International Competitive Racing Mod Development Thread

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Mystical

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Closed Beta testing for the mod will begin in the next day or so. I have in the range of 4-6 users that I will be bringing onboard first. Some will be looking at the templates for the various paint programs to make sure everything can be correctly painted and the layers function as expected along with testing carviewer/preview files. The other group will be testing the mod in-game for performance/stability/visual issues found. As I mentioned before this is not for the purpose to 'have fun' (though we might have some lol) but to make sure everything is working and looking as good as possible for a released mod eventually.

As this is phase 1 it is a very small group that I have personally hand-picked, they range from SRD, Stunod, discord, etc so it not just exclusive to this place but members in the nr2003 community I have known. If I am unable to from this selection get the preferred amount I want I'll expand to more. The future phases I'll add a couple more testers but for the most part I don't expect this to grow too much. I'll just need enough willing participants to get the required coverage and data, I will relay how things are going as the test team gets further into the mod.
 

Mystical

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Just a quick update as its been several weeks. No official dev post is ready yet. Work has been ongoing since the last one with the main focus of bug fixes/tweaks found from the test team. The other half of the work has been working on the real cockpit the player sees. Part of the reason why its taking longer than usual is I've been doing a lot of research and development creating cockpit features not commonly seen or done before in NR2003, this is also the first time I've ever done this section of a mod before so I've had to learn as I go as well. Probably end of January or early February is when I'll have the new dev post breaking down the details.
 

Mystical

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Development post #12

With the majority of the exterior of the car complete it was time to move onto the interior. In NR2003 (and most racing games I believe) the interior cockpit is treated as a totally different asset. When you click the 'drive' button in NR2003 and switch between camera views the cockpit view you see is an entirely different scene from the exterior. While you could essentially 'reuse' your meshes and textures from the exterior view as a cockpit you'd notice pretty soon being that close to the model in cockpit view is very low resolution. The exterior models were not made to be viewed by literal feet away, to fix this new models in higher resolution and better texture detail is needed.

While its possible to create a mod starting in cockpit view I decided to leave this part of the mod to work on after I completed the exterior. This way I could use the exterior cockpit I made as a guide to recreate the higher resolution one. Since I know the basic cockpit I modeled for the exterior already fits the car its a perfect template to use. So taking my exterior cockpit model I basically replaced all of the model pieces with higher resolution ones. Another thing was I only needed to focus on the front section of the cockpit because in NR2003 you can never turn left or right far enough to see the back section. Essentially you are almost modeling a simulator in a way where just the front section is visible:

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After I remodeled the big sections of the cockpit like the dashboard, rollbar, and windows I added in more placeholder objects to get a feel for the look of the cockpit. Before finalizing the total design I did a quick unwrap and applied a checkerboard to all the models so I had a placeholder present which allowed me to go into the game with a very basic cockpit and get a feel for where I needed everything to be placed in relation to the camera. The main challenge with the cockpit is the camera needs to be visible of course to see clear racing but also the gauges/telemetry on the dashboard needs to be visible as well. To achieve this I went in and out of the game adjusting certain pieces and the head height of the camera to get the desired result:

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Once I was pretty satisfied with the camera angle and how all the models were in view it was just a matter of finalizing the models, adding in the extra details like buttons, and windows braces. I wanted a unique design and I did take some inspiration from the iracing Nascar cockpit and other forms of racing that have more sophisticated features on their dash. The easy party is doing the static models and textures really of the cockpit. The harder part is making sure the real telemetry gauges not only work design wise but are placed in the correct spots too. This is what makes the cockpit a challenge. Unlike the exterior where you deal with LODs the cockpit is simply always in LOD1 but with that payoff comes all the literal moving parts. The parts in the cockpit that move/interact is the steering wheel, shifter, mirror, hood damage, and gauges.

