Foreword: Using custom cars online
P2P upload/download must be enabled ( TM launcher / Configure / Advanced / PeertoPeer), no matter if you want to transfer your car zips directly or if you use locators.
Of course your firewall/router must also allow the transfer to the outside. |
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In Trackmania Forever you need an upgraded account (Trackmania United) for making your locally used custom cars visible to other players in the global network. |
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Section 1: How Trackmania assembles cars
First you need to get a rough idea, how your car is actually assembled by your Trackmania Game.
You might think, the car you use is just 1 big file, but that's not correct... A car is assembled from many differenct pieces of data...
Usually your Trackmania catches the different data files from different folders of the game installation on-the-fly while you play the game. |
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Section 2: A custom car zip archive
Instead of letting Trackmania collect all the data from different locations, you can put all the important files into 1 zip archive and chose it as "your car" in the player's profile menu.
A fully loaded zip archive with (almost) all necessary data for a car would look like this (right picture)... containing lots of media files for all sorts of things related to your car.
The file size of this zip archive would cause you some serious trouble.
Even with using locators for your zip archive, transferring this huge amount of data to 20 or 30 players on an online server wouldn't work within a reasonable amount of time.
But Trackmania isn't stupid. Trackmania will first try to use all files in the zip archive to assemble a car, and then afterwards try to collect all other necessary files from its own data folders. |
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Conclusion
That means, that you only have to insert files into the zip archive, which are different from the default/original files in Trackmania's own resource folders. This will save you lots of time working on the zip, and will keep it nice and small... |
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Section 3: 3D car models
A 3D car model is a complex geometrical object, made in a 3D drawing program and then converted to Nadeo's own file container format, GBX. Often enough it's not a real car, but some really odd vehicle, like a wheelchair, a ladybug on wheels or whatever.. people get the wildest ideas about the vehicles they want to drive :-)
We'll work with a replika 3D model of the Stadium Car instead to show our case...
Mainbody.Solid.Gbx and MainbodyHigh.Solid.Gbx
represent the 3D car model in a custom car zip archive.
Both show the same vehicle, just with less/more geometrical details. Trackmania will use one of the files, depending on the user's graphic settings. |
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Does it make sense to add THIS car model files to the zip ?
A good question. After all, Trackmania already has this car model integrated in its own installation folders.
In Trackmania it could make sense, but only, if you'd intend to use this 3D model outside of its "natural" environment (Stadium).
Example 1
If you wanted to use this 3D model in the Snow environment, you'd have to insert the 2 Gbx files into the zip (along with necessary textures), and place the zip archive here:
..\My documents\TrackMania\Skins\Vehicles\SnowCar\
Reason: If Trackmania United would find a custom car .zip file without the 2 Gbx files in this directory, it would naturally add the Snow car 3D model while assembling the car. |
Example 2
If you wanted to use this 3D model for all environments, you'd have to insert the 2 Gbx files into the zip (along with necessary textures), and place the zip archive here:
..\My documents\TrackMania\Skins\Vehicles\Carcommon\
Reason: If Trackmania United would find a custom car zip file without the 2 Gbx files in this directory, it wouldn't know what model it should add, because the "Carcommon" stands for "All environments"... |
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However, as soon as the 3D model is not a standard car model (which Trackmania could automatically add from its own data resources), the 2 Gbx files must always be put in the zip archive anyway.
How to build/import a custom 3D car model for Trackmania
I hoped you would never ask this ^^
Of course it's possible to produce a totally custom 3D object in your favourite 3D construction program and import them to your Trackmania Game.
But this matter is really complicated and requires some extensive knowledge about 3D modelling. If you're really hot about this topic, you can start reading yourself into the matter here:
Trick's tutorial (English) *UPDATE*
Trackmania Carpark Tutorial (French)
Deepsilver Forum (German)
Taolung's tutorial (German)
TM-Community (English)
Maybe we can offer you some comprehensive tutorial one day here on this site...
