Modders i need your help

[Australian Made]

i want to do some v8supercars for nt2003 i have the permissions and you have the no how i need you to help me out if you can tell me whati need to know then drop me a line here there etc.....so i can get started

thanks

[chris]

You need Mastudio 2002, for staters.

- You must run Z-Modeller in programming mode
- Normal car body parts must have Blend mode set to One and Zero
- Window materials are set to Blend, with the settings set to Source Colour, and Inv. Source Colour.
- Texture map is set in the materials to Modulate
- Reflection map is set in the materials to Add.
- You absolutely MUST NOT have high blending set
- DO NOT have any NFS flags set on the models, like NO CULL. No cull does not work.
- Team naming is related to the first 4 letters/numbers:

IE: RP31 for instance is the Reiter Engineering Diablo, and 31 is the car number.

However, before you go creating yourself whole new teams, you must remember than other parts must also exist, too, such as suspension parts, for instance, that must have the same name, and, some others too.

Good luck.. You'll well and truly need it.

[VQ]

Yeah are there ne basic tutorials that can get? Cos thats the only way I'll know cos I might go into this game if u can veiw the cars from the outside wats the command for it?

[chris]

Their are basic tutorials, but, they are really not very full tutorials.

Viewing cars for the outside, I believe is possible, but, I wouldn't know it.. They have a name for those camera views, in the F12002 community.. ;)

[chris]

Probably a better idea, on second thoughts, is just don't bother trying to mod anything F12002 related.

Try Racer instead..

[Australian Made]

Originally posted by chris
Probably a better idea, on second thoughts, is just don't bother trying to mod anything F12002 related.

Try Racer instead..

nah thats the wuss's way out, besides racer is incomplete and everytime you make a car for racer there is a new beta come out and car's need to be updated too much.

if anyone has anything useful that i can use as an example to look at then email me
thanks

[chris]

Oh well, be warned. Just the slightest little thing can cause a car to not display.

But, it would seem, you don't have to use the F12002 MTS format, all the time, though.

It appears the F12001 MTS format can be still used for some things.

I'm putting a car in F12002, but, it's hard work.

[Australian Made]

chris, im no mug when it comes to doing conversions etc.
here are a coupla questions for you

can i use the f12001 tutorial to convert the cars i have to f12xx and nt2k3

can you put a few notes down for me to view

what format must the textures be in.

ok thats all i can think of. if you can answer any of those then this will be a step forward. im also contemplating putting together a tutorial for those out there who want to be able to make cars for the aforementioned games. without getting snubbed because they are n00b's like me-^

[chris]

Use BMP format for the textures.

1024x1024 size is best.

[Australian Made]

one other question i came up with a sec ago was;

what are the naming conventions for the parts

ie what do i put in for part names....

[chris]

Okay, I quote from a tutorial:


How to convert a SCGT car to F1-2001 using ZModeler

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Links to files/programs required for this conversion can be found at the bottom of this document.

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This is a step by step tutorial in how to convert a SCGT car to F1-2001 using ZModeler. The result will not be perfect, nor will it give you the car of your dreams. However, it will get you a working car in F1-2001, which is an excellent start if you want to improve this car. The car will have all of the properties of the original car you use a base for the conversion proces (the F1-2001 car that is) and will need a lot of work. I hope I haven't missed any vital steps in this process. I'm no modeler and have very, very little experience with ZModeler but I had little trouble in finding out what it takes to convert a SCGT car.

Try to understand what you are doing, instead of just copying the steps. F1-2001 is very sensitive to missing files or improper named files. I have tried to get it all right at once in this conversion, and missed a few details at first. These are very, very important and without doing everything right your car won't work.

There's a new version of the MTS plugin for ZModeler. This one works better with objects with "animated textures". Get the ZModeler MTS Plugin 1.4.1 now and replace the one that comes with ZModeler 1.05b or newer. Also supports track MTS files.

Locutus. Last update: December 19, 2001. Rev: 1.05.



