How to create a car from scratch by Genetleman

[Trigger Happy]

We missed here a good carmaking guide. Because nobody did any until now, I asked Genetleman, if I can place here on forum his complete carmaking guide from his website and he agreed. Thank you very much!

Note: If you're author of content restored in this topic and want to manage these files on your own (e.g. for updating attached files to their latest version), feel free to ask forum administrators to replace poster of the topic all following related replies by your forum profile, which will allow you to edit the topic according your needs and wishes.

How to create a car from scratch by Genetleman


Which tools / files will you need?

* The free car editor of Juan (download here).
Check out his other cool stuff and required files for using them too.
* A template of a blank car (download here).


First steps

Start the car editor, choose <Load> and open the Blank X.car file for editing. You will find lots of values in the table - don't worry yet they will be needed and explained later.
Start your car creation by giving it a name: MyCar
After this you should save your car to a new file named MyCar (click <Save>).

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What are we going to create?

A car! Who guessed that? Nono, you can also create planes, boats, helicopters, skateboards, bicycles etc. but we just want a simple car which should look like the one in the left picture (very simple).

Click on <Model> in the upper right corner to open the Edit Model window. The window is divided in 5 parts: a toolbar at the left, 3 two-dimensional squares (front, side and top view of the car) and a three dimensional square.

The four blue circles are the wheels of the car. The easiest to understand is the top view (lower left quadrant). You are looking at the "car" like a bird. The car front points southward.

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[Trigger Happy]

The Model window

To make this a bit less mathematical or geometrical, you should think of building a car in this editor like building a real car model with pieces of cardboard. You would assemble those cardboards in a way, that the result looks like a car. Here, you can only use triangular pieces of cardboard. You must put triangle after triangle together to form a car-like shape. The triangles are called polygons (poly).
We will begin with the front of the car. Let's fire up the model by adding a new poly to our empty model (see left picture: click on that button, results in right picture).

A poly (triangle) is made of three edges called Vertexes (or Vertices). You can see the number of the currently chosen Vertex in the toolbar (see right pic).

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If you point the mouse at one of the edges of the poly, you can see the number of the corresponding Vertex in the status bar at the bottom of the window. Choose Vertex 0 in the top view window (lower left quadrant).

We will now pull this Vertex to the front of the car to make it the lower front edge of the car. Pull it in front of the front wheel like shown in the right picture. The X value of the status bar should be about -1,0, the Z value about 1,8. In the top-view quadrant it looks okay now.

From the front-view quadrant (upper left) you can see that the edge is far above our wheel. Since we do not want to build a monster truck, we should get this edge down to a more street level.

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[Trigger Happy]

Choose Vertex 0 in the upper left window (front-view) and pull it down to the middle of the wheel (Y value should be about -0,2, the X value should stay at about -1). You may have noticed yet, that there are three dimensions X, Y and Z. X is the horizontal value, Y represents the height of a Vertex and Z is the depth.

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Now pull Vertex 1 in front of the right wheel the same way to X=1, Y=-0,2 and Z=1,8.

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An easier and more exact method is to double click on the Vertex (edge) and type in the values in digits. Let's put Vertex 0 to X=-1, Y=-0,2 and Z=2 (see right picture).

Vertex 1 should be (X/Y/Z): 1 / -0,2 / 2 and
Vertex 2 should be (X/Y/Z): 1 / 0,4 / 1,8.

We have finished our first poly.

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[Trigger Happy]

You can now take a look at the car's front by using the 3-D quadrant. Left click and hold the mouse button in the lower right window and move the mouse to the upper right, you will rotate the car this way. Right clicking and holding results in zooming in or out when moving the mouse up or down. Try to find the view which is seen in the right picture here.

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There is something very annoying about polys, and that is that they have only one visible side. In our cardboard example, imagine that the cardboard has one ugly underside and a nicely painted upper side. You would only want to see the upper side at the outside of the car, otherwise the car would look ugly. Here at GR, the ugly side is transparent. You must always keep an eye on turning the nice side of the poly outward, otherwise it is not visible. To see the direction of our poly, you have to change to the Polys mode by double clicking in the 3-D quadrant a few times until you can see the word Polys in the right corner of the status bar.
The fact that our Poly (triangle) is only an outlined shape of blue indicates, that the invisible side is turned outward, which we would like to change. Flip the poly around by clicking at the <Swap Vertex> button (see right picture).
Now our Poly should be a nice dark blue triangle, indicating that the nice side is pointed outward.

