Noob ; )

[Metalincident]

Hi I´m rather new to this forum but that dont stop me from having some questions.

I got a car-projekt going, a nice little Fiat 500 that I´m starting from ground up and I need some help getting it fixed for RT. I modell the car in Zmodeler 1.7* and have put those extra files in that downloads from this site.

First of all: is one unit in Zm = 1 meter in real RT?
2: I followed your guide and I want to know what that create def mat-button do, the long story. If it is creating anything were does it go and how and why is that good for me building the car.
3:How big can the textures be? Is there a limit or a prefered value?
4: When I´ve finished every piece of the car i guess its just to hit the exportbutton and everything is great, or?

I will probebly have more ? later so hopefully someone can answer these and more ;)

David

[Metalincident]

Can someone please answer the atleast some of my questions, I got the body finished and realy need some help to get further.

[Imagine]

:wave: i would help you but i don't have a clue
BTW-when are we gonna see a car? :)

[Florenzo]

First of all: is one unit in Zm = 1 meter in real RT?

I don´t use ZM. Try do import a original RT-car and look at the size. But i think yes.


2: I followed your guide and I want to know what that create def mat-button do, the long story. If it is creating anything were does it go and how and why is that good for me building the car.

Material in ZM - don´t know


3:How big can the textures be? Is there a limit or a prefered value?

big enough but not too much. I use only square-sizes 128, 256 ,512, 1024


4: When I´ve finished every piece of the car i guess its just to hit the exportbutton and everything is great, or?

In 3DSM click on export and then import the car with the BZF-Manager

[fredizzimo]

1. Yes, the guide says so. I couldn't have remembered if it was scaled or not without reading it, it's a long time since I wrote that;) I should fix some grammar errors that I noticed though...

2. The guide says that it creates all the default materials, in other words the materials that are required to get the car working. It doesn't create any textures though, just the materials inside zmodeler. And they go to the material browser, or whatever it's called in zmodeler, I don't remember anymore.

3. It depends on which graphics cards you want to support.

4. As florenzo said, you need to import it with BZF manager after that. And don't forget the textures. The guide says this too.

[Metalincident]

Thanks for the help all.

I got the low-polly things done and texured now but Zmodeler seems to make the textures disapear every time I close the program, does anyone now why? Does the textures have to be in a specific format or is .jpg good? The lowpolly body got 760 faces is that allright? The highpolly is not far from finished but it will probebly take a while since I want to make it as good as possible.

I´m still a Noob though so I got some more questions. This might be a no brainer but what exactly is a "material" is it like a texture with the little triangles put out on it or is it something else?

Thats all for now...

David

[kiplali]

Apologies for not responding sooner, only just seen your thread.
All of the original cars use a TGA and the body is then mapped to that. The size for the body TGA is 1024 x 1024.

You can always rescale the body if necessary. Every car I have made I have had to rescale it as it was made to the scale of the blueprints.

When I have finished a body I import one of the original cars into Zmodeler (the donor Car) and then delete its body, body crash, body lod, trunk, trunk crash, trunk rain, hood, hood crash and hood rain.

Next thing to do is to merge your body into the donor car, (File, merge). Once your body has arrived, you can then map your body to your body TGA. (you probably will need to move the tyres location so as to fit the body).

When you have finished the mapping, you will need to re centre all of the lights, tyres, wipers , steering wheels, rev and speedo before exporting the car. To recentre, only display the item you want to re centre using Display, Local Axis, Centre Axis.

As to the faces my Datsun body had 2962 faces so there shouldn't be a problem with amount in your body.

Kiplali

[Metalincident]

With merging you meen that I use the donor cars hi interior, steering wheel and so on? I have the low-polly interior, all the wheels and the low-p boddy finished so I intend to use that but every thing else I´ll steal ;)

It will be fun to try and drive something with < 2 meter wheelbase, 1.84 to be exact..... it will probebly fall over a lot.

David

[kiplali]

I only use part of the original high interior , ie I delete everything above door level. I then make a copy of the body I have made, delete everything below the top of the doors and re-orinate whats remaining. Once I have lined everything up, I join the two parts together( Select quad). I then make the dash appropriate to the car.

You can of course create your own interior and any of the other parts but it saves time if you can borrow whats already been made. If you kept the entire original interior you would find that parts of it would protrude through your body and look really bad.


Should be interesting to drive.

Kiplali

[Metalincident]

I´m allmost all done with the car modells. Remade it a few times and now I´m pretty happy.
700 pollys for the low-p one and dubble for hi-p body. The hightinterior is done and low on the way. Tires are ready and everything else I took from car_1.
I altered the textures some om the steering wheel l and took all the light-thinges together with the ext_pipe. I took the indikators to. Now is there anyting I need to know about stealing things from ather cars. Is it looked at as "bad" or do I need to alter anything anywere to make them work with my car. I have moved them to their new locations.

