Default cars paintjobs adding

[NotoriousA]

Just wondering, how do you add extra paintjobs for the default MM2 cars?

[NiAlBlack]

Needed programs: zModeler 1.07b; TexManager; MM2 City Toolkit

First of all you have to extract the .pkg and the textures for the car you want to modify. Then you have to convert all the textures used for the vehicles first paintjob from .tex to .tga with texmanager. To find out which textures it uses you can easily use MM2CT's File Browser. Just browse for the vehicle's pkg-file and click on it. In the lower left corner you can see a list with the textures. It's important that you keep the foldertree used in MM2. Now open zModeler and import the vehicle's pkg. Press on "Select all" and then press the "SELL"-button. It should be pressed in now. Click on "Display" then on "Local Axis" and then on "Center Axis". Now click anywhere on the editing surface (not the 3D view). You should see the axis move. After this just press "Deselect". Then there are 2 possibillities, I'll describe the one that is easier (in my opinion). For this your custom textures have to be called in the scheme as the default ones. Now export your file as .pkg. It doesn't matter where you store it. After clicking on save a little window will appear. Check "Standard vehicle" and multiple paintjobs. Now delete the colors that are written there by default and also remove the one listed on the right. The first paintjob is always there so the first time you click on "add" it will be the 2nd paintjob. So if you want e.g. 7 paintjobs you have to press it 6 times. But for traffic cars you need one more because the last paintjob will never show up in-game. Now click export. After that you can close zModeller. Now go to whereever you have saved your file and delete the .mtx-files and the .txt-file. You won't need them. Now I would recommend you to test the pkg in-game to check if the axis were centered correctly. It will only have the first paintjob and sometimes the wheel textures don't show up and when watching it from the back the wheels sometimes seem to whobble. But thats OK as long as they don't seem to whobble from the side. If something is wrong you have to go back to zModeller and repeat this above. If not go to MM2CT's file browser, browse for your pkg and click on it. Now open the shaders editor. You can see a list of textures now.to find the 2nd paintjob just look for the point where everything repeats itself. Click on the first texture name of the 2nd paitjob and click on "change texture name" and replace the color with the one that should be the 2nd paintjob. I recommend you to copy the color so you can always paste it instead of rewriting it. Do this to every paintjob. OK, you are almost finished now. You'll only have to fix the wheel texture problem. Look for the wheel's texture Around it there should be some free fields. One should have completly black ambient lightning. Leave this one the way it is or in case it is named (this causes the whobbling effect) remove the name. And the other one is lighter, this one has to be called the way the wheel's textures are called. This may differ from vehicle to vehicle. Do this to every paintjob. Now try it in-game. If something is wrong you have to retry changing the wheel textures. Experiment a bit with it untill it works.

And BTW: The textures for the FMGT's magenta paintjob will be leftover in the final release so you can add them yourself with MM2CT

[CarLuver69]

^^^ Talk about a wall of text...oh dear.

@NiALBlack You're seriously misguiding this person. You're exporting your default vehicles wrong. You made this process a whole lot more complicated than it really is. I shall now go into more depth with my post.

First off, you'll need a program called TexManager (Click the link to get it)

A good idea to do is make sure you have all of the files from MM2TEX.AR extracted into your MM2 directory, or wherever you choose to extract them. Take the time to convert all of the .TEX files to .TGA using TexManager by selecting all of them and clicking "Convert to TGA" - this may take awhile.

Obviously in another undocumented step, you create the paintjob. NEXT!

Import the proper .PKG into ZModeler 1.05c or 1.07b, whichever one you find to work best. I used 1.07B the most. First thing you want to do is click "Select All" then, on the right, go to "Display" --> "Center Axis" - make sure "SEL" is clicked, then click anywhere in a non-3D view. That part is done.

Now go to the materials manager in ZModeler and untick the "Texture" field for materials that have a "1" at the end of them, for example "vpbasename-left-texture1" since the PKG importer doesn't like matte materials for some reason. DO NOT DELETE THE ACTUAL ENTRY - only turn off the texture tick.

Now you need to figure out the proper order for the textures - using the File Browser (F9) found in the MM2 City Toolkit, browse to the default cars PKG file and click it once. Now click "Shaders Editor" and look at the names of the textures - it would probably be something like "vpname_blue_side" , "vpname_red_side" and so on. Take note of the names of those textures and then go back to ZModeler. Click "Export" and make sure "Standard Vehicle" is selected and "Multiple Paintjobs" is ticked. Whatever the first paintjob is, enter in the name of the color you saw in the Shaders Editor in "Replace Suffix..." (so in this case, mine would be _blue) "With Suffix..." (in this case it would be _Red). You must do this for all paintjobs in the same order MM2 lists them. This can be a complicated process if you don't pay attention. Make sure you save it as the same basename as the original default car...DO NOT OVERWRITE THE ORIGINAL. Make your own folder for your modifications and have a "geometry" and "texture" folder.

I think you get the point. Some default car textures don't have an underscore with the color name, so think of this process as a find and replace type of deal...then after you're all done, delete the MTX and TXT file in the "geometry" folder.