Preparing the model in ZModeler:

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Download a SCGT car or use one you already have. I downloaded a great Porsche 917 from #3 Martini 917 (Shark) from the PorBoy Racing "The Rock!" SCGT site.
Unzip the archive you downloaded
Create a temporary directory and copy the .MAS file to that directory
Use a tool like MASpuce or ReadMas to dump the contents of the SCGT .MAS file to your temp directory. (You can't use MAStudi2001 for this, as the MAS file formats are different)
Start ZModeler and import the necesarry .VRL files. The files you need are the car body models, and the wheel models. There's no point in importing light and shadow related models as they are not of use in F1-2001 anyway.
If you are sure that you have all the models imported in ZModeler properly, you can delete all the SCGT VRL files from your temporary directory.
Often save your "workspace" in ZModeler to ZModeler's own .Z3D file format. Don't save things to .MTS files while you are working on the car.
Rename the objects (objects are the 3D models inside ZModeler). Body models need to have the ":F" tag appended to the name of the object, and I wouldn't keep the ".VRL" extension in the object name.
(Make sure the "Objects" window is open by going to the "View/Float bars" menu and make sure "Objects" is checked)

In my case, "GM3GVA.VRL" is renamed to "GM3GVA:F", and the rest of the body models are renamed in a similar way. You also need to make sure "GM3GVW.VRL" is renamed to "GM3GVS:F"

I have these objects in ZModeler at this stage : GM3GVA:F, GM3GVB:F, GM3GVC:F, GM3GVD:F, GM3GVS:F, GGSBTLFA, GGSBTRFA, GGSBTLRA and GGSBTRRA. 5 Body models, and 4 tyres. I can't be bothered by the low resolution tyres.
The object you have in ZModeler right now is partially textured, but the textures are not right. This might be a good time as any to flip the textures vertically using your favourite bitmap painting program like PaintShopPro or Photoshop. Close ZModeler for this action, after you saved your workspace first of course.
Re-open the car in ZModeler. Textures look a lot better now! The car doesn't have wheel textures yet though. These need to be downloaded seperately. In my case, from 917k Wheels and sounds (also from The Rock! SCGT site).
Unfortunately the files in for this car are "RAW" files that need to be converted to BMP files. I use PaintShopPro for it, to convert these 64x64 RGB RAW files to BMPs.

Open the material editor in ZModeler. I usually rename the texture names to remove the ".BMP" part. Make sure you use original names if you rename your textures, and don't use ones that are already used somewhere in F1-2001 to avoid strange results.
To get something visible for the wheels, I use "YTIRE02.BMP" as the primary texture for the "YTIRE" texture. Later on I will do some more work on the wheels, as I want to use 3 textures for it.
There are a lot "Colored material" textures which need to be changed to real "Textured material" entries. I will make two small (16x16 pixels) textures to replace the dark and medium grey "Colored materials"
Replace all "Colored Material" names with unique "Textured Material: ..." names. I'm using "Textured Material: T3BB01", "Textured Material: T3BB02" and further. Use the "load map" button to load a primary texture for this former "Colored Material" entry. Do that for all of them.
Save your model after changing the texture names and loading texture maps for all textures. You should have a properly textured car now.



Some optional steps to make the car look better in the game in the future:

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F1-2001 uses 'EMAPRLTM.BMP' for environment mapping and is part of the CMAPS.MAS file. Extract it using MAStudio2001 and put it in the temp directory you are using for this proces. In ZModeler you can add environt mapping to the textures by loading this 'EMAPRLTM.BMP' file as the "reflection map". Do this in the materials editor.
Some times you would also like to have certain parts semi-transparent. This isn't possible if you start ZModeler the normal way. You need to start ZModeler with the "-programming" option to get access to the wanted functionality. If you have started ZModeler in this mode, you will notice that the materials editor looks slightly different. One of the new things is that you can change the "Alpha parameters" settings. In this case, I want to set the headlight (Material "T3ACK") to semi-transparent. I set the "Type" box to "Blend", "Src." to "Inv. Source color" and "Dest." to "Source color". This is the mode F1-2001 uses for it's semi-transparent parts as well.
I want to have the tyres using 3 textures. To achieve that, I change the material name from "Textured Material: YTIRE" to "Textured Material: YTIRE[3-]". This means ZModeler will create the MTS file making F1-2001 use 3 textures in a descending order.