The first thing I tackled was the gauges. A gauge in NR2003 is simply a needle mesh rotating around. To make it appear like a gauge you need a background mesh textured as a gauge then in the code you have to define the needle to a specific gauge and location of your cockpit. In NR2003 you have several: Tach (Your rpm), water temp, water pressure, oil temp, oil pressure, fuel, and volts. Depending on the car you are making you can have as many or as few of these as you want. If you notice in some mods they only have 5-6 while others have a tach and 6 gauges (like the BR15 mod). How you order them, how many your want on your dash, and where exactly they go is all customizable. The key part though is they need to be visible to the player or there is really no point in having them if the steering wheel covers it all up. Several of these gauges also include a bonus feature of the warning light where they will change color when they are going past their limit. For example when you over-rev your engine and in most mod the red light on the tach comes on that is the light. Lastly depending on the type of gauges you make you may have different appearances for them between day and night racing.

For my mod instead of doing analog gauges I wanted a fully digital dash. With that in mind I wanted the tach especially to be a bar instead of a circle as well. The DW12 mod has a similar feature and I did something like that for mine. Pretty much I used a flat plane mesh , cutout the shape of the bar and the 'needle' mesh will rotate through the bar as I increase speed and shift gears in the car. Here is my proof of concept in blender:

View: https://youtu.be/aiOHj_frmDM


Then here is what the proof of concept looks like in-game once I coded it:

View: https://youtu.be/YV3ltrri4-I


You will also notice all those orange needles floating around. Those were still using the default cup mod placement positions and I had not touched them yet. Literally everything in the cockpit scene is just visible info for the player and the game won't explode if you remove a gauge or is just not looking correct. If you want a good looking cockpit though you will have to take the extra time to add in the detail to get it looking right though.

After I had the main tach bar finished I simply created several octagon mesh planes for the rest of the gauges which I would then texture a circular gauge design on. The needle would then design to look like it follows the rim of the gauge circle instead of just being a traditional triangle needle shape. Here is what what one of the gauges looks like when it has the proper texture is applied to the mesh:

wwue5UR.jpg


For the code of a gauge its probably the most 'complex' part of the interior scene. For a single gauge such as the fuel this is what it looks like:


Code:
needle_fuel_level: TRANSFORM NAME pfuel POS(0.253, 0.502, 0.382) ROT(0,0,0) Small_Needle_Digital
            gauge_fuel:        MESH maInt        g3
            gauge_fuel_digital:    SELFLIGHTING AMBIENT(1, 1, 1)   gauge_fuel

            gauge_fuel_red:        MESH maInt        g3r
            gauge_fuel_red_digital:    SELFLIGHTING AMBIENT(1, 1, 1)   gauge_fuel_red

            gauge_fuel_light: STATE_SWITCH VAR fuelPressureLightEnable (0 gauge_fuel_digital, 1 gauge_fuel_red_digital, 2)

Basically to break it down I tell the game where my gauge background and needle meshes are. Then I have to tell it where the needle position should be so it lines up with my background gauge texture. Once that is done I want these gauges (as they are digital) to always self light. What this means is regardless if its dark or bright inside the cockpit these meshes will always be a certain brightness. Since these are digital I set them to 1. After that I create the state switch that will tell the game when the warning light for fuel comes on switch to my red texture. One last thing I want to point out is since I am doing digital I don't need a day to night switch but if you are doing a regular physical gauge design you'd probably have a day and night version so when you race at night the gauges will look darker. This is just the code for one gauge, I wouldn't have time to cover all the code for the entire cockpit in this post but if/when I do a tutorial in the future I'd do a larger review of it all for easier understanding.

Once the gauges were complete I moved to the mirror. The mirror is simply a mesh along with a plane mesh in front of it which you define as a 'portal'. This portal tells the game to render it as a literal mirror. You can make the portal any shape you want and place it anywhere in the cockpit. For mine I wanted a stylized design and this was my end result of the shape:

y3R2zkX.jpg


After the mirror was completed the steering wheel and shifter had to be modeled. These objects are simply static meshes that you then define in the code to be a wheel or shifter. After carefully placing them in the correct spot of my cockpit they will look like a natural wheel and shifter as you speed up and turn. Since these models are very close to the player the poly count is much higher such as the steering wheel:

nkSeYnn.jpg


Last but not least when you take hood damage I wanted the hood damage to be visible. Since I already did the work on the exterior hood I took the code from that and placed it into my cockpit scene. This way when the hood takes any damage it will crumple up as you get hit. The hood section also includes the hood flaps so if you go for a wild ride you will see those deploy in cockpit view as well.

