Car converting related problems

[Diatosta]

So, I'm converting a car (first try!) but I have a problem. The body and glasses come in separate objects. How do I unite them? Or if possible, use them both without uniting?

[Franch88]

You obviously have to unite them, in one object called BODY_H. For first, make sure that the glass and other parts with transparencies are down the opaque parts in the objects list and make sure that you're in objects mode (press key 4), then, select all of them clicking on the button Select All present on the bottom of the objects list, click on Create...

[Diatosta]

Thanks, it worked! Now everything is united! Thanks very much

[Diatosta]

Hey! So I've had another problem. In Zmodeler it looks like this:

But in game it's like this:

Why the texture and shadow appear white?

[Franch88]

Make sure that all the car textures are placed in a folder called Texture, in singular. It must be placed in the same directory of the Geometry and the other vehicle folders.

[aaro4130]

Also, if you have multiple materials with the same texture (eg carbody and carbody) then you must unite the materials, and note, the textures must be either BMP, TEX, or TGA

[e-cobra]

In addition to the above, if you re-name a texture(s) after exporting the car, it will appear white because the texture assigned before exporting was named something and then you re-named it and now it is something else. Looks like the car is a bit small, to re-size it, go to objects level in Zmodeler and turn on SEL, then go to Modify > Scale. Press and hold Shift key and drag with mouse to scale the car in all dimensions.

[Diatosta]

Ok, so it worked! Yeah
But about the shadow, I made how the tutorial says, "save as .tga with transparent background". Didn't worked, white square. Then I tried making a alpha channel (after a little research) and the white stuff disappeared, but there isn't any shadow either. See the picture to understand better:


Also, my car steers in a weird way. I've tried to center axes but it did't worked. What to do?

[e-cobra]

About making the shadow, you need to use multiple layers to make it. I do that using Paint.NET. SHADOW_H object in Zmodeler is a rectangle whereas the shadow of the car is of the shape of the car. So, you need to make the 'shadow of the car' part a bit darker and the rest of the rectangular texture completely transparent. There are 255 shades of transparency (0 being completely transparent and 255 being completely opaque).
(The image is of shadow texture of a bus)



So make a new layer of desired size, and use the eraser tool to make the white background transparent. (in Paint.NET) Now take a screenshot from the top view in Zmodeler. Somehow select the outline of the car from the top view and colour it black. Now load this top view as a new layer. The previous layer is completely transparent and this (new layer) will be completely black (Opacity at 255). Now edit the layer properties and set opacity of this second layer to somewhere about 130 so that it looks a bit darker.
Save the texture as 32 bit TGA and you're done.

That steering problem could be because the car is positioned below the Z axis.


Make sure that the wheels and all other parts are above the Z axis and the origin (center point of co-ordinate system) is in the middle of the car, neither too back not too ahead. If this does not solve the problem, then something must be wrong with the tuning files.

[Diatosta]

So, the car now steers correctly (yey!), but the shadow don't work quite well. Now it's just a big grey (more to black) rectangle. I've made exactly what you said, in Photoshop (what made the background white with the shadow in it) and with Paint.NET (wich made it correctly (at least it appears correctly in after reopening it) but the result is the one below). I'll try to use a existent one.

[zoot]

Use the MM2 default texture for the shadow.

[Diatosta]

Ok, so I tried everything and it still won't work! Can someone make one for me? I can them the car just to make it. If someones makes it I'l be very thanked

Edit: So just by the curious I downloaded NFS HP2 mod by The_Most_Wanted and I start thinking it might be a game's problem. Look:

Is this supposed to happen? (Oh and I'm refering to the shadow)

[Franch88]

Give me through a PM the car model in Z3D file format to use to make the shadow for you, I'll give you a little explaining on how make a custom shadow then.
I haven't a such problem with the textures of the cars from that mod. That should be the problem of the TGA textures with the RLE compression because of how it looks.

[The_Most_Wanted]

This shadow texture works fine with me in the game.

[Diatosta]

So, Franch sent me a shadow texture he made and it still didn't worked, so I presume it's something to do with Zmodeler, so I'm leaving here how I made the shadow (I'm following Silent1Unkown tutorial):
1- Create a flat surface:
2- The properties:
3- The face itself:
4- The texture properties:
5- The texture Franch sent me:
6- Selecting all the shadow object:
7- Assigning the texture to shadow:
8- The shadow after in Zmodeler:
9- And the shadow after in MM2:

So, if I am escaping something, because I did everything that the tutorial said and it still doesn't work, please say what it is.

P.S.- Sorry for the big post