Up until relatively recently, I was working mostly on FiveM releases. Race tracks, terrains and so on. But I always wanted to start modding Assetto Corsa too. About a month ago, it was a time for a new project and since FiveM releases have been my main income for years now, that’s how this project also started. But I soon realized this reimagination of Carbon canyons has so much potential for AC, I couldn’t let it go. So, while being mainly developed for FiveM and its PR infrastructure, I’ll also decided to create AC variant of this map. Even if that will mean more work to be done, I’m very excited to see the final result in upcoming weeks!

While I have worked on my modelling tools in Blender for several years now, creating terrain for this project was more difficult than I imagined. At first, I approached this from relatively realistic angle, trying to come up with similar looking terrain generated in Gaea, but due to the facts that I am not yet well experienced in the software and the original map being very stylized, I decided to give up on generating the terrain “the right way”. And instead, I came up with almost 1:1 terrain layout, which used the original as a fairly accurate guidance for a new terrain layer that was raycasted over. With some adjustments here and there, you’ll see very familiar shapes and scenery!

Creating my first AC map will also mean I’ll have to start using models and textures that do not belong to Rockstar. Creating textures was on my mind for some time, but was never a priority. That changed with this project. I also decided to completely rework the way I construct roads, because until previously, I wasn’t capable of generating complex roads nor intersections. Being able to do both now, I also needed new road textures and to come up with the most efficient way to use them. I want my maps to look great, but also stay reasonably optimized.

While older Need for Speed games used fairly simple road system, it looked great for racing games of that time. Especially considering they had to run on PS2. But times changed, hardware improved dramatically and such approach to road systems wouldn’t hold up well today. Even 15 years old GTA V already had more complex looking roads than average racing game today. I’m not talking about size of textures, but their complexity and great use.

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