Getting Started in ZModeler

[Jerre]

Ok i'm going to ask this question, so dont get mad.

You do know that inside every txd there are textures in it right?

When i posted extract the textures from the txd, i meant use the

txdworkshop like you have done, sorry for the misunderstanding.

Your textures that you make must be the same name as what you used

to add to the bus.dff model.

Also when you add them back into the txd with txdworkshop, you have

to make sure the name is right, and that it doesnt use the alpha

texture, sometimes this will happen and just a small area is white

while the rest is black and it will be transparent, and will give you

that white texture you are seeing on the model in the game.

I'm not mad sorry if I made you think that.

I am very new a this it is the first time that I use textures

 

I know you may find this annoying but can you please tell me one more time wath i have to do

 

BTW I don't want to edit any of the textures I just wanted to move the taillights and exhaust in the dff

[Mark]

1) Extract the .dff and .txd of the model you wanna edit from the gta3.img, found in "/models" and for the sake of making it easy to do, extract the vehicles.txd from "/models/generic"

 

2) Extract the .tgas from the 2 .txd files using txdworkshop (for example)

 

3) Stick these .tgas in the same folder

 

4) Open ZM2 (which isn't covered in this tutorial, this tutorial is for ZM1). All textures should now appear, including the generic ones. If they look mightily odd, you might need the flip the textures vertically, but I've personally never come across a need to do so.

 

5) Edit the model.

 

6) Re-export the model, making sure the hierarchy is as it should be (I take it you'll just be uniting to existing objects in the .dff or just raplacing them, so this bit should be a no brainer and you seem to already know what you're doing here anyway)

 

7) One way of checking the textures is to load up txd workshop, open the .txd of the model you're editing, and ".dff check" it, as found in one of the drop down menus. Select the modified .dff you've made. You should have mostly Green ticks across the board, except in places involving textures found in the generic "vehicles.txd". If so, all is good.

 

8) Stick yer new.dff in the gta3.img again (probably a good idea to back up the old one by renaming it like "vehicleold.dff" (not that exact name, just edit vehicle with whatever the .dff name of the vehicle is. Therefore if you f*ck up and wanna go back, just delete your new .dff and rename it back! hurrah!)

 

9) Play!

[Jerre]

1) Extract the .dff and .txd of the model you wanna edit from the gta3.img, found in "/models" and for the sake of making it easy to do, extract the vehicles.txd from "/models/generic"

 

7) One way of checking the textures is to load up txd workshop, open the .txd of the model you're editing, and ".dff check" it, as found in one of the drop down menus. Select the modified .dff you've made. You should have mostly Green ticks across the board, except in places involving textures found in the generic "vehicles.txd". If so, all is good.

 

 

 

Thanks very much! But still I have 1 big problem now

 

There is no vehicles.txd in my /models/generic folder. I have vice city (if maybe you thought i had sa)

 

About 7)

The 7 dots in the dff part are all green ticks and the txd part has seven green ticks too so thats ok i think

[Jerre]

I'll try to make the situation a bit clearer by these screenshots

 

 

1) These are the textures in txd workshop and after that placed in the same folder as the dff (I did not change any of the textures so i didn't save the txd file)

 

 

 

2) These are some of the mentions that zmod gives when i import the dff file

 

 

3) This is the model as it looks like in zmod

 

 

4) This is what the model should look like in game (and it did look like that before i started modeling the lights)

 

 

 

[Mark]

Yeah I was assuming SA, I usually do as ZM2 is a necessity for SA and under any other circumstance I use ZM1 lol. I highly suggest using Zmod 1...but ok right then. Should'nt be an issue with ZM2.

 

I find it bizarre it's giving so many errors up when you import. ZM2 isn't my speciality by a long way, but I have imported a few VC cars before into ZM2 and not really had much of an issue on that front (at least I can't remember, I edited the models afterwards in ZM1)

 

Right, try opening the materials editor by hitting E, then check what textures are applied to which material (the 1st one is just a default one from before the model was imported so skip that one). If it appears no textures are selected, click the "..." button and select the relevant texture (specified by the material's name) and click apply changes. See what happens. Do this for all the materials that look like they're meant to be textured.

