Features are listed by their name in RBR, with comments summarising the level of support for each format. If anything is outdated or wrong on this page, let me know.
Used for opaque static geometry (i.e. the world). This geometry is split into chunks, and these chunks are only rendered when they are within the “render distance” circle, which is variable along the driveline. The mesh can have vertex colours, two diffuse textures (blended by the vertex colour alpha channel), a specular texture, and a shadow texture. The diffuse and specular textures can be animated (UV animation, useful for water). There are 3 levels of detail: near, any, and far.
These levels of detail work as such:
For RenderQuality=low there are some differences:
Typically the geometry the player can drive on is high detail, and marked as “near” geometry, and it has a corresponding very low polygon copy placed as “far” geometry. This is the primary LOD mechanism of RBR, and while very simple, it works well. Geometry further than 40m away from the stage is lower poly (because the player can’t get to it since the brake wall blocks them) and marked “any”.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| No shadow support yet [0] | Named “Ground meshes” |
| One diffuse texture | |
| No specular texture | |
| No level of detail [1] | |
| Partial shadow support [2] | |
| No animated texture UVs |
[0] Shadow texture generation is not yet complete, but will be soon
[1] Everything is marked “near”, so even if zfar was set correctly, which it
isn’t, the maximum view distance would be 600m.
[2] Partial shadow generation via a web service. There is a limit on the size of the track.
Used for static geometry with transparent textures, usually foliage. This geometry is split into the same chunks as the geom blocks. It only has one diffuse blended textures - no specular or shadow textures. This geometry can sway in the wind: each vertex has individual control over the amplitude, frequency, and phase offset of the oscillation. There is some support for levels of detail, geometry can be put into a low quality buffer or a high quality buffer. This cuts down on geometry rendered when far away, but also is altered by the user settings for high/low quality (although I suspect the setting is always high these days). Import the vanilla stages to see the difference between buffers.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Named “General meshes” |
| Partial sway support [0] |
[0] This feature was a simple toggle in version 0.28, and it made all of the “general meshes” sway in a predetermined way. It was removed in later versions.
Geometry which can use transparent textures, especially used for planes of water (like lakes). This geometry is always transparent, no matter the low/high settings of the user. [TODO: check this]
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Not supported |
Used for faking reflections - inverted geometry that exists under bodies of water. Has vertex colours and two diffuse blended textures.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Not supported |
This is for background geometry: terrain that is so far away the user could never reach it. Useful for distant mountains, for example. This geometry is always drawn, no matter the camera settings or how far away the camera is, so keep the polygon count low. Like reflection objects, it has vertex colours and up to two diffuse blended textures per polygon.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Named “Scenery” |
| Single diffuse texture per polygon |
Simple “transparent” geometry, usually large rectangular planes, which occlude geometry behind them from the cameras view, but aren’t directly visible themselves. Useful to cut down on the number of triangles being rendered. Available in two flavours:
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Full support? |
A soft wall around the track which prevents the car from driving too far away from the stage. There’s only one, so if your stage is a circuit, it must be on the outside - you can’t have one on the inside of a loop. The inner wall defines where the slowing effect starts, and the outer wall is impenetrable.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Not supported |
Simple quads which define water splash areas. Water surfaces always give water splashes, but wet surfaces only work under wet conditions.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Not supported |
The ground collision mesh is an optimised structure, entirely separate to the visual geometry of the world (at least in the game files). It contains information about surface materials, and each polygon can have two materials blended together, much like the two diffuse textures of geom blocks. It also has some lighting information baked in, and this is used for shading the car and dust.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support (generated) | No blending |
| No shading information [1] |
[0] The addon does not expose export of this directly, instead it is generated from
your “near” or “any” geom blocks, if you check the “generate collision mesh”
checkbox on an object. The primary reason for this is simplicity (track creators
only need to care about the material mappings for each texture), but also this
makes it easy to support material blending which matches the texture
blending of the geom block.
[1] Wallaby writes fixed values here instead, which causes a faint flickering on
the car as you travel across polygons.
