Converting NFS4 - NFS6
This is my first ever tutorial so it may seem pretty rubbish. This was only meant to be a quick reference guide, so please appreciate the time i ended up putting into this and don't complain about how inadequate it is, this is as indepth as i could make it giving the little time available i have. The techniques used in here may not be the best, but the mine and i seem to do okay with them. I hope this will help all or atleast most people who use it. Time to shut up and get on with it i suppose.
Converting the Textures:
1.Convert the TGA to BMP format, resize it to 512x512 and save as 0000.bmp
2.Open the newly converted BMP and change it to grayscale mode, then apply colour coding from white to black on appropriate places, this decides the amount of chrome black being none and white being high chrome. Once you're Done change it to Indexed Mode and save as 0000-a.bmp
3.Unpack the Skin.VIV of the car you will be replacing with VIVmagic this will creat a new folder with some skin.fsh files in it, unpack the skin00 with the FSHtool and you will get another folder named Skin00 with 3 files inside (0000.bmp, 0000-a.bmp and index fsh ) replace the 0000.bmp and 0000-a.bmp with the ones you saved earlier, then use FSHtool to repack the Skin00 and the use VIVmagic to repack the Skin.VIV.
4.Alter the vehicle.ini (i will explain this part at the end)
hopefully i haven't missed anything, but if i have i will add it later.
just a quick reference of the Skin.VIV:
The Skin.VIV holds all the files for the car texture, how many depends on the car or how many you have added. As far as i know, you can have 15 textures max.
Each texture file within the zip is named from Skin00 upto Skin14 (Skin00 being skin 1) and is in FSH format.
Inside the individual SkinFSH's there is 3 files:
0000.bmp - the actual car texture
0000-a.bmp - the chroming map, which decides what parts have which amount of chroming
index.fsh - for repacking the Skin.FSH
Converting the Mesh:
For this i will replace the F50 as an example, because it only has 25 parts and are named simply. but you may have to use a different model to compensate for the amount of lights or shape of lights.
1.Goto you're cars folder in the HP2 directory and into the F50 folder, unpack the car.VIV.
2.Import you're fce into Zmodeler (without damage loaded) and delete all parts except the car body, mirrors, Brakes, wheels and interior.
3.Create a new 128x128 texture file for the wheels and save if in .bmp format, then re-texture the wheels and brakes to it.
4.Mirror the car Horizontally in the side veiw then Horizontally in the top view.
5.Detach the follwing parts from the car as individual parts and name accordingly (parts must be named exactly how i have written):
Bottom named as Bottom
Windows named as Window (Front) [t]
Now rename what's left of the body as Front.
6.Now to rename the rest of the parts, rename as follows:
Brake Front Right - Brake (Front R)
Brake Front Left - Brake (Front L)
Brake Rear Right - Brake (Rear R)
Brake Rear Left - Brake (Rear L)
Wheel Front Right - Wheel (Front R) [w]
Wheel Front Left - Wheel (Front L) [w]
Wheel Rear Right - Wheel (Rear R) [w]
Wheel Rear Left - Wheel (Rear L) [w]
Mirros - Misc Parts
Interior - Interior
7.Now select all the verticles for the windows and goto Plugins/OIF custom settings and change the vertex color to 7F000000 (this value decides how dark the windows will be and can be changed to suit you're liking)
8. now export the file as car.oif
9.now a tricky part. if you're car has logo's or decals you will have to reverse the textures for the mirrored model. you cant simple mirror the mesh, because this causes problems with the wheel placement that can't be fixed within the Skeleton file. Once you've pirrored all the Lettering/Logos/Decals/Sponsors on the car export it as carM.oif
The actual conversion:
1. Start Oiftool and and click convert OIF to O then click next.Click on the square next to the input box and locate you're exported car.oif file, then click on the square next to the output box and locate the car.O file in the F50 folder and click next. For the external O file, locate the carRigid.O in the F50 folder and click next. If all parts were named correctly at the start you should beable to just click next without future problems and it will convert the file.