Exporting/copy the models to MTS files for us in F1-2001:

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Export all the objects to MTS files. Use the same names as the names of the objects, without the ":F" flag of course. After exporting all objects (9 in this example) you can close ZModeler
Verify that all objects are named properly:
The car body parts MUST have the same 4 first letters as your .VEH file is going to start with. The wheels need to have the same 2 starting letters. My future .VEH file will be named GM3GGPXA.VEH
The car body files must be in the form ****VA.MTS, ****VB.MTS, ****VC.MTS, ****VD.MTS and ****VS.MTS. Mine are going to be GM3GVA.MTS, GM3GVB.MTS, GM3GVC.MTS, GM3GVD.MTS and GM3GVS.MTS.
The wheel files must be in the form **TLFA.MTS, **TLRA.MTS, **TRFA.MTS and **TRRA.MTS. Mine are going to be GMTLFA.MTS, GMTLRA.MTS, GMTRFA.MTS and GMTRRA.MTS.
Our car will need a dashboard and a steering wheel as well. I'm going to use those of the original safety car and copy those to my temp directory. I will name them GM3GCPIT.MTS and GM3GSW.MTS. Also needed is a suspension MTS file, and I will take BBSUSPA.MTS from CDB.MAS. I rename it to GMSUSPA.MTS. Like the car body, the suspension object needs the ":F" tag.
For the steering wheel/dashboard you need to copy the DASHTOP.BMP, FIAPIT.BMP, SIDEPANEL.BMP and WHEEL.BMP to your temp directory as well. You can extract these from the TEAM.MAS file in your \F1-2001\Season01\Vehicles\FIA\ directory.
Now all models are exported and ready, you can delete the EMAPRLTM.BMP you might have copied for applying environment mapping to your models from this temporary directory.



Build a MAS file from your MTS/BMP files:

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If you have the latest version of MAStudio2001, you also have the latest commandline tools. We need "Files2MAS.EXE" for the next step, so copy it to your temp directory (the one which contains all your BMP and MTS files).
Open a "Command Prompt" box and go to the temp directory. There, type this to create your MAS file: "Files2MAS . TEAM.MAS"



Create the directories/files in F1-2001 for your new car:

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Create a new subdirectory in your \F1-2001\Season01\Vehicles\ directories. I will create \F1-2001\Season01\Vehicles\Porsche917\
Copy the TEAM.MAS file you created from your temp directory to your new vehicle directory.
Copy a .VEH file from another Vehicle directory to your new vehicle directory. As said before, I will call it GM3GGPXA.VEH. For the sake of this example, I will use the one from the FIA safety car again.
Copy the SAFGICON.BMP, SAF_RATIOS.INI, SAFETY.GEN and SAFETY.HDV from the \F1-2001\Season01\Vehicles\FIA\ directory to your own vehicle directory as well. I'm naming them GM3GICON.BMP, 917_RATIOS.INI, PORSCHE917.GEN and PORSCHE917.HDV
I'm going to have the original FIA safety car driver Bernd Maylander as the driver of this car. If you use a new driver, you will need to do a lot of extra things. (You would have to create a new .RCD file for your new driver, and add an entry for this new driver to the "FUELUSE.RCD" file. .RCD files are normal textfiles that can be editted with any texteditor.)
Open your .VEH file in a texteditor (Notepad will do) to make some changes (as required for this example):
HDVehicle=safety.hdv -> HDVehicle=PORSCHE917.HDV
Graphics=safety.gen -> Graphics=PORSCHE917.GEN
Number=29 -> Number=3
Team="FIA" -> Team="Porsche 917 GT1"
Engine="Mercedes-Benz" -> Engine="Porsche Flat 12"
Manufacturer="Mercedes-Benz" -> Manufacturer="Porsche AG"
Classes="Safety, DSFrance, 2001, NotAI" -> Classes="FormulaOne,OpenWheel, 2001, NotAI"
FullTeamName="FIA" -> FullTeamName="Porsche 917 GT1"

Open your .HDV file in a texteditor to make a change:
GearFile=saf_ratios.ini -> GearFile=917_RATIOS.INI

Open your .GEN file in a texteditor to make a changes:
Replace all "<123>" occurences with "<1234>". (Don't change the "<12>" entries!).

