DLC conversion link thread

[djotefsoup]

There now exists a nice user-friendly single folder install for the DLC content courtesy of QuadCoremax, so I'm just going to stick this up top where everyone can see it.

So to make this easy(er) for new people, if you want the DLC content, this should get you started.

From the point where you have just installed Shift:

1. Install the Shift 1.02 patch for your region (North American or All Other Languages). The patch will silently fail to install if you attempt to install it over a NoCD crack or use the wrong region patch. Shift.exe's properties panel will read 1.0.2.0 like so:



if you patched successfully.

2. Extract the Shift unpacker to your Shift folder and run shiftunpack.bat. Wait 30-60 minutes for this to complete. Please use this unpacker to unpack the game, there are several other older unpackers around that do not properly unpack 1.02 patch content.

*** NOTE: Under Windows 7 and Windows Vista, user permissions and user account control may interfere with the unpacker. See this article on disabling UAC. If you are not logged in as an administrator account on your system, the unpacker may also fail due to insufficient user privileges in the Shift install folder. Please note that in some cases, a folder such as "Program Files\*\Shift" may inherit read-only permissions from the main Program Files folder. Make sure your Shift folder is NOT marked read only in its folder properties.

3. Install JSGME to your Shift folder, then run JSGME.exe from your Shift folder. Allow it to create a "MODS" folder inside your Shift folder.

4. Download the 1.55 Full release:

Mirror 1

Mirror 2

5. Extract the DLC package as shown below. Pay attention to the path here - we want it to extract into \yourShiftfolder\mods\DLC_Pack_By_QCM_Full_1.55\, with the contents under DLC_Pack_By_QCM_Full_1.55.



6. In JSGME you should see DLC_Pack_By_QCM_Full_1.55 appear as an available mod. Press the ">" button in the middle of the JSGME window to install the package. The mod will show in the "activated" column when it's done.



1.55 Full should be the only DLC cars package visible in your installed mods list. Unapply all previous versions using the < button in JSGME prior to installation. DLC cars and DLC track conversions will not interfere with each other and can be installed in any order.

7. Update your Shift shortcut to run with the -loose command line parameter like so:



Note that if your Shift install folder has a space in the filename, for example, it goes somewhere like C:\Program Files\Electronic Arts or C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps, you should enclose the folder and .exe with double quotes. So the shortcut target would start with "C:\ and end in .exe". The -loose comes after the last set of quotes.

(you can also add -skipmenu after -loose to avoid having to select your profile if you want)

Please note that if you haven't followed these steps and report problems with the package, you will be shaved, sterilised and destroyed. Well - maybe not shaved. It will make it vastly less likely that anyone will pay attention at the least.

Thanks to quadcoremax, acti0n, cric, pez2k, crowtrobot, zpectre, jdougny, arachnus, jeroen vd helm, 1nkz, nemesis, mikelogn, kazumi and white00gt from the nogrip forums, and anyone else I've missed. Special thanks to luigi auriemma, dave noonan, japamd, shadowmoy and oleg melashenko for tools. The team at SMS for making the content in the first place and nogrip for hosting the discussion. And everyone else who has helped develop and test the package.

The 4 tracks from the Exotic DLC are now fully converted and available from this link. Go over there and say thanks to eppeP and JDougNY!

[djotefsoup]

Next release:

Things I'd like to get in order before the next version.

*** DONE *** THANKS MIKELOGN *** Alfa Romeo manufacturer/race logos added in some non-destructive manner. Harder than it looks...

*** DONE *** THANKS MIKELOGN *** Gumpert small logo. Currently showing "Ford" logo on end-of-race leaderboards, large (car lots) logo is fine.

*** DONE *** THANKS QCM *** Reflection/envmap fix for vinyls (using Sqwall's method or if you know some other way that involves less typing..).

*** DONE *** THANKS KAZUMI *** Vibration/throttle off noise issues for F430C.fsb/fev sound set, and add dlc2/3 .fev file index content to ai/dlc1.fev.

*** DONE *** Physics changes to DLC cars are now being moved into Overhaul Mod *** Check of basic index/physics files to see if there is anything strange left in there - even with carperfrating.360 transferred we still seem to be missing some unlockable tuning elements (7th gear ratio adjustment for california, mp4-12c) and some ranges for some settings seem strange or nonexistent.

Check of what's easy to fix head and tail-light wise (SLR Moss?).

*** DONE *** THANKS JDOUGNY *** Someone to work out why the hell some people have internal gauge glows, some people get them only while the car is under AI control, and some people never get them. Enough is enough! I've had it with these multifunctional glows on these manufacturers cars!

Anything else?

Known bugs in 1.55:

Bugs:

*** DONE THANKS ARACHNUS *** Carbon material. Anything with carbon involved - interior pits or external areas on the car - there will be something, sometimes something big, sometimes something very small, wrong with it.