2.Do step 1 again but this time with You're carM.oif instead of you're car.oif, the carM.O instead of the car.O and the carRigidM.O instead of the carRigid.O.
3.Now Open the F50 folder in the HP2/cars Directory and copy the car.O to you're desktop. Rename it as carRigid, then drag it back into the folder. Copy the carM.O file to desktop and Rename it carRigidM, then drag it back into the folder.
Simple huh? or maybe i just missed a couple of things.....lol, i hope not.
The Wheels:
1.Inside the car.VIV is a car.FSH file, this is the texture for the wheels and brakes. unpack the FSH and you will find 7 files:
0000.bmp - wheel texture
0000-a.bmp - chroming map
0001.bmp - wheel texture
0001-a.bmp - chroming map
0002.bmp - wheel texture
0002-a.bmp - chroming map
index.FSH - for repacking the FSH
now, i don't know why we have 3 texture files for the wheels but my guess is that it has something to do with either the distant or angle you view them at. same scenario as the skin files here just remember to goto grayscale mode, then to indexed mode with the chroming textures.
The vehicle.ini:
this file hold all the information about the skin reflection colors, siren colors, light colors and size, etc.
(DO NOT mess with this file unless you know what you're doing as it can cause problems)
now the Skin reflections, scroll down to the appropriate skin, in this case Skin00 and change the "specular" RGB values to the ones you want, maybe a slightly lighter shade of the cars actual colour.
and change the "Paint" RGB values to the exact colour of the car. The specular color is the reflection color and the paint color is the color of the actual car shown in the menu.
Damage:
I myself don't know how to do dame for HP2 (Yet!!!), so i would advise disabling it, otherwise it may look quite messy on you're converted car.So to disable it..........in the Vehicle.ini file scroll down to VEHICLE DAMAGE DEFINITIONS and input the same as below:
'-----------------------------------------------------------------
' VEHICLE DAMAGE DEFINITIONS
'-----------------------------------------------------------------
[damage]
disabled=1
'-----------------------------------------------------------------
' VEHICLE SKIN LIGHTING DEFINITIONS
'-----------------------------------------------------------------
The Skeleton.O file
This file holds all the information about wheel, brake, driver and lights positioning. there seems to be a small bug when saving as it appears to take no effect sometimes and can be quite frustrating, so i developed a technique that works EVERY time and if you do exactly as i say and don't try and cut corners, then you shouldn't have a problem with it.
1.Start Oedit 2 and load the car.O, the Geomdata and the Skeleton.O from the F50 folder
2.when you load the Skeleton.O you will get a list of Bones, load only the 4 wheels (make sure there not the LOD wheels). check the 4 wheels and the 4 bones in the right coloumn, now centre each bone with the appropriate wheel in the side view, now make sure each bone is up against the back of the offset in the alloy for each appropriate wheel in the top view and save, close Oedit2 and restart it, this time do the same as above but only load the 2 front wheel bones from the Skeleton.O, check the 2 front wheels and the two bones in the right menu, have a quick look to see there still in the position you set, then save.
3.Do axectly the same as above but this time with the Brakes and Brake bones.
4.Restart Oedit2 again and this time when you load the Skeleton.O file only load the top 4 Light bones under "joint3" and reposition to fit the car, you may have to position them, then go ingame to check to see if there the right way round and if not, change them. once you've repositioned them save then exit.
5.Restart Oedit2 Again (last time) this time only load the player bone. in the right coloumn check interior and the player bone and postion the bone to the point where the driver will be seated, then save and exit.
now repack the car.VIV with VIVmagic and you should ahve you're first converted car.
some other files:
car.ini - the cars performance
carracer.ini - AI cars perfromance
car_cop.ini - cops performance
car_hp.ini - Hp versions performance
P.S. please don't email me asking for help, i currently have an active topic at www.nfsunlimited.net where you can post you're questions and i will help as much as i can. This way everybody can see regular problems asked and (hopefully) answered and i won't get bombarded will emails.
Have fun
Viper_gts
www.nfsunlimited.net