(If you are doing your own conversion, observe the contents of the .GEN file. There's a bit of explanation in there on how it works and it might give you an idea of any files you are missing if the game crashes when you are trying to use your new car and you don't know why.)
Open your icon bitmap (here GM3GICON.BMP) file in your favourite bitmap painting program to create a customized icon for your new car.



Notes:

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All naming for a single vehicle is based on the naming of the .VEH file. Bitmaps (except the "icon" which needs to be named similarly to the .VEH file) don't matter, as long as you keep using bitmaps with the names used in the MTS models. You can't just add a totally new bitmap and hope it will work.
If you keep original names you will also affect the original car that also uses that name. It's better to use new names. For my conversions I deliberately renamed everything to unique names so they wouldn't conflict with existing material in the game.
The tyre bitmaps are referenced inside the MTS files, and are normally stored in the "CDBMAP.MAS" file. Through the name of the .VEH file, and the tyre models that are used for it these textures are linked to the model.
Example: Original Minardi #20 .VEH name is MB20GPXA.VEH. The first two letters of that name correspond to the "MB*" tyre models in the CDB.MAS file (and to the "MB*" driver models in DRIVERS.MAS). The MB* (Michelin/Black) tyre models use the "MICHBLK" set of textures: MICHBLK00.BMP, MICHBLK01.BMP and MICHBLK02.BMP.

That's how they are connected. If you add a new car, with new drivers like BB44GPXA.VEH, you will be using the "BB" set of tyre models. These are already available in the game. You can of course also use a different name for the .VEH file, to use a new set of unique tyres like I have done with my conversions. That means however that you will have to copy some original tyres to your new car's directory and name them accordingly.

If your car has a driver in it, you will also need a "BB44*" set of files in the DRIVERS.MAS file. Otherwise your car will still not work.

If you create a new team/car with a new driver number, you will have to create new driver models as well. The easiest way to do this is by copying the files of a certain driver to your working directory and rename the files properly. These file don't need to be added to the drivers.mas file, you can keep them in the MAS file in your vehicle directory. Once again be careful with naming things as the game is very sensitive about that. If you copy existing models to your new car directory, you will also need the textures used by those models. (Examples are the cockpit textures if you use the safety car cockpit for your car, or the driver helmet/suit textures if you create a new driver.)
Some parts of the car require to have the ":F" flag in ZModeler attached to the object name before exporting them or they won't work. Also, some parts of the car absolutely can not have this ":F" flag.
Objects that require ":F" :

The car body objects: *VA, *VB, *VC, *VD, *VS
The suspension objects: *SUSPA, *SUSPB
The cockpit object: *CPIT
Objects that can NOT have ":F" (Chances are that if your wheels have the ":F" flag, the game will crash hard) :

All wheel objects: *TLFA, *TRFA, *TLRA, *TRRA, *TLFB, *TRFB, *TLRB, *TRRB, *TLFC, *TRFC, *TLRC, *TRRC, *TLFD, *TRFD, *TLRD, *TRRD, *TLFS, *TRFS, *TLRS, *TRRS.
There are two ways to write a MTS file with this ":F" flag. The first one is obvious, and is adding ":F" to the object name. The other one is a bit hidden. You can find it by selecting an object and type CTRL-A to go to the "Attributes" window. "Flag 1" is used as an alternative for ":F". An object that you want to have using this function can have either ":F" of "Flag 1" set or both. An object that you don't want to have using this function must have not have ":F" and not have "Flag 1" set.



Files/programs needed:

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Required:
ReadMAS 2.0 (by Joaquim Pereira) or MASpuce (by TagForce).
ZModeler MTS Plugin 1.4.1. Updated version of the plugin with better support for cockpits and other objects with "animated textures". Also supports track MTS files.
ZModeler (by Oleg M.) including the MTS plugin (older 1.2 version).
MAStudio2001. Includes F1-2001 command line tools (Files2MAS/MAS2Files).
Recommended:

A decent bitmap editing program like PaintShopPro.
A decent text editor (if you are tired of NotePad) like Ultraedit.