Section 4 : 2D skins (textures)
A 2D skin is a .dds texture graphic, applied to the surface of the car model. We will use the Stadium car to work on... of course our lessons will work for all other enviroments as well...
For your understanding
The instructions, which texture + how a texture will be used to illustrate the car, is stored WITHIN the 3D model. The names of the textures are always the same (given by Nadeo), but every single 3D model decides if/how it wants to use them or not... |
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Let's take a look at our fully loaded zip archive again.
All the .DDS files are 2D Skin textures, applied to the car model in one or the other way...
A detailed explanation of the different textures' functions follows below.
And again:
Adding one of these textures to your custom car zip only makes sense if your texture is different from the one Trackmania would automatically add from its own resources, while assembling your car. |
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The most simple custom car zip file
Most people are completely satisfied with putting 2 customised texture graphics into their zip archive: Icon.dds and Diffuse.dds: |
These 2 texture graphics, alone in a .zip archive are already a nifty and simple way to individualise your car's appearance. And besides that, the zip file is still pretty small and can be quickly transfered to other online players. |
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Icon.dds (TMN + TMU)
This little graphic file will be displayed in your user profile, showing a thumbnail preview of your car... It has nothing to do with how your car is assembled.
The format of this file is always the same, no matter what 3D model or 2D skins you use in your archive.
| Size: 128 x 128 pixels
DDS Format: DXT1 compression, simple alpha channel. |
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Diffuse.dds (TMN + TMU)
This is the surface picture, which will be layed upon the 3D default car model. (Our example shows the Blue color skin for the United Stadium Car).
| Size: anywhere from 512x512 to 2048x2048,depending on your quality wishes.
DDS Format: DXT5 compression (alpha channel sets "shinyness" of parts) |
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At first this looks a bit irritating. Different parts of this picture will be layed upon different parts of the car model.
Now you get a rough idea of where parts of the diffuse.dds are applied on the car. |
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Additional 2D Skin texture files
But of course you can blow up the size of your custom car zip archive by including several more textures to individualise the car's looks.
DiffuseDirty.dds (TMU only)
Same layout as the Diffuse.dds, but this texture shows how the car's surface will look when getting dirty from the mud sections in the TMU Stadium environment.
| Size: same as "Diffuse.dds".
DDS Format: same as "Diffuse.dds". |
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Details.dds (TMN + TMU)
This texture contains nice details, such as steering wheel, driver's suit, rims and tires etc.
In TMN, the standard 3D car model won't use the Details.dds in the zip archive, but load it from a fixed data folder within the TMN installation directory.
However, if a custom 3D car model is in the zip file, this texture can be included in the zip file as well.
| Size: 1024x1024
DDS Format: DXT5 compression (alpha channel sets "shinyness" of parts) |
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DetailsDirty.dds (TMU only)
The name pretty muchs says it all, it's the same as with the the DiffuseDirty.dds.
| Size: same as "Details.dds".
DDS Format: same as "Details.dds". |
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Illum.dds (TMU only)
This texture is a "copy" of the Details.dds texture, but with 1 difference:
Only the objects which shall be illuminated are still in the picture ! Everything else is black..
| Size: same as "Details.dds".
DDS Format: same as "Details.dds".
Note: Sometimes it's necessary to insert an "Illum.dds" into the zip archive, even if it's only pure black, to avoid illumination bugs. |
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| Projshad.dds (TMN + TMU)
This file is responsible for the shadow that is put on the floor.
| Size: 512x512 - 1024x1024
DDS Format: DXT1c / no alpha |
We have an extra tutorial for creating custom shadows such as "Underbody Neon"... |
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Skins for custom made 3D models
I already told you that the 3D model contains instructions on how/if these textures above are used.
Don't be surprised if a "Diffuse.dds" for a custom 3d model looks totally different compared to the one shown above. It's in the 3D model author's freedom to map the texture file onto the car model the way he wants it to...
