Engine Limits and HD Art

[Fila]

I have updated the documents with today's work.

In short:

- added the mesh preset in BinEdit. It's like the glass but instead of turning EVERY texture into glass material, it converts ONLY the transparent alpha into glass material while saving the other colors. This way you can have the meshes looking correctly. Parameters let you set it up the way you want to.
- every texture, no matter if it's .raw or 64x64 can now have normals. The only ones that cannot are the terrain .raw files. Those need to be .png
- I have decided to add the filename caps to BinEdit, Traxx . The base is 18 for safety reasons. Both programs will alert you if you go over but won't block you. The engine has headroom but 18 is a better universal limit. The ones that have smaller constraint are the animation textures, the base name can't be more than 11 and the tire names, they have to be 16 max.

NOTE: if you do normal mapping textures, the _N is NOT part of the base.

Example:
- ThisIsBase.png <--- 10 char base
- ThisIsBase_N.png <---- still 10 char base

[OG_RuDeE]

Can the engine's handling of the normal map be adjusted so that it shows up all over the tire rather than just in the back? Compare in-game with how it looks in Blender.

Screenshot 2026-08-23 100825.jpg

Screenshot 2026-08-23 101039.jpg

Same tire, view from one side vs. another (made tire some weird kind of shiny to see normal better). I think normal should be visible from all angles.

Screenshot 2026-08-23 111924.jpg

Screenshot 2026-08-23 111902.jpg

[Ford-chan]

Now this would look juicy as hell on Cale's HD Trucks once the engine is updated.

[OG_RuDeE]

Actually, the way I have it set up for my truck, it is using Cale's HD tires. So, download the most recent pod zip on the 0.51 patch post, mount it above truck2.pod, and you will get some additional texture on most of Cale's tires. Right now, it is flat shaded, so not shiny like in the blender photo. Let me know if you think it should be shinier, similar to the photo above.

[OG_RuDeE]

Ok, so I don't know what I think at the moment. Here are two screenshots (side by side of "HD" textures on the right and originals on the left):

"HD" 256 by 256 textures with too strong normals (50+ megs pod):

Screenshot 2026-08-27 180934.jpg

"HD" 256 by 256 textures with no normals (30+ megs pod):

Screenshot 2026-08-27 181650.jpg

At the cost of an extra 50+ megs worth of art, you get some of the Sidewinder Canyon textures upscaled to higher resolution. Not really more detail currently, just upscaled and sharpened. The normal map is currently too strong at 50% power. Bad texture alignment in the originals translates to sharp lines in upscaled patterns.

I've updated my script with lots of options, but it will take fiddling with options for every different track's textures to find the right balance.

I can only imagine only a handful of people will use this, but do people have feedback / suggestions generally?

Edit: Checked stuff on steamOS gaming mode, and upscaled textures alone there look pretty decent.

[Fila]

I would love to be able to contribute more to this but until I release the patch I can't really focus on much. Although I am in the bug hunt for something related to this. Even perfectly aligned HD textures have a minuscule seam that you can see once you know where to look so I'm trying to figure out why.

[OG_RuDeE]

No worries. I'm mainly asking what people think visually.

I'll put a version of the script up tomorrow with instructions for anyone to mess around with. I'll keep working on it until I find something in happy with. Fairly disappointed with the results so far, but hoping I can find something that's easy to use with good results.

At the least, it will recompile patterns for anyone who tries it out.

[Kmaster]

i get the idea, but if you are using the old 64x64 flat shaded textures as source, i don't see the plus of adding normal maps. wouldnt you have conflicting lighting info? and wouldn't this take you more time if you want to go and convert all stock assets to HD? I guess a proper use case would be using them on new textures.

for me 256x256 looks great enough. also, size was something that I didn't foresee... pngs are heavy, 30mb for a single track is something. Or I guess I got used to having 5-10mb tracks for all these years that having a 30-50mb track sounds weird.

