It's simple really, I'm trying to make a few mods of several types for the game, and I'm able to progress, but, only so far before I hit points where I'm stuck. Vehicles and the related parts have several roadblocks I need help learning to overcome, but the larger things I'm facing at the moment are textures/materials and node/beam structure and creation. If someone could help with these (mostly textures/materials), I would greatly appreciate it. I have some knowledge with map creation, I can do some rather decent work I've been told when showing screenshots of random edits. I want to create custom assets for maps, potentially change existing assets and so on, but I have no knowledge of where to even begin, and further on, I still have absolutely 0 knowledge in texturing/materials which greatly affects all aspects of mod creation. If anyone knows any of these topics and is willing to teach me and help guide me to learning it myself, it would be greatly appreciated; please if you want to help, message me on discord at Cable_jr#5436 or reply in this thread. I would really love to be able to create mods and maps for this game, I enjoy it so much
You should try to join the Modding For Dummies Discord server. They are usually willing to help, so they will also possibly teach you some things Contact Blijo for the server invite
I've been through there, I'm somewhat active in there, however after trying to seek help in there I only came out more confused on what I was doing and felt less confident. I'm not saying the server is bad or any person in it is either, I just wasn't able to fully grasp the way it was explained in that server though I am grateful that they tried to explain it. Thank you for the suggestion though
Well you either have modding for dummies, some random person who can teach you, or you somehow figure it out yourself.
That's the point, I'm coming here (to the forums I rarely use) to seek the help of some people outside of the regular BeamNG related servers I frequent in the hopes of getting help or at least pointed in the right direction. I ask very nicely, please try and provide some help or direction in the topics I'm asking about if you're going to reply, I feel as though you pointed out rather obvious things that were already mentioned or explained, but I may be wrong and you may not have noticed. Nonetheless, thank you for taking the time to reply at all, but I assure you, I know what my options are and how to go after each of those options.
If it's for a vehicle, I have a simple thread for beginners. It's still unfinished though should state the basics at first. Hopefully it helps https://www.beamng.com/threads/how-to-mod-a-vehicle-basics.79294/
that has been bookmarked and saved. Now i need to find materials/textures and map asset creation help thank you