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[Trigger Happy]

Now we will add the next poly. DO THIS ONLY ONCE: Tap the New Poly button (like in the first step). You will not see any change in the editor, that is because the new poly lays on top of the first poly! You can see that there is a second one, by looking at the poly indicator on the top of the toolbar. If you pull the slider left or right you can choose Poly 0 or 1. The X field below deletes the chosen poly. Just for fun you can now choose poly 1 (not 0) and delete it. Then create a new poly again. Having fun deleting stuff, huh?
Please choose poly 1. We will now finish building the front of our car, therefore we need to build a poly which ranges from vertex 0 to vertex 2 to a new edge which will be vertex 3. We don't need vertex 1 for this poly, so we will kill vertex 1 and create a new Vertex instead for this poly. Click on Vertex 1 in the toolbar and choose <New> from the pull down list. Say yes to the question if we are sure. We will now have a new vertex numbered 3.

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By doubleclicking the new point (like the steps above) give vertex 3 the XYZ values -1/0,4/1,8.

Flip the poly around to make it visible from the outside like in the earlier step. Your car's front should look like this ->

UGLY BEAST!!! But don't worry...

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[Trigger Happy]

We are continuing with the base of the car. Try to do one side and the rear of the car with the next 4 polys, don't forget to flip them around, so that the visible side is outward.

Use about the following values: The Z value of the rear part should be something like -1,8 to make it symmetrical. Okay, our car will look like a brick stone, but this is just a tutorial guys!

If you are now coming to "close the circle", meaning that you come to the poly which connects to the first two Vertexes you should not choose a new Vertex, but an existing one (here: Vertex 2). Now close the circle!

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Next in line is the "deck" of the car. Create a new poly and choose the top 3 Vertexes to create the first deck part.

With the next poly we can close the deck. I would exchange Vertex 3 by 7 but it may be different in your car since you may have connected other Vertices.

Anyway, you car should look like the one in the right picture. We do not need a base, because we can only see the car from the top in the game (if not turning the car over in a crash, but this must not be visible). We are "saving polys" with this method (see later explanation).

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[Trigger Happy]

Now we need a windshield, this is going to be a convertible!!! Create a new poly. We cannot use any existing Vertex, so we create new ones. Let's start with Vertex 8 (if you already have a higher count you must have dropped one Vertex - find and delete it).
Give it the value -1 / 0,4 / 0,5.
Then create Vertex 9 with the values 1 / 0,4 / 0,5.
The top of the windshield will be Vertex 10 with (-0,8 / 0,9 / 0,2).

Flip the poly so that the blue side is pointed to the front.
Complete the Windshield with the next poly and Vertex 11 (0,8 / 0,9 / 0,2).

The car is ready! But... our windshield doesn't look like a windshield. It has the wrong color.

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You can choose the color of the poly either by picking it from a scheme or typing in the color number. Typing will be better for some special colors I recommend to use:

Value: 0 - Color number 1 chosen by player in GeneRally
Value: 4 - Color number 2 chosen by player in GeneRally (+ head)

The self-definable colors will look slightly different from the editor to the actual game. My preferred colors are 178 for a bright white (e.g. headlights), 184 for glass (e.g. windshield), 116 for red (rear lights) and 168 for black. Choose the windshield polys (one after the other) and give it the color 184. Our car will remain with color 0, so the player can choose his preferred color in the game.

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[Trigger Happy]

It's a convertible but where is the driver? Alright. Check the driver in by clicking the "Head vis." box, a green "head" will appear. You can drag it with your mouse to a comfortable position. If you put your driver to the left side of the car, it will sit in the right side of the car in game (don't ask me why).

Now our car seems to be finished. If you are at this step, always do 3 things

1) Check, if all polys are at the right direction (facing outward)
2) Check, that all polys are sorted bottom up (the lower the poly is in the car, the smaller should be its poly number (I will make an own topic about this at the guides main page)).
3) Normalize the colors by doubleclicking the bottom right window until you switched to "Lighting" mode, then press the <Normals> button. Btw: This mode displays a nice view of the car.

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Not ready yet! Last thing is shadows. Click on the shadows box to see the current shadow. The shadow should not be larger then your car. Also, it has to be one single object (made of many polys). It just happens that this shadow is about fine and we don't need to change anything

If you should need a different shadow you can edit it the same way as if you were in the normal mode (add polys / vertexes etc.). Shadows are often the cause of problems with graphics in GR so be very accurate with this.