*** DONE *** THANKS MIKELOGN *** Gumpert Apollo has no small logo for leaderboards.

*** DONE *** THANKS MIKELOGN *** No alfa romeo logo.

F430s sound set "vibration" noise issues.

*** DONE *** THANKS KAZUMI *** No AI sounds from ai_dlc2.fev & ai_dlc3.fev related sound sets.

*** DONE *** THANKS QCM *** No consistent reflections on vinyls (QCM fixing..), the F50GT doesn't seem to pick up spec/envmap over the entire car body, even using paint, and some wing mirror colouration issues for some F430s (carbon material issue again).

Front headlight occlusion issues (seems not to orientate quad to face the camera properly under all circumstances, will shine through some car bodywork, might be just something Oleg needs to fix).

Career events for Ferraris and Exotics not converted yet (no xmls for these, only bmls, might be a problem unless pez2k wants to look at it), also no new badges/achievement type things for them.

*** WIP *** THANKS eppeP and JDougNY *** . See track conversion thread here. Woo!

Anything else?


General requests:

Are you trying to "fix" something? It would be good of you to test it first and see whether it actually does what you think it will theoretically do! Please check that what you're putting out will work with just the DLC installed and that it doesn't depend on file x from user y but not file z because that would ruin half a dozen cars. There are a lot of 'forks' in Shift modding (acti0n will pop up to say we could have avoided this with a bugtracker ) so just because you are using a 3dsimed conversion of meb file 265267423535.meb does not mean everyone else is.

From this point onwards ANY file added is going to have to work against an installation of Shift 1.02 with the QCM DLC. If it does depend on something else being installed, please say so. If you would like something added or changed just post in the thread and we can see if it's the best method available. There is nothing stopping you running a different set of fixes if you want or rolling up your own custom set of files (as many people do with Shift).

If you are packaging up a "fix", please don't just dump the fix-files in one folder, use the paths they are supposed to have. If installing it means having to move 65 .bla files into that many folders it will just take more time to get added to the install.

Error reporting:

It would surprise you how hard it is to track an error report that consists solely of "My skin doesn't work", "my HUD doesn't work", "my lights don't work", etc. Please tell us what you did and where you found the bug and include a screenshot if possible. FRAPS demo can take screenshots and TinyPic will host the screenshot for you. Make sure you select '640x480' for your screenshot size, or a nogrip mod will get mad with you. Again, if you have ANYTHING other than the QCM DLC installed in Shift, please mention it!

[djotefsoup]

(just putting the old first post here for a bit)

Hey kids, don't install any of this stuff unless you are pretty sure about your ability to mod Shift. Most of this is now rolled up into an all in one package that will just (mostly) work with comparatively little effort.

The other big thread is becoming a bit unwieldy to navigate properly, so here is a topic just for files to do with converting the ps3/360 DLCs.

For now there is still no magic bullet "bothdlcs.bff" download that will add everything cleanly to PC Shift, just some base files and some complete car conversions at different stages of completion.

Bearing this in mind, you are going to need an unpacked Shift install (see the sticky thread) and it would be a great idea for you to construct a 'parallel' Shift mod folder and use the great JSGME utility to apply these mods.

So using JSGME, anything that installs to "\shift\vehicles\textures" for instance, should instead be extracted to eg "\shift\mods\dlcmod\vehicles\textures\" and then applied as an active mod. If you are installing an experimental fix then you should put it in "\shift\mods\experimentalfix\vehicles\textures " and apply that as a mod. That way you never lose any file and everything is backed up and reversible if it breaks something else.


1. Tools and resources

Unpacker quickbms scripts and batchfiles. Should be capable of double-click extraction from 360 pakfiles, pc pakfiles, and forza 3 .zip format archives. Instructions in the .bat files.

Zmodeler 2 - currently supports the most features of any 3d editor for NFS Shift, though as always with some small issues. Can read PC and 360 .meb, .bmt, .vhf.bml files, and create plaintext .mtx material files. Demo version cannot import directly from PC or 360 Shift, use the .z3d files linked below. Please read the NFS Shift Guide here before attempting to import/export from Zmodeler as several important settings need to be set first.

3dsimed - currently supports some features better than Zmodeler (track viewing, tyre material/mesh conversion from 360, can batch convert textures from .xtx to many formats) and is slightly easier to use for 3d modelling newbies than Zmodeler. See the NFS Shift Guide here. Demo supports all features but is time limited.

Zpectre's collection of all Ferrari and Exotic pack cars, as zmodeler (2.2.2-2.2.4) z3d files. These don't go into Shift directly, they are simply zmodeler native versions of all the DLC cars to use as a clean starting point for conversion.

