UPDATE: This map is now cancelled. Okay, so I did a modified East Coast, USA map back in September 2020, but it was a complete pile of dog crap looking back at it, so I wanna actually work on doing a new modified East Coast, USA map. Thank you to @RobloxFan2 for helping me with my previous map, btw. I am hoping to learn how to export original signs and stuff I made in Blender into BeamNG Drive. I would love some information on files, how to upload the map to the repo, and exporting stuff from Blender to BeamNG. Btw, do you guys know how @bob.blunderton made his 11-8 foot bridge sign in Los Injurus and put in BeamNG? If you know, I would love to know. Any feedback is welcome and appreciated. Anyways, here's 3 pictures on the map's progress. And yes, that's a race track I made in the 3rd pic. Thank you to @davidinark for helping how to make AI roads, btw. I watched his video and it was super clear and super detailed. Here it is.
Well thanks for the kind words, I appreciate it. I was able to get license/rights to use a portion of an 11-foot-8 picture taken some years ago. I cropped and straightened the photo so the sign is almost straight-on (it was taken at an angle, but being somewhat skilled at times with graphics, I have methods to straighten free-use / cc-0 photos for use in-game). Do graphics for enough years and it slowly comes naturally to you, takes a lot of time to get confident though. I started with Doom. In the mid 1990's. I'm sure the dev-team can still run circles around my efforts though, for perspective. DAE (collada) images are plain-text just like most web pages are. You can open them in notepad++ (which is free), or your preferred text program, and take a look at what graphic they call for. You can either replace this graphic, customize it to your liking by changing signs you don't need (the graphics are usually a bunch of signs together, with the sole difference of many sign models being the coordinates of the UV's / graphics it displays). When talking about models, UV's generally means textures faces like you'd see in-game. So the sign in question which is sign_elevenfooteight dot DAE, will ask for (under LIBRARY_MATERIALS section on line 105 in the DAE file) both ECA_BLD_metalbeams which is the signpost and/or backing material, and it will most importantly ask for SIGNS_USA. SIGNS_USA is a MAPTO= name inside one of the materials dot json files inside the map folder structure, usually under art/shapes/signs or something like that. This is the exact same as the other signs for the most part, again, just differing on the coordinates given for which part of the sign texture is displayed. The game reads (and creates caches of) models and their req'd textures when the map loads. It finds the textures it needs by parsing the materials json files in all folders inside that map structure (and sometimes it reads erroneously from the game's built-in map folders and can over-ride things! this is a bug, and sometimes a pain). The MAPTO= name is the one part of the texture entry in materials JSON file that MUST match what it calls for in the DAE's file materials_library. DO NOT just change things inside the DAE file, it'll mess up. If you must change things in the DAE file, highlight the text for the material id= thing inside the quotation marks and pull up the REPLACE ALL (in this file, if it asks specifically), this way the texture UV entries and what the model calls for don't get messed up. It's best (and easiest to just replace the graphic or modify it yourself). Of-course, make sure to replace the texture entries in materials JSON file in your map so that the folder structure mirrors your map and not the one you took the assets from, otherwise changing the graphic in your map won't seem to have any effect (and gives the game yet-another unneeded excuse to throw orange stuff of you-messed-up-ness at you). So to make this simpler, just grab the sign files you need from my map or others (I'm not going to be mad if you take signs), adjust the materials json files to match (it could be in main materials json, that the game auto-makes when you use the texture tools in the world editor), and adjust the graphics themselves to your liking. Don't MOVE the signs around on the graphic, just change the words or colors on the ones you need. You can download CC0 and CC-SA (attribution req'd share-alike / give credit and link-back for CC-SA stuff as it's an honor system and meant to stay free) graphic bits and use them in your mod. CC0 is best as it's creative commons and no restrictions on use other than credit, if you need to add things in. Best not to just mug stuff from google unless doing a temporary mock-up for yourself and a few friends. It's easy to modify graphics, especially if you use paint dot net (I admit I use it here a lot!) and get to using layers, allowing ease of integration of new material into old files, adding just what you need and not anything else. Don't forget to keep things the right format. There's an article or wiki page on this somewhere and it is probably more up-to-date than I am. Formats - to the best of my knowledge! DIFFUSE / Color-map: BC7, sRGB (dx11+) This is the graphic you see most of and contains sign words and colors. NORMAL : BC5 (pick whatever one would make your graphic yellow in color, one is grey one is yellow) Normals used to be blue but the graphics engine switched up a bit ago and now we use yellow ones. Using the blue normals makes things look bad. This is 3d bump-mapping to make bricks and anything else with height look proper from all angles and illuminate realistically when hit by headlights. Getting this wrong makes textures black or unusually dark. Specular / reflective: I would look