International Competitive Racing Mod Development Thread

[mtblillie]

It would be kind of nice to be able to paint over the rear windows, there are a lot more examples of logos going over the windows than the 18 Hardee's car, BUT all of the examples I believe are older than Gen 6 (so prior to 2013) with the exception of some of the series in other countries put the side numbers over the windows rather than on the side of the body. I honestly feel that having transparent windows just looks better and is probably why you haven't seen paintable windows in a long time.

Honestly Mystical you should do what you think is best and not worry too much about it. It will be a great product regardless and you can't really please everyone. They will either get over what they don't like or they won't. If you would rather put transparent windows than you should.

 

[Mystical]

It would be kind of nice to be able to paint over the rear windows, there are a lot more examples of logos going over the windows than the 18 Hardee's car, BUT all of the examples I believe are older than Gen 6 (so prior to 2013) with the exception of some of the series in other countries put the side numbers over the windows rather than on the side of the body. I honestly feel that having transparent windows just looks better and is probably why you haven't seen paintable windows in a long time.

Honestly Mystical you should do what you think is best and not worry too much about it. It will be a great product regardless and you can't really please everyone. They will either get over what they don't like or they won't. If you would rather put transparent windows than you should.

Yeah I can see good reason to want paintable rear windows. However for this mod it would be nice to not have those windows I think as part of the template's UV set so I could free up more space. Having all the windows on one shared texture would make it easier to just group the models all up as well.

 

[AntCurtain]

I havn't been posting much stuff here, but this concept seems amazing and the models are looking beautiful right now.

In terms of the rear windows, I'd say they probably won't matter that much if their painted or not. It seems like there's plenty of space on the quarter panels to put logos, and most paint schemes nowadays seem to keep their decals on the body anyways. The only things I would use paintable windows for would be if I wanted to put numbers on them like in Supercars.

In terms of the splitter/valence thing I guess I agree with @nascarfreak88 's opinion. For oval racing cars (stock cars), I've never really liked how splitters look, so I'd go with short splitter/tall valence (or ideally no splitter/tall valence); but then I love how splitters look on GT cars, especially gracing through winding corners and hopping over curbs, which would make me side with short valence/long splitter (or ideally no valence/long splitter). But yeah, I guess since this is a based off modern stock cars, I'd side with short splitter/tall valence.

But anyways, I can't wait to see how this progresses! Thanks for posting your progress here and taking us all on this ride with you!

 

[WinstonCup426]

I'll also vote for no splitter/tall valence (and write in a suggestion to raise the rear QPs, if that's allowed), but either way this is really cool. Thanks a bunch for doing this!

 

[NascarGuy42]

This is turning out amazing so far man, so awesome to see someone new interested in modding. I'd say no splitter, tall valence has another vote.

 

[ERS]

Looks great! Coming from a 58 year old, I can't tell you how much I appreciate what you and everyone else does to keep this game alive. NR2003 is the only sim/video I "play". Having done so for about 14 years. Often heard, "... where's dad? ... He's probably racin' "

It does seem that at this point, from my perspective, the game has gotten stale. I think much of that has to do with the sport of NASCAR and the road it has taken. Not to be the "old geezer", but not what it used to be.

So again, Thank You, good luck. I love the idea of fictionals and multiple manufacturers, as you can see (different versions of same model name)..... (credits are too many to give, so I just credit the entire community. most paints by me).

 

[J.Smoove]

Personally I like the short valence, short splitter or long valence, long splitter. Not a big fan of the mismatched size either way

 

[DERacing]

What did I miss?!

 

[Jonny683]

Is it safe to say that this will be a "One body fits all" Type car or are we getting 4 different models?

 

[Mystical]

Is it safe to say that this will be a "One body fits all" Type car or are we getting 4 different models?

The middle section for each car will be the same. Front and Rear bumper will have different shapes but nothing super detailed so any fictional makes could be created for them (rounded, pointy, harder flat front, etc.

