Blackhole Motorsports :: View topic

tracks

Forum Index -> Nascar Thunder 2003 & 2004 -> tracks

Page 1 of 1

cowbob84

Joined: 19 Jul 2008
Posts: 127

Posted: Mon Dec 22, 20:43

is there any way i could make tracks for nascar thunder 04 or nsr

Timothy Chapman

Joined: 04 Oct 2007
Posts: 669

Posted: Mon Dec 22, 21:58

Well, they are both a challange. I've had enough trouble getting my track to work for rFactor and that's the easyest ISI simulator to built tracks for. For NSR and NT2004, it is possible, but it has to work on rFactor first. Fortunatly, there are different utilities to work with to make this possible. The easyest tool to work with to build a race track is sandbox. Look in the NR2003 downloads section of this site under either tools or utilities and you should see it their. If you don't look under the track editors sub catigory. You will find it there. Sandbox is just scratching the surface and is used to build track geometry. The next thing you will need is 3dSimEd. This tool will let you convert the track geometry to just about any format you want. It's also useful for creating simple objects like boxes to represent buildings. It's also used to modify the surface of the race track to put in bumps, convert image formats, and expand and pack files (not recomended for NT2004 or NSR MAS formats). The next thing you will need are a few textures for your track. The textures I use are universal and can be found in you "trackmap.mas" folder of one of the other tracks. Without the textures, you pretty much can't build a track at all. If you want to modify the textures, you will need adobe Photoshop which can be found at http://www.adobe.com . The full version is almost $900 but you do have a 30 day free trial. It's also a great tool for making paint schemes, but that's another topic. I used photoshop to color my track walls. When downloading it, you may recieve a pop-up blocked thing. Allow it to install the ActiveX content. It's harmless and will allow you to download Photoshop (once content is installed, download will start automaticly). Photoshop can also be used to make texture blends. Once you've got all of that, you will be ready to create a track. with the sandbox track editor. The following is a brief summery of how the track editor works. It doesn't on Vista (not well anyways). F Section - The surface that the car will drive on. A car is about 6.56 feet (2 meters) wide. Place two F Sections on the same segment to make a surface. To modify a surface, make sure you click the F Section to the right of the surfac you want to modify. Example: If you have 5 surfaces (going from right to left), and you want to modify surface properties for surface three, you would need to click the third F Section from the right. F Sections are green lines. W Section - Walls. These keep the car within cirtain limits of the race track. Only one of these is required to make a wall. To modify wall properties, you will use the same window that you used to modify the surface properties. W Sections are blue lines. X Section - These don't realy do anything in terms of putting a physical object. They just raise and lower the land in either direction of it. This is critical for adding banking. For a drivable surface, I wouldn't recomend more than 40 degrees. Be carefull. With an X Section, it's easy to change the banking for the wrong portion of the track. X Sections are red lines. Modes (nodes) - Apearing as tiny white squares, these are used to move the X, W, and F sections on a segment. They also change the length and heading of a track segment. They are visable in the geometry editing view and the heights view. Important Notes Note 1: By default, the option "draw world underneeth" is turned off. Turn this on to get a better idea of what the textures look like for the track. Note 2: When editing an X Section in height views, you are changing the height of the tail (far) end of the segment. Note 3: Mode Interlode Forward/Back can be used if the banking transitions through multiple segments. Mode Interlode Left/Right can be used to level the track if you make a mistake. Note 4: Do not change the heights of the right most or left most X Section unless you are sure you know what you are doing. Make a mistake with those X Sections, and you may have to start all over. Note 5: There is a dialog box that says (no F or W section selected). It is your best friend at making surface types and mapping out the texture. Same for walls. You will be using it every time you make a wall or a surface. Units are in the metric system. Note 6: Make sure you have papyrus' shared folder in the same directory as your track. Otherwise, some features may not work properly. Note 7: All surface and wall textures are in a directory called "trackmat" which goes within your track folder. End of notes. It took me a while to get the hang of the sandbox track editor. Make sure you save often and right after you place the first segment. _________________ --- TCR Leagues ---

Basher EJS

Joined: 23 May 2005
Posts: 2972

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 00:19

i somehow got Kansas from NSR to work in Thunder 04!!! _________________ NSR Paint Zone 2007 Stats: After 28 of 36 races: 8th, -510 of leader Kyle Busch. Chase: Leader by 43pts over Dale Jr Previous Race Winner: #8 Dale Earnhardt Jr

Timothy Chapman

Joined: 04 Oct 2007
Posts: 669

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 01:31

I was talking about custom tracks. But generally, tracks that already work with one ISI simulator should work with another one. If there are no AIW flaws. _________________ --- TCR Leagues ---

Basher EJS

Joined: 23 May 2005
Posts: 2972

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 02:04

trust me, chapman.... that's just preaching to the chior. _________________ NSR Paint Zone 2007 Stats: After 28 of 36 races: 8th, -510 of leader Kyle Busch. Chase: Leader by 43pts over Dale Jr Previous Race Winner: #8 Dale Earnhardt Jr

cowbob84

Joined: 19 Jul 2008
Posts: 127

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 21:34

I cant figure this out i wish some one could just make the tracks and cars for me.

Timothy Chapman

Joined: 04 Oct 2007
Posts: 669

Posted: Tue Dec 23, 22:21

Well, I can't do anything for you right now. You might want to play around with sandbox for a while. Here are some main directories. This might help. basedir/trackname (main track directory for surface decals and objects and track file) basedir/trackname/trackmat (surface and wall textures) basedir/shared (directory for objects like ambulances, tow trucks, etc.) My hands are full right now, but I can help you on Team Speak if you want. I have my own server, and I can walk you through step by step on building a track. I'll even give you some of the textures I used for my race track. I can't build a custom track for everyone that asks for one. That would overload my schedule. But I can give a step-by-step tutorial. Send me a pm and we'll schedule a session. Click Here to view my website forum. I have a whole section just for making and editing tracks. NSR and NT2004 should be interchangeable. _________________ --- TCR Leagues --- Last edited by Timothy Chapman on Mon Mar 02, 16:10; edited 1 time in total

cowbob84

Joined: 19 Jul 2008
Posts: 127

Posted: Mon Mar 02, 05:57

ok i could probably get this but i could use some help if you can help me

Timothy Chapman

Joined: 04 Oct 2007
Posts: 669

Posted: Mon Mar 02, 16:32

I am building a tutorial on how to use sandbox. But for the basics, in the "basedir/trackname" directory, create a file called "trackname.ptf". That should get you started pretty well. Then open the ptf file and an error message should come up. Don't worry though, it's only comming up because it can't find any data. Just ignore it and right click anywhere on the grid and create a straight or a curve. Save it off and restart sandbox. If you have 3dSimEd you can easily convert some .bmp files to .mip files for you textures. Otherwise, you will need either DDS Converter 2 or Photoshop and save your textures as .tga and use makemip.exe to convert the tga file to a mip file. Put your tga file(s) into the sandbox directory, then go into command prompt and type the following line. C:\Program Files\sandbox >makemip texture.tga texture.mip Append the following to the end of that string before you hit enter to do the following operations upon conversion. -tile = Allows the image to repeat in both U(x) and V(y) axis. -tileU = Allows the image to repeat in only the U(x) axis. -tileV = Allows the image to repeat in only the V(y) axis. -trueColor = produce an 888 or 8888 texel format in the mip (no color loss) After you convert the files to a mip format, if it's a surface or wall texture, put it into the "trackname/trackmat" directory, otherwise, put it into the "trackname" directory. Everything in the "trackmat" directory will be used by surfaces and walls, everything outside the trackmat directory will be used to put surface decals and be used as object textures. _________________ --- TCR Leagues ---

Page 1 of 1

Jump to :

ABOUT US | CONTACT | ADVERTISING | LINK US | RSS