By the way, your truck looks amazing. Almost feels like a different game

[Fila]

High resolution needs somewhere to go. Why do you think new games are all 10GB and higher. It's the textures

[Fila]

Alright, so annoyingly the barely faint seam that I see can only be solved by... adding overlap 3 hours of testing tonight has decided this is the only way and I am confident the AI has not missed any tricks (or at least tricks that I am aware of).
1. The seam is barely noticeable, you only see it when you know it is there.
2. If I am going to make changes and add the overlap, it's going to be done engine side automatic. So when one authors the files, they don't have to think about it. On the flip side... this MIGHT accidentally fix TRI's original textures.

But this pushes the release of patch 3 a little. I was hoping to have it done tonight but it's not happening. So I am now looking for Sunday-ish.

[Fila]

Rudee: I think the nature of the blurry original textures (since upscaling doesn't fully do away with it) makes normals not look as good. Just higher resolution seems fine to me.
Normals are probably something that look better on new crisp textures.

[Fila]

Kmaster, the good news is that the HD path is completely optional. Both BinEdit and Traxx can import PNG and automatically convert to .raw and when you create the pod, they give you the option to save with or without the .raw Now that I am saying this, maybe it should give you the option of saving with or without .png too in case someone wants to keep a small size pod.
There's also the option of having a general HD pod file that we get to podzip out of. I imagine podzipping will become much more valuable now.

[Kmaster]

no, you're right. i was just venting. games nowadays are indeed quite heavy, and even pod files of 15mb were weird back in the day. how ironic, I remember my city tracks being always too big due to the amount of textures. but it is just the price we have to pay for HD stuff, and the results are looking good.
I never really liked podzipping since I would always unmount stock tracks that i wasn't playing, but if the issue is server resources I completely get it.

[OG_RuDeE]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I had a revelation this morning when I woke up, and I think we've been approaching normals on tracks wrong. Thinking over to other games, there is often a single normal map, with tons of detail, repeated over lots of space. The Evos didn't exactly have a normal map, they they had a higher detail noise repeated over the entire track. Wreckfest uses a blendmap for much of the terrain, there are three colors, hence three allowed diffuse textures which are blended together, and each comes with optional further detail textures such a normal map.

For us, I'm imagining making a blend map for the whole terrain based on the the .clr file made of three colors. One then chooses three nice high detail normal maps to tile over those areas, and the engine blends them according to the colors in the new blend map. This would also save immensely on textures rather than having one normal map per texture.

For example, here's the .clr (essentially) map that I used to create the blend map for Farm Road in WF:

edittmm1.PNG

fr8_blend_c - Copy.PNG

Red got a detailed dirt normal, blue detailed asphalt, and green detailed grass.

Kmaster, the good news is that the HD path is completely optional. Both BinEdit and Traxx can import PNG and automatically convert to .raw and when you create the pod, they give you the option to save with or without the .raw Now that I am saying this, maybe it should give you the option of saving with or without .png too in case someone wants to keep a small size pod.
There's also the option of having a general HD pod file that we get to podzip out of. I imagine podzipping will become much more valuable now.

I was thinking yesterday that having a whole separate pod with the HD art (especially for the map) would be a nice thing for tack makers to supply so that users could have the choice of keeping it or not. If they just want the most basic art or have storage concerns, they delete the HD art pod. If they want the full shebang, they keep it and mount it too. Traxx could make separating things out like this very easy on pod write.

[Fila]

Ok, so I don't know what I think at the moment. Here are two screenshots (side by side of "HD" textures on the right and originals on the left):

"HD" 256 by 256 textures with too strong normals (50+ megs pod):
Screenshot 2026-08-27 180934.jpg

"HD" 256 by 256 textures with no normals (30+ megs pod):
Screenshot 2026-08-27 181650.jpg

At the cost of an extra 50+ megs worth of art, you get some of the Sidewinder Canyon textures upscaled to higher resolution. Not really more detail currently, just upscaled and sharpened. The normal map is currently too strong at 50% power. Bad texture alignment in the originals translates to sharp lines in upscaled patterns.

