Version 0.7 Last Modified 29th July 2002
Creating Track Zones and Viziboxes
ASE2TAZ.exe and ASE2VIS.exe provides conversion from ASE files to Re-Volt Track Zone and Vizibox files. They provide the same functionality that is offered by the in-game editor "Track Zones" and "Vizibox" editing modes. To make vizibox or track zone export, you must first create boxes in Max; place and size them along your racing line. Then make the listfile, which enlists the names of your boxes which will be used to generate Track Zones and Viziboxes from. Run ASE2TAZ or ASE2VIS - and you are done. Boxes "Box" here stands for a mesh, which has eight vertices, and the (imaginary) edges connecting the vertices are parallel / perpendicular to each other. I say imaginary, because your mesh need not have the edges. ASE2TAZ and ASE2VIS uses vertex information only, and everything else is ignored. So you need not assign material to you boxes, and can also remove all faces and/or edges, provided you answer "No" to "Delete isolated vertices?" The most convenient way to do the boxes is to create Box objects, size, position and rotate as appropriate, then leave them as they are - you don't have to collapse them to an Editable Mesh. You should not, however, apply any modifiers which deforms the box so its edges are no longer parallel / perpendicular to each other. Track Zone boxes can be rotated; Viziboxes must be parallel to the main axes.
Each box you create can serve as a basis for more than one generated Re-Volt box. For example, assume that you have a track with many camera boxes, and there is an area which is invisible from almost all. You then create a box which covers the common invisible area, and in the Visfile, list its name with all of the camera box names it applies to. Each occurrence will generate a separate cube box (covering the same area). Listfiles
Listfiles are ASCII text files, which enlist the names of your boxes to be used to generate
Track Zones and Viziboxes from.
Empty lines are ignored; lines beginning with '#' character also (use '#' for commenting).
Each line can contain one or more names, separated with whitespace.
If the name of an object contains whitespace, you must enclose the name in single or double quotes.
Without whitespace in the name, quotes can be omitted.
Tazfiles
Tazfiles must contain the names in the order along you racing line; beginning with the starting point.
TAZ id 0 will be assigned to the object named on the first line, and is incremented by each line. If
there are multiple names in one line, they will have identical id-s. This is used when you have separate
Track Zones for alternate routes.
The name of the Tazfile can be specified to ASE2TAZ with the -f option; if that is omitted, ASE2TAZ
looks for a file named "Tazfile" in the directory where the ASE file resides.
Visfiles
Visfiles list names for Camera and corresponding Cube boxes. Each line contains Camera name(s), a colon,
and the Cube name(s), in this order. There can be any number of Cameras and Cubes with the same id.
Having more Cameras (or Cubes) with the same id is useful when you want to cover an area, but you cannot
do that with one box only. Typically, you will have one Camera with a number of Cubes in a line, but feel
free to make more Camera box if it is needed.
Note: Support for multiple Cameras with the same id appeared in rvtmod6. This has broken Visfile backwards compatibility. Visfiles created for rvtmod5 must be modified to work with later versions (a colon must be added after the first name in each line). For example, if you had a line:
Tips
The most important thing is that Track Zones must overlap, and it is advisable that Camera boxes also do.
If Track Zones don't overlap, you can't complete a lap at all. If Camera boxes don't overlap (i.e. there
are places where the camera travels in an area which is not covered by any of the camera boxes), frame rate
will drop. You can do overlapping in two ways. First is that you size and position your
boxes in Max that they overlap in the first place. Second one is to make boxes with snap
to grid, just side-by-side, then specify -g switch to ASE2TAZ or ASE2VIS, to grow the boxes a bit. Note that
-g does not affect cubes - only Track Zones and Cameras.
Be prepared
ASE2TAZ and ASE2VIS are quite new development and have not been tested/used a lot.
Take all precautions you can. Always save your work before using them. After you created
your Track Zones and Viziboxes, use the in-game editor to check that what you have is
what you expected.
Acknowledgements The algorithm used to find out a box from eight vertices, and all linear algebra stuff which is inside ASE2VIS and ASE2TAZ (and has not already been in rvtmod4) was invented by Gyula Kosa. Thank you Gyula. |