PART 1 - THE EDITOR

 1.1 DISCLAIMER :-)

   Let me start off by saying, I originally wrote this editor to be used only by myself
with no intentions of distributing it to others, so you can take your hopes for an
easy to use, nice user interface and throw them out the window. hehe.
   The editor and editing process are by no means easy. You will need lots of patience
and persistence to achieve a clean looking fully functional model.
   This editor is still beta, There are many functions yet to be implemented, many
refinements to be made, and maybe a couple of bugs...
   For further information and or tutorials on CarEd, go to the official CarEd support
site:
   The Carmageddon Fan Club
   http://cfc.allgames.com
 

 1.2 SETUP

   You will need to install the Java 2 platform and the Java 3D extension from Sun.
Currently The Java 3D runtime only supports Open-GL for Windows so you need that
as well. If you are using Win98 or NT4.0 the Open-GL support should already be there.
You can find the Java 2 platform here: (about 9 megs)
   http://www.javasoft.com/products/jdk/1.2/jre/download-windows.html
and the Java 3D extension here:
   http://www.javasoft.com/products/java-media/3D/download.html
You MUST install both the Java 1.2 platform and the Java 3D in the same directory.
The default is c:\program files\javasoft\jre\1.2

   To run the editor, you should probably create a shortcut to the batch file that can
be found in this zip archive called cared.bat. You may need to enter the full path
to the java.exe in the batch file. It should look something like this:

c:\progra~1\javasoft\jre\1.2\bin\java -classpath cared.jar CarEd

   Make sure the cared.jar and the cared.bat files are in the same directory. If
you launch the .BAT file and a DOS window appears and then quickly disappears,
you will need to open up a DOS prompt, cd to the directory containing the
cared.bat and then type cared to see what the problem is.
   When the editor is running, you will notice that a DOS window will also be
running in the background. This window is used for debugging info, and will
show any errors you may encounter. If you want to get rid of it, you can replace
the java executable name in the batch file with javaw.

   The only problem I have ever had running this program is when I initialize the
3D window, sometimes the editor hangs and you need to kill it by pressing Ctrl-c
in the DOS window. This bug rarely happens and it is a problem with the Java Open-GL
implementation. Other than that the editor should be pretty stable, MUCH more stable
than the Stainless PlayThing2 editor.
   You may also want to download a TWT extractor that can be found on most any
Carmageddon II site, so you can look at other models in the game.
 

 1.3 THE MAIN WINDOW

   The main window has 4 views, three are three editing views, and the fourth is a
browsing view.

                                         (figure 1.1)

   To get an idea of how a car is oriented in each view, you can load up one of the
carmageddon .DAT files that can be found in any one of the car .TWT files.
   Each of the three editing views can be translated and scaled with the mouse so
that you can see detailed enlargements of any section of the car you need to work on.
Hold down the left mouse button over an editing view and move the mouse to translate
the view. Hold down Alt and the left mouse button and drag to scale the view.
   The Browser view can be scaled the same way as the edit windows, but it also supports
rotation to let you see all sides of your textured car.
Hold down the left mouse button over the browser view and move the mouse to translate
the view. Hold down Alt and the left mouse button and drag to rotate the view.
 
 

 1.4 PLOTTING POINTS (Vertices)

   To add a point to the currently selected component, simply hold down the Alt key
and click on one of the edit views. Make sure you do not move the mouse when you
click or the edit view will resize instead. When you add a Point (Vertex) it will
become the only selected point in the component thus allowing you to move it around
by right clicking on the appropriate edit view and dragging the mouse.
    If you are modeling a real car, it is a good idea to brows the web and download as
many pictures of it as possible. If you are lucky enough to find a side view, front view,
top view or back view, you can use the image trace feature to accurately plot the model.
Image tracing simply allows you to load up an image (GIF or JPG) and display it in one
of the three editing views. You then can outline the image with points to get an exact
fit. Press Alt-1 to load a trace image into the left editing view, Alt-2 for the front view
and Alt-3 for the top view.
                         (figure 1.2)

 

 1.5 SELECTING POINTS (Vertices)

   When you have a few points plotted, you can select groups of them by holding
down the Ctrl key and dragging the select box around the points you want.
When you release the mouse button, all points within the box will be selected.
To de-select points, simply hold down the Shift key in place of Ctrl.
   By default, the only points that are selected will be in the currently
selected component. You can select points from other components by changing the
selected component or enabling the Select from all visible checkbox in the
Points box (see figure 1.1).

                               (figure 1.3)

   If you need to align two or more points along an axis or even mirror two
points along an axis, select the points and click on one of the Align buttons
found on the component edit window. The only one I ever really use for cars is the
Align X to make sure the car is exactly symmetric across the X axis.
 

 1.6 DEFINING A TRIANGLE

   A note about triangles, if you are new to 3D modeling, here are the basics: 3D models
are composed of nothing but lots of little triangles. Other shapes such as rectangles
can easily be made from two or more triangles. Most model components will only be
viewed from one side, so if you had a cube, you would only see the outside of the cube
and not the inside. By using this principal, 3D games can speed up the drawing process
by only drawing one side of any given triangle (the outside). When you define a triangle
with CarEd, only one side will be visible and the other will be invisible.
   You must have 3 points selected to define a triangle, it is a good idea if possible
to create a triangle that shares 2 points from another triangle, so the new triangle
knows which way to face, otherwise you have a 50-50 chance that the triangle will
be facing the wrong way. If it is facing the wrong way, then press i to invert
the triangle and make it face in the correct direction. You can see how tedious this
becomes quickly. You may have a bunch of components on the screen making it difficult
to see what you are working on so it is a good idea to hide all other components by
clicking on the Only visible checkbox on the Components box (see figure 1.1) or you
can hide specific components by selecting them and disabling the Visible checkbox.
 