After all of that is completed the final textures were worked on which took quite a bit of work detailing every piece and making it look realistic enough in terms of NR2003 cockpit detail can go. I went the extra mile and added subtle window reflection, dashboard detail, and a paintable nameplate the user will be able to customize on the template. Here are a few laps with the new cockpit around armory digital displaying the digital dash:

View: https://youtu.be/aQpfu3DPWkE


Ij2dgOZ.jpg


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V8GzevR.jpg


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For extra perspective here is using camhack to get a outside look around it, you can see hood is on the front of the car and once you take damage it'll pop up into view:

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orNuWiu.jpg


As with all things in this thread its not completely final but pretty close so things are subject to be tweaked but overall I am happy with the cockpit design. Before I head out I want to touch on behind the scenes with the test team. They've been diligently testing the mod in-game and also the painters testing out the template giving feedback. Here are just a few screenshots of some of the paint tests they've done:

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Currently we are only focusing on make0 template and once I finalize the template more I will start unlocking the other makes for paint testing. On the flipside, the guys who are in-game testing the mod have been doing a great job too. Lots of minor bugs been found but happy to report stability has been very good and even Cosmin gave his seal of approval so when this thing comes out you should expect similar results performance wise I hope when it goes public.

It may seem like the mod at this point is complete but not yet. There is still the rearview mirror model (when you press the n key) to create, the exterior gauges, and a lot of template cleanup and work left. The next dev post will focus on the rearview model and exterior gauges.
 

Dominic Carranza

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Do what you need to do. This just buys me idea conjuring time. Plus the fact I'd rather it be done right than rushed. Overall so far just magnifique
 
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Mystical

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Development post #13

While the overall car mod itself is completed by now the small features and details left over were still needed to be done. The first of these is the rear view model scene. This is the scene that appears in your rear view mirror when you press the 'n' key. To make this is quite simple since you can reuse your car mod parts to create it. The rear view looks backwards at your model to give the illusion in the mirror it is reflecting what is behind it. To do this I simply copied all my car parts in a new scene that I knew would appear in the rearview and delete all the unnecessary pieces that couldn't be shown so I ended up with something like this:

rhwbK5j.png


Included in this is also the damage code for the decklid and spoiler so if you take rear damage you will see the effects n the rearview correctly. Depending on where this rearview model is placed in your scene you can make it appear closer or farther away in the mirror. Since I had everything already lined up I didn't really need to adjust it much. In the game this is what it looks like when toggled on:

mqWYvZ4.jpg


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Now of course the challenge with the tall spoiler on my mod is of course with this model toggled on it will make it harder to see cars from behind or on the side. To give an extra option I am including an optional version with an included side mirror:

GPthsbC.jpg


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You will notice the rearview model looks different with a side mirror and that is becasue with the way NR2003 handles mirror portals. It takes into effect the entire bounding box 'region' of where it must 'reflect' and as a result stuff zooms in more. If you look at various other mods with and without a side mirror you can see this same thing. One way to 'fix' it is move the rearview model much farther back in the 3d scene before exporting but since I am offering 2 versions (one with and one without a side mirror) I can't move it back or the non-side mirror version will be way too far away. It would end up being more work than its worth having to create 2 different scenes with different code for it. It will not completely make it easier with the rear model enabled but give the player at least some choice to have a different mirror view they may like more.

Next up was the part that delayed this dev post by a whole week: The outer gauges and outer custom mirror. The challenge with this part of the mod was not setting up my scene or getting it to appear in game as expected but a bug that caused an unintended side effect I didn't see happen with other mods. Before I get to that I will go over the process how the outer gauges are done. The file that dictates this part of a mod is called make_a_light_cockpit.3do. In this output file and code it holds the mirror and gauges for any of the exterior views of a mod.

