6. Polishing It Up

With a light heart we return to our native CarCAD and load our texture. Well then... it'll do for a first time ;-).

If you notice any blunders and irregularities in the texture mapping – fix them manually by moving the points right on UV. I'm just too lazy to do this myself ;-)

If you remember, every part in the model must have its own name meaning its purpose. Using Rename in the Parts panel, rename the parts of your car according to this list (don't forget the colons):

Practically, the car is now ready to be driven in the game. But that's far from all, there are still many interesting things...

Firstly, those are the very preset colors. Of course, you can do without pre-defined colors and set them right in the game via Custom Color, but...there's a dubious pleasure in naming them afterwards. ;-) Anyway, to set colors in CarCAD there's the command Edit/Colours.

Each "color" is actually a set of four colors – Primary, Secondary, Interior and Driver's Hair. The Primary color is used to paint the areas filled in the texture's alpha channel with the color with RGB parameters 224,224,224 ; Secondary – areas with RGB parameters 96,96,96; Interior – with parameters 160, 160, 160; and the Driver's Hair color – areas with parameters 32, 32, 32.

With the Add button you create a new color set, and with the sliders Hue, Saturation, Brightnessand Tolerance (?) you adjust each of the four colors. Generally speaking, it's more convenient to adjust colors in NFS Wizard, so here you can just create them and adjust them later.

Secondly, there's animation. Of course, all of it is predefined in the game, so you won't be able to make, say, a running person... We can only count on these movements:
Wheel rotation;
Driver's head turning toward the turn and following cars passing by;
Steering wheel and driver's hands turning toward the turn.
There are no special tricks here... the parts rotate around their local axes (that's why we centered them). But – in the :OD part (driver's hands and steering wheel) ONLY certain points rotate (naturally, since, say, the driver's shoulders must stay in place while the hands rotate). To mark these points accordingly, select them in point editing mode and in the Vertices panel check the Driverbox for them. This only works for the :OD part.
     

Thirdly, there's car damage. In the geometry set D we store the maximally damaged car. (And in the game a point shifts from the "normal" to the "damaged" position only after being hit). Let's switch there and disfigure the car beyond recognition ;-) To begin with, you can run the command Tools/Create Damage – this will randomly shift all points of the selected part a little, creating the impression of "dents". And you can refine it manually by moving points directly. Any part can be deformed (although mangling the driver makes no sense in my opinion – he'll never get hit anyway...;-)


Fourthly, there are things like headlights, license plates and exhausts. In the FCE format special objects without their own geometry are used for them – the so-called "dummies", Dummies. Switch to their editing mode (Edit/Dummy Editor) and you will see a new "dummy" as a red circle.

You can move it with the cursor keys (however, keep in mind that it moves in that direction in all projection windows; it's better to maximize one of the windows to full screen). A new one is added, and an old one is deleted and renamed via the panel on the right Dummies.
What this "dummy" will be in the game is determined by its name.
For the "dummy" to emit puffs of black smoke at every gear shift, it must be named ":SMOKE"
For a license plate with your name to appear at the "dummy" location, it should be named ":LICENSE", or ":LICENSE_EURO", or ":LICMED", or ":LICLOW" (for different levels of detail)

Headlights have their own naming system. The name format is "ABCD123", where:

     A – is the light type. The values can be:
     "H" – headlight,
     "T" – taillight,
     "B" – brake,
     "R" – reverse,
     "P" – turn signal,
     "S" – police (or some other) flashing beacon.

     B – light color.
     "W" – white,
     "R" – red,
     "B" – blue,
     "O" – orange.

     C – this position always holds "Y"

     D – light flashing type.
     "N" – doesn't flash,
     "O" – flashes at moment 1 (?)
     "E" – flashes at moment 2.

     1 – light intensity, a number from 0 to 9. Usually 5.
     2 – flashing period, a number from 0 to 9.
     3 – delay (?) a number from 0 to 9.

Thus, an ordinary headlight will be coded as HWYN550.
Now you can save and close CarCAD, since we have already covered all of its capabilities...

CarCAD guide © Baco, 2001.