Is it possible to export a car from 3dsMax into Cama 2?

[helomyname]

And if so, what is the process?

[Toshiba-3]

Yes, again with Harm's CarmaTools.

I don't have the motivation to write a tutorial now though, just import a C2 car and replicate the scale and setup within your addon car's scene. Keep in mind C2's scale is very tiny, so you'll have to zoom a lot in Max to vew the imported car.

[helomyname]

Do you have a link to Harm's CarmaTools? And how do i import a C2 car?

[Toshiba-3]

This is the C2 modding subforum. Helomyname explicitly said he wants to export a car from Max into C2. I then told him to import a stock C2 car into Max beforehand so that he's able to compare the scale and setup of the scene he wants to export into the game, from there he also asks how to import a C2 car into Max. No offence, just read the topic more thoroughly next time.

Otherwise he would have read the tutorials.

There are no tutorials about importing/exporting cars between Carmageddon 2 and 3dsMax.

Also man you're 50+ or something, what's up with the drama and passive-aggressiveness like that:

Nice to see you take a week to answer questions but once somebody says something you think is wrong BAM you show up.

Not only is Trent (or anyone) not bound to answer all questions, esp as his main focus is CMD, but yeah it's good he's correcting you when you might potentially induce confusion with your misinterpretation of the original question.

@Helomyname: these are the last versions of the CarmaTools scripts:
http://harmsollie.nl/wp-content/uploads/manual/tools/carmatools_20150129.zip

Extract the content into the 3DSMAX folder (usually C:\Program Fils\Autodesk\3ds Max 201X). Keep in mind the scripts only work from version 2012 and up. Then you execute Carma_tools.mcr only once, this installs the other scripts into the UI (you can customize it to create a CarmaTools bar in Max if you want). Else you can directly run the individual scripts. Importing is done via Carma_ImportV19.ms. To run a script: MAXScripts (in the top menu bar) > Run Script...

I'm not going to write a tutorial any time soon, so you'll have to help yourself as much as you can. Two major points are: applying Reset XForm on all parts as soon as you have scaled the scene to the proper C2 scale. You can find Reset XForm in the Utilities tab (Hammer icon on the right of the screen). Save before applying it as it can mess stuff sometimes. Better to apply it before doing the second important point:

Second point is the hierarchy (Graph Editor > Schematic Views), the main car component must be the parent and all other parts its children. Again just check an imported C2 car's schematic view to see how its hierarchy is setup.

Also if you apply modifiers (like the Reset XForm up there btw), you have to collapse them all. You can do that easily by right-clicking a component and converting it again to Editable Poly.

Oh, and all parts but animated ones (most of the times only the wheels) must have their pivot set to 0,0,0. You can do that by enabling Affect Pivot Only (Hierarchy tab in the right panel), selecting all components that need their pivot moved to the origin, select the 'Select and Move' tool (crosshair with arrows icon), hit F12 and enter 0 for each Absolute:World coords.

BTW not all C2 cars can be imported easily in C2 (some generate errors).

I'm pretty sure these few steps won't be enough but that's a start.

[helomyname]

I cannot seem to be able to get the Carmatools to appear within 3ds max, but running the import script worked for the Eagle and i have created a car with the same scale as it. I use 3ds Max 2012 btw.

I set up the hierarchy and the pivots, with naming similar to that of the Eagle.



What is my next step? Do i texture it within 3ds max, or should I somehow export it into Plaything and do it there?

[Toshiba-3]

Fantastic!

Yes, do the texturing in Max, the export script will take care of it as well. If you want to skip ahead to already check the next step (the export script), you can apply the same texture on everything for the time being (with planar mapping for example ('UVW map' in the Modifier list) (btw an absolute requirement is all parts must have UVW coords, be it unwrapped UVW or simply planar. PT2 and the game might crash otherwise. Parts can be nontextured though.)

When trying to get it ingame the first time, I guess you might base the txt and wam file on the EAGLE3 ones (it's easier than setting it all up with the scripts honestly) but you'll have to adapt them a bit (like the first non-commented line will have to be its filename (RANG.TXT?)). Further down in the file, you can rename set EAGLE2.WAM to RANG.WAM (or whatever your car folder/files are named) if you want.