^^^ Talk about another wall of text

[NiAlBlack]

I understand your argument but I recommend using your method only when creating a new vehicle because it has some disadvantages:

1. In your method you have to convert all textures the vehicle uses, in mine only the one of the first paintjob. (thats why I didn't say that you have to open the shaders editor to find out)

2. To let your method work you have to rename every texture in a way that the color is in the end because zModeler won't recognize it if the color is in the middle. e.g if you have vpfordred_sd.tga you have to rename it to vpford_sd_red. And you have to do this to every texture. Only this step takes longer than manually renaming it in CityToolkit and you will also have to put the default textures into your .ar file because their name was changed (compare to revisited4 or to the default cars traffic mod)

3. You have to add every single texture in zModeler and the "Ctrl"-button does not work. This takes a very long time and it is really boring doing that!

I hope you see my point and understand why I change the names manually.

[NotoriousA]

I can't seem to find the TEX files, I used DeAR 2 to extract all the files from mm2tex.AR.

[CarLuver69]

I can't seem to find the TEX files, I used DeAR 2 to extract all the files from mm2tex.AR.

Look in the "texture" folder.

I understand your argument but I recommend using your method only when creating a new vehicle because it has some disadvantages:

1. In your method you have to convert all textures the vehicle uses, in mine only the one of the first paintjob. (thats why I didn't say that you have to open the shaders editor to find out)

2. To let your method work you have to rename every texture in a way that the color is in the end because zModeler won't recognize it if the color is in the middle. e.g if you have vpfordred_sd.tga you have to rename it to vpford_sd_red. And you have to do this to every texture. Only this step takes longer than manually renaming it in CityToolkit and you will also have to put the default textures into your .ar file because their name was changed (compare to revisited4 or to the default cars traffic mod)

3. You have to add every single texture in zModeler and the "Ctrl"-button does not work. This takes a very long time and it is really boring doing that!

I hope you see my point and understand why I change the names manually.

Nope, still wrong. Converting all the textures is good practice so you can actually view them later on and know what to replace. Renaming textures? That's insane. You can EASILY add ones that names like "vpfordred_sd", just put "fordred" in the Replace Suffix... field and then enter in the other colors names in the With field. It's a simple Find and Replace function, not literally the end of the filename. Secondly, you do NOT have to add every texture to ZModeler! All you have to do is import the PKG, center axis, turn the texture tick off for the materials that have "1" on the end of them, and then export it with your new paintjob on the end. You obviously don't understand the concept of replacing one word with another.

[NiAlBlack]

OK, thanks for explaining. But please don't tell me it is "wrong" because there's a difference between something being wrong or just more complicated than it has to be. I talked about this with dummiesboy some weeks ago and after exporting the pkg the suffix wasn't changed, so I changed it with a hex editor. Later I had problems with the wheels and he told me to use MM2CT. Then I thought it would be easier changing it in MM2CT instead of using a hex editor. However I'll check out your method. But there's one thing I don't get. when having the name "vpfordred_sd" and using "red" doesn't work why should "fordred" work. Wouldn't it make more sence that "vpfordred" works? And I understand the concept of replacing one word with another but doesn't it say it replaces the suffix? And a suffix is always in the end. When having it in the beginning it's called prefix. So possibly it works in your way but if you have once tried and it failed for some reason and you read the word suffix then you just think: "Oh now it's clear, it only works when having the color as suffix and not in the middle.
And sorry for giving wrong information about revisited4, the textures aren't renamed. And I don't see a sence in posting everything here and also sending it as a message so we should stop doing that.

[dummiesboy]

Actually, I'm fairly positive that you need to import all of the textures for every paintjob before you export, or the first paintjob will simply be exported several times. That happened to me before, and after I started importing all of the textures, that didn't happen.

[NiAlBlack]

Actually, I'm fairly positive that you need to import all of the textures for every paintjob before you export, or the first paintjob will simply be exported several times. That happened to me before, and after I started importing all of the textures, that didn't happen.

Exactly. But importing them takes longer than changing it manually in MM2CT because Ctrl doesn't work in zModeler.

[CarLuver69]

Actually, I'm fairly positive that you need to import all of the textures for every paintjob before you export, or the first paintjob will simply be exported several times. That happened to me before, and after I started importing all of the textures, that didn't happen.

Who's the one that's been working his ass off on fixing default cars for RV? Me. I didn't have to import any other paintjobs textures once. That last part for exporting multiple paintjobs and loading textures into the materials manager is just adding it to the shaders list, and will work for TEX or TGA...it doesn't actually add the images to the PKG file. You add the first paintjob's textures and then on the final step, add the rest of the textures the car uses.

This is a really simple process, and about the "suffix" thing being on the end of a file...yes, it is true that it is the end of a name, BUT, it's talking about the "_Color" part with the underscore behind it. But in reality it's a "Find X" and "Replace with Y" function, if I tell it to replace "caddiered" with "caddieblue" and all of my other paintjobs, it does exactly what I told it to do...whatever has "caddiered" in it will get replaced with "caddieblue". That's only for textures without an underscore, though.

[NotoriousA]

I'm using the most recent version of ZModeler, but it doesn't work.

Where can I find the 1.07b version of it?

[zoot]

https://rapidshare.com/files/1980562273 ... r_v107.exe

[NiAlBlack]

BTW: Why do you want to know how to do that? Do you want to join my project or is it for something else?

Oh and I think that I read somewhere that sajmon uses my method too. Or was it someone else? I'm not sure about that anymore.