Hello everyone! I would like to find somewhere exact instructions about creating and importing external items in a map I saw various videos about blender and sketchup but I could not find any step by step instructions but rather some general information that I can't use, even in this forum. I don't know if the guides here apply to programmers but i found it really hard to start working. Does anyone know a link or can possibly give me instructions from step one on how to do it? I really need a detailed guide cause I have no idea on how to begin. Thanks in advance!
I feel for you, sometimes it feels like one needs to be Sherlock Holmes in a quest of figuring out cryptic clues left by a nemesis! Someone really should do something about that ... oh yeah, that tends to be so that to get something one needs to do it by self. Quick crash course of basics for MAP static objects follows. Forest objects are bit different, vehicles are lot different, this is as requested, to be able to place custom items on MAP only. Always apply location, rotation and scale, using Ctrl-A and selecting from menu, that makes them . Place objects above 0. Treat everything as case sensitive. When you have your object made up, export as Collada: It is absolutely same what you name the DAE file itself, also path does not matter as long as it is inside the your level folder and materials.cs that defines materials and textures need to be in same folder with the dae, so I'm using here art/shapes and everything in that folder gets mapped by single materials.cs file. Game ignores materials from Blender completely, it only finds name of the material, which you can see here: Materials are defined in Materials.cs that resides in same folder as your exported .DAE file, most important line is mapTo Code: EXAMPLE OF PLAIN COLOR TO BE USED ON OBJECT singleton Material(Weirdo_face_fufsgfen) { mapTo = "Weirdo_face"; diffuseColor[0] = "0.29 0.29 0.29 1"; specular[0] = "0.5 0.5 0.5 1"; specularPower[0] = "50"; translucentBlendOp = "None"; }; Code: EXAMPLE OF TEXTURE TO BE USED ON OBJECT singleton Material(Weirdo_face_texture_fufsgfen) { mapTo = "Weirdo_face"; diffuseMap[0] = "levels/Devils_rally/art/shapes/weirdo_face.dds"; diffuseColor[0] = "1 1 1 1"; specular[0] = "0.5 0.5 0.5 1"; specularPower[0] = "50"; translucentBlendOp = "None"; }; Material name that game uses internally = singleton Material(Weirdo_face_fufsgfen) *****(Note that this has no meaning for anything else than for game to able to tell apart different materials, you don't use this for anything really that I know of, you just have to name it and have it different from everyone else's or conflicts might occur) Material name that need to match material name in Blender = mapTo = "Weirdo_face"; ****** (this is what makes your object to have texture or material, game reads dae, finds material name you set in Blender and then reads materials.cs file mapTo line, when that matches, game then applies that specific material to all objects that have that material name given in Blender. and that are in DAE files in that specific folder) Color of the object = diffuseColor[0] 1 1 1 is white 0 0 0 is black Red Green Blue, better not to touch that last 1, I don't even know what it does but certainly won't be touching it. This link is about vehicle materials, but it explains those lines of codes somewhat, however I'm using only diffuseColor and diffuseMap, you can even copy paste those lines I wrote above and modify to suit, then use in your materials.cs file, but if you want to dive deeper into materials, in Wiki there is a lot of that stuff: https://wiki.beamng.com/Vehicle_Materials Placing those freshly made objects then. In game, press F11 to level editor, then F1 to make sure you are in object editor, from right choose Library, below that make sure Meshes is selected and navigate to path you did place your DAE file, then you should see your object name on the list, double click that name From this new window I always click OK For object to be collidable, you can select visual mesh to collision type for the quick temporary solution to get started, it is not good, it might not work very well at all, but gets one started: LOD and collision is difficult part, which are still something I need to study more before I can make sense at all, so if someone who already knows would make instructions that actually make sense and be to point simple stuff, that would be great, but probably just need to bang my head to wall enough long and some day I might be able to find out what is key to that. For example with materials it took really long time to find out that in instructions essential key part is not mentioned, but lot of unimportant data that just makes confusion is scattered around the subject. I'm sure that with collisions and lods there are really just one or two key bits that make it work, other information given in instructions is then for finetuning, but somehow it all is explained difficult/confusing way in instructions. This all is assuming you can use Blender, if not, then take time to learn that, it will take months of practice if 3d modeling is something not done before and youtube has lot of tutorials on that.
Well, it's a start, thank you so much! I still feel like i'm swimming in the Pacific alone, but you definately sent me a life vest!
