Compiling

Now for the compiling. This bit took me quite a while to figure out. I followed this guide which helped a lot... http://www.aplinet.org/realsim/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=236:tutorial-mas2exe-modmakerchm-how-make-a-mod-for-rfactor2&catid=62:herramientas&Itemid=154

To package the files together you use a program called the MAS utility. I used this way back to unpack mas files to sort out my file structure. All the gmt and dds texture files go into one file which you do by dragging and dropping them and saving as a mas file. Then all the code goes in another and then the teams folder which specifies different paint jobs for different drivers. But so far I only have one. And then im left with 3 mas files..

hakosuka (code)
hakosuka_common (textures and gmt's)
hakosuka_teams

Then comes the packing which is done using the same program. This is pretty easy, just browsing to all 3 mas files. Setting the name of the mod which I called Hakosuka. Setting where I want the mod to go which is in the packages folder like any other mod. Then choosing what type of mod which this is a vehicle. Then pressing the package button and then install to install the mod. That green square will show if this is done without any errors. Here's a pic of what that whole process is like.

Then I tried launching the game with my mod but once I got to the loading screen for the race I got several errors...

I was confused by this for quite a while. That file was in my mas files I packaged but it didn't work. Finally I just merged the mas file I already had when I followed the tutorial with my own mas file (this was the hakosuka_common file). This got it working which is great. My file names and structure is not very good. But to change it now might break things which might take a while to fix so I'm just going to leave them for now. The only visible problem I have now is the rear wheels on the players car are invisible. But on the AI they are visible. This is quite puzzling but as the player wont be racing in 3rd person this is fine for now. Also the texture for my tachometer is the default one, not the one I made. Anyway here's what my car looks like in game on Croft circuit which is a local racetrack. I also applied a HDR preset which makes the visuals quite dramatic.

Windows

For the windows firstly I had the model them as I hadn't done this already. This was the easy step, just extruding from the window frames with a quick unwrap. Now the hard part was setting up the material. I spent around 3 hours trying to get this to work in game. The windows would either be invisible or opaque. So I played around with pretty much every setting in the max material editor to get it to work. I also did some extensive searching on the forums and read all the posts about alpha channels. This is what my material setup looked like in max.

The one setting that finally got the material working was the material alpha value which was originally set at 255. It was just the normal setup in the code like all the other objects. I made the windows 2 sided originally but this made it quite distracting while driving with all the reflections. So I just have this for the outside view. Which may look strange but you don't even notice when driving about. So here is what that looks like in dev mode. Up next is compiling all this so I can play in the main single player with all the racetracks!

Marmoset renders

Here's my car so far. Its pretty much done now I just need to do the windows. I will also be compiling the game files so i can add them to the main game.

Exterior texturing

For the exterior I baked the normal and ao maps then began straight away with texturing all the chrome pieces. I originally made the car paint red but my supervisor said it would be nice to have one with decals on too like a proper racing car so I gathered some reference for this. As for the decals I added some I saw on my reference and ones that I thought were applicable. The way I unwrapped my car allows me to have deals on both sides without them being inverted. Normally in a racing game decals would be added within the engine so they wouldn't have this issue. I learned this from making a car in and year and finding my decals were inverted so for the cars number I just used 00.

I added a Yokohoma decal as the tyres on my car are that make. The PMC.S decal was hard as my unwrap wasn't perfect so it would be stretched. So I had to recreate the decal and warp it for both sides of the car. The rest of the them were fine I just had a problem with that one. I also noticed one problem where the car has the letter S and I forgot to separate these so one one side of the car it is inverted. Its nothing major but it is quite annoying and for my next car I will make sure I don't have this issue again.

Other Guages + Texturing the interior

In rFactor you can have other gauges that work like the OIL, TEMP and FUEL etc. But I decided just to leave these and save some time so I can start the 2nd car asap. So I just added them to the interior UV's. This is the texture I made for the other gauges. I made the petty much from scratch accept using a template gauges so all he markings were correct.

As for the rest of the interior I baked the AO and normal maps in xNormal as I always do. Then I began texturing in photoshop. I was originally going to sculpt the foam parts on he roll cage for some extra detail but after looking at reference this was unnecessary. Most of the foam in my reference seemed to be attached with cable ties so I added this detail with nDo2. I also decided to add some welds the the rollcage. I did this by creating some overlapping gradient circles that when converted to a normal look like a weld. For the rest of the interior I mainly left it black as the player wont be looking at the back seats or floor so adding detail there is meaningless. 

Here Is what it looked like in the end.

rFactor 2 GIF

I said I post a pic of the dashboard and gauges in game but I decided to make a gif instead so you can actually see them working. You'll notice the shift light turn on also! I currently texturing the outside of the car and ill do a update on that soon.

Dashboard Texturing

I need to spend more time on the interior than the outside as in game that's where the player will spend most their time. So it's nice to get the interior looking as good as possible. As usual I baked the normal and AO maps in xnormal and used ndo2 for some extra normal detail. Here are the diffuse, normal and specular maps I made.

I decided to put a sticker on the glovebox as stickers in Japan are used loads on vehicles. And JDM Legends is a garage that specialize in classic Japanese cars. JDM stands for Japanese Domestic Market.