I've updated my script with lots of options, but it will take fiddling with options for every different track's textures to find the right balance.

I can only imagine only a handful of people will use this, but do people have feedback / suggestions generally?

Edit: Checked stuff on steamOS gaming mode, and upscaled textures alone there look pretty decent.

As I was trying to fix the seams I had to come up with my own upscalers to try different situations. Ended up with this.

[Fila]

I think I've been able to solve it but it requires the use of my upscaler (or at least the settings of my scaler) as it kinda works in tandem with the engine.

However, this needs to be tested on the other stock tracks too. There is a real danger of overdoing it on textures that did not have such big problems as these ones did.

[Fila]

https://www.mtm2.com/~mtmg/misc/snakeHD5_test.zip
You have to pair with the latest HF.

[OG_RuDeE]

Checked out your textures in the new hf9 build, and they look really good. I noticed a big seam on the bridge and another one down by the second to last checkpoint before you go up the hill.

After I checked my most recent texture pack from the one I uploaded, and those are now (edit: much closer to) perfectly seamless too except what I noticed a seam on yours (mine don't have a seam on the bridge though). So, whatever you did engine side is working for my tool too. My textures are too strong on the sharpening side, and I like whatever algorithm you used, but since my tool seems to be working now too, there is room for more experimentation on my end.

Screenshots from my textures and yours in the same place where they use textures from different patterns:

Screenshot 2026-08-30 093305.jpg

Screenshot 2026-08-30 092957.jpg

[Fila]

I can send you my .py file if you want to take a look at it.

The main algorithm for upscaling is this one: https://github.com/xinntao/Real-ESRGAN

But I do some extra fancy stuff too, basically replicating the 2px overlap without having the user doing it.

On that note: It was impossible to do away with the 2px overlap. I just couldn't get it to work right. The freaking 256x256 test .png was having a seam at the boundaries. So my decision was to have authors do the 256 or 512 or 1024 textures as they see it but then the engine itself adds a 2px overlap. So the textures effectively become 258 when they are actually rendered on the screen.

[Fila]

Thanks for the feedback guys. I had a revelation this morning when I woke up, and I think we've been approaching normals on tracks wrong. Thinking over to other games, there is often a single normal map, with tons of detail, repeated over lots of space. The Evos didn't exactly have a normal map, they they had a higher detail noise repeated over the entire track. Wreckfest uses a blendmap for much of the terrain, there are three colors, hence three allowed diffuse textures which are blended together, and each comes with optional further detail textures such a normal map.

For us, I'm imagining making a blend map for the whole terrain based on the the .clr file made of three colors. One then chooses three nice high detail normal maps to tile over those areas, and the engine blends them according to the colors in the new blend map. This would also save immensely on textures rather than having one normal map per texture.

For example, here's the .clr (essentially) map that I used to create the blend map for Farm Road in WF:
edittmm1.PNGfr8_blend_c - Copy.PNG
Red got a detailed dirt normal, blue detailed asphalt, and green detailed grass.

Kmaster, the good news is that the HD path is completely optional. Both BinEdit and Traxx can import PNG and automatically convert to .raw and when you create the pod, they give you the option to save with or without the .raw Now that I am saying this, maybe it should give you the option of saving with or without .png too in case someone wants to keep a small size pod.
There's also the option of having a general HD pod file that we get to podzip out of. I imagine podzipping will become much more valuable now.

I was thinking yesterday that having a whole separate pod with the HD art (especially for the map) would be a nice thing for tack makers to supply so that users could have the choice of keeping it or not. If they just want the most basic art or have storage concerns, they delete the HD art pod. If they want the full shebang, they keep it and mount it too. Traxx could make separating things out like this very easy on pod write.

Think that's doable.