The .XTX to .TGA converter for converting unpacked Xbox360 Shift textures to a PC readable format. This utility and 3dsimed 2.08 are able to bring most textures over from the 360, usually if a texture does not work in one, it will work in the other, or will at least tell you enough to work out what's wrong.

Pre-converted XTX To TGA'd DLC \vehicles\textures folder - this should give a 'purer' starting point than the DDS converted textures in acti0n's pack below, which while mostly fine, has some automatic conversion process errors in the DDS textures. Will not work with Shift by default unless all textures are converted to the correct DXT type first. You can use 3dsimed, The Compressinator or the NVidia texture tools to convert from TGA > DDS.

2. Baseline DLC installation files

The Upgradecatalogue details for DLC cars. Only really relevant for the Maserati GTS, Acura NSX and Alfa Romeo 8c. Goes into the Shift root folder.

The DLC physics folder. This should be placed in \shift\vehicles and contains an updated \vehicles\vehiclelist.lst and \vehicles\physics\tyres\tyreshd.xml - Shift PC currently won't listen to anything in a "dlc2" or "dlc3" index file so the original indexes for cars and available tyre types needs to be modified.

acti0n's converted \audio\ files for the Ferrari DLC

acti0n's converted \audio\ files for the Exotic DLC

acti0n's DLC packages. The car packages contain unpacked 360 native .meb, .bmt, and .vhf.bml files, readable by Zmodeller 2.2.4 (full) and 3dsimed2.08.

The car packages also contain the car information index files (.c__, .rcf, .vud, .vhf). These are plaintext and can be brought directly to PC Shift when converting cars. The car index files are REQUIRED to make a car function properly in Shift regardless of how you have converted models, textures or other resources.

The "textures" package contains the DLCs unpacked, name-corrected, .DDS converted textures for use in the \vehicles\textures folder. These should be installed WITHOUT overwriting existing files.

** AT PRESENT THE TEXTURES FOLDER IS THE ONLY COMPONENT OF THE ABOVE PACKAGE THAT SHOULD BE INSTALLED UNLESS YOU WISH TO COVERT THE CARS MANUALLY **

Everything in the car packages necessary to actually drive the car in Shift and test material effects is included in the Zmodeller 'plain' conversions linked below.

QuadCoreMax's hand-converted textures update (covering the Acura NSX, Alfa Romeo a8c, Ferrari F430GTC, Gumpert Apollo, McLaren MP4-12c, and Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss). All textures go to \vehicles\textures and can safely overwrite existing textures.

DLC \gui\ folder textures. This is not yet a complete package of all \gui and \gui\hud elements, but its should be enough to start on converting .bgui files for the DLC cars and get you the background texture working.

Crowtrobot's in-car MOTEC displays for the alfa_romeo_8c, gumpert_apollo, maserati_gt_s, mclaren_mp4-12c, Ferrari 599 & F430GTC *** UPDATED 20/6/10

Pez2k's hand-converted paintschemes for DLC cars. As the readme says it should be pretty obvious where it goes.

TheRocke's corrected Ferrari HUD textures and Ferrari ambientshadows *** CORRECTED HUD TEXTURES STILL CORRUPT LINK REMOVED

3. Car Conversions

The following should be used as a starting point for modders/modelers to begin conversion of these cars to Shift. This is not intended to disrespect Cric, Quadcoremax or anyone else who brought out cars via 3dsimed earlier, it's just that the automatic Zmodeler 2.2.4 conversions have such a vastly smaller error rate and produce .mtx files far better than 99% of what is achieveable by hand. They still need some fine tuning though. Don't be posting here about how the wheel rims don't work or your livery doesn't map properly or how you don't see your driver in the car or anything like that. Everyone knows. All should be extracted to \vehicles\ and all contain working model, damage, and the original 360 car index related files. Ambient shadows and paintmasks which would ordinarily go into the same folder with each car are still waiting accurate conversion.

Please note that you should remove any .vhf.bml file from the 360 version before attempting to use these. The .vhf.bml files included in acti0n's pack are not directly compatible with PC Shift and are only in those packs above to aid in importing to Zmodeller 2.2.4 full.

Ferrari Superamerica

Alfa Romeo 8C

Ferrari FXX

Gumpert Apollo

Ferrari F430GTC

SLR Stirling Moss

MP4-12c

Scuderia 16M, 430 Scuderia, F430 Spider, 430 Challenge

F50GT

California

599

BMW M1

NSX

Maserati GT S (thanks arachnus)

[QuadCoremax]

I managed somehow fixing last things, lights & tyres/tread like said yesterday. I really don't know if I'll continue all this conversion, it takes too much time...