This part of a mod I'd say was the most unknown and secretive. Not even the rockstar files contain any example code files (or 3ds max scenes) for how to do this stuff so I give big credit to Cosmin sharing his code that I reworked for my mod with its custom models and placements. To make a scene for proper outer content I took my interior cockpit gauges and mirror frame and placed them in the scene like so:

fvWnwTo.png


The middle (0, 0, 0) axis in their scene is pretty much the front dead center of where your in game racing view will be so you have to move around and place the models farther back. Moving a model closer or farther away from the 0 center coordinates will enlarger or shrink the size of the model. I also had to create a new RPM tach becasue as you know my interior view has the custom digital version. You can literally move your parts around any way you want. If for some bizzare reason you wanted all the gauges to be stacked vertically on the left side of the screen you could. I went for a more simple and traditional horizontal lineup but it is really left up to the modder in what order or placement these go. The only important thing rally is will the gauges be readable and not cover up a ton of the car model where they are placed.

As for the code itself it shares similarities with the interior cockpit but also uses different names for the gauges to define them as the 'exterior' versions. There is also special code that allows you to group the mirror and gauges as separate entities which then defines when you press the 'g' (gauge toggle key) or 'm' (mirror toggle key) what turns off with what. This is where I ran into an issue, some reason my mirror and gauge would toggle off correct but when going into replay mode my mirror would still be appearing which as we all know is not good and other mods don't do that. After many hours and days trying to figure out what was wrong I consulted SmokeOR for help. I was finally able to figure out what was wrong and it ended up being a single line of code that was different in the mirror which essentially was not telling it to hide itself pretty much when not in a racing view. I never would have been able to figure this out since I couldn't find any existing code examples so big thanks for him looking over my code and suggesting I try the other thing. Like I mentioned before I would like to after this mod is done to make a tutorial series on mod creation and stuff like this is code I would definitely go over in detail so others know how it can be done correctly. With that annoying issue out of the way though the mod now had custom gauges and mirror shape:

xOQCSH7.jpg


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The gauges can be turned off separate like any other mod, also included will be an optional file the player can use that moves the mirror to the top of the screen. You will notice in my screenshots above the mirror is not being covered up by my UIE 2013 content. This is becasue I of course wanted to make my mod compatible with my UI mod and no longer having to use camhack to move the mirror is really great since I can control mirror placement ultimately for once. If I had the code and knew how to adjust the mirror for real with other mods this is what I wanted to so several years ago when I first released UIE 2013.

Now that the outer gauges are done the next little feature to add was backfire to the sideskirt on the right side of the car. You can have backfire anywhere on the car really but I just wanted something simple. Backfire is simply a model mesh that appears briefly for a few frames than disappears. The first thing I did was model several mesh planes together so regardless of the angle the fire output was being view from it would appear '3d'. This is similar to how 3do trees on a race track are done. After unwrapping the simple model I then had to create a fire texture:

sb9FUJF.png


I could have probably found/used a fire effect somewhere but made it from scratch in affinity photo. I started with a literal triangle shape and blurred it, added noise, brought up the brightness and glow levels along with some extra filter distortions to create it. After the texture was done I combined it all in my 3d scene and it looks like this:

mv74maz.png


In game the transparency of the fire and specular levels are correct and you get a result like this:

jQWTEVk.jpg


With those 3 new elements add to the mod its now a 'complete' mod. At this point is has everything a mod would included:
- Exterior models
- Exterior damage models
- Working Flap deployment
- Animated driver
- Interior Model
- Rearview mirror model
- Out Gauges/Mirror toggle
- Backfire effect

The only thing left to do now is heavy focus on the texture work for the actual paintable template of the model. This includes adding more parts details to it, making the specific manufacturer decals/details, and finalizing the templates for a releasable version that painters would be used to seeing. A significant amount of work was done on the template this last week. To show more of the detail I'm using blue and white on the car so the parts can be easier to see but this is the current detail so far:

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With this stage in the mod I will have one more dev post most likely. The last one will show the mod with a few of the manufacturers on it along with a preview of what a completely painted car will look like which will really give you a better sense of how the mod looks in a completed state. Work on the actual mod itself is pretty much done now unless any big bugs appear but there is still quite a lot or work left to do which I will detail all of that in the next and most likely final update.
 