Want to take your car out of the garage and give it a first drive? Go back to normal mode (click Shadow box again), save it and then start your GeneRally, choose your new car and - hope you like it. We are going to fine-tune it later.

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[Trigger Happy]

Limitations of GeneRally and other stuff to know:

* Cars are limited to 40 polys (0 to 39) and 30 vertices (0 to 29). Shadow polys are also limited.
* You can rearrange the tires and adjust their size (see left picture). Positioning the wheels affects car behaviour.
* By clicking the <Options> button you will see the options shown in the right picture. I never used these options. You may resize your car here. Bad thing is, that resizing does not implicate the zero-ground-level, meaning that your car gets too low or high above the ground when resizing, so always begin your model with the right size or resize it manually.
* The next thing to do would be to alter the performance values of the car. There is an own tutorial about this. Find it here (to be done).

I hope this guide helped you with your first steps in car modeling. If there are still complicated parts I will try to explain them better. Please post your questions.

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End of Genetleman's tutorial.

[Genetleman]

Unfortunately the link to Juans Car editor does not work any more but there is a copy at

http://www.generally.com.ar/im.asp?c=Ge ... tor092.zip

[Paw]

When I click on Genetleman's link it gives me blank page, so maybe it would be best to put just link to his page? Also, didn't the CE needed those dll's? I don't remember myself, but if yes, it would be wise to mention it too in the forst post.

[Trigger Happy]

Thanks for note Paw, is it now OK?

[ent96]

Anyone could somehow translate it into Polish?

[Scorpion]

Try use google translator

[ent96]

But some words are poorly translated and hard to guess what it might mean

[LegoDino77]

Choose Vertex 0 in the upper left window (front-view) and pull it down to the middle of the wheel (Y value should be about -0,2, the X value should stay at about -1). You may have noticed yet, that there are three dimensions X, Y and Z. X is the horizontal value, Y represents the height of a Vertex and Z is the depth.

Carmaking 11.jpg

Now pull Vertex 1 in front of the right wheel the same way to X=1, Y=-0,2 and Z=1,8.

Carmaking 9.jpg

Carmaking 10.jpg

An easier and more exact method is to double click on the Vertex (edge) and type in the values in digits. Let's put Vertex 0 to X=-1, Y=-0,2 and Z=2 (see right picture).

Vertex 1 should be (X/Y/Z): 1 / -0,2 / 2 and
Vertex 2 should be (X/Y/Z): 1 / 0,4 / 1,8.

We have finished our first poly.

Carmaking 12.jpg

Carmaking 13.jpg

Ok... I did this, still easy, looks the picture, I have the same.

You can now take a look at the car's front by using the 3-D quadrant. Left click and hold the mouse button in the lower right window and move the mouse to the upper right, you will rotate the car this way. Right clicking and holding results in zooming in or out when moving the mouse up or down. Try to find the view which is seen in the right picture here.

Carmaking 14.jpg

Carmaking 15.jpg

There is something very annoying about polys, and that is that they have only one visible side. In our cardboard example, imagine that the cardboard has one ugly underside and a nicely painted upper side. You would only want to see the upper side at the outside of the car, otherwise the car would look ugly. Here at GR, the ugly side is transparent. You must always keep an eye on turning the nice side of the poly outward, otherwise it is not visible. To see the direction of our poly, you have to change to the Polys mode by double clicking in the 3-D quadrant a few times until you can see the word Polys in the right corner of the status bar.
The fact that our Poly (triangle) is only an outlined shape of blue indicates, that the invisible side is turned outward, which we would like to change. Flip the poly around by clicking at the <Swap Vertex> button (see right picture).
Now our Poly should be a nice dark blue triangle, indicating that the nice side is pointed outward.

Carmaking 16.jpg

Carmaking 17.jpg

Okay! Looks the picture1!!! WUUTT!!!! Did I just do something wrong? It doesent look the same! Is it supposed to go there, did I do something wrong? Did I miss something?

[Lukeno94]

Did you really have to quote the entire post?

[LegoDino77]

I am sorry, Im not so good at editing quotes, xD. I didint know what I should quote, and what no!

[cabooseXIVgenerally]

help i cant download it!

[DropboxKenshiro]

You could. Juan's tools are in THIS topic.

[sam1225]

Can You A Video On This Tutorial And Post on YouTube I m Not Able To Understand.