I'm loosing precious time debugging the whole & adjusting correctly things, will take approx. 2 months, even more. All cars need to be regenerated by Zmod & verified one by one. We talking about a couple of thousand files all mixed together...& my courage/force is down.

All I can say, everyone is capable of doing it the right way, every explanations can be found here or on other forums

Zmod Edited Alfa Romeo 8c Rear Lights KiT03 Only

[white00gt]

Originally Posted by QuadCoremax

I managed somehow fixing last things, lights & tyres/tread like said yesterday. I really don't know if I'll continue all this conversion, it takes too much time...

I'm loosing precious time debugging the whole & adjusting correctly things, will take approx. 2 months, even more. All cars need to be regenerated by Zmod & verified one by one. We talking about a couple of thousand files all mixed together...& my courage/force is down.

All I can say, everyone is capable of doing it the right way, every explanations can be found here or on other forums

Zmod Edited Alfa Romeo 8c Rear Lights KiT03 Only

Thanks for all your hard work!!! great job..

[acti0n]

What about the last picture? Remapped?

[white00gt]

Still can't figure out how to get Alfa Romeo badges to work , made changes to rcf file but now only see rainbow where textures should be

[djotefsoup]

Originally Posted by QuadCoremax

I managed somehow fixing last things, lights & tyres/tread like said yesterday. I really don't know if I'll continue all this conversion, it takes too much time...

I know exactly what you mean.

I have the basic package ready to go of all cars physics/textures (there are only 253 \vehicles\textures that are actually unique to the DLCs, down from about 780 something). It is very hard to automate any of this stuff because there seems to be a different DTX level which is ideal for certain kinds of things, then you have to test it, see that it still looks wrong, scratch your head if it's the texture that is right, or the meb that is right, or the mtx that is right.

And also now I have a cold which goes nicely with the power going out here at random intervals and belt sander noises.

Starting to think it is easier to just try and fix everything for every car in the whole thing than try and integrate it with the releases of cars already done.

[djotefsoup]

Originally Posted by white00gt

Still can't figure out how to get Alfa Romeo badges to work , made changes to rcf file but now only see rainbow where textures should be

The badges aren't called from the .rcf.

Can you check if you have the following files in the path shown:

(shift) \vehicles\Textures\ALFA_ROMEO_8C_BADGING_DIFFUSE.DDS
(shift) \vehicles\Textures\ALFA_ROMEO_8C_BADGING_SPECULAR.DDS
(shift) \vehicles\Textures\ALFA_ROMEO_8C_BADGING_NORMALS.DDS

There is nothing wrong with the mtx itself that I can see, or at least it's no different to others that work for the same thing.

[white00gt]

Originally Posted by djotefsoup

The badges aren't called from the .rcf.

Can you check if you have the following files in the path shown:

(shift) \vehicles\Textures\ALFA_ROMEO_8C_BADGING_DIFFUSE.DDS
(shift) \vehicles\Textures\ALFA_ROMEO_8C_BADGING_SPECULAR.DDS
(shift) \vehicles\Textures\ALFA_ROMEO_8C_BADGING_NORMALS.DDS

There is nothing wrong with the mtx itself that I can see, or at least it's no different to others that work for the same thing.

Sorry my mistake I meant the alfa_8c_badges.mtx file-I made the changes but still just rainbows...
I do have the .DDS files you name

[kannan4NFS]

I don't understand the purpose of this thread!!! Are you guys trying to convert DLC cars to PC? If that's the case all I can say is Wowwwwwww!!! I'm really looking forward to drive one of the Ferrari!!!

What did you mean by other thread? "New Cars and Tracks for Shift is possible" ??? I'm just curious to know what is going there ...

[martinsalat]

when you have time to read http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...174157&page=18 http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=698

[crowtrobot]

I finally got new .bgui's working. See the other thread for the alfa. I hope dj or quadcore keep up the conversions, so I can keep making new ones. It was a metric crapton of work if it was just figuring out for 1 file...

[djotefsoup]

Still sick as here, won't be anything more happening for another couple of days at least.

[kannan4NFS]

Originally Posted by martinsalat

when you have time to read http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...174157&page=18 http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=698

Thanks for the info man ...

Wow!!! It'll definitely good work. Specially considering that EA has abandoned the PC users we really need this.

Looking forward to it ...

[Sledge08]

Hey guys, a first timer here. First of all I'm sorry to flood this place any more, seems like there's a whole lot of fuss going on regarding the DLC conversions. I think you guys are doing a fabulous job.

Anyway, I'm not an expert on modding at all, but reading these threads it seems like Quadcore's Superamerica and the Alfa C8 are the two most complete mods out here with drivers, damage etc (although quickly testing, damaging the Superamerica corrupted its textures to white/transparent for me hmm).