And sometimes authors of 3D models forget to implement the useage of certain textures (like e.g. Projshad.dds). That's a pity, but you can't change it...
How to paint your own 2D Skin textures
If you feel like adventuring, you can start painting your textures now (You could also use Trackmania's internal painting tool, which might be useful for beginners).
Nevertheless, the Paint a custom car skin tutorial will teach you how to do it manually.
Section 5: Sounds
You've got the possibility to add a horn sound and lots of engine sounds to your custom car zip archive as well.
Please note, that you can't put sounds alone in a car zip, at least an Icon.dds and Diffuse.dds must be in it as well, otherwise you might encounter instability issues...
Engine sounds
The engine sounds should be saved in this format:
Codec: .ogg compression
Channels: 2 (Stereo)
Usually these files are created in a way that you can't hear any transition when they loop.
| EngineIdle.ogg |
Sound when your car is standing |
| EngineLow.ogg |
Sound when your car is in 1st gear |
| EngineMid.ogg |
Sound when your car is in 2nd + 3rd gear |
| EngineFast.ogg |
Sound comes in when your car is heading towards high speed |
| EngineRev.ogg |
Sound when your car accellerates in reverse gear |
| EngineRev2.ogg |
Sound when your car drives in reverse gear pretty fast |
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Trackmania has a special feature while playing sounds in "water near" sections of Stadium, Bay, Coast and Island...
Trackmania will play only the right channel of the Engine sounds to create a special "wet" soundstage. The right channel sound should be therefor dampened a lot (if you create custom ones)...
Horn sound
The horn sound should be saved in this format:
Codec: .wav (windows pcm file)
Channels: 1 (Mono)
| Horn.wav |
Honk a lot to irritate other people ^^ |
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Section 6: Where to put your custom car zip file ?
Trackmania (zip files including 3D car model)
C:\...\My documents\TrackMania\Skins\Vehicles\Carcommon\ |
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Trackmania (zip files excluding 3D model, only including 2D skins)
C:\...\My documents\TrackMania\Skins\Vehicles\[Environment]\
In our example [Environment] would be "StadiumCar", but this always depends on what standard car model the custom textures were made for. |
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Attention!
Using locators on car zip files is a bit special !
If you decide to use locators for transfering your car zip to other people, you should still have the zip file in the directory, TOGETHER with the .loc file.
Additionally, you should set the properties of both files to "read only"/write protected, otherwise a little bug in Trackmania could destroy your files !!! |
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Section 7: Original texture & sound resources
Surely you can use the original textures and sounds as a basis for creating new things...Be aware that the filenames and formats of these originals are often very different from the filenames they must have in the .zip archive !!!
Sound resources
[Game Install folder]\GameData\Vehicles\Media\Audio\Sound\WavData\
In this directory there are many many sounds of the different environments mixed together... e.g. you have 6 different horn sounds, BayCarHorn.wav, CoastCarHorn.wav, RallyCarHorn.wav, SnowCarHorn.wav, SpeedCarHorn.wav and SportCarHorn.wav.
The Stadium car uses lots of sounds from other cars, such as "BayCarHorn.wav" or "SportCarEngine...wav" sounds.
So watch out that you catch the right one, rename it properly (and convert it to ogg if necessary), if you want to put it in your zip file...
TMU Texture resources
The different colour skin zips for all environments (incl. Diffuse.dds and Icon.dds) are in
[Game Install]\GameData\Skins\Vehicles\[Environment]\
Textures like Shadow, Details and Illumination for all enviroments can be found here:
[Game Install]\GameData\Vehicles\Media\Texture\Image\
The Default shadow texture is
[Game Install]\GameData\Vehicles\Media\Texture\Image\StadiumCarShadowProj.dds
It must be renamed to "ProjShad.dds" when beeing inserted into the zip file.