up texture formats to figure this out, this changed recently. This is the part that makes metal or the letters on signs reflective and how shiny stuff should be. Using the wrong format can make reflections blue or yellow, so this should be colorless. There are other layers, if you have programs to generate them; otherwise use in-game graphics. Youtube can be of great help when dealing with textures and trying to figure them out. Please see the in-game maps when trying to work with colors. The sign assets inside my map are many, many years old and not as up-to-date as the current in-game maps, so you might want to use beamng's sources and not mine. I think I updated them at one point, but still, they're numerous versions old. Always make backups. This is a lot of data in this post and should probably be backed up, but I digress. If you need continued help, still, do ask. I will politely help you until the tornadoes eat me or whatever God throws my way temporarily makes me stop. Almost got mulched by a tornado last week, too, but it did not touch down. My brain has tons and tons and tons of info in it. I've spent over 40 years on this planet learning, about 30 of which on a computer trying to make custom game stuff. My body is broken to the point where I cannot go out quite as often as I'd like and teach people things, so really I can be of good use here to help when I otherwise wouldn't be good for much (when I'm not milling about my place fixing a leak or fixing the forever-broken lawn mower for the upteenth time, blast that thing, there's a special place in hell for that mower - sorry). ... I could have just said 'look for signs_usa_d.dds in the map folder and change what you need', too. Still not a cop-out here, though! --Cheers and good luck! If you still need more assistance, or just like my awful spelling and book of a post to make your thread look super busy even if it's not, let me know. I'll keep this open in an additional tab so I don't forget about it as easily as I do everything else. You can get quite far just changing little things in graphics to make things different as needed.
I'm glad you even took time to make this post. I'll read it. I'm just busy with other stuff right now, but yes. Hopefully, I can figure it out. Okay. UPDATE! I've been wanting to make my own custom speed limit signs and curve signs for East Coast USA and I use Paint3D. I'm terrible at reading things, but did you say you can't move the sign once you added the texture? I've been cloning signs and moving them in East Coast, USA like this in the World Editor and this is how I replace the signs. Basically. I wanna make speed limit signs, curve signs, exit signs and steep grade signs.
Anyways, yes folks. I made more progress. Thank you so much. I've been editing Los Injurus for like 3 years now and it's really helped me with my world editor skills. Btw, the post above this is how I clone the signs in BeamNG pretty much. --- Post updated --- But it gets even better. I've been adding AI roads. EDIT: Oh btw, I wanna make a Speed Limit 10 sign and a Dead End sign for this area and I wanna make a mobile home model in Blender for this area too. --- Post updated --- Btw, thank you to everyone who's helped me with this!
You can move a sign all you want (or do anything else with it), the texture loads when the map loads if you have any signs that call for the sign face texture placed in the map. Just edit the sign graphic, it's a DDS file as I had explained above. You can (re: should) use paint dot net (it's free / donation-ware), as it works with DDS files natively. DDS is a type of game graphic file with compression native to video drivers/hardware and is the fastest type of graphic for the game to display. Just change the graphics of the signs you don't plan on using. Then you essentially turn the old unused signs into new ones you can use for your specified purpose. Be aware that often while I do have some BeamNG stock assets (like signs), the texture MAPTO and name may be changed (along with file names) in my Los Injurus and Roane County resources to fix conflict issues that crop up (it's a bug) periodically as the game updates. Don't know why it does that, but just a word of warning if you copy stuff out of Los Injurus (etc) and don't know why it doesn't work right. If you can't figure something out, just try and re-read stuff I type to see if it makes it more clear to you, what steps you must do to make things work. Grades over 5% generally get a sign. You can stick decals on things (like the word STOP in white letters on the asphalt, pot-holes, and even grunge/filth decals), to make some of your detailing easier, but setting them up to display the right stuff you want can be a PAIN in the rear for new-comers. West coast and Roane County both have EXIT (arrow) signs for the highways, yield signs, and even other highway signs (albeit some are slightly low res). They both also have gantries for signs (what they mount to) but be aware some of the signs from Roane County will EAT your car if you hit them resulting in a stuck player. You'll have to try them for yourself, though signs made of just the sign-board only (square or rectangular) shouldn't have any collision to my best knowledge (the ones with poles do!). If you're STILL unsure, take a look at how things are set up in levels you like, and learn from those. --I hope this cleared some stuff up.
Thank you so much!! Yes, yes it cleared stuff up. The slippery sign, I would love to turn into a merge sign. --- Post updated --- Oh and here's some plans, comedy, and more progress.
Well. I tried to make a mobile home in Blender success. I couldn't save the mobile home detail, though. Just the cube part of it.