Being a perfectionist I'll install each car when it matches the other cars in the game without errors but no sooner, so I just have a couple of questions here:

1) I noticed there are sounds for Ferraris, but does the C8 have any soundfiles available yet..? Proper engine sounds are propably the one most important thing for me in this game, so without that I'll just wait further..

2) Do these cars have the Alfa+Ferrari menu logos available yet, or is the UI modding thing something that hasn't been solved at all yet? I found logos for the Ferrari, but it never worked for me when quickly trying it out..

3) Any quick sum-up on which files are the absolute latest versions of these two cars..? Just to help with the install hm.. There seem to be a lot of updates and notes on how to get it work all over the place, and I already experienced a lot of trouble just getting these tested. Great looking cars, though.

Keep up the great work, it is appreciated, really!

[djotefsoup]

Someone had a link to a working .bff file for Ferrari logos, but I couldn't find it when I went digging in the big thread. I'm not sure if we're able to create a novel file for those yet, haven't looked at it myself. For now people seem to be retargetting existing logos, or logos that are present but unused (Cadillac) for those.

Ideally someone would look at a way of making a manufacturer's logo set including both Gumpert and Ferrari logos which don't overwrite anything else already used by a car and includes both a big (car lot) and small (post-race summary) logo for those manufacturers.

So anyway. This thread should actually be worth looking at for any reason starting now.

[martinsalat]

there are the logos inside. http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=698 http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=669

[djotefsoup]

Yeah I could swear someone actually went and made a proper .bff of them, and I couldn't find that. Entirely possible I am just misremembering it - I have a lot of posts in that thread that I don't remember writing at all - winter 2010 flu is no joke.

[martinsalat]

there are some more http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=736 http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=739 http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=746 http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=747 http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...&postcount=755

[Sledge08]

Thanks man, changing the logos seems to work great this way. I also got the sounds to work, very nice! My Superamerica textures still get transparent with damage, though.

Btw I would greatly appreciate if you guys got any tips on how to change the order of owned cars in the garage?

Ever since installing patch 1.2 they got completely messed for me - the cars appear in different order, depending on whether you browse them in quick race or career mode (quick race list order being the same as before 1.2 patching), newly purchased cars don't appear in the same spots in these two lists, DLC1 cars are listed at opposite ends of those lists etc.. And now adding modded cars also seem to appear randomly in there, making the whole thing even slower to scan thru haha.

Did you guys experience this after the 1.2 patch at all? I'm wondering if I had something wrong with my savegame in the first place, though I patched a completely unmodded game back then and it still happened.

Would be awesome to somehow be able to completely sort that list in neat order.. Is it possible?

[Kazumi]

Originally Posted by Sledge08

1) I noticed there are sounds for Ferraris, but does the C8 have any soundfiles available yet..? Proper engine sounds are propably the one most important thing for me in this game, so without that I'll just wait further..

yes, for own car sound download exotic_audio file, extract to Shift folders, and then rename the line in .csd of the car (Shift\vehicles\*alfaromeo-something*\... .csd ) accordingly <prop name="EngineSoundName" data="alfa_8c" />

[crowtrobot]

I've got kind of a stupid question: how does the xtx to tga converter work? I've tried dragging and dropping the files on to the .exe, but it doesn't seem to do anything. The cmd window pops up for a split second and says that it is exporting *.xtx and then disappears, any tips? Or if someone could upload all of the Exotic DLC motec displays as .dds' that'd be great...

[martinsalat]

Originally Posted by djotefsoup

The other big thread is becoming a bit unwieldy to navigate properly, so here is a topic just for files to do with converting the ps3/360 DLCs.

For now there is still no magic bullet "bothdlcs.bff" download that will add everything cleanly to PC Shift, just some base files and some complete car conversions at different stages of completion.

Bearing this in mind, you are going to need an unpacked Shift install (see the sticky thread) and it would be a great idea for you to construct a 'parallel' Shift mod folder and use the great JSGME utility to apply these mods.

So using JSGME, anything that installs to "\shift\vehicles\textures" for instance, should instead be extracted to eg "\shift\mods\dlcmod\vehicles\textures\" and then applied as an active mod.


1. Tools and resources

Zmodeler 2 - currently supports the most features of any 3d editor for NFS Shift, though as always with some small issues. Can read PC and 360 .meb, .bmt, .vhf.bml files, and create plaintext .mtx material files. Demo version cannot import directly from PC or 360 Shift, use the .z3d files linked below. Please read the NFS Shift Guide here before attempting to import/export from Zmodeler as several important settings need to be set first.

3dsimed - currently supports some features better than Zmodeler (track viewing, tyre material/mesh conversion from 360, can batch convert textures from .xtx to many formats) and is slightly easier to use for 3d modelling newbies than Zmodeler. See the NFS Shift Guide here. Demo supports all features but is time limited.

