As you know there are a few tutorials about texturing but none of them are detailed enough for the noob modders to understand and they are a bit outdated. At the moment my car only has material but no texture. What are the steps needed to create a texture and why are there many texture files for the same car part but with different names(eg: seats_n, seats_d, seats_s)? And why use dds file instead of png?
N is the normal map, this creates an illusion of a 3D effect so a surface. Appears to have bumps. Specular is how light reacts with the surface I think. Diffuse its the main texture overlay. If you want to change the texture of something (not a skin) then edit the diffuse
I appreciate the fast and clear explanation. If I want to create a texture from scratch how do i put the texture on the car part then make the 3 types (diffuse,normal and specular)?
Are you making a skin or a texture? If your making a skin then I'd recommend looking at the introduction to skinning tutorial on the wiki. If your looking into making a new texture for something then pm me. A skin is much more simple than a whole new texture https://wiki.beamng.com/Introduction_to_skin_system Something to consider is that skins don't require d,n or s files
Well hey ,fancy seeing you here too Yeah saw this but like you said it has good tips but not actual instructions.
I would like to see some tutorial about how to actually do textures so that they look good, because while I can put random image in game as a texture just fine, to make it look anything usable is beyond me. There was instructions of baking diffuse map etc. however I have never got that to work myself, I'm too stupid for that :\
Remember that the topics you are discussing here are not unique to BeamNG. Unwrapping UVs is a universal 3D art concept. https://www.google.com/search?q=blender+unwrapping Once you've unwrapped and exported a UV you use your skills as an illustrator to texture it and create a diffuse map. Just draw the diffuse map right on top of the UV inside your favorite product (Photoshop, GIMP, etc). For example, you'll have trouble texturing a leather seat if you can't draw stitching. Tutorials exist for stuff like specular or normal maps. I'm afraid that I haven't really seen tutorials on concepts like "how to illustrate the faceplate of an automotive radio". It's certainly not something I am able to do, whether for a video game or to illustrate a book cover. On the other hand if you simply want to do really basic textures there are plenty of resources for that around on the internet and it's fairly straightforward.
I agree with you 100%,but its not the how to use photoshop or gimp thats the problem , its how to put what youve done in your car file and make it appear ingame. The wiki doesnt mention anything about dds files or how do you put the (d,s,n)textures in your car file or things like that etc...Its the Beamng specific issues that im talking about, not the general how to use photoshop or gimp. For example one can be a pro at using blender and making models but doesnt have a clue about how to make it appear in Beamng.
Have your dds file within your car's folder structure, then in materials.cs you write mapTo to be exactly same as material name you set in Blender and diffuseMap[0] to path of your texture (d) specularMap[0] to (s) and normalMap[0] to (n) 0 in those is layer of texture. https://wiki.beamng.com/Vehicle_Materials To appear in game, nothing else is needed than correct path to diffuseMap[0] and mapTo same as material in Blender. Here same with pictures and everything, you should be able to get textures appear with that: https://www.beamng.com/threads/content-creation-and-import.55577/#post-881111 However how to make specular maps and normal maps, how to set other parameters so that it looks good and not 5 years old painting, that I can't help with because whatever I do those skills are evading me.
I tried to do the trunk.... I keep getting a black trunk everytime. I tried everything. Could someone take a look ?
I guess you confused me a bit. Based on the nature of the questions in the OP, I assumed that you needed help w/ the stuff that isn't BeamNG specific. You were asking about generic topics like "why are there many texture files for the same car part but with different names" and "why use dds file instead of png". None of that is BeamNG specific. If you familiarize yourself with these generic texturing topics there is definitely enough info floating around on the game-specific stuff to get you going. RE: your earlier question on PNG vs DDS... DDS is used for performance reasons. You definitely don't want to be publishing mods which use PNG if you can avoid it. To work with DDS I use Photoshop, but as I recall free tools/plugins are available for both Photoshop and GIMP. RE: your black trunk lid... you do not appear to have UV'd the trunk lid. You can't texture something that hasn't had it's UV's unwrapped. https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Blender_3D:_Noob_to_Pro/UV_Map_Basics No UV: UV:
I did unwrap it. You open uv/imageeditor window then select all the faces of the trunk press u and choose smart uv.Then bake the unwrapped pieces onto an image and save it as png and open that png in gimp. Isnt that correct?
As you can see in my screenshots, your DAE does not include the UV. Once you generate a UV you'll want to save that as part of your Blender project and ensure that the UV is also exported into your DAE. FYI people are happy to help here, but this is generic Blender and/or video game content creation stuff and not specific to BeamNG. As I suggested earlier, there are lots of tutorials and things you can find on the internet to help you learn this stuff. Just using Smart UV by itself is probably not ideal. The UVs that come with the game were certainly not generated that way. Look up tutorials on the topic, those authors probably understand the process and goals much better than I do. To get the best results you'll definitely want to make use of seams and probably various forms of projection. https://docs.blender.org/manual/en/dev/editors/uv_image/uv/editing/unwrapping/seams.html http://sophiehoulden.com/tutorials/blender/unwrapTut.html
An explanation as simple as this was what I was looking for(the texturing part) : https://www.beamng.com/threads/modding-help-tutorial-and-server.54422/ The rest of the details about texturing can be found online and in the WIKI I know. Thanks alot guys !
