Autodesk version of DVSP. 

In DVSP 4.x, materials were not stored in the max files, but a generic “DynamiteVehicles” material was applied to all vehicles when they were created from an OPS style.

We’ll need to look at this, but in the meantime you have two choices:

1) Change DVSP so that it always overrides any materials stored in max files and forces the generic DynamiteVehicles material to be applied instead. You can set this in the DVSP Preferences panel.  The setting is called “Always override pre-assigned materials in DVSP object library files?”.  The default setting is false, you’ll need to set this to true.

2) Manually fix the material problem in each of the max files in the DVSP 2011 Vehicle Library. Although the diffuse colour has been set correctly for each of the nine body colours, if you delve a little deeper into the diffuse channel you’ll see a Maps rollut with a parameter called “Metallic Paint Material Properties”. There is a “falloff” map in here which overrides the basic diffuse colour and these colours in the falloff map have not been set correctly.  The trouble is that you’ll need to set these manually in nine different material IDs, for every vehicle in the library.

I hope this helps - thanks for pointing this out.

Bruce Harfield - 21 July 2010 07:55 PM

Yeah, the vehicle spacing thing is not working quite as well as was intended.  It’s on the list to be addressed for the next Autodesk release.

Good stuff.

Bruce Harfield - 21 July 2010 07:55 PM

Have you switched yet, or are you still on DVSP 4.x?

We have switched to ACVE.  I have started a new project and it’s a bit of a pain.  It’s been 13 months between 3D gigs and recently we have had an office move, software upgrades, computer upgrades and movements, network changes and I presently don’t have a render manager and only four machines for the render farm.  The end result is that I’m essentially trying to build back up to where we were from scratch while trying to work on this project and there’s small things that aren’t working out as I’d hoped.  AVCE is basically fine however I have legacy stuff that I have to sort out while trying to keep a deadline.

Bruce Harfield - 21 July 2010 08:04 PM

I hope this helps - thanks for pointing this out.

No worries.  Which is the better sollution?  I’d imagine no. 2 although no. 1 is clearly the easier / quicker option.

Peter Cook - 21 July 2010 11:17 PM

Which is the better sollution?  I’d imagine no. 2 although no. 1 is clearly the easier / quicker option.

Yes 2 would be better. Part of the reason that vehicle materials are stored in the max files for the Autodesk release of DVSP, is that it gives the opportunity to provide vehicle specific maps like headlamp lenses, and tyre treads.  You’ll lose this extra detail if you go for the generic DynamiteVehicles material.

Bruce Harfield - 21 July 2010 08:04 PM

2) Manually fix the material problem in each of the max files in the DVSP 2011 Vehicle Library. Although the diffuse colour has been set correctly for each of the nine body colours, if you delve a little deeper into the diffuse channel you’ll see a Maps rollut with a parameter called “Metallic Paint Material Properties”. There is a “falloff” map in here which overrides the basic diffuse colour and these colours in the falloff map have not been set correctly.  The trouble is that you’ll need to set these manually in nine different material IDs, for every vehicle in the library.

Bruce, can you post two screen snap-shots: 1 of the existing “falloff” maps 1 of the correct “falloff” maps settings for one of the vehicles?
I ask because I am experiencing the problem Ian has with the vehicle color. I opened the vehicle material in the slate material editor and all the “falloff” maps are the same color.

BevLynn - 22 July 2010 06:19 PM

Bruce, can you post two screen snap-shots: 1 of the existing “falloff” maps 1 of the correct “falloff” maps settings for one of the vehicles?
I ask because I am experiencing the problem Ian has with the vehicle color. I opened the vehicle material in the slate material editor and all the “falloff” maps are the same color.

They are all the same color - exactly! That is the problem. The idea of these materials is that there should be a different body color in each of the first nine channels of the materials for these vehicles.

This is true of the color (reflectance) value in the metallic paint pro-material (see screenshot 1), delve deeper and you’ll see that the falloff map applied to the map slot of color (reflectance) does not change across the nine channels (see screenshot 2).

So you need to edit those two colors in the falloff map for each of the nine channels to be something close to the color that’s displayed one level above in the ProMaterial itself.

Let me know if you need further clarification.

Yeah and also the Low poly Trucks supplied render with no texture on the trailer and the shadow underneath the truck just comes out grey