Zpectre's collection of all Ferrari and Exotic pack cars, as zmodeler (2.2.2-2.2.4) z3d files. These don't go into Shift directly, they are simply zmodeler native versions of all the DLC cars to use as a clean starting point for conversion.

The .XTX to .TGA converter for converting unpacked Xbox360 Shift textures to a PC readable format. This utility and 3dsimed 2.08 are able to bring most textures over from the 360, usually if a texture does not work in one, it will work in the other, or will at least tell you enough to work out what's wrong.



2. Baseline DLC installation files

The DLC physics folder. This should be placed in \shift\vehicles and contains an updated \vehicles\vehiclelist.lst and \vehicles\physics\tyres\tyreshd.xml

acti0n's converted \audio\ files for the Ferrari DLC

acti0n's converted \audio\ files for the Exotic DLC

acti0n's DLC packages. The car packages contain unpacked 360 native .meb, .bmt, and .vhf.bml files, readable by Zmodeller 2.2.4 (full) and 3dsimed2.08.

The car packages also contain the car information index files (.c__, .rcf, .vud, .vhf). These are plaintext and can be brought directly to PC Shift when converting cars. The car index files are REQUIRED to make a car function properly in Shift regardless of how you have converted models, textures or other resources.

The "textures" package contains the DLCs unpacked, name-corrected, .DDS converted textures for use in the \vehicles\textures folder. These should be installed WITHOUT overwriting existing files.

QuadCoreMax's hand-converted textures update (covering the Acura NSX, Alfa Romeo a8c, Ferrari F430GTC, Gumpert Apollo, McLaren MP4-12c, and Mercedes McLaren SLR Stirling Moss). All textures go to \vehicles\textures and can safely overwrite existing textures.

here a link to a all in one pack;
http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...postcount=1102

[djotefsoup]

Yeah I'm not all that interested in relinking to the old 3dsimed versions of cars - crics 599 and qcms superamerica are fine other than needing a little attention for damage and minor issues but there is really no reason for many of the others to exist now we have z3ds. I've got everything as clean z3d conversions and I'm just going through seeing how much can be hand-fixed from there on at the moment.

If people want I can throw up the straight z3d conversions but they're really not that hard to do. It's like, open, rename, export, or open, export, rename, and not a lot more work.

I think I've worked out how to grab at least the intended colour of most of those broken paintschemes - one pixel of it seems to be the right colour and the rest is noise - but buggered if I can work out how to get the .bmt mix properties in there though.

Working on fixing the \gui\ path at the moment too.

Also could I please ask that you not block quote the entire top post with links? That's just going to get really confusing for people as time goes on.

[djotefsoup]

Originally Posted by crowtrobot

I've got kind of a stupid question: how does the xtx to tga converter work? I've tried dragging and dropping the files on to the .exe, but it doesn't seem to do anything. The cmd window pops up for a split second and says that it is exporting *.xtx and then disappears, any tips? Or if someone could upload all of the Exotic DLC motec displays as .dds' that'd be great...

It's a command line utility and it won't work on wildcards. It also renames filenames that are too long, which in the case of things like the tyres textures, means it will eat at least one set of _00 _01's if you let it do its thing. And a lot of renaming _dif _specul _norma filenames later. The author (seriously!) recommends using a batch file fed from

dir /b *.xtx > list.bat

and then manually going in and pasting NFS_Shift_XTX_TO_TGA.exe in front of all the filenames and inserting 'pause' on a clean line afterwards. Because the other charming habit it has is going too fast and stumbling over its own temporary files.

It's a nice utility and all but MAN is it a huge pain to use to sort through a thousand plus textures. Even then it doesn't process everything right and has no way to store what the original dds properties (mip/compression type/repeat) were. So you have to then go and check them with something else when you go to make the dds's.

You do not want to know how long I have spent fighting with that thing.

[Sledge08]

Originally Posted by Sledge08

Btw I would greatly appreciate if you guys got any tips on how to change the order of owned cars in the garage?

Ever since installing patch 1.2 they got completely messed for me - the cars appear in different order, depending on whether you browse them in quick race or career mode (quick race list order being the same as before 1.2 patching), newly purchased cars don't appear in the same spots in these two lists, DLC1 cars are listed at opposite ends of those lists etc.. And now adding modded cars also seem to appear randomly in there, making the whole thing even slower to scan thru haha.

Did you guys experience this after the 1.2 patch at all? I'm wondering if I had something wrong with my savegame in the first place, though I patched a completely unmodded game back then and it still happened.

Would be awesome to somehow be able to completely sort that list in neat order.. Is it possible?

