Broken normals when exporting from blender to 3ds Max.

[Kozzren]

So i have been converting these idas maps for over a year now to assetto corsa, and recently came across this lovely script or so i thought. There is one huge issue with this script or its blender export system causing it, of which i tried different blender version from 2.8 to the latest version. Here are some examples, i see it mainly effecting transparency objects like roadside bushes and distant ones and the mirrors etc. They all look fine in blender but when it is brought over to 3ds max stuff breaks for some reason.

This is in kseditor from assetto corsa. This is 3ds Max. Blender. In-game from Assetto Corsa W.I.P Conversion

[GreenTrafficLight]

Seems to be a problem with faces orientation, I guess you could try to flip the normals to fix it (but that may generate some weird normals). It's the same issue with the windows of the AE86T2 and I don't really know what cause it.

I'd like to solve it but since exams are in the way right now I won't be able to do anything (during 3-4 weeks minimum).

[Kozzren]

Either way very nice work on making this possible for us, I used to use a noesis script from a friend who made it before i tried using yours, and it didn't have these issues, though i could only work on d8 and before with it since i had to manually drag n drop the textures on them etc. Our next track I'll be porting is Hakone turnpike. Then all that's left is two snow tracks and then doing mass updates to our already released tracks. Also I was wondering is it possible for the script to grab the original orientation of the trees like their rotation etc instead of just the positions?

[Kozzren]

Also yeah I did try flipping normal's on those mirrors and foliage type objects, it only made it worse by doing so.

[GreenTrafficLight]

I'm super late but I found what was the issue, basically the faces are double sided and my Blender addon didn't generate the other side. I fixed this but the black spots will still appear and I'm also duplicating the edges ( which I think Noesis doesn't do ) so the normals don't get broken in Blender, though I don't know how it will look in other programs.

By the way did you also have the black spots when you exported from Noesis to 3ds max ? Because they still appear in 3ds max but you can remove them and get the right face orientation ( though it will be painful to remove from every object so I'm wondering if you managed to get past this problem when you used Noesis ).

As for the trees, I could try to make a option. But the thing is they don't seem to have rotations ( I think ? I tried to check from videos of the courses and I never could get a clear view if they are rotated ), I only found the positions and scales. They do have quaternions but it gives weird rotations.

[Kozzren]

Yeah noesis still had the black faces but it shows up fine when rending in 3ds max and worked fine in game, Yes the trees do have rotations, cause if you look on some track's some are leaning and rotated etc like myogi as well as irohazaka. Also is it possible for this to be updated to work with the latest blender since that is at least what i use now if not that's fine. I'm going to test it out now and let you know how it goes in 3ds max.

[Kozzren]

So it seems to be fixed now, will have to test it out in game at a later date when we go to finish our last few ports and updating all of them. Again thank you so much for fixing this and making this easier for us. Also i did notice an issue with the tree import, it isn't that big of an issue but basically when you select an LOD it will import the trees correctly along the track but it also imports all the other lods in a single spot unless those trees are supposed to be with selected lod type like it has A B C trees etc. I personally always used the a trees.

[Kozzren]

Also the noesis wasn't perfect either, like when imported you had to assign the textures yourself also i had to use a script in 3ds max called weighted normals other wise it would have a weird black tint covering it all.

[GreenTrafficLight]

Ok after almost two weeks of pain trying to find the rotations of the trees, I think I finally found them ( forget about the option thing, I just misread your reply ). I added it to Blender and so far they seems to be correct from what I've seen. ( though there are two values that I'm skipping in the pa8 format but they don't seems to be important ).

The trees in the center were not important, they were used to position the trees, but I updated the script so now they are deleted automatically ( same with gallery )

Also you will have to tell me if it's work with the latest version of Blender, I think I fixed it because the error was something dumb since I used equal sign instead of colon for the options.

[Kozzren]

This is the error i got when importing the d8 iroha, I'm now trying the zero v2.11 versions, and yes the prior version of your script did work on the latest blender. Kozzren#5700 here is my discord id if you are interested in contacting me, im currently working on the hakone turnpike port to assetto now.

This is importing Zero v2.11 it seems to work for this version but it only imports the placed trees and not the stationary ones in the center of blender, but this is amazgin. I'm gonna try importing D8 again and see if it will work cause it did not the first time.

Edit: it seems to work fine with my extracted efo for D8 but it gave that error for the non extracted efo from D8 that i downloaded interesting. and it doesnt import the trees for the non extracted efo, the efo that is just in the main games files.

[Kozzren]

oh i see this was intentional Add : Trees and gallery are deleted after path import my bad then Edit: Also i noticed for some reason it wont import akagi trees when using the path folder from the game but it does when using the path folder from zero

[Kozzren]

This may be a long shot since you seem to know your stuff, but do you think it would be possible for you to extract initial d special stage and Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 maps, i would love to be able to bring those to the assetto community as well one day. If it is at all possible i wouldn't even mind commissioning you to do it

[GreenTrafficLight]

I know why the ID8 files doesn't work, it's because the filename for the paths is different than the one used in Zero. I'm thinking in the future of doing a panel interface so you can choose which path to import instead of having constants in my script.

As for the other games, they're PS2 games which is really a pain to reverse engineering compared to modern games.

I already worked on Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2 and basically the files doesn't have names. The maps for example are splitted into multiple small files, their UV need scaling ( I don't know what the value is ), I never found the normals which make some parts of the map kinda weird and the textures are also seperated into multiple files. Also the way face orientation is stored in PS2 games is weird. Though I think someone on Xentax managed to get the right face orientation so it's maybe a problem on my part.

Still I did have some good results on extracting some maps ( maybe I can add double faces, though I don't know how it look outside blender ). But I don't think it will be 100% perfect like I did with the Initial D Arcade Stage games.

For Initial D Special Stage, the files have names, but the maps are compressed and there was that one guy on Xentax that managed to decompress them without telling how. But from what I've seen the format is probably simpler than Tokyo Xtreme Racer Drift 2.

I could give you some news on Discord but I don't think I'm gonna be that active