Making the terrain in the editor vs making a disp map in PS

[XPR GREEN]

What is preferred for most track creators in MX Sim?

Creating your disp maps in photoshop, and saving it as the terrain file in the blank folder? Then touching it up/editing within the track editor?

....or just doing all the terrain creation right in the editor?

Thanks.

[dionhuybers]

I use paint more often...


No just kidding, it depends on what you want... I am a editor track maker, i make all my tracks in editor and so the terrain.

[checkerz]

I still use PS, simply because it's what I learned and know.

The editor has what you need to make great tracks, and I would say is probably better for SX for sure.

It's really what ever you feel most confident with. I miss your MCM2 stuff!

[XPR GREEN]

Thanks checkerz. You went on to be one of the masters since then, so I appreciate that man

I'm trying to get back into some track making now that I'm actually getting decent at playing MXsim, but it's all so different now. Would love to ride some old maps in this new game, but not so easy to convert

I took an old mcm2 disp map and since it's a lot smaller and the height values are different than a mxsim map, I just overlaid it in the corner of an mxsim map at actual size and imported it and tried playing with it, in and out of the editor...even tried smoothing it out, etc. I think I have an idea of how I could make it work size-wise, but I can't get any good results with my limited newbie editor knowledge. Also did a little experimenting from creating some stuff from scratch, but feeling kind of discouraged at the moment with the editor

Wish I had a better handle on all of this

[tyskorn]

I don't know if you've seen this page or not, but it has the basic stuff. It really helps for starting out though. Whenever he says something about hitting "u" don't worry about it. The game does that automatically now.
http://mxsimulator.com/editing.html

[XPR GREEN]

Yeah, I have checked out all that when I first started learning the editor, so I have tried out those basics. thanks

For example, I'd really like to just zoom in on a jump or section and spend a while with the small details like lips or ruts that make each jump or section unique, etc. whether it's with a fine tune brush or blur, etc. It was always nice in photoshop to be able to spend a while "sculpting" everything exactly the way you want it. I'm having trouble doing that right within the editor with good result, and if I import from PS into the editor, it doesn't seem to turn out the way I hope.

[Pumaxcs]

The game acts differently than MVA so adding to much 'noise' on a track doesn't work the way it did in MVA. Also, make sure you have the map at greyscale/16bit or it will never really be right.

[checkerz]

Yeah, I have checked out all that when I first started learning the editor, so I have tried out those basics. thanks

For example, I'd really like to just zoom in on a jump or section and spend a while with the small details like lips or ruts that make each jump or section unique, etc. whether it's with a fine tune brush or blur, etc. It was always nice in photoshop to be able to spend a while "sculpting" everything exactly the way you want it. I'm having trouble doing that right within the editor with good result, and if I import from PS into the editor, it doesn't seem to turn out the way I hope.

Using the "raise" tool at super low power allows this.

[m121c]

I always like using them both. I usually make the jump I want in photoshop, and then in game I will adjust the lip, such as your talking about, to ride the best as possible by using the gradient edit tool and gradient paint tool.

[Garasaki]

I remember XPR stuff from back in the day!!!

I found using a combo of the editor and PS to work well.

I think the editor is really good at sculpting jumps, but I could never get it to do turn, ruts, and base terrain very well.

I'd use PS to manage the different components of my track.

I'd start a base terrain from photoshop. Give my track a basic layout. Save that, and keep it as a base in PS.

Then I'd make turns in photoshop. They'd exist as a group of layers on top of my base terrain.

Then I'd make all my jumps in the ingame editor. I'd transfer the jumps to photoshop, by taking the terrain.whatevertheextensionwas from the ingame folder, and plopping it down into photoshop. I'd then cut out everything but the specific jump I wanted, feather the sides, or blend it into the terrain using PS.

Then I'd do ruts, bumps, etc in PS. Again existing as a group of layers.

My photoshop file would then be arranged like this

Ruts/bumps (group of layers)
Jumps (group of layers, each taken from the ingame editor generated terrain picture)
turns (group of layers)
Base terrain

This approach allowed me to use the best of both worlds and resulted in the least amount of frustration for me personally.

Don't forget the black and white dots.