 

[123456789colton]

Short splitter, but like really short!

 

[Smoke]

Yes you can have paintable tires and rims. Check your pm.

 

[Renault Fan]

Development post #2

Its only been 4 days since this project began and already a lot of good progress with the body has been done. Behind the scenes I've also been preparing the code setting up all the segments for future preparation. While it is kind of skipping ahead since I don't even have all the models complete I'm able to start setting up the names and at least the basic stuff. As with last time a lot of work was done on the body fine tuning and carefully sculpting little by little and I am happy with the results coming out so far. Here are some of the main things updated since the last screenshots were posted:

• Top of car (this includes side windows and front) were slightly slid back to make a little extra room for the hood
• Hood lowered and angled slightly more to curve downwards towards the front bumper more so its not a blocky
  
• Roof rails were rebuilt, the side attachments are now less dramatic
• Placeholder roof details added
• Rear decklid fins slightly lowered, glass section added to the rear one. Front nose smoothed and sculpted to fit the Honda/Chevy
  
• Rear decklid fins made thinner
  
• Front splitter variation added
• Front and Rear windows have been blown out (aka detached from the body now)

Spoiler: Animated Tunrtable video

With everything that has been completed there is still a lot left to do later on throughout this week:

• Rear bumper will will be lowered a bit so the rear trunk area will have a bit more space height wise
• Rear Bumper will be shaped slightly more for the make0 Honda/Chevy/Nissan body
  
• Tire rims will be smoothed with extra poly's (this one most likely be one of the last things I do)
• Rear Spoiler variations need to be modeled, currently still the same placeholder one
• Side windows need to be removed/blown out
• Extra details such as rear cam and any other fictional pieces I may want to include as eye candy (this would be the last icing on the cake)
• Hood still needs to be blown out along with the hood flaps

Speaking of windows, there has been some discussion about making the rear windows paintable, this would mean fake windows as they would need to go onto the template. The reasoning given was so things such as logos could be placed on them. Personally I would just want the windows to be like the others and have transparency along with not being included on the template. For those who do want them paintable a good example would be NR4 where the rear windows were fake:

Is there is big demand for something like this or is it ok to do without? As I mentioned earlier the sides of the car just above the rims in the rear are flatter to provide more sponsor space height wise so I was hoping that would mitigate any reason or need to put logos on the windows unless that extra free re-estate is good for a fictional series. If there is one thing that I will agree to is making the car more fictional friendly but keep in mind with every feature added it will increase the pressure to make this all fit on a template.

Up next is the nose, how is everyone feeling about it from the above turntable render video? Does that look satisfactory to work well for a Honda/Chevy/Nissan nose? Remember I'm purposefully not trying to go all out on the nose (as hard as it is to resist lol) becasue every bump or indent I add will make it harder for template creators as they will have to fight with distortion more. Not everyone has 3D Coat or Substance painter like me and can paint decals in a 3D Space with ease. I can always harder the ridge between the hood and front bumper, add side ducts indents or other stuff but I'd like to not go overboard.

More work has been put into the fictional roof rail design, I kept a similar look but lessened the side of the brace parts. Personally I am liking how they look but what do you think? I want them to almost act like a mini wicker bill from the 2000-2001 era with those braces breaking up the air slightly more. I know the model has (sadly) no real aero effect in the game but for fictional purposes when I race at superspeedways the racing is always crazy 3-5 wide with my ai settings so I want the car to look like its the roof rails in part playing a roll in the action on track just as the beloved wicker once did.

Last but not least for feedback in this dev post is the valence/ splitter. I've taken a bit more time to concept out a few variations which one do you like best? (I didn't smooth them out so they are a little blocky still)

Short valence and short splitter:

Tall valence and short splitter

Tall valence and long splitter:

Short valence and long splitter:

Of course there are just some rough ideas, I can always make another crazy shape, make the valence even taller or whatever. Personally I like the tall valence and shorter splitter the most or the default currently on the car.

