Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii - Version 1.0 Released

SKmaric

King Bowser
http://wiki.tockdom.com/wiki/3DS_Toad_Circuit_(SKmaric)
No new video yet because I'm too lazy to record it now.

I don't know if anyone remembers when I created a thread where I showed off some things I'd made in Sketchup and in it was a very unfinished recreation of Toad Circuit from Mario Kart 7:

rAqCD.png


Well, I uh...

mcc7cl0.jpg

rhrZ4YB.png

Kinda almost finished it out of complete boredom in 3DS Max because I felt I needed to build on my modelling skills. I couldn't find a fitting texture for the tunnel so that's why there's a checkerboard material.

*cough*someoneputthisinmkw*cough*
 
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Re: So I got bored and made this

Lakituilveloce said:
SKmarioman said:
*cough*someoneputthisinmkw*cough*
I could do that, but I'm not great in lighting and moving textures.
I'll send you a .brres file of the model when I've finished it, I'll add in vertex colors as pseudo-shadows and try to make the people in the stands animated correctly, but since I'll be doing it blindly I won't be able to tell if I did it right since I don't use Dolphin and I don't want to risk doing something wrong with Riivolution.
 
Re: So I got bored and made this

SKmarioman said:
Lakituilveloce said:
SKmarioman said:
*cough*someoneputthisinmkw*cough*
I could do that, but I'm not great in lighting and moving textures.
I'll send you a .brres file of the model when I've finished it, I'll add in vertex colors as pseudo-shadows and try to make the people in the stands animated correctly, but since I'll be doing it blindly I won't be able to tell if I did it right since I don't use Dolphin and I don't want to risk doing something wrong with Riivolution.
Okay, I can use that BRRES to make a KCL too.

Also, note that if you want moving trees and pipes which you can drive trough with a star, you must not include them in your model.
 
Re: So I got bored and made this

Lakituilveloce said:
SKmarioman said:
Lakituilveloce said:
SKmarioman said:
*cough*someoneputthisinmkw*cough*
I could do that, but I'm not great in lighting and moving textures.
I'll send you a .brres file of the model when I've finished it, I'll add in vertex colors as pseudo-shadows and try to make the people in the stands animated correctly, but since I'll be doing it blindly I won't be able to tell if I did it right since I don't use Dolphin and I don't want to risk doing something wrong with Riivolution.
Okay, I can use that BRRES to make a KCL too.

Also, note that if you want moving trees and pipes which you can drive trough with a star, you must not include them in your model.
Yeah I got that already, I might put in some trees that are further off in the background anyway to prevent slowdown, also I can create the kcl myself with invisible walls and fall boundaries but I'll also send a second brres of the collision model in case I do something wrong in the creation of the kcl.
 
Re: So I got bored and made this

So I've pretty much finished the model at this point:
gX3YI7U.jpg
I made/redid any textures that weren't already in MKW and I tried to make it as close to the original as possible with some added details to make use of the Wii's added capabilities (See those two extra mushrooms in screen #3? Yeah those were on the touchscreen map in MK7 but weren't actually there in the model so I put them in here.) Also instead of the metallic mushroom stands near the bridge I put in the re-textured sign from Luigi Circuit. I'll remove some of the trees from this model so that they'll be animated in-game.

Yeah I've learned how to use splines, UV maps, animation/posing and optimize models for specific game engines (primarily Sonic Generations but...) before so this wasn't actually as difficult as I was expecting it to be, though it was mainly just something I was modelling for the sake of modelling something.
 
Re: So I got bored and made this (Toad Circuit Recreation)

Looks great.
 
Re: So I got bored and made this (Toad Circuit Recreation)

We're off with importing it.

RMCP01-16.png

Work in progress though, vertex coloring was lost when SKmm exported the model, and the model is positioned too low.

The minimap might need some tweaking too, but that's not such a big problem.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

Yeah, I forked out the $48 for a second Wii and used Riivolution to get the track going myself.
There's more information in the video description.

Also sorry LTQ if you thought I was trolling when I sent you that broken .brres, I had no idea that BrawlBox broke the models like that. Basically editing anything or creating models with Brawlbox will just make the game crash for me (and the model won't load in SZS Modifier either) and the reason why a lot of materials are broken is because editing only the textures in Brawlbox will make all objects just a solid color with no textures. So yeah, I'm kind of stuck there.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

I wasn't under the impression of you trolling me, don't worry. You also clearly put some time in the KCL and stuff, though the cameras clip a little bit.

I also don't have a clue how these vertex colors work, so yeah.

Also dat luigi.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

Looks interesting.

I'd love to test your respawn points.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

The one respawn point is working perfectly fine actually, really the only problem I'm having is that I need to use Brawlbox but it always breaks the model in some way whenever I use it, often in that the game crashes when the model is loaded and SZS Modifier won't load the model, but all other tools display the model without any problems.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

The Free Fly cheat is an excellent respawn point tester and see if CPUs drastically mess up after they've put through it. I've used it many times and detected many many bad respawn points/checkpoints in a lot of custom tracks.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

Alright, so I've managed to get the model working perfectly fine in Brawlbox, I've put in shaders and materials and such, though I'm not going to be able to test it until tomorrow.