From the amount of responses I'm guessing this is harder to do than it seems? Adding car mods and modding overall sometimes seems to have some impact on the order of cars listed, so I just figured there has to be some logic that affects it. Would be an awesome little mod to have a small utility for rearranging the car lot order hmm.

[djotefsoup]

I think Goffik and me were the only ones who really looked at the save game profile and neither of us could find a single thing to do with it. Very likely the order gets touched by how your save profile saves cars, how car slots are allocated to cars from XLASTID/carperformance.pc, etc. So it's really just a mess of things nobody has looked at much or understands very well.

[Nemesis28021982]

hey djotefsoup,

have convert the m1/f50gt/fxx with zmodeler???

i dont know who i must save the name for the z3d files for shift....m1 body????

i wont to make skins for this cars....

when you convert the cars, can you upload the files???

[white00gt]

Originally Posted by acti0n

I've lost my interest in Modding Shift to tell the truth...

Reasons: To little Community, one Suspect who wants sell Mods (you are killing the little Shift Modding Community!), after almost 1 Year no Big Success in Modding Shift... (I mean Real Mods like WSGT, CTDP for GTR 2, rFactor...)

And it seems so the others (Quadcore Max, Juls...) have no interest anymore too..

Hey is this ^^^^ true nobody wants to move forward with the car conversions anymore?

I really haven't figured out z-mod yet because i have been in between surgeries but I would still like to help do my part to help you guys keep going, it's worth finishing I was on the staff of a website that made user add on police cars for hot pursuit(NFS Police Garage-gatekeeper) and it made the game a lot more fun to play and part of the reason why it is still alive today. The website only closed because of domain issues that could not be resolved , but this game can move forward and guys like you DJ can make it happen and at least you can say you are the one who made it possible, I know it is difficult work and takes up a lot of time but for the most part it is greatly appreciated- you took off where EA failed the PC gamers

Hope you guys(action included ) will continue on with your work- don't let one person who is trying to be greedy and make money off of NFS Mods ruin it for all

[djotefsoup]

OK, since nobody wants to do it themselves, here are some plain-jane zmodeler conversions.

FXX

Apollo

F430GTC

SLR Stirling Moss

MP4-12c

Scuderia 16M, 430 Scuderia, F430 Spider, 430 Challenge

F50GT

California

599

BMW M1

NSX

Drivers, paintmasks, ambient shadows, wheels, rims, animations (other than the NSX which has a nice plaintext BAS for some reason), brakelights, all totally untouched. This is just "I better make an archive of these before I bugger them up fixing them" not "hey look at these finished cars".

[Nemesis28021982]

great work dj,

and i hope now i can make a skin for fxx/f50gt

[martinsalat]

wow awesome job.

[kannan4NFS]

Why that Italian guy Filippo94 is not in this thread? I think it's better if all of you guys work together. I believe both thread are talking about the same conversion and both have the same files too. So will it be better to use only one thread to avoid confusion?

And guys, don't worry about the size of community. There are people like me who always will appreciate your works. We really enjoy your works. And we will be ...

Since I'm from SriLanka it's not possible to move to XBOX or PlayStation. Believe it, I really depend only on my PC. And I bet there are more people like me they don't have any options. We depend on your works guys. We thank you for the works you are doing and we are expecting more....

I hope this modding will not stop and grow forever

[djotefsoup]

Honestly I would have expected someone more competent than me to have shown up at this point. Like I said all these are is zpectre's z3d files, opened, exported, renamed slightly and in a highly predictable way. The only cars that were any real great amount of work to do were the old set I put out from 3dsimed and I haven't put out anything yet I've worked on from the z3ds (many many false starts and annoyances).

But yeah, feel free to use them as a starting point for whatever. I didn't make the models or the z3ds or anything. It's just open > export > rename and that's it.

And the intention of the thread isn't to provide entire working cars so much as stop the big thread from being such a gigantic link-hunt. The old link post I had up in there was full of stuff that sort of worked, was sort of converted, was modified from what the original 360 files were, worked as long as you used some other modded file, etc. That's not very useful - this one is more intended to give people clean starting resources to work from. And no disrespect to Filippo94's work but I see a lot there that look like the kind of mistakes I'm trying to avoid here. I'm trying not to mess up the top post with stuff that has some giant array of caveats attached to using it and hopefully avoid the usual "here is this incredibly useful file buried between 53 "why doesn't it work" comments and 29 "you need this other (bad link to outdated file) posts"".


Once I put out the \gui\hud stuff finished (which is mostly done but boring compared to playing TF2) there will be some more toys for people to play with.

[acti0n]

You renamed the Files in zModeler 2 so that we can use the vhf.bml or after Exporting with the vhf file? (First thing is better)

[djotefsoup]

What's the deal with .vhf.bml anyhow? I mean you could use it to get it into 2.2.2 but .. you already have z3ds .. so .. you're kind of back where you started there. And it's just nicer having a plaintext vhf file to work from, I think.

