BMW 2002 from the Retro Expansion Pack

Good news kikoya - keep on going and take all the time you need !

Touring sure would be a fine addition to the mod but I'm afraid it's far beyond my skills. I'm now working on the wheel arches because they really don't look like the real thing, and moving all those points, one by one is sometimes a bit tedious, even more when I have worked for some hours and suddendly 3dsimed crashes... And of course, I didn't think of saving my work from time to time !! I'll post some pics of the wheels arches, maybe tomorrow if I have the time (that is if it rains, because if the weather's fair, we'll go for a walk in the hills nearby)...

Here are some pics :







The arches are narrower than those on the original mod, and a bit shorter too, though the front ones are still too long, but I'm afraid of distorting the polygons too much and thus make skinning too difficult. Even right now, many polygons have been modified, on the fenders and front and rear ends. I have not tried complex skins for the moment... I wish I could reassign the textures to the polygons but I strictly have no clue on how to proceed. It seems that 3dsimed does not offer that possibility.

Wonderful !!!

Awesome!

As you can see on the pics in a previous post above, the car has some extra lights with yellow tinted glass. For a long time I've tried to make both white and yellow lights able to work at night, but no matter how I tried, it wouldn't work, hence the result you can see here :



So after some time I gave up. But after seeing that Muddie's XK120 can use two different types of light, I've tried again. My mistake was trying to use two texture files but GTL can use only one, so both lights have to be on the same file. The good thing is that the 2002's light GMT is unnecessarily complicated and I could split it in two to make two lights instead of one, and voilà :





Even though it's not very important stuff here, I'm very happy I've managed to make it. What do you think of the lights ? Are they ok like this or should they be dimmed a little ?

It's amazing, Kikoya! Good job, well done! It's perfect!

Hey Kikoya!

Im very proud that my stuff could help you. With the Light Colour you must see. The clear white is more spectacular. A little yellow/brown touch is more realistic. I think a kind of middle way is the best solution.

BTW: I think guys like you and me are obsessed by diggin in the details. So, have you ever think about the Light reflection on street. I do it. You can organize it over the .cas-File and its surprisingly Easy and works without any Problems. A little Manipulation in the .cas-File, a few textures to do, thats it. Look here:



Its not worked out to the end in GTL, many Opportunities. The disadvantage: Every light reflection Style need his own .cas-File

Are you interested?

Greetings
Muddie

I love yellow lights like it were common in France in the past.

Great work!!!

Yes, it's true that I'm obsessed with details, maybe a bit too much, that's why the mod takes that long to complete. I'm sure many things won't be noticed but as long as I'm not satisfied with what I see I'll keep trying to make it look the way I want...

And yes, I thought about the light reflection on the road. For the moment I'm using the default one that is much too white. I'll have to make different textures for all the different sets of lights. BTW, yours look great. Did you make them or found them in a mod or in another game ?

As for the integration of those textures in the game, I was thinking of adding them to a mask.gtl file rather than a different .cas file for each car. I found the utility of the mask files when converting some P&G cars to GTL. It allows to use modified .GMT or .DDS files without changing their default names, hence no need to modify the .cas. Anyway, this will need some testing, since sometimes some things just can't seem to be done in GTL for no apparent reason, as I guess you have found by yourself too !

Since I've managed to make the yellow lights work alongside the white ones, I'll now try to make the US specs side lights work too !

Obsession with detail certainly seems to lead into great results. I think those white lights could be dimmed just a little bit. This is offtopic but hilarious, US sidelight are banned in finland.

I don't know if it's still the case but the US side lights were forbidden in France too some time ago. Same with the courtesy lights on the pillars and even the third brake light. To be autorized to use the car you couldn't just remove the light bulb, the glass had to be permanently occulted as well. Then one day the third brake light turned from forbidden to obligatory...

And about the yellow lights they were mandatory until 1993 if I remember well. The fine for using white lights was rather high, and as soon as they were autorized almost everybody switched to white. On my 320 it's not the bulb that was tinted yellow but headlights glass, so i remained yellow ! But I think that night driving with a lot of traffic was less tiresome with yellow lights.

Working side lights are done. It seems that all the lights need to be on the same .dds to be able to work. Only the brake light has its own texture. The light's .gmt entry in the .cas file has its importance too. The side lights won't work if not integrated in the debris 2 and 3 entries. I had the same case with the reverse lights that wouldn't work until I put them under the debris 6 entry...




New thing : the rear plates lights and their projection on the body. Don't know yet if it can be easily used as they are a bit tricky to get a good result. And it needs an individual light texture for each car, as it's not really a projection of light but a copy of a capture of the back of the car during the day...  

kikoya wrote:

New thing : the rear plates lights and their projection on the body. Don't know yet if it can be easily used as they are a bit tricky to get a good result. And it needs an individual light texture for each car, as it's not really a projection of light but a copy of a capture of the back of the car during the day...  