[Daalyman05]

Ok this is what i was trying to say.

If you had extracted the textures from that models txd, and into

the same folder as your dff, then in zmod it would show up with all

the textures on it not just the text.

And if you export like that then it will show up white, cause your dff

that you had open in zmod had no texture to it except for the text.

Are you sure you are extracting the textures from that bus model you

have open into the folder?

If so then are you sure you have placed that models txd in the img file,

cause the original file has different textures then the one's used on

that model you are working on.

Since this is a vice city dff your textures are flipped for the model in

zmod2 you may have to flip them so they show up right on the model.

Also extract those textures in bmp format see if that helps.

Edited December 9, 2006 by Daalyman05

[Mark]

changing from .tga to .bmp never seemed to change anything for me. I think I recall XM1 had issues with certain types of .tga, but is fine now. Ah whatever, there's plenty of troubleshooting tips to try in the 2 posts previous. Let us know what happens

[Jerre]

I tried the material editor and i think the textures are all in alpha cause they're on the spheres transparently and some have the text new alpha on them ad first editing them seems really hard to me

 

Edit: @Daalyman05: I have extracted all textures to the same folder (see in the screenshots above) as tga files (it was the txd for that dff and not for the normal bus in the clean gta vice city game + this txd is in the .img file and the crane had all his textures in game before i tried to edit it)

 

Tried bmp too once and mad sure zm2 loaded them as bmp and not as tga as you can chose in the import window

 

I'll try flippin them

 

Edit: flippin them didn't make a single difference the model still shows up the same way in zmod

Edited December 9, 2006 by Jerre

[Daalyman05]

Please post a screenshot of your textures browser from zmod2 of that

bus dff.

[Jerre]

 

This is the browser as i loaded dff

(not many textures in there)

 

This is what it should be like with all of the textures of the txd in it

 

[Mark]

Bizarre it's only loading so few textures.

 

Have you got a link to the actual thing? I'll take a look myself.

[Jerre]

Don't know the site anymore but i can mail you the dff and txd if you want?

 

[Daalyman05]

Is that dff the original one, it hasn't been changed, or is it one that

you have changed and loaded?

If you don't mind i would very much like to take a look at it as well.

So if you like email it to me.

Thanks.

 

Yeah Check my contact card.

Edited December 12, 2006 by Daalyman05

[Jerre]

Ok ill send it if you give me your email

 

Edit: I have sent it to gtauron and daalyman

 

Have you both received it?

Edited December 13, 2006 by Jerre

[Mark]

Nope, though i'm home in 2 days, send it to [email protected] as well if you wish. Probably more ideal to if it's past 12:00 on the 14th Dec (GMT)

[Daalyman05]

Yep and i sent an email with my finding's it's not good.

Either the diff is corrupted, or both are, cause some of those

textures are not mapped onto the model.

I even went as far as getting the beta one they had for

download that replaced the firetruck, and still the same results.

Sorry for the bad news on this.

[Mark]

hold up but it's worked in your game?

[Jerre]

It has worked before i ever used zmod on it but the lights were in the wrong place and the exhaust to but the textures all looked fine

 

I think i'm gonna use another model as it seems this is going to take to long and is almost inposible to correct those lights

 

Thanks for all the help guys

It was a nice model though

 

There are some 20 other cars that have a minor problem with there lights too but i think i'm going to let them be the problem with them is that i find it ugly when you can see the red or white squares on the lights when the light dummy is outside of the model if its inside of the model the square isn't there just the light

 

But having seen that it isn't easy editing a mod without messing up the textures i think i'm going to ignore those squares for now

[Mark]

Keep at it you'll get there mate

 

I'm back home now, I'm redecorating this weekend but i promise to have a look sometime next week.

[Jerre]

Too late for the bus model I allready replaced that

But maybe you could help me make a sort of a tutorial to move the light on any car?

 

I have some 20 other cars where i would like to move the lights.

I tried one as I tried the bus.dff and it also didn't load all textures in zmod2. But after importing the textures and using the material editor the all showed up but some showed up very strange.