For those following along so far I've only been modeling in blender 2.8 still. So if you are making your own mod the process is just a focus on refining that outer body shell still and making design choices. Of course if you are not making a fictional mod you probably won't be doing as much concepts as me as you probably are following a reference image. Either way there is no way to rush this process no matter how well you model. Its all in the details and every vert you move can dramatically change the shape of the car so its careful smoothing and iterations to get a final result.

Another tool introduced is Atom Text editor which is what I use to edit and create the script/code for the mod. It really does not matter what text editor you use but I like atom becasue I can collapse lines of code right out of the box and I like the dark mode theme it has. I will get into the coding part more in future dev posts but if you want to skip ahead to you can always watch the videos Cosmin made or Burnout videos as well.

I am quite surprised with myself and how the car is coming along, not that I doubt my 3D modeling ability but I still amaze myself when I see the model and realize it will be in the game eventually. I think its looking pretty good already. Currently the body shell is only at 800+ verts so we are still under the 1000 limit! Best part is once I blow out the side windows and remove the bottom part of the mesh the count will go lower or even out after I add the extra details on. I will then do some poly cleanup at the very end and merge a few of those verts that really don't need to have so many edge loops. I'm not trying to sculpt a roman statue here, if the body looks good enough I don't have to hit that 1000 limit just for the sake of it.

Well that wraps up this dev post, it was quite a bit to take in. Coming up in future posts I'll be talking more about the UV's and how the template may possibly look, the template dimensions, and what this could mean for details with the painting space. Also I am happy to report this mod will include paintable rims AND paintable tire brands. Someone on Cosmin's Discord reached out to me and shared the code to do this. I've already integrated it into my script for preparation. I'll be sure to show all the tire details in the future when we get there.

Just saw this and looks great so far, I like the idea of the of rear windows being paintable, allow more proper car bodies rather than one window designs for all. I thought it looked good in NR2002.

 

[Harry Nurpplez]

1) This is a really neat idea and I like were you're going with this.

2) Did I read that right? Unique spoiler design per model? Awesome if so!

3) Tall valence with short splitter.

4) Paintable rear side windows. Just because it hasn't been allowed for a long ass time on the real cars, there's no reason why this FICTIONAL mod should adhere to those same rules. Which kinda leads into my final point.

5) Fully paintable chassis(like with Cup98) would be freaking sweet. If that is something you would even consider that is.

Either way you go with all that I'd still be putting many hours into this mod.

 

[Mystical]

1) This is a really neat idea and I like were you're going with this.

2) Did I read that right? Unique spoiler design per model? Awesome if so!

3) Tall valence with short splitter.

4) Paintable rear side windows. Just because it hasn't been allowed for a long ass time on the real cars, there's no reason why this FICTIONAL mod should adhere to those same rules. Which kinda leads into my final point.

5) Fully paintable chassis(like with Cup98) would be freaking sweet. If that is something you would even consider that is.

Either way you go with all that I'd still be putting many hours into this mod.

1) Thanks, I am hoping to see it through, its only been like a week or so but progress has been going well.

2) Spoiler design will be the same per car body, but I am still locking down the design/how it looks. The only parts that will looks different is the front nose and the rear with different indent design but nothing too dramatic.

3) This seems to be the popular splitter/valence design which makes me happy I am going in the right direction as it is the splitter/valence design I like the most as well.

4) I kinda blew out the side windows in prep to make them like the other windows (real transparent ones). Rear paintbale windows seems to be a really popular thing, I kinda wanted realistic windows instead of having to paint them. That is not to say I don't want the side rear windows to not be painted on (I wouldn't mind) but just the way transparency works I don't think the paintjob can have transparency so if it goes on the template them means fake windows essentially, I worry it might look too tacky.