Then Funks should be empty at first like so:

START OF FUNK
END OF FUNK

At the end of the txt file, CAMERA_TURN_OFF_MATERIALS can be removed entirely so that it looks like that:

// start of keyword stuff
CAMERA_POSITIONS
0, 0.1686, -0.3			// bumper position
0, 0.170060, 0.039150		// cockpit position

// End of keyword stuff
END

IIRC the WAM file might be nonexistant, but it's better to have one (RANG.WAM?) with at least one entry, in your case:

VERSION 4

// Sub member: Master-crush data
1                           // Number of 'X mins' entries.
0.104000                    // X mins
1                           // Number of 'X maxs' entries.
-0.107000                   // X maxs
1                           // Number of 'Y mins' entries.
0.138000                    // Y mins
1                           // Number of 'Y maxs' entries.
0.062000                    // Y maxs
1                           // Number of 'Z mins' entries.
0.215000                    // Z mins
1                           // Number of 'Z maxs' entries.
-0.227000                   // Z maxs
1.000000                    // Bendability factor
-0.064000                   // Bend point Z min
0.152000                    // Bend point Z max
1.000000                    // Snappability factor
0                           // Y split position
0.056000,0.163000,0.053000  // Driver position

1                          // Number of 'Crush data' entries.

// entry 0
RANGBOD.ACT
normal
boring
0				// number of smashable parts

The point of this is just to check that the game can load, position and display your work so far properly ingame. Especially the scaling. It doesn't matter if most of the values will have to be changed later.

You might have noticed other car folders have aditional files like simple_**.dat or **SHELL.dat, don't worry about them, they are not vital for the game to load your car.

Then you can simply hijack an existing car in OPPONENT.TXT to make it load your car txt file and have a quick test.

Chances are high that it will crash though as I might have overlooked obvious steps, if that's the case you can zip your C2 car folder and I'll explain the problem.

For the CarmaTools UI, you must go to Customize (top menu bar) > Customize User Interface, then Toolbars. There click on 'New' to create a new floating toolbar (name it CarmaTools for example). An empty floating toolbar suddenly appears. You can then drag and drop Commands from the list on the left into the empty toolbar, CarmaTools commands are prefixed with 'CarmaTools -" so they are easy to find. Once the toolbar is complete you can drag it wherever you want, here I have it collapsed next to the main toolbar under the top menu. You can then click on these icons to easily launch the scripts.

This assume you ran CarmaTools.msc once as explained in the previous post. If the commands don't appear in the list, it might mean that you have to run it again I guess.

Sorry for the messy explainations, I'm about to go to bed :B

[helomyname]

I am getting this error when exporting my car, even though i made sure that every surface has a material applied to it. I dont know what to do, the files still seem to export but they are probably damaged, as some of them are 0kb (probably not good).




Another thing i'm confused about is actually getting the car in the game. Do I need to put it in Plaything or something first? Because all of the cars in the Carma2 folder are in .TWT format, and i dont know if i should get mine into that format somehow? (I know i sound like a complete noob but i have never modded Carmageddon so bear with me)

[Toshiba-3]

Could you zip up your MAX scene + textures and send it to me?

Or upload it somewhere. This way I can check the problem directly.

You might have to load the car in PT2 at some point to check some values but at the moment it is not necessary. Don't worry about the TWT packing. You can just have your addon car folder within the DATA\CARS folder like all other mods.

ACT and DAT files seem to have been created successfully, only the MAT file has a problem. I suspect the material names might be too long. It's best to name them like this: rangwin, rangfrnt, rangdoor, etc. you get the idea.

[Harmalarm]

Hey, I didn't notice this topic untill now.

The error you are getting has to do with the fact that there is something going wrong in the multi-material you applied. I suspect a couple of things, in order of probabillity:

- one of the sub-materials is a multimaterial in itself. This will throw an error. All sub-materials should be standardmaterials

- one of the sub-materials is missing

- one of the sub-materials is missing a diffusemap?

I can't tell for sure, but as Tosh said, if you mail the file we can have a look at it. It seems the rest of your setup is pretty spot on so far.

Did you manage to get the carmageddon tool buttons to view?