While some tracks have made use of the ground collision meshes for things like tree trunks, it’s not really suited for that: the car can get stuck inside the tree trunk. These “shape collision meshes” are simple [0] closed meshes which are instanced: there’s a “root mesh” stored in the files, and then all of the uses of that mesh just contain position, rotation, and scale information. The mesh has a physical material, and can also have a soft volume which acts physically like a bush or a snowwall.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support [1] | Partial support for soft volume [2] |
| Time consuming to place in the editor [3] |
[0] Max of 30 vertices, max of 84 edges, and max of 56 faces.
[1] Instancing is determined by the underlying mesh data of each collision mesh
object. Duplicates must be linked in order for instancing to work. Soft volumes
are added as “empty” child objects of the main collision mesh, either boxes or
spheres. In the case of entirely soft objects like snow walls, the parent mesh
should be empty too. Import vanilla RBR stages to see how the snow walls are set
up.
[2] It’s possible to create bushes if you know the correct material ID.
[3] You can’t grab the objects and move them with the mouse, you must enter new
coordinates manually.
Closely related to static shape collision meshes (the collision meshes are stored together and share the same limitations), interactive objects are dynamic physical objects which can be pushed around by the car. This is often used for signs, fences, and concrete blocks. The choices of object are relatively few, and their mass and inertia are baked in and not user customisable, so it may require experimentation to find the right setting. The visual mesh data can have vertex colours and two diffuse textures. Note that these objects are “sleeping” until interaction with the car, so they can be used to construct destructable fences like the vanilla stages.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support [0] | Single texture |
[0] The visual geometry (the “interactive object”) is the parent object, and the collision mesh should be a direct child object. Has the same instancing constraint as static shape collision meshes.
Sections of coloured tape or flexible orange plastic fences which can be interacted with.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Full support [0] |
[0] Click to place, but altering fence positions after placing requires manual entry of coordinates
Animations of deer crossing or spectators running from the road can be triggered at points along the driveline, with some element of randomness.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| No support yet | Use of existing animations [0] |
[0] Small bugs like animations having incorrect rotations in the preview
Spheres which cause the bird sounds to play in replays.
These are not used by the game
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | Full support [0] |
[0] Manual coordinate entry
Replay cameras are placed along the road and are triggered at particular points along the driveline. They can be steady cameras, or handheld (i.e. shakey). The FOV and position of the cameras can be animated by bezier splines according to driveline position, and the position animation can be used to create helicams (along with the helicam noise setting).
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support | No position animation |
| Buggy [0] |
[0] Adding markers/triggers between existing ones can result in having to delete them all and recreate them. Additionally, placing cameras correctly requires all geometry to be active, but this lower FPS substantially.
The driveline is a bezier spline which determines when pacenotes are read out, when events are triggered (start/finish/checkpoints), position animations of cameras, and the render distance. It’s also used to determine where and in which direction to place the car when a driver calls for help.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Full support [0] | No camera position animations |
| No render distance [1] |
[0] Pacenote support is limited to native RBR notes, and they are added in the
driveline object directly. Animations are handled by blender, we treat the time
in the timeline as the distance along the stage. When editing the driveline,
you’ll notice the addon will reset your handles to keep the spline compatible
with RBR: the handles must be equal length and facing in opposite directions.
For the render distance, create an empty object of type circle, and make the
driveline spline the parent object. Set the RBR object type to render distance,
and set X rotation to 90 degrees so that the circle lies flat on the ground. You
can alter the empty display size to control the render distance, and this can be
animated over time. Import vanilla stages to see examples of how it’s often
animated: it’s kept to the minimum size possible without causing geometry to pop
in or out. If you need a display size > 1000m, you can do this by scaling the
object, the exported render distance is a multiplication of the scale and the
empty display size.
[1] Wallaby doesn’t write the render distance at all, and this would cause the
value to be unpredictable when starting a stage - it would use the last known
value from a previously driven stage. A FixUp patch fixed this recently, so it’s
always reset at the start of a stage.
RBR textures are packaged into a .rbz file (zip format) and a .ini file controlling texture options.
| Blender Addon | Wallaby |
|---|---|
| Autogeneration of .rbz and .ini | Manually created |
| Guards against slow loading [0] |
[0] RBR likes textures with width and height being integer powers of two (2^N). If a texture isn’t this size, it’s rescaled to be this size while the stage loads, and this process is really slow. Just one badly sized texture can change loading times from almost instant to painstakingly slow.