Our ReVolt Pub

I'd like to take two TrackMK instances, load them up into Zmodeler, merge them together as one track piece, and them use them in an extreme track. Problem is, I don't have a clue how to re-rexture the instances once they go through Zmodeler - I'm not even sure if you can do it this way.

I'd also like to know some of the limits of what extreme tracks can handle. Are there limits to how many instances there can be? Limits to how many polygons or faces an instance can have? I'd actually really love to build the whole road section of the track in Zmodeler and then load it into Re-Volt as an instance so I don't have to piece together anything using MAKEITGOOD, but I really don't know if that's possible.

The biggest thing holding me back from doing extremes, aside from the annoying hassle of putting together a blank track since no one seems to have one up for download anywhere (why not I can't imagine), is that I don't know what you can and can't do. I really don't want to waste my time putting together a track only to find that Re-Volt can't handle what I was planning to do.

In other words, how do you assign a texture to an instance in Zmodeler?

Assigning textures to a car is easy enough, since cars only use one texture. But PRMs used as instances can use multiple textures, and I don't know how to do this.

I don't know how to do mapping to more than one bmp either. My ZZII full scale on my forum just uses 1 whole bmp because of this.

Things I do know: You can only have 64 individual PRM instances. You can avoid this limit by gluing the instances to the .w. Of course, editability would be tarnished, so it would be best to only glue the PRM's that no one would ever want separate.

There is also a 16000 collision polygon limit. You can have more than 16000 polygons a track, but no more than 16000 polygons must be referenced by an NCP collision data file.

How do I know this? I don't know.

Skitch2 is the guy to ask 'bout tracks, he's done a lot of study on them, including optimum size of poly.

There have been tracks made entirely in MAX, so it should be possible to do 1 in ZModeller.

You haven't got the blank track yet, 'cos it seems AOL won't send emails to gmail addresses. Maybe I could send it to Adam and he could send it on to you. He could put it up on his forum as well, if he wants.

Geoff

I have Gmail too. Great e-mail, bad compatibility with everything though. I don't know. I seen that you registered on my forum. Attach it in the tracks forum. It should work.
But I have been having problems with about everything on that forum, so I can't guarantee it.

Just shun the registration e-mail. You should be able to log in right on the spot.

OK, I've uploaded blankhood1 to your forum track section.

You can put as much instances as you want since you turn them into a *.w file.
But too much will slow down framerate so you have to take care about optimisation.

Anyway, the Re-Volt engine support only 16000 solid surfaces (16384 exactly : 2^14).

You can use multiples bitmaps in Z-modeler and export your scene as an instance you'll turn in *.w file. Anyway this is not a really good end because of the engine wich handle better multiples instances merged into a track.

I hope you've understand what I've tried to say

Greetings, KW

When u say that it is possible to have 16000 solid polygons in a track, How many kb prm's are that then?

As I said, it's not a good idea to make only one *.prm for building a complete track. So, try yourself if you really want the answer, but I believe you do not...

The filesize may vary because you can make for example an instance with 2 polygons (so 2 x 3 edges, so 2 x 3 vertices). But you can weld vertices so that the 2 polygons will use 1 x 3 vertices. This is an example.

The best way to optimize your *.w file is by making multiples instances with welded vertices :

-Not too much polygons for one mesh
-Some vertices will be loaded one time for multiples polygons



Greetings, KW