Mystical

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I have no news yet for the next dev post yet. Work has continued on the mod non-stop even though the work done is not massive in changes it is all the little features and pieces overall which are equating to lots of quality of life improvements and also will make the mod overall just better for the end-user. The other large focus has been the manufacturer specific templates and its been going really well, I have completed 4 already and they are turning out great. I think everyone will be pleased with how the mod is so template friendly to really customize and paint whatever type of manufacturer you want for your carset/series.

In other news I am still looking for a 3ds max render scene expert. Creating 3ds render scenes for mods is not something I do or focus on. I use a modern render tool called Marmoset Toolbag 3 which the mod will include render scenes for that. I do know probably the majority (if not all) users don't have that tool though so I'd like to provide optional 3ds scenes that users are familiar with. This can only be done if I have someone that can make them though and if there is no one willing then users will have to rely on the carviewer scene or have Marmoset. If this sounds like a task you'd like to help with please contact me, I'm not looking for someone that can only do hyper realistic render scenes in 3ds but adequate enough that would be to the same standard other mods come with.
 

NRE

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Apr 19, 2019
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Looking great so far! Can't wait for the final product. The digital dash and the cockpit are so next-level. And that big spoiler, imagine all that downforce! :eek:
 

Unggoy

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Been following your work for a very long time and I'm always impressed with each new release. Based on what I see here, I've found myself itching to paint again -- and maybe even try to fix up a couple of my smaller, easier tracks. Also, your mod is going to serve as the mod for my premiere offline personal racing league that I've been running since 2015. :D Looking forward to seeing it complete, as well as everything that comes with a new mod!
 

Anthony Stuart

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I've already got a carset planned, fully rated, and in game using another mod for now (I'll copy it over to this mod and paint when it's released), and I'm about to start on pit crews for it, I don't remember looking forward to a mod this much in a long time. I'm not rushing it though, it'll be done when it's done and I can wait :D
 

Mystical

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Development post #14

The time has finally arrived for the final dev post of this mod creation saga. If you've been reading along all these months you will have probably figured out by now the mod for the most part looks completed and that would be correct. The main piece of the puzzle still missing, despite the mod in the game being completed, was the visual side of things: the manufacturer templates. A mod looks fine and all but without proper looking manufacturer templates that represent a certain car manufacturer with its representative parts, sponsor decals, and their little details the 'realism' of the stock car can be lost if you just have a plain grey 'test car' riding around.

In this final post you'll finally see how this complicated road in mod creation leads to probably the most familiar part of a mod: the paint/manufacturer template. This is the final version of a template the end-user would essentially see and use to import into NR2003 to apply their custom paints to the game. To get here though requires an immense amount of detail and use of layers to give the illusion of all those decals, parts, shading, highlights, and other miscellaneous pieces that create a stock car design. Similar to how I showed the process on an isolated part of the mod in the past (creating the tire texture) today I will be going over how I apply/create manufacturer decals and a few of the other elements to create a completed looking template. For this demonstration I will be revealing the first manufacturer included in this mod: The Chevrolet Monte Carlo SS. As this is a fictional mod it would only make sense to bring back some of my old favorite manufacturers and give them a modern look in the process.

Where we last left off there was an essentially a blank template:
YhUXw1h.png


Now its not completely 'blank' by true terms of course. If you've followed along in previous posts you will know that other details on the template were made such as bolts, the body shading/highlights, small details etc. Today though, we are essentially going to finalize this template and give it an identity. One feature this mod offers that others usually don't on launch are blank templates like this one. The user will either have the choice with this mod to start painting on manufacturers already created or start from scratch (as I am with this demonstration) to create whatever manufacturer they want.

To start in making a manufacturer there are two ways you can go about it: Gather all the pieces from high resolution photo/images on the web or create the parts from scratch. I usually do a hybrid of this. The main part I tend to use images are on the pieces like headlights while other pieces like the grill I personally find you can get better results from just making from scratch. Where you find these images can be from anywhere really, I find using a search engine and using certain keywords for different car makes can get good result for all sort of angles of the front and rear of a car. The most important thing in an image is the lighting is neutral, image is not at a weird angle, and the resolution is high enough it won't be low quality of a template. In some instances I have stitched two different images together (or more) together to create a whole part of a car or did a lot of manual painting/cleanup on an image to make it better quality as well. In the end the parts you use are only as good as the time you spend adjusting them.