 1.7 CONNECTING COMPONENTS

   Most components will be connected to other components, so it is very important to
be sure that they line up. To do this you need to determine which vertices the components
have in common. Go to the connecting component and select all vertices that will be
shared and copy them to the clipboard Ctrl-c. Now go back to your new component that
will be connected and paste the vertices. You should be able to build the new component
off of these points and have a well defined connection. If you move any of the connecting
vertices, by default the editor will move the vertices in any connecting component
by the same amount. In some rare circumstances you will not want this to happen, so
to disable this feature you can go to the main windows menubar and turn off the
Edit-Effect Links option. You should turn it back on when you are done.
 

 1.8 TRANSFORMATIONS

   There are a few different ways to manipulate a model. You have seen how to move
points with the mouse, but now lets take a look at some of the more advanced types
of transformations. Looking at the Point and Component boxes you will see two buttons
Transform and Iterate (see figure 1.1). The Transform button will bring up a dialog that
will let you define exactly how to manipulate selected points or the current component.
Simply type in the needed transformation numbers and click on the Ok button.
The component Transform even allows you the option of applying the transformation
to all visible components. Remember you can experiment with different values here
and then select Edit-undo to remove the transformation.

                               (figure 1.4)

 

 1.9 ITERATIONS

   Iterations are a form of transformation, but they create new sets of components
or points. Both the Component and Point boxes have an Iterate button (see figure 1.1).

                                (figure 1.5)

   The most commonly used iteration is to create a point or component on the opposite
side of the car (mirroring on the X axis). For instance, if you have the front right
wheel plotted, and want to create the front left wheel. You would select Iterate
from the components edit menu. A Dialog will pop up with transformation, origin and
number of iterations fields. All we want to do is mirror the Front right wheel along
the X axis, so we would type in a -1 scale for the X axis. We would only want one
iteration, and the origin should be (0,0,0) so all other values are default. Then
click on Ok and a new front left wheel will be created.
   More complex components can be generated by this type of transformation when using
multiple iterations, but watch out, if you have too many iterations, the editor and
game will become sluggish with too many polygons.
 

 1.10 CREATING TEXTURES

   Textures are simply RGB images saved in .TIF format. The best way to create them
is by using Adobe Photoshop, but there are many other good image editors out there
like L-View or Paint Shop Pro. Both the width and the height of each texture MUST
be a power of 2 but do not have to be the same. eg. 16x16, 32x16, 64x64, 128x16.
Valid dimensions are: 2,4,8,16,32,64,128. I would not recommend creating a texture
with a dimension beyond 128x128. TIF files support many types of images and even
compression formats but to be on the safe side, ONLY create RGB or RGBA 24-bit
color (8-bit per color component) images that are uncompressed and in DOS format.
I still have a few bugs in my TIF reader that may cause problems if the TIF is saved
with LZW compression.    When you have created your texture, save it in the \tiffrgb\
directory of the car you want to use it on. eg. c:\cared\cala\tiffrgb\
   Photoshop allows you to create RGBA TIF files with an alpha channel that defines
translucency. This option will allow you to create your own (see-through) window
textures, but if you do not have Photoshop, you can borrow the SCRN.TIF image
from someone else's car.
   One thing to keep in mind about colors is that Carmageddon II will tend to bleach
out brighter colors, so you will want to keep color saturation as high as possible.
 

  1.11 TEXTURING COMPONENTS

   CarEd uses simple projection based texturing. Basically you can think of it as if
you are projecting your texture (Image) onto the surface of the currently selected
component. You can project the texture form one of six sides (Top,Bottom,Left,Right,
Front or Back).
   To texture a component, you will first need to import the image. In the Textures
box (see figure 1.1), click on the + button which will create a new texture slot. Then
click on the ... button which will bring up a file dialog allowing you to select the .TIF image.
Now from the Components box (see figure 1.1), select the component to be textured
and click on the Texture drop dow, select your new texture, then click on the Map to drop
down and select how you want to project the texture. From the main CarEd window, click
on the Refresh button on the lower right to see what the texture will look like on your
model.
 

 1.12 COMPONENT GROUPS

   Grouping components allows you to have multiple textures per car part. A good
example of this would be a car door. A standard door is usually made up of three
components: The outer door, the inside of the door(cockpit), an a window. Each
component has it's own texture but they are all part of the complete door.
   From the main CarEd window, select the Component-Group components menu option
which will bring up the Component group dialog. The list on the left side will
display all components that are not part of any group, The upper left list
displays all defined groups and the lower left list displays all components
contained in the selected group.

 (figure 1.6)

   To define a door group you would click on the + button to add a new group,
rename the group to something like LDOOR, add the components that make up
the door and you are done.
   You will notice the Is Master Group checkbox. This allows you to define
which group is the main car body, which all other components and groups are
attached.
 

 1.13 3D FORMATS

   The cared editor uses it's own 3D file format (.OBJ) that is not compatible with any
other 3D editor formats. If you want to import and export 3D models from other
modelers, you will need to be able to convert the files to (.ASC) which can be imported
into the cared editor. At the moment (.ASC) files are the only external 3D file format
I support, due to their simple text based data. You can load .DAT files from
Carmageddon II into the editor, but that is only useful for grabbing car parts that
you may want to reuse, like a driver or the wheels.
   When you are working on your car, you should always save using the File-save
option which will generate my .OBJ format files. The only other type of save you
should should need is the compile car when you are ready to test out your design
in the game.