[kannan4NFS]

Originally Posted by djotefsoup

Honestly I would have expected someone more competent than me to have shown up at this point............

Once I put out the \gui\hud stuff finished (which is mostly done but boring compared to playing TF2) there will be some more toys for people to play with.

Thanks a lot buddy. I appreciate the job you guys are doing ... Waiting for a final version

[QuadCoremax]

@Action

The tyre & tread were completely rebuilded in 3D (64 subdivs) & its UV's were fitted to the "reusable" existing common_tire_style01_diffuse/normals.dds texture.

@crowtrobot

I'll continue the conversion...

@Sledge08

You're welcome !
My first version of SuperAmerica is a 3Dsim "bad" conversion, which contains a multitude of issues like collisions, etc...
I'm working on all cars, so be patient, it takes time, since I have to tweak lights (i.e.) in Zmod...
Your idea about sorting cars alphabetically for example is great, but like Djo said, it's all in the profile file which isn't really easy to mod, still, you could use some binary tools/apps to inject/replace strings inside of it.

@djotefsoup

You're right & EVERYONE should now concentrating in a clean Zmod conversion, which is the best way for best results.

@Action

I'm back, I'm feeling like a machine now, Zmod conversion will take less time than projected. I think your method of keeping the bml instead of vhf is a good idea when modding the original structure of the car, i.e. when adding custom bodyparts with custom meb names etc...

@All

I've been finishing 3 other cars, the FXX, F50GT & F430 Scuderia are now perfectly converted (99.9% perfection level) => working liveries, tyres/tread, collisions, GUI tuning section tweak, back lights fix (deletion of 2 quads => quick solution for now).

Had to fight to make motec display work like it should, basically done the Crowrobot method renaming the bgui file & pointing to the correct/new textures.

I still have some issues which I'll probably fix soon :

Ferrari FXX
- car rating
- envmap => reflection of lights in garage
- front lights oversized

F430 Scuderia
- envmap
- HUD/motec display

F50GT
- upgrades will be added => fine tune in TUNING section available
- envmap
- Gear ratios + FDR [Final Drive Ratio] issue

Forget about the existing Ferrari chassis files, etc...lots of files are unfinished versions. The best example is Djo first & really cool Zmod conversion of F430 cars...=> cpa missing, chassis file etc...

===================
1 Picture : back lights fix + tyre/tread fix + UV's fix => liveries/vinyls + driver fix...etc.
2 Picture : Envmap just present in the hood => solution ? => need to analyze why....

[crowtrobot]

@QuadCore

I've got the motec for the alfa finished (uploaded in the other thread) and the 599 practically done (will be uploaded tonight). I'll be starting on the F430's next, so you can work on other stuff, no use in two people doing duplicate work. Good to see you back.

[matt2380]

Very excited about these DLC cars!! Keep up the great work guys!

[djotefsoup]

Awesome thanks QCM.

[tangopro]

Muchas Gracias Desde Argentina!!!!! Thx Modders!!!!!


Usuario On Line: JavierRosales - TangoPro

[QuadCoremax]

@crowtrobot

I've duplicated the TT.bgui & renamed it to alfa_8C + re-created an Alfa_8C_LCD.mtx file pointing to the correct textures, looks like it's working like it should, quite easy to fix, like seen in the picture. Speed + Gears are correctly displayed. The bottom number isn't updated though, looks like a "common" Shift issue, some cars will display the traveled kms => bmw Z4 for example.

I'll check your work...
Here's the little issue of the F430 Scuderia display...

[white00gt]

Quad - great job!!!! glad to see ur feeling better

[Filippo94]

Originally Posted by kannan4NFS

Why that Italian guy Filippo94 is not in this thread?

I'm Here! I'm new on this site, and i didn't know about this thread Sorry.
So, What is the situation?

Edit: Ok, I read the whole topic (or whole the topic? i think that this is better...)
I can still make packs, and I'm reinstalling my NFS Shift for new fresh backups, so I can be the guinea pig that has the new NFS Shift files. What do you need?

Edit: I was thinking... When we will finish this Pack, maybe we can add the Ferrari 458 Italia to the Dlc, we can take it from Forza 3! It will be the most difficult mod of the Story

[crowtrobot]

@QuadCore

Why don't you include this guy here:

http://www.nogripracing.com/forum/sh...postcount=1068

It's the actual motec from the 360 file ported over. The gearing, oil, fuel, water, speed, and odometer all function as they should.

[martinsalat]

Ferrari 458 Italia

[martinsalat]

[Filippo94]

Originally Posted by martinsalat

Ferrari 458 Italia

I quote
I'm unpacking the game, then i will make another copy of the game and I will ready