Thecarlover's mods & WIPs

You can edit them with notepad.

Although I would recommend using notepad++

Thanks!

For some reason it won’t appear in game after editing the .lua file based on the car body format changes. I’ve modified a .lua file from before those changes and I think I might have done something wrong. Would anyone be willing to share a .lua file with the recent specifications for me to use?

Also, I really appreciate all of you who have been helping me along with this. Once I know what I’m doing I’ll repay you guys with more content! :smiley:

You can copy one of the existing LUA files from the install. I would recommend HighRoof.lua for the 90s Van found in

C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Automation\GameData\Camso\cars\Front\large\90Van (for steam installs)
C:\Program Files (x86)\Automation\GameData\Camso\cars\Front\large\90Van (for non steam)

In addition to the LUA file you need to make sure you folder structure is correct, especially for uploading to steam. You must not place your mods into the CAMSO folder.
Create a new folder in the GameData folder with a name that clearly identifies it as your mod, e.g. 70sCarloverBoxyVan (please do not use trademarks or other registered names).
Within your new folder you will need to recreate the folder structure as used in the CAMSO folder, not the whole thing, just the path that reaches down to your files. In the example above you would have
\GameData\70sCarloverBoxyVan\cars\Front\large\70sCarloverBoxyVan

you should place all your mods files in there

I’ll try that. I made the folder structure in C:\Program Files (x86)\Steam\steamapps\common\Automation\assets\meshes so that might be the issue I’m having.

Edit: It works! Thank you so much :smiley:

Good Stuff - you’re welcome :slight_smile:

A few new issues now…

The bone boxes appear in the model, and the model appears in its edited form (after adding the bones) instead of the basic mesh before adding bones
The scale is way off, the wheelbase should be around 3.4 m, not much bigger than the 90s van I took the .lua files from, but it seems to be at least 4 m
The half seam in the middle of the door on the back (to split it into two doors) doesn’t appear, but the edge of the door is offset from X = 0 in the model
I get “Invalid material” popups saying it only has 10 materials, so there’s no material 10, 11, 12

[quote=“thecarlover”]A few new issues now…

The bone boxes appear in the model, and the model appears in its edited form (after adding the bones) instead of the basic mesh before adding bones
The scale is way off, the wheelbase should be around 3.4 m, not much bigger than the 90s van I took the .lua files from, but it seems to be at least 4 m
The half seam in the middle of the door on the back (to split it into two doors) doesn’t appear, but the edge of the door is offset from X = 0 in the model
I get “Invalid material” popups saying it only has 10 materials, so there’s no material 10, 11, 12

[/quote]

You don’t actually export the bone boxes, just the car body itself with the skin modifier on it. It will always export however it looks in 3ds max though, so if you move the bones in Max it’ll change how the export looks.

How big is the wheelbase of your model when you measure it in 3ds max?

Seams in the middle of the car need to be pretty wide, or they’ll get automatically welded together, so that might be the issue.

Check how many materials are defined in the LUA file, it sounds like there are 13 of them defined, but the model only has 10 of them in 3ds max, so it has no idea what you’re trying to tell it with the last 3 materials :slight_smile:

If you hide the boxes in Max before exporting the .kjc files, they should not appear in the game.

For the invalid material error, make sure that in your LUA file you have the same number of materials as the materials the body uses in the max file (including the invisible ones, such as the CARGO_BOX, BOTTOM_BOX and LOWER_BOX)

For the scaling, you probably need to scale the whole thing a bit down in Max. The units in the game should correlate to the units in 3ds Max*, so you can determine the length of the wheelbase in Max and resize the mesh accordingly. For example: I’m making a kei car with a wheelbase of 2.335 m, the same value is set in the LUA file. After finishing the mesh in Max, I make a reference object (a plane will do) with the same length in Max and resize the mesh to match it.

edit: Daffy beat me to it :smiley:

You don’t actually export the bone boxes, just the car body itself with the skin modifier on it. It will always export however it looks in 3ds max though, so if you move the bones in Max it’ll change how the export looks.

How big is the wheelbase of your model when you measure it in 3ds max?

Seams in the middle of the car need to be pretty wide, or they’ll get automatically welded together, so that might be the issue.

