Table of Contents
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Introduction
Goal of this guide is to help the artists in the process of implementing Rain Effects for Tracks, from the art creation to the shader settings.
Requirements
Software
- 3Ds Max 2012 with rFactor 2 latest Plugins and Shaders
- Photoshop CC 2018
- Latest nVidia DDS Plugins, 64bit
Hardware
- A Wacom Tablet and Pen
- A PC/MAC with at least 8GB of RAM
Assets
- Roads and Kerbs Puddle Maps needs to be mapped on UV 5
- UVW template of the UV5 @ 16K Resolution (16384*16384)
Final Puddle Map downsampled to 8K (or 4K for a very small track course)
A brief introduction to the rain effects
What is affecting the Road and Kerbs wet/dampness reflections?
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- An algorithm does take into account the rain severity and the sun occlusion, and that factor does translate into the dampness and puddles formation speed and depth.
- The puddles will be filled with water while raining, and they will dry out when it does stop raning. This is again happening dynamically, along the passing time.
- When the rain stops, driving along the course will generate a dry line, depending on how many cars are lapping in the course, this process may be more or less quick.
Step 1 - Setting Real Road and Real Kerb Shaders
1.1 - The Real Road Shader composition
| STAGE | Description | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Road Diffuse Map (Spec/Wet Map in the Alpha channel) | 1 |
| 2 | Detail Map | 2 |
| 3 | Normal Map | 1 or 2 |
| 4 | RaceGroove Map | 3 |
| 5 | Specular Map (Puddle Map in the Alpha Channel) | 2 |
| 6 | Marble Map | 2 |
| 7 | Dummy Reflection (A dummy texture, which exist in the MAPs folder) | 3 |
| 8 | Rain Puddle Map (Specular Map with Puddle Map here) | 5 |
1.2- The Real Road Shader Settings
It's Important to respect these settings as much as possible, to achieve constancy between contents/art, and more important, to give the Shader and RainFX code the numbers that they are expecting, and produce the wanted output. Using different values/settings, might produce unexpected results and also introduce performance issues.
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- Live Mapper: Checked
- Fresnel Reflection Min: 0.1 (Do Not Use Different)
- Fresnel Reflection Max: 0.9 (Do Not Use Different)
- Fresnel Reflection EXP: 5.0 (Do Not Use Different)
1.5 - The Real Kerb Shader composition
| STAGE | Description | Channel |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Kerb Diffuse Map (Wet Map in the Alpha channel) | 1 |
| 2 | Detail Map (typically a Blank white map) | 2 |
| 3 | Normal Map | 1 |
| 4 | RaceGroove Map | 3 |
| 5 | Specular Map (Puddle Map in the Alpha Channel) | 2 (copy of Ch1) |
| 6 | Marble Map | 2 |
| 7 | Dummy Reflection (A dummy texture, which exist in the MAPs folder) | 3 |
| 8 | Rain Puddle Map (Specular Map with Puddle Map here) | 5 |
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- Live Mapper: Checked
- Fresnel Reflection Min: 0.1 (Do Not Use Different)
- Fresnel Reflection Max: 0.9 (Do Not Use Different)
- Fresnel Reflection EXP: 5.0 (Do Not Use Different)
Step 2 - Mapping for Rain Puddles
Mapping for the Rain puddles is pretty simple and straight. The important task here is to be 100% sure you are mapping all the Real Road and Real Kerb mesh, at the same time, so that you get a single mapping for all of them.
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We now have the two reference maps, so we can exit 3Ds Max and launch Photoshop CC
Step 3 - Creating the PuddleMap in Photoshop
I know that at this point you probably have a question; why working with a 16384px*16384px huge photoshop file, if the final texture will be 8192*8192px?
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Congratulation! Your Puddle Map is done!
ADDENDUM - New parameters to control Planar Reflections
As part of the improvements we did for the RainFX and Road/Kerb shaders, we also unlocked more controls for the planar reflections, to make them looking better, reducing clipping.
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