Also I finally found out that apparently when a Color Node is created in or generated with Brawlbox from an imported .dae it will be set with the parameters "IsRGBA" and "Format" as being "False" and "RGB8", and it looks like they need to be "True" and "RGBA8" or else the game will not load the model and crash on the loading screen. And these parameters are locked in Brawlbox, and I can import raw data of color nodes from official models with said parameters being correct without having the game crash although they won't do anything.

So unless I find another workaround I might have to resort to hex editing...
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

This is amazing! Even though I am not a fan of most of the Circuits, this looks really good. Now I am wondering, should I use 3DSmax instead. This is probably the best 3DS course remake, besides 3DS Rainbow Road but I just hate when the creators add in their own favorite things into a remade course.

Also that floating Luigi Head fits pretty well with the Toad Balloons.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

I'd recommend 3DS Max over Sketchup any day, mainly because 3DS Max was made with game development in mind, Sketchup on the other hand is only really good for architectural design at least from my experience.

The interface can be a bit daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it it's much easier to create professional-looking models.

Update: So setting the vertex modifier to have the vertex colors on the vertex alpha layer at least makes the model load in SZS Modifier, but the game still crashes.

At least with the map anyway, I haven't tried with the course model.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

I would love to use 3DS Max but unfortunately, the student download is not working well at all. I have downloaded it like 3 times and each time, it fails. So, I guess I have to stick with Sketchup. I tried the 2014 version twice and the 2013 once but it just seems to be really really slow and after like an hour or more, it just says installation failed.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

I heard that not too long ago they completely changed the way the student licenses work, but I wouldn't know what the problem would be aside from your computer possibly just not being able to handle the rather large installation.

Though you could also use Blender which has some of the tools that 3DS Max has that sketchup doesn't, including UV Mapping tools and splines.

I haven't used Blender much but I'd say it's worth looking at if you can't get 3DS Max working.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

It can handle the downloads, it just takes about 20 to 30 minutes depending on the internet connection and what I have open. But when I put in the Product ID and that other stuff it asks for, it installs and after that, it says some products did not install properly, please try again.

I have checked to see the problem and it seems to have happened to a lot of people, and some solutions don't always work.

But I can give Blender a try but I don't know of anyone who used Blender to make Custom Tracks.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

That's amazing. Great job, hoping this gets into the CTGP?
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (first gameplay footage!)

So I tried out the new course model in game, and it's fine, so proper mipmaps and no more Harry Potter effect, but everything has a dark blue tint for some reason...

I know it has everything to do with the shaders, as the dash panels look perfect and they use a separate shader from the rest of the model, but even in Dolphin the track looks fine, it's only on a real Wii that it has that dark blue color, so testing that to see if any changes I make work will be a pain.

Also still no vertex colors working... I've checked that exporting models from other tracks as .dae from Brawlbox then immediately reimporting them back in and then loading them in the game doesn't cause a crash but importing the .dae into 3DS Max, exporting that from there and then importing into Brawlbox causes the game to crash. So it's probably got to do with the way 3DS Max exports .dae files.

Edit: Found a temporary fix for the blue tint, and it's also entirely possible that this issue will fix itself once I get vertex colors working anyway since it was related to the lack of any raster color values supposedly, so no real problems here.

Edit again: So apparently getting hit by a Spiny Shell or Bob-omb on the bridge summons Lakitu and brings you back to just before the underpass and you have to do the whole lap again. Good... To clarify I did try moving the collision plane up but then it was impossible to make the jump over.
 
Re: Toad Circuit in Mario Kart Wii (second preview video)

Double post, I know but it's a project update.
So almost everything's done excluding possible bugs I could have missed unlike that one at the end of the video.

Still can't get those vertex colors working which is really getting on my nerves now, I'm sure everyone who's ever put in vertex colors in MKW models got this problem and figured it out themselves so I'm probably missing something really simple but there's still no tutorials or such anywhere to deal with this.

Also no tutorials on how to make shadow maps either which would really make this track look as good as it can get.

Edit: I finally got vertex colors in the game without crashing, now I've got to just alter the shaders so that it looks good. Because I haven't seen anything elsewhere saying how to fix this issue: If you're using a version of 3DS Max newer than 2010, you will need to use FBX Converter 2010.2, export the track model from 3DS Max as FBX and convert it to DAE with the FBX Converter, then once you've got the model in Brawlbox go to each color node and make the alpha value in each one 252, you don't need to do this in color nodes that already has an alpha value other than 255 however.

So yeah, the minimap is perfectly finished now, with the correct vertex colors. I'm still working on the shaders and materials in the course model however.
 
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