Scaling Issues...need help.

[bison160]

Ok. So not really sure how to explain this but I'll do my best. I am really scratching my head on this one. And searching the boards have led me nowhere. I created my heightmap. Ran the map.bat and come up with my track in the viewer. I wanted to begin placing trackside objects so I followed others advice and created a plane in max the same size (550x550m) as in my .hmf, moved it so the bottom left edge was at 0,0, then added a displace modifier to it, using my heightmap as the displace map. I set the scale the same as in my hmf (48.511m.) which was my highest vertice in my model I created my heightmap from.

From there, I created 12 tires and placed them around my track in max and lined them up to the displaced plane I had created. I then exported the 12 tires as an fbx, and converted to edf. added it to my hmf and ran the map.bat. I load the new map file in the viewer and my tires are about 5 meters too low(perfect on side to side placement). I adjusted them so that one of the tires on the flat part of the infield are perfectly aligned on the up/down axis. Then I looked at the other tires, and the ones that are on the banking are now too high.

Any Idea's what I'm doing wrong here? thanks.

[bison160]

Bump. Is there anybody that has any Idea's on this? Am I really going to have to separate every object into its own EDF file and figure out the offset for each one? Is anyone else having this same issue or do you objects just come in to the right spot.

PiBoSo. What is the sim doing with the height map compared to how max applies it as a displace modifier. Should I be using any "blur" or another setting in max that might change the outcome.

I am using a 4096 height map. will using a 2049 map give more reliable results? I'm just at a loss of what to do here or what could be causing this.

[Torque]

Hmm, might be a 3dmax issue. I followed a similar procedure with blender and my objects came in at the right place. I have only done two objects though, and they were both exported in the same .FBX. My map is 2049 and my objects were on a flat surface with a known height. I think I have noticed some scale issues with the banking though. There are some areas that seem much steeper than my 3D reference model that the height map was created from. If your objects that are on flat surfaces seem to be in the right place you can make an object to test how accurate your banking is.

Couple random things to check:

How thick is the top layer of your track? Any chance that the tires are in the right spot but your top layer is missing a texture?

Do all of your sizes match between the HMF and THT files?

[bison160]

I have noticed that the banking actually seems a little less than my object I used to create the height map. I will try greating a box banked at the same angle and put it in to see if it is coming through correctly.

I don't think my layers have any thickness right now...my THT is blank. I have only edited the HMF and ran the map.bat to get it in the viewer. I havent set any material thicknesses.

[Torque]

There should be thicknesses In both files. The only layer that shouldn't have a thickness is Layer 0. From what I can tell the thicknesses in each file are independent of eachother. The thickness in the HMF control how deep each texture is applied and the thickness in the THT controls the depth of the physical terrain types (soil, soft soil, compact soil etc.). As I write this out and think about it I don't think it is your problem. If you had a layer that was 5m thick and you had a texture problem it would show the tires above the track. Kind of like the issue Aussie had with his car above the track.

A word of warning. If you don't have a thickness set for your texture; when it deforms it will get rid of a whole tile instead of just where the tire tracks are. I have had this happen ocassionally with my top layer that is very thin also.

[bison160]

Hmm, interesting, and good to know. I haven't got past the mapviewer stage yet. Want to make sure things look right step by step, so I haven't turned a lap on it yet.

[bison160]

OK, so update. What I did was take a cross section of my track in max, copy it to a model which I exported to an fbx, converted to EDF, and put it in scene. Something is going majorly wrong with the scaling of my track in the game. PiBoSo? any ideas here. You are really the only one that truly knows how the importing of a heightmap is being done and what could cause this. The white object is where the track SHOULD be. The scaling of the heightmap is not being done correctly for some reason.

[PiBoSo]

The height of the terrain should be "pos_y" plus the heightmap multiplied by the "scale", in meters.
For the heightmap, black is zero and white is "scale".