And now to the big question. I have tried to texture the car and it doesent look as good as I want it to do. Is there any tips on how to make the textures and map them to the cars to make it look realy nice. The biggest problem is around the windows were it looks like sh.t on a closeup. Please help me I´m aiming at getting it ready as soon as shool and cristmas allows and I feel a little lost since I´ve never done anything in 3D exept bouncing bolls in Matlab.

(by the way is it ok to steel the window-textures from cars and use the, I cant do the work better myself)

David

[Dan]

by the way is it ok to steel the window-textures from cars and use the

if you're using parts from original bugbear cars then its ok.. if however you use parts from cars made by other people then you should be asking them for permission.. not everyone likes to have their work used in this way

[kiplali]

When you say the mapped textures don't look good especially around the windows, do you mean they are not the same colour as the rest of the body. I noticed that on the Bugbear cars they have mapped 5 or 6 cm of the body that surround the windows on to the windows tga. The wnidows tga has an alpha channel and it could be that you have not made an alpha channel for your body tga.

I'm not the best person to answer your texturing question but I would say have a look at the body tga's of cars made by RTS013, Florenzo etc . Knowing what you can/cannot do in Photoshop/paintshop pro or whatever system you are using will help you in making small.

Apologies if you are already doing this: To have a shiny body, in the Material Editor, have your Primary texture checked but also check the Reflection map (light map). When you load that, go back to where your Zmodeler files are , open textures, highlight chrome, open and when back in tme Mat.editor, apply changes and OK.

When I sais "borrow whats already made" I should have made it clear I was only referring to the original Bugbear cars.

Kiplali

[Metalincident]

thank for answering my many newbee-questions.

The edgy lines around the windows came from me painting the rubbery stuff around the windows onto the body.tga. When I mapped it the corners got edgy or the lines different in size. I´m redoing all the textures now with the blueprint as guidens, so hopefully I get it better this time.

I´m learning as I go along so I got to ask :)

What is alfa-channel, does it have something to do with making stuff see-trough?

Do you know how to take pictures from the 3D-viez in Zmodeler. I´d like to post a picture of my progress here...

David

[John_Schoen]

You can find an explanation of alfa channels here (http://www.ypoart.com/tutorials/Alpha-about.htm). In short: yes, they are used for transparency.
If you want to make a screenshot, press the PrintScreen button. This places a copy of your screen on the clipboard. Open your painting program, select something like File -> New and paste the contents of the clipboard into this new file. Save it as a jpg file and come back here to show us your Fiat. :)

[Metalincident]

I´m still stuck om alfa-channel.... Did read the tutorial but it wasnt to much help, sadly. I´m able to make a alfa channel that makes the windows go away in zmodeler but I dont seem to get the windows to show a little.... why is that ( using paint shop pro)? As it is now they just show up as holes (the edgy thing around the windows that I had problems with is gone by the way).

Someone please help its probebly a real easy thing to do when you know all the buttons but for me its a mess....

I was able to get it to work in paint shop pro with the windows showing up a bit but in Z its all bad all the way...

David

[kiplali]

If you are using the windows tga from the donor car you don't need to make an alpha channel, it already has one.

If you have made your own windows tga this what you do:
(I use Paintshop pro 5 so later versions may be diferrent)

With the on the screen, Click on Mask
new
from image
source luminance, OK
click on Mask
view mask
click on Mask
Edit ( tga will turn pink)
You can now make the windows transparent etc. Generally the darker the black is the more transparent the object is. The paler the white is more visible the object is. (I would suggest you open one of Bugbears's tga's and see what levels they have used).

When you have finished making any amendments;
click on Mask
uncheck Edit
click on Mask
uncheck view mask
click on Mask
Save to alpha channel
rename popup screen "alpha channel"
click on Mask
Delete (a opoup screen will then if you want to merge ....click on "No")

File and save

Kiplali

[Metalincident]

Thanks a lot I couldnt have gotten a better "cook-book" for making transperent stuff for games.. Now the windows looks great and the car is moving on fine...

[Metalincident]

Got one more now....

Why is it that Zmodeler doesnt show the interior_lo through the windows of the body. It showed as long as I didnt retexture the interior_lo at all after making if from the original body. The interior_hi shows just fine and I would realy like to know why. Anyone have any idea?

David

[kiplali]

Have you mapped the windows from inside the interior _lo?

Although you have already mapped the windows when texturing the body, the windows in your interior_lo are another set of windows which need to be mapped as well.
Map the interior_lo windows to the windows tga but when selecting the attributes choose "window front", "window left" etc
(You use "E1 window front" etc when mapping the windows on the body as view from the outside.

You will also need to map the widows in your interior_hi.
Kiplali