Hello,
I recently reworked old cars, and I thought I might share my experience, to help others to make it right from day one.
Who does this thread adress at?
People who have some months experience in Automation and started to build cars that are more complex than the five-fixture-wonders.
Guide Nr. 1 - chassis tunnels
I rarely use the advanced trim settings. It also depends which car I build. If I have a huge 4WD monster, a massive tunnel is alright. This car, a 1982 Primus Urbano, is a tiny FWD car, so it actually doesn’t need a huge tunnel that shines through the floor. Make it smaller, really, if it fits your car. It makes interior floors much easier.
Yep, there is more wrong in the pictures, but one problem at a time. I’ll adress that later.
Guide Nr. 2 - exposed firewall
Let’s have a look at this 1978 Primus Astrona CL. I was lazy with the leg room because you don’t see it in BeamNG. Now it annoys me, and therefore take a front piece and cover the metal. Don’t be lazy. You also might notice the GIANT cover for the chassis tunnel - although its a RWD, I reduced it to end that unneccessary goofy tunnel cover.
The center console wasn’t long enough, I made a lazy fix, I copied it in place and dragged it towards the firewall. You actually see it’s two pieces because I wasn’t able to completely align them, but it’s ok for me - a 100 percent better than before.
Guide Nr.3 - Gap between dash and windscreen
An annoying thing in interior shots and also in Beam is this gap.
Please mind my method only works with a rather straight windscreen, if it’s totally curved, you’re doomed. However, this one saved a few cars from being totally redone to close the gap.
Just take that 3D piece selected, adjust it in all dimensions in a way that it doesn’t shine through the hood, and there you are. You see the difference?
Guide Nr.4 - invisible materials
A beautiful 1990 Globus Grand Cruiser LS… if only the headlights didn’t scream right away how they were put together. These frames really annoy, if I only could make them disappear…
I can. Just use the material selector, there IS a “disappearing” material. Select it, and you’ll have less frustration when compositing different parts to a fancy headlight.
Mambo Nr. 5 - Alignment
The headlights look now “in one piece”, but lack a little contour, I might use the chrome trim to fix that. But what is that? It bends totally wrong. ARGH!
Guide Nr.6 - decals for the grille
We’re going back to a 1978 Astrona. I wanted to make a fancy grille with custom bar arrangement, and it looks ok from the distance. In close-ups, you actually see that these bars stand far out from the actual grille. Meeh. We can do this better.
This goof isn’t that bad, but in Beam the grille pattern shined through the headlights because the latter ones are sized to be quite flat to fit into the grille. I fixed that by setting the grille inset invisible (remember, guide 4), this fixed the Beam exporter trouble.
Now that I wanted to change the grille inset anyway to come further out, I used a patch (I think it’s a mod, correct me if I’m wrong) and gave it a grille material.
Guide Nr.7 - mirrors
A 1985 Primus Astrona base model - I corrected a lot of goofs here, starting from the leg room, then giving the center console a frame, and so on. A new error here is easily recognizable if you focus on the mirrors - the connecting part really pokes through the sides. How annoying!
What I did was searching in the 3D parts direction of my game, and I found a triangular piece - hooray!
I scaled it to my needs, and there we go - I was able to realistically adjust the mirrors, and it won’t intrude into my interior anymore.
This thread might be updated later if there are more tips to include.
