1.3 Making your own tippable objects, drones, and other such objects


If there's gonna be many identical objects in your track, like those lamp posts, trees (that's for sure) and even some houses, then why don't you make one of them separately, and then import that (many times) to save time, instead of making them over and over again? Sounds reasonable? Well, it is! Make one, and you can clone it as much as you want! If you're planning to make many kinds of objects, then make a folder for them to find them easily. (CarEd's lib-folder, for example) You can also make the objects with some other modeler than CarEd, as long as you can convert it into ASC.
Tip: If you are making models where you have to measure a lot, make the model with real scale, and scale it down in the end. That's how you don't have to convert the units all the time. (from meters to Carmageddon units, for example)

Making solid (non-tippable) objects
Texture mapping
Most of this is about texture mapping. There's nothing special here: just make the model in CarEd, compile it, and import its ACT-file in PT2 to map the textures. To get new textures, press ALT+P, and choose the texture which you have in your object's Tiffrgb-folder. The new texture appears to the bottom of the screen. Click on the new texture, press F to toggle faces-mode on, and then select the faces (=triangles) that will use this texture. Once they are selected, right-click in the camera views and choose "manual mapping". (Or press F5) Manual mapping resets the mapping in selected triangles and applies the selected texture to them, while "edit mapping" keeps the old texture and old mapping, so you might want to use that for fine-tuning the mapping. A window appears with your new texture. (If you mess up the mapping later, press "reset"-button to restore this default mapping) Now click "select"-button to choose where the texture will be projected from. After that use those "slide", "scale" and "spin"-commands to fine-tune the mapping, and drag the vertices if you need to. When the mapping looks correct in the object, press D to de-select the faces, close the the mapping window and press D again, just in case. When everything seems to be correctly, save your object. Now it it ready for use.

Notes in the picture:
A: Click this button to reset the mapping. (Choosing manual mapping in camera window is quite like the same)
B: Here you can choose, where the texture will be projected from: XY = front , XZ = top , YZ = left
C: Drag the object's vertices here to fit the texture.
D: You can mirror the texture with these two buttons. (horizontal and vertical mirrors)
E: Spreads the vertices to cover the whole texture.
F: With these two buttons you can rotate the mapping by 90°.

Making tippable objects (noncars)

About the naming: objects must have a &-sign in the beginning of their name, and after that a two-digit number. After those you can write anything you like, unless it's the same name like in those original tippable objects. (see the names in data/noncars-folder) Another thing: You can't have two or more objects in your track, which use the same two-digit number, because the same two-digit-numbers can only use one physics settings at time. (Bounding shapes, mass, centre of mass, etc.) So if you make many objects, increase the number with every new object. (01, 02, 03...) After modeling and texture mapping you have to make the object's textfile, which contains all the physics. Use the empty noncar's textfile, which is included in the ZIP-file with this tutorial. The name of that textfile is the name of the object, only without that &-sign. So &02Lamp-object's textfile would be 02Lamp(.txt). Copy that .txt-file into data/noncars-folder, and then take a look at noncar's textfile editing-title in this tutorial.

Making drones

Drones must have the wheels: FLWHEEL, FRWHEEL, RLWHEEL, and RRWHEEL. The main component has to be named exactly like drone's name. When you import it in PT2, select the main component (the one with .ACT in the end), and press SHIFT+G to re-write the name of the drone without the .ACT. Now save and exit from PT2. Copy the empty drone's textfile from this tutorial's ZIP-file to your drone's folder, and rename it to match your drone's name. Then copy your drone's folder into data\drones-folder. Now open data/drones/drones.txt, and write your drone's name there. Finally, open your drone's empty textfile for editing, and look at the drone's textfile editing in this tutorial.

Making smashable objects (Smashables can't be moved, but they can be destroyed, and then the shrapnel materials appear and scatter everywhere)

When you import, rename it to have "&"-letter in the beginning of the name, ".ACT"-extension in the end of the name isn't necessary. And no "0000", "0001" or "0002" in the end either, because the smashables get wasted separately, even if their names are similar. Then move it into hierarchy. You'll probably have to move and rotate it. Well, only use "modify geometry"'s commands, everything else will cause problems. So move and rotate it with modify geometry-tool. When it's in the desired place, apply "Force identity matrix" and "Re-centre model data". Now your car won't go through these objects in the game, and the possible flying parts (after impact) appear in the right place, and not in the centre points of the whole track. (At coords 0,0,0) Now the model is imported. To setup the textfile for smashable object's details, read "Other smashable stuff".

Making shrapnel materials for the smashable objects (Used as the falling shards and parts after impact)

You've probably noticed the falling shards when you waste the Startgate or Icebear in the winter level. This is how you make your own. The spreading parts are just some model (which usually looks like the same as the smashable object), which is actually divided into multiple components. These components will be given different speeds and directions after impact. The more components you divide the object into, the more differently spreading shards you get. You can open the original model (Startgate for example), choose some triangles, and use ALT+D to detach them into separate components. Give them some name. The components don't have to be flat triangles, you can use doors, wheels, bonnets, pieces of wood, anything. When you have divided the stuff enough, save it with different name to your track's directory. They will be taken from there. As a matter of fact, you can use add-on cars as shrapnel materials. (for smashable parked cars) Just copy the ACT, MAT, DAT, and the PIX16-folder of the add-on car to your track's directory, and it's ready for use. In the textfile editing part will find out how to connect shrapnel material to the smashable object.

[Picture: AdR's add-on car used as shrapnel material. Notice the scattering components]

1.2 Tips Back to index 1.4 Importing objects into your track in PT2, and amalgamating them