Hey Everyone, I just noticed something strange with the mirrors of my opponents cars. You can see in the pic they aren't showing as mirrors, the texture seems wrong, however my cars mirrors are fine. i just noticed this, was there something changed in CM to cause this or did I mess this up somehow?
I get similar effects with GT4 mod, but not all cars, other series I've tried so far seem to be ok.
View attachment 955333
WRONG MIRROR TEXTURES IN GAME FIX:
This is an issue where the mod has the wrong texture mapped to the mirror surface object.
To fix the issue you need to map "MIRROR.dds" and NOT MIRROR_PLACEMENT.png to the mirror surface object.
Many quick and dirty mods have this wrong.
I do only use the MIRROR_PLACEMENT.png early in a car build to be able to quickly 1) see that all mirror objects are properly mapped and functional and 2) that the mirror objects are "the right way around and 3) the aspect ratio of the mirror mapping is correct so that there are no major issues later where people have to adjust mirror aspect ratio with CSP rear mirrors.
If you see a mod car showing the blue and red MIRROR_PLACEMENT.png texture in game it has its mirror textures mapped wrong.
Fix:
- export kn5 to fbx
- import fbx to kseditor (make sure to have the correct persistent file to not have to do over materials and shaders in kseditor)
- assign mirror.dds to the mirror materials
- export to kn5
- repeat with LODs if needed
If the issue is deeper (sometimes the mod maker has objects, materials or even mirror surface mapping wrong):
insert as step 2:
- import fbx to 3D editor (such as blender, ...)
- verify mirror objects are properly separated (you need separate mirror objects to assign in data file)
- verify that mirror material is unique only to mirror surface objects
- verify that mirror surface objects are UV mapped properly and aspect ratio is correct (here is where MIRROR_PLACEMENT.png comes top use)
- export to fbx
- continue with kseditor (assign materials + textures to all changed objects)
...
I HIGHLY recommend that everyone who is into AC mods learns those simple modding procedures - you will live a much happier life as you will be able to fix broken mods yourself.
It is a bit like the oil change yourself in your drive way kind of procedure of racing sim modding - everyone should know how to do it.
I'm not really sure what to think about this whole effort from the community to destroy Sim Dreams.
I mean sure, they are losers and destroying them would be a service to the internet, but at what cost?
If humans from YouTube's end don't get involved in SR604's predicament, he's just lost a source of income (a job) and hours of excellent content.
But beyond that, how does it make the modding community look? We have many people here on GTP that put a lot of care into freely distributed rips and that style of modding accounts for probably 95% of all the content we have. Take that away and you're only left with a morsel of scratch-built resources. I admit there's really good scratch-made cars and tracks out there, but they're very difficult to make and as such there isn't much content available in that style.
Incidents like these are gonna give people higher up in the game development world a real big reason to take a hard look at modding as a whole and go "yeah, I don't want that". Then if we go even higher, car companies might become more protective of their branding and start taking heavier legal action against modders like Nintendo or other video game devs do to fan projects. (Not to mention potential legal action from the model makers like the folks at IRacing, Forza etc.)
Well, the lid on the can of worms has been well pryed off at this point, but the question is would it have been more economical to simply leave it on? Would it have been better to simply not have a victory at all instead of a pyrrhic one? While it hasn't 100% happened yet, this could very well have multiple people lose their YouTube channels, aggravate copyright holders, cause game devs to avoid modding support and kill off the community going forwards IMO. While attacking Sim Dreams we might have put the nails in our own coffins as well.
Assetto Corsa very well may be the final haven for PC modding as we know it.
CROOKS RUINING OUR FUN FIX:
The issue with SimDream is not that the modding community should be quiet and "not wake up sleeping dogs" but that SimDream and their rotten ilk is MONETIZING what wasn't theirs to begin with and bringing the ENTIRE modding community into a bad light (I have had conversations with many people who were completely turned off by mods as a whole (including amazing free and paid mods by some of the best) because of the sour taste they had either due to gotten scammed themselves or having heard about someone having had issues.
The number of people I talked with who outright told me that they would never ever again touch a paid mod, no matter the provenance after experience with one of the scam artists is sadly high.
Nasty entities such as SimDream, RTM and alike no matter their pretend efforts to "clean up" have lastingly damaged sim racing with their shady practices and they belong ... ENDED.
This must be discussed and NOT put under the carpet.
I have a mod - more specifically a Lancia Delta Integrale Evo by Wolf24h - that just doesn't have that dark shadow underneath, which makes it very weird. See the video. Is there any way to fix this?
AMBIENT SHADOWS MISSING / BROKEN FIX:
The "dumb" ambient shadows are defined on a car model by two items:
1) body_shadow.png within car root folder (make sure it is reasonable for your car - compare with another reference car that should have a similar shadow)
2) ambient_shadows.ini within data.acd (the definition within the file are pretty self explanatory and simple - easiest way to set this up is by opening the car in CM custom showroom, switch off live shadow rendering so that the dumb contact shadows are used instead and then modifying the file and saving it for a quick feedback)
You can switch shadow rendering in CM Custom Showroom by hitting "CTRL + S"
You may have to unpack a packed data.acd (make sure to backup and delete the data.acd file so that CM does read the data from the unpacked data folder instead of the packed acd file.