Just a thought but could the Headlights use the WC_TEAM_BODY2.DDS to make it possible to have different plates for each individual car? I've a funny feeling that the texture has to be called 'Headlight' though...

I think not. The choice for naming parts and textures is rather restricted in GTL. For the lights, the name of the material has its importance and the name of the texture as well. If it's not respected, it won't work. I've spent a lot of time wondering why those #@!§% lights didn't work, and most of the time it was only a naming problem.

Hey Kikoya!

Its me again.
I must confess, that i have a little Light fetish and i made my first steps in Modding with Lights. One Year Ago i made somithing with the AM DB4 Z lights which could help you:




It works smooth with the Body Texture. Two thinks you must notice:

-In the light01-File you must have a gradient in the Alpha Channel.
-the body Part with the Light Texture must be minimal Outside the Body. (Like the Headlight Texture Parts)
(Sorry, my English is today not the best. I hope you understand, what i mean.)
In my Plans for the 700RS is a NP Reflection and i will try it like this.

You can find the Link for the Light update here if you dont have it till now:
http://www.evolution-modding.com/t896p180-aston-martin-db4-gt-zagato

Greetings
Muddie

Looking good, kikoya

Hey Kikoya. Yesterday Servimg works very slow. It takes Minutes to upload my Pics and EvoMod never shows your Pics to me, so i could only read the Text. I thougt you have a problem to create the lights but i was wrong. Your result is brilliant. Not only the Number Plate, also the rearlights with this subtile highlights at the Bulb Position. I think with my method the result wouldnt be so colourful. If you get no Name Conflict(I think Headligt Texture only Tolerate the Light01.dds File and GTL is on that Point not open for Compromises.) than make a Template with a little Tutorial and put it in your Pack. The Painters will deal with this.

Greetings
Muddie

I have a BIG problem with the mod. I must have done something wrong when using 3dsimed. Now the lighting is very strange on the cars. Parts in the sunlight show correctly, but those not directly exposed to the sun are completely black. Not just dark, absolutely black.

I'd like to upload a pic to show how horrible it looks but it doesn't seem to work today...

Does anybody already have had this problem ? And, most important, does anybody know how to fix it ??

I've tried a few things but nothing changes. And of course, it's only this mod, not any other mod or original car. Only this mod, and all the cars of the mod I've done so far. And it happens on any track, so it's really a problem on the mod itself. It also shows in the showroom, though it's not as black as on track, and it's doesn't show in 3dSimed, the cars or parts there look absolutely normal.

One more thing, it doesn't affect the wheels, none of them. And the loose modified GMTs that can be found in various cars folders are not affected either. It seems like the problem is the main .GTL file that has the problem, the wheels being in their own wheels.GTL file and the loose files being on their own.

Who could help me fix that ?

Maybe some object properties went wrong in main gtl file. It happened to me while converting car that it looked strange (dark) in night racing... I've redone everything but I think that something changed in object properties when I've combined two objects into one without using exploding command, but in this case it could be something totally different...

Have you installed any new cars or mods recently? Could it be a conflict with texture naming from something else? It's not something i've noticed happen from using 3dSimed before but that does sound the most likely culprit...

No, I have not installed anything just before the change happened. The only thing I've done was to modify the properties of a material (switch to double-sided). After seeing the result, I've reverted back to single sided, but the damage was done, the car looked the same ugly black.

I just hope I won't have to do like Vipla Dare and redo everything ! The main GTL file for the car hosts 670 GMTs. Though the car is just an update of an existing mod, actually not any single GMT (except those linked to "empty" genstring entries) is similar with the original ones, and many of them were heavily modified or scratch made. This could mean either a lot of work in perspective or sadly, the end of the mod...

I still hope I can do something and have to think how !

Hey kikoya - have you been able to solve your problems concerning this mod after all your hard work?

Hi Jeanno, the problem's fixed or maybe almost completely fixed; I'll have to check...

If it happens to other people, for some reason the materials got corrupted, and to solve the problem I've found only one way. Trying to modify the materials didn't change anything, so I renamed all the materials, for example wc_team_body1_pa to 00wc_team_body1_pa. The easy part was to replace them with correct materials from some loose GMTs I found in various folders from the 2002. For the remaining corrupted materials, I replaced them with corresponding ones from another car, the Cortina, and then changed all the textures from those materials with those from the 2002.

I must say that it took some time to find this solution and it was quite boring to do. I still have to check if I have not forgotten any corrupted material, and also if I have correctly replaced all the Cortina textures with the 2002 ones...

Those interested in this car should take a look there :

http://www.evolution-modding.com/t1930-crimson-road-beta-version-something-else#38520