For this I will be focusing on the grill of the Chevy going through essentially step by step how I make one from scratch. The first step I do is create a basic shape of what I want the grill to look like, here is an example of it laid out with some custom headlights in place as well:
aDvknUB.png


Taking the vector shape I made I then will mask a texture inside it. The textures can be made from a scratch made pattern or metal mesh like texture depending on the design you are going for. For me I used a high resolution metal mesh texture. You can see from here how the grill is already starting to look more realistic now that the texture is in place of just a black shape:
33AYJi7.png


After this I add an outline around the grill to give it more definition along with inner shading so it appears to be affected by the lighting and not just a flat surface:
3WewKtB.png


At this point the grill is already looking very good and didn't take much time to create at all. Using a simple shape, masking in a texture, then applying some layer effects like outline and inner shadow you can relatively create from scratch a varying degree of grill parts for a car in a matter of minuets. This same thing can be applied to other parts such as the upper grill so we eventually have something looking like this on the front of the car now:
liQHw4Z.png


Now to many it probably looks good enough and we can call it a day. But for the quality of templates I am going for I want to take it a notch higher: shading around the parts themselves. With shading definition around the car parts themselves this can really up the realism and fool you into thinking the shape of the car nose is something very different than how it really looks. To achieve this effect you need two things: shading and highlights. Without both you would lose the effects of the design depending on how dark or bright your car's paint scheme is. If a car has a bright white background and only has highlights but no shading you wont be able to see the detail becasue the highlights are bright like the color of the car paint. On the flipside if you only do dark shading but no bright highlights around the parts then with a dark paint scheme you will see no details becasue the black shading matches the dark paint scheme. In the most basic terms highlights and shading are simply white and black colors on a layer (or separate layers) that have semi opacity so the layers under them still appear but now have the effect of highlights and shading a real object would. This is the 'secret' essentially of how some of your favorite templates for NR2003 look so good. Its becasue they achieve this trifecta of detail: parts + highlights + shading. How you combat this when making your own manufacturer templates is really up to you. Below I will show you my process that I found creates good results but also is quick and easy to achieve.

Before I make a mock shading and highlight piece I will demonstrate the effect I am trying to create with a simple circle on a neutral color in its background. At first I just have a black and white circle (the white circle is under the black one). The black circle represents the shading (this is the shadows and dark indented areas of a part). The white circle represents the highlights of a part (the area that have a bump or stick out to have light bounce on them):
rx9TziG.png


At first you can see it just looks like two circle. But once I lower the opacity on both circles to 50% you see the background color begin to appear through and a side effects of this 'shading' and 'highlight; layer begin to appear more like an shape is pressed into the color:
yP2dIPS.png


Is still doesn't look right through as the top layers are still too opaque and the color under it doesn't appear much so I lower the black circle to 34% opacity and the white to 13%. Now this is all subjective of course but I found the magical number for most of my shading layers to be anywhere from 34% to 50% and the highlights from 13% to 20%. Depending on how 'intense' you want a design to appear you can lower or raise the opacity levels to create the desired result:
jdACfWG.png


This looks slightly better but it still just appears like a few circles on a blue background really. The main problem is the circle shape is too hard, the edges need to be softened up more as real light curves on objects and wouldn't appear this hard. So I apply a blue to both oe the circles to get a result such as this now:
szfTHUy.png


While not as bad as before it just looks like a blurred circle really. To really give it that depth I erase with a low opacity eraser brush the inside of the circle layers a bit. I also shrink the outside white circle a bit so the thickness isn't so large:
V94XjuR.png


Now that is looking like detail on a surface and no longer just some circles. If I raise the shading circle opacity more I can create different 'levels' of shading depth. Here is an example of the varying degree you can achieve by just adjusting the opacity level, this is also why I keep my highlights and shading on different layers so I can always go back and adjust their levels if things don't look right:
iyAAaJG.png


Now that the highlights and shading is completed there is one final test, the dark and bright background effect. This is where the magic appears. Below you can see the shape and detail I made appears regardless of what the background color is changed to:
QisAqco.png

R0oXOGI.png


This same effect works when a more detailed texture is applied behind it as well:
9EKIZb4.png


