"Borrowing" objects and textures from existing tracks...

You can but you will need to purchase yourself a copy of 3dSimEd. Its well worth it, its a pretty sweet program, I have managed to "borrow" a number of objects from Mills and Toban using it.

http://www.sim-garage.co.uk/

Check it out above, there is a few tricks to getting something out of a track, and then into a XPACK, but its not too tricky at all to be honest.
 
  • buckets

I think any tutorials on how to borrow stuff from tracks would have been on RSC. I think you get a 30 free trial if you download the software though.

Basically though, all you need to do is open an .scn file or a .gmt. Isolate the object you want and export it to .3ds. This can then be imported into an XPack.
 
The process is to "borrow" and object.

1). Load an existing track, toban for instance.
2). Hide the curved skybox that prevents you from clicking on the objects underneath. (by right clicking)
3). Right click on an object and select "edit object name"
4). Click the "isolate" button in the dialogue box.

Your object is now on its own in its position relative to the X-Y-Z coordonates of the track you took it from. Some objects comprise of several objects together, so remember to select all the parts before you do the next steps.

5). Select "edit" from the taskbar and then "centre model".

Your model is now centred on 0.0 of X-Y-Z.

6). Select "file" then "save as .3ds" from the menu, I would suggest that you place in its own folder.
7). Select "file" then "export textures" from the menu, and save them into the same folder as the .3ds

Now your onto the Xpacker section.

8). Open Xpacker and create a new Xpack or use an existing one of yours.
9). On the "objects" tab select add at the bottom and open your "objects.3ds" file. Your object will be listed.
10). Click the "materials" tab and expand your object. It will have have a number of materials listed.
11). If you select your "mat0" from the tree you will notice that the file path in the box to the middle right is listed as dummy texture. You now have to load your texture to make "mat0" what you want it to be. This is a process of ellimination, and a slow process!!!

12). Zip to BTB and test.

Hope this helps,
Steven.
 
I did indeed use the help on RSC, and can not remember much about it now.

I always as shown above hide the skybox, selected the item, centred it. And exported, there was an issue though with exporting the textures but not sure what it was, not terribly helpful I know :)

I have always kept to borrowing from the original ISI tracks, as I assume you are safe doing that, even then though I guess you need to be careful with the textures, shame really as some xpacks with such items would be really sweet, but the hassle of getting permissions for objects is more trouble than its worth.
 
  • buckets

I haven't used the export textures option so I don't know if it does some renaming that causes the XPacker to use dummy textures, but I find if I put the .dds files used by the .gmt into the same folder as the .3ds then the XPacker will then pick them up automatically on import.

It doesn't name them too well though and you will still need to set apha, chrome, and things like that.
 
  • ferreirajl

Hi everybody,

I'm just getting into track building and at this point, "borrowing" objects from official ISI tracks would really be helpful. I have tried the process described here, but ran into a problem in 3dSimED when exporting textures... the program crashes as soon as I hit the "export textures" button.

That's why I'm asking if someone could please explain how do I do what buckets says here...

I find if I put the .dds files used by the .gmt into the same folder as the .3ds then the XPacker will then pick them up automatically on import.

It doesn't name them too well though and you will still need to set apha, chrome, and things like that.

How do I extract these .dds files from... say, Toban track? I tried using the MAS utility to "look" into the .scn file, but all I see is a bunch of .gmt files.

Thanks in advance.
 
  • buckets

There are usually 2 .mas files - one will have gmt's and the other the .dds textures. Off the top of my head I think for toban they are toban.mas (gmt) and tobanmap.mas (dds).

I use VLM's (I think they made it) mas explorer available on rFC to extract the 2 folders. I then import an object into 3DSimed and use the option that shows you what textures it uses (can't remember off the top of my head which option this is, but it just creates a text file)

I then export the 3ds object from 3Dsimed to a folder and copy the textures it uses from where ever I unpacked them to the same folder.

I then point the XPacker at this folder to import the object and all textures are found.
 

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