 

So i'm still havin troubles with this but i think i'm gonna put some new models in my game first (with the lights in the right place) and when i have replaced all vehicles in the game I'll try to make the lights of all cars perfect

[Mark]

Not a bad idea, you're not the only person who's had problems with this. I'll look at starting such a tutorial by the end of the week once I've got time.

[Jerre]

Thanks i'll be there to test it out and give a revieuw

 

Hey maybe you can take a look at another of my problems http://www.gtaforums.com/index.php?act=ST&...=0#entry3977228

Edited December 22, 2006 by Jerre

[xX_Matic_Xx]

what version did you use for this tut because the Zmod program I cant find the flat option

[Mark]

Zmodeler V1.07b, as can be found here, on the Zmodeler 2 Website.

 

Right...and this is actually handy when people do this, they bring to my attention summin vital that people would like to do in Zmod, but that I haven't explained. Cheers Ottae . I threw this out in under 10 mins so excuse typos etc lol .

 

ADDING DIFFERENT MATERIALS TO YOUR MODEL, INCLUDING GLASS.

 

 

Hit Ctrl+E or the button. This'll bring up the materials editor:

 

 

Hit the Copy button, then select the newly created material from the drop down list (I reccommend that you rename them to prompt you a bit better in the future)

 

Fart-arse about with the RGB sliders etc. This will make different colour opaque materials. For transparency, aka windows (w00t!), Go down to the "Type:" drop down box, and choose "Glowing"

 

 

Now move the "Opacity" slider to the correct level that you want, the lower it is, the more transparent it is. Best results for glass in game is to have the colour as completely black, opacity at what setting you feel like.

 

 

Like so. Once all this is done as you want it, click "Apply Changes" then "OK".

 

Now, to apply these materials to certain parts of your car, you'll need to select those parts then apply the materials to them. Now, if you want to change an entire object, keep your model in objects mode:

 

<- That depressed button

 

Then choose Select>Single from the toolbar, right click the object when it is highlighted, and you will notice it changes from Blue (Highlighted) to Red (Selected)

 

 

to

 

<- That.

 

Now, bring up the materials editor again, use the drop down box at the top to select the material you want, then click "Assign to selection" at the bottom, then "OK".

 

 

Now, for applying a texture to a certain number of faces, click onto "Faces" mode:

 

 

And then click onto the object you want to work on in this mode. If you click on the wrong one, choose objects mode again, then pick faces mode and try again. Once you've got the right object, choose Select>Single from the side bar, and use right click again to select the individual faces (the dot in the middle is what you need to aim at to select a face). Once you've selected your faces, like so:

 

 

Then just repeat the same way you've already learnt to assign a material, as shown above .

 

BACK TO ORIGINAL TUTORIAL

Edited January 10, 2007 by GTAuron

[Silberio]

BAH!

all i came to is to this

 

i dont know what more to do, plis help me, its so confusing, i get confused easly, easely, or whatever, help me, help this poor noob, the tut isnt bad, but its too hard for me

[GTA_Hacker]

thanx for the tutorial auron. i just nedd to find out: after making the first piece, you have to make another and connect them? if then how so?

[92F]

To continue the mesh, click on create>faces>single.

 

Then you will create a single poly(triangle) therefore you have to click three times to complete one poly.

 

Silbero, your turning out to be a proper biff. Read through the whole tutorial a few times rather than just jumping in at the deep end. You need to complete a bit more of the mesh before you even contemplate extruding etc. I doubt Mark will re-write the whole tutorial just for you...

Edited January 25, 2007 by 92F

[Silberio]

hey, 9, i never said mark would re-write the tutorial, im just telling i get confused whit conncting parts whit other parts, i dont even know whats mesh, contemplate extruding and all that

[92F]

Then you know what you must do.

 

Read up until you know what it is and how to do it.

[Cai-pirinha]

hi,

I red your tutorial "just 4 fun", cos I'm acutally modelling a Nissan 350Z and google showed me this thread...

I think it's rly nice and easy understandable (lol, dunno a good word for?!)

 

I'd be glad about an explanation of UV-mapping. Could you do this for us, please?