So that is the basic concept broken down how one way shading on a car can be made. Now I am going to demonstrate on the top grill piece this put into practice. To begin a create a shading layer around the grill part:
qbbiEfl.png


Next I use a low opacity eraser to form a shape that give the illusion of this grill piece sticking out more:
oqXfgO7.png


After that I apply opacity levels and blur the layer a bit:
dHFpoDu.png


Once that is complete I duplicate my shading layer and change it to a white color and expand it a bit so it encompassed the shading layer region and this creates my highlight layer:
RRNHQHW.png


After that there is a completed grill piece essentially with highlights and shading:
K2KbcmA.png
 

Mystical

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Now its time to apply this same concept to the rest of the car both front and rear, the end results with all the parts, shading, and highlights I came up with something like this:
sCmwu9M.png


In my renderer you can see the full effect of a completed Chevy Monte Carlo SS:
oRDUPaD.png

kGa4xbF.png

xITTWiX.png

lG5XZQh.png

5GiYVDb.png


In game the results look just as convincing:
8nCg8qs.jpg

I4agsZ7.jpg

cP5huwN.jpg

Jkeihgs.jpg


This is the first time the mod essentially feels like a completed one becasue at this point it technically was/is. The user could now essentially paint on the Chevy Monte Carlo SS template and achieve the same results they would with other mods now that a proper manufacturer template is available. After all these months this was the ultimate resolution to be reached and it finally has. There are of course many other small details that needed to be finalized or cleaned up that takes time but the milestone of getting the first manufacturer completed is there now. This now officially concludes my dev posts so what is next? For that I have 3 things left to say and if you have been reading all along you definitely won't regret it.

1. The current state of the mod is going into its final release candidate state. This means after the carset for the mod is completed all the final packaging of the mod, templates, and preview/render scenes will be worked on. While this isn't part of the dev posts, for anyone making a mod this is still a huge amount of work even if a mod is 'completed'. During this process the final phase of uploading it all to my website along with all the promotional work needed (such as info for the web pages and trailer(s)) is done. Once I have it all ready to go you will begin to see some form of a trailer or at a minimum a public release date for when the mod will be available.

2. My work here is done, the dev post saga on a mod being created is completed and I wont have any other info to add really. That does not mean this thread needs to die off though. If you have further questions about the mod creation process or my methods feel free to ask. The point of this thread was after-all to get people interested in making their own mods. I do hope after I release my mod to make a video tutorial series that will at least go over the core parts of mod making but for now these dev posts will serve in its place, I hope it was enjoyable to read through as insightful in the process. I will admit I am glad if/when I do make another mod again I won't have to document everything again, this was a huge task on its own typing this all out and getting all the screencaps to show the process as I go through it.

3. Congratulations in reaching the very end, as a reward for taking the time to read everything I'm happy to share some extra details about the mod. To start when I originally began I planned to have about 10-11 different manufacturers templates across the 4 different makes done. Instead you will see on launch not only the 4 blank templates available (to create your own manufacturers with ease) but also 16 different manufacturers, yes 16 that are completed already. The Monte Carlo SS I showed today was just a sample. This does not include the numerous manufacturers I plan to create post-launch that will provide even more options.

Along with manufacturers the templates will include a robust amount of customization options such as over 20+ tire brands to choose from, pre-made contingency decals sets, b-pillar sets, and much more. I cannot state enough how much you will really be able to make this mod into your own creation with all the paint options alone to make some very unique looking series.

Last but not least (and most important probably) I've not revealed all this mod has to offer. I've deliberately hidden some features this mod will include. I'm not talking about features already revealed too like the decklid flap, being able to paint your own tire decals, the side mirror in the cockpit option, or even the new digital dash design. I've successfully developed and happy to say created some new features that no other mod has had before it. I'm not going to say its revolutionary by any means of course but with all things I make I try and think out of the box. Just becasue something only worked one way in NR2003 doesn't mean I can't try and make it look or work a different way. Similar to how my UIE 2013 mod did something new with NR2003 this mod will bring about something you've never seen in the game before to give you a new and different racing experience than you've had in this game since it launched. What all these feature are ... well you'll just have to wait for the release trailer.
 

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