5) The chassis being paintable is that like how Dale Sr's car on the bottom was red? I didn't think about it but I would have to allocate even more space on the template. I will see about it. I plan to have a dev post tomorrow with all of this week's progress (hopefully). I will discuss more in depth the template and whats planned to be paintable on the template in due time.

 

[Harry Nurpplez]

2) Spoiler design will be the same per car body, but I am still locking down the design/how it looks. The only parts that will looks different is the front nose and the rear with different indent design but nothing too dramatic.

Ah ok. Whatever design you go with I'm sure it'll look cool.

4) I kinda blew out the side windows in prep to make them like the other windows (real transparent ones). Rear paintbale windows seems to be a really popular thing, I kinda wanted realistic windows instead of having to paint them. That is not to say I don't want the side rear windows to not be painted on (I wouldn't mind) but just the way transparency works I don't think the paintjob can have transparency so if it goes on the template them means fake windows essentially, I worry it might look too tacky.

Yeah that makes sense. I can see how it would be tacky too now that I think about it more.

5) The chassis being paintable is that like how Dale Sr's car on the bottom was red? I didn't think about it but I would have to allocate even more space on the template. I will see about it. I plan to have a dev post tomorrow with all of this week's progress (hopefully). I will discuss more in depth the template and whats planned to be paintable on the template in due time.

Exactly, the whole chassis was painted. If you are worried about space look at how it's done on the Cup98 templates. The sacrifice is that the quality of the underside of the car will be quite low but maybe you can find a better space? Just something to think about that would make the schemes stand out more than just the regular paintable roll bars that are in most mods.

 

[RacerXero84]

I kind of figured it would be a matter of time before you delved into this; you have the same cravings I've had for models/templates (truthfully, I don't have the time nor the drive/focus to do it... call me lazy, whatever, is what it is lol).

I do strongly like your overall mission statement and your plan of execution. I have only one piece of advice:

Do it how YOU want it. It is, after all, a fictional creation based from your desires. You've done amazingly well in the past with creating things that started out as an idea in your head, so I caution you on taking on too much feedback and thus deviating from what YOU want the mod to be.

I believe the style in which you are putting this together (template wise) is going to be enough to appease even the most picky of the masses; you clearly outlined a plethora of template options (and knowing the community, there will inevitably be more later on).

Look forward to seeing your progress, and I hope you don't get discouraged, as I did once upon a time.

 

[Mystical]

Look forward to seeing your progress, and I hope you don't get discouraged, as I did once upon a time.

I definitely appreciate the support for sure. So far nothing at the moment is discouraging me yet. I'd say making this mod feels on the same level as UIE 2013 (with its several unknowns/challenges) and the grind of Yas Marina (never-ending 3do's to make) combined. Its all about staying focused and doing each small piece one at a time. I have far better tools at my disposal these days that I use which makes a lot of the creation process faster/better/easier. Also for the first time with NR2003 I have tracking software which makes managing bigger projects like this a lot easier to break things down, plan out what I do bi-weekly, and track overall progress of each element. I'll have info on all that and more in future dev posts as I progress through the entire process.

 

[MrDude68]

I like the idea of the of rear windows being paintable, allow more proper car bodies rather than one window designs for all.

Yeah, this to me is the best reasoning for having paintable rear windows. On the other hand, there are also great reasons to go in the other direction...

Either way, it's not like the rear windows are going to make or break the mod. It's going to be awesome no matter what, I trust that much

 

[MattyO]

In my experience, and @Smoke OR can attest to this when we would test the NXS mods, the more shit we put on the car templates that mapped to the car models, the worse our FPS's would get.

Now, that could be several reasons why, could be the way the script was originally written by KingDA. Could have been what we were mapping to the car template. I don't know. Others seem to be able to map a ton of shit to the car templates and not have the problems we had.

Anyway, I planned on posting the NXS11 mod files so that everyone can see how the file structure was done as well as the scripting part of it. Might help with trying to figure out how to do a mod step by step.

Someone keep on me about it and I'll get it posted when I swing back in town.