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Locutus - December 19, 2001. Rev: 1.05

[Australian Made]

thanks i have all that.
i'll make sure you get some credit for your advice. if you have anything to add you can email me through the board if you wish. i'll do my best to put a tutorial in plain precise english. for other users

[chris]

If I discover more, I will send it via private message, here? Is that okay?

I've got a Murciélago semi in-game, with the body, and wing parts, but, not the wheels, yet. I'm using some other wheels. I won't say anything more than that, however.

[chris]

Okay, some more info:

Where to put files:
- wheels go into the cdb.mas file
- textures for wheels go into the cmaps.mas file
- environment maps used, must also be in the cmaps.mas file
- car body/interior parts, and wings, go in the team.mas file
- car texture goes in the team.mas file, too

[Australian Made]

thanks for the info chris,
btw do you have icq/msn by any chance maybe you can take me through the naming part....
...What about the interior does it need to be fused with the body, or can it be a seperate part . last question is does the wing need to be added.....as most cars will be aussiemuscle
[b]closing can you also take me through the process of textures[b/]....im bugging you because you are in the know lol

[chris]

Alright, here is what is to be done.

Naming conventions:
See the conversion tutorial above, for naming conventions.

For instance, the body part in Z-Modeller might be called mu01va:F

The mu refers to the team ID, and the 01 is the car number.

The wings MUST exist. They are linked to the physics engine, I believe. Just make them as bumper bars, or something like that. Then, if you crash, they will fall off.

Z-Modeller/painting stuff:
1. In Z-Modeller, you must have enabled the programming mode (go into the options to set that).
2. You can use multiple texture maps. But, just make sure they are 1:1 aspect ratio.
3. Draw your textures as you normally would.
4. Save the ones for normal body parts/lights as BMP files.
5. For windows, do a specific texture, using alpha channel transparency. (use black in the alpha channel, to define what parts will be transparent). You can paint the black surrounding edge of a window, on the texture, rather than modelling it, into the mesh, too. Then save your TGA file.
6. Make your environment maps, as well, or use F12002's default emaptrlm.bmp found in the cmaps.mas file. You can have specific environment maps, for certain cars, or, even certain parts of a car!!

NOTE: Be warned, not to make them very bright, or they will appear too powerful in game, and you will see solid white, rather than the texture beneath.

7. Load your Z-Modeller program (1.07a is okay)
8. Trash your existing materials, if it is just 1 for the whole car. The default material is NOT used.
9. copy the default material, and, then rename it to say MU01CAR1, or whatever team and car number you'll have.
10. Now bring in your first car texture.
11. Now bring in the appropriate environment map, that you've painted, for the reflections.
12. Standard materials with no transparency have the mode set to blend, then One and Zero, and, the blend mode for the texture/diffuse map set to Modulate, and the reflection map, is set to Add.
12.5: Repeat previous process, for all other normal materials
13. Now, for windows, do the same process as before, but, import your TGA file, and, set the blend modes to One, and source Alpha, and for the diffuse map, set it to Modulate, and, for the reflection map, set it to Add.
14. I suppose you are finished with setting up the materials now, and that is good.
15. Now, select in faces mode, parts of the 3d mesh, with the SEL button depressed, then, go into the Material Editor (press E) and, apply the appropriate materials to those parts.
16. Repeat step 15 until all parts of the 3d model have the correct materials assigned to them.
17. Also, don't forget to have named all the mesh parts correctly.
18. The car must feature ALL the required mesh parts, or the car will be invisible. Open up an F1 team, or, better still, the files for one of the GTR2002 cars, like the Reiter Engineering Diablo GTR. The Reiter team uses the RP31 identification. Any file that starts with RP, or, RP31, will be for that car. Take note of what they are, and how they are named, and where they are located, and, adapt what you discover here, to your car. All of those parts must be textured, or have material applied to them, or the car will be invisible in game!


That will keep you busy for the moment, I suspect. I will write more at a later date. I'd love to go into more detail, and have screenshots, and so on, but, it'd take me weeks to do all that, and I'd never get anything done. :(

I do want to help you out, though, and help you to learn how this stuff works.

Just put any questions as replies in this thread, and I'll answer them as soon as I can.