Check how many materials are defined in the LUA file, it sounds like there are 13 of them defined, but the model only has 10 of them in 3ds max, so it has no idea what you’re trying to tell it with the last 3 materials :slight_smile:[/quote]

How can I export the model without exporting the boxes along with it? Also, the bones have moved to where I had moved the boxes when skinning the model, is there a way to get the skinning back to default, or do I just have to move them and try to get as close as possible?

The wheelbase in max is ~350 cm (I made sure to scale things properly), so I don’t know why the model looks giant, even dwarfing the 70s pickup/SUV in-game

For the materials, I assigned the ECS_BOTTOM_BOX and ECS_TOP_BOX the same material as the cargo box, so could that be the issue?
The “BodyBoxes” section of the .lua, with their position and size is also something I don’t understand. Is that just manually scaling and placing the ECS_BOTTOM_BOX and ECS_TOP_BOX in the .lua instead of whatever values are in 3ds Max?

Could be that it’s the SWB version? According to Wikipedia, the 1975–1991 Econoline short version had a wheelbase of 124 in (3,149.6 mm). You might try scaling it to match that instead.

[quote=“partario”]

Could be that it’s the SWB version? According to Wikipedia, the 1975–1991 Econoline short version had a wheelbase of 124 in (3,149.6 mm). You might try scaling it to match that instead.[/quote]

Yeah, I ended up realising that… I got the width right, but length and height got skewed too much when I rescaled for the width.

[quote=“Daffyflyer”]
It will always export however it looks in 3ds max though, so if you move the bones in Max it’ll change how the export looks.[/quote]

I have a magic hax trick that makes 3DS max export the basic shape as if you never moved the bones, I’ll make a video when I get back home in a few hours.

For some reason all the bones I had set up changed, so I have to restart all of that anyways. At least I’ve managed to solve pretty much every other issue (that I’m aware of). My next model should go much more smoothly. :slight_smile:

Edit: Another question: how should I define the cargo box? I want to give the option of a back seat, but since it’ll also have the option of only front seats, should the cargo box go all the way up to the front seat area, or should it only go up to the back seat?

The way it’s been done for now is to have 2 variants.

A cargo van variant with only 2-3 seat options and a cargo box that takes all the space behind the front seats.

A passenger van variant with a bunch of seating options, and a cargo box that stops behind the second row of seats.

The passenger van usually has back side windows while the cargo van doesn’t, to help differentiate between both.

Edit:

Video of how to export the model in its unmorphed shape:

drive.google.com/file/d/0B1Q03K … sp=sharing

Sorry for the craptacular quality and the obviously not practiced text, I recorded this in 5 minutes with no preparation. It should hopefully be helpful.

AFAIK it doesn’t mess anything up, so I really reccomend using that method to export.

Thank you so much for making that! :smiley: That definitely makes things faster and easier.

I have another question about boxes:

When morphing the top and bottom body boxes, do I have to keep the ends perfectly vertical (moving the whole end of the box with a morph), or can I just select one of the edges to morph?

[quote=“thecarlover”]Thank you so much for making that! :smiley: That definitely makes things faster and easier.

I have another question about boxes:

When morphing the top and bottom body boxes, do I have to keep the ends perfectly vertical (moving the whole end of the box with a morph), or can I just select one of the edges to morph?[/quote]

It looks at the overall bounds of the box (the furthest apart points) so it will work if you only move 1 vert for example, but it’s not ideal.

[quote=“Daffyflyer”]

[quote=“thecarlover”]Thank you so much for making that! :smiley: That definitely makes things faster and easier.

I have another question about boxes:

When morphing the top and bottom body boxes, do I have to keep the ends perfectly vertical (moving the whole end of the box with a morph), or can I just select one of the edges to morph?[/quote]

It looks at the overall bounds of the box (the furthest apart points) so it will work if you only move 1 vert for example, but it’s not ideal.[/quote]

Thanks, that’s really what I was wondering.

i’m sorry that i’m not helping you, but i just have to say this is a prime example of how nice the community is, a single person has issues making a mod and a lot of people are stepping up to help, heck even the devs of the game are helping out with just a single mod, goess that brings a whole new meaning to “mod support” lol, but yeah seriously, you guys all rock, i just had to say that

No worries, I have plenty of help. I really am thankful for everyone taking the time to help me with this. I’m glad they can see some potential in me even when I’m a complete noob with this stuff. That being said, I have another issue…

I have this morph at the back:

But then in game it appears like this:

And it does deform that whole area, not just the area I set it to deform in 3ds Max.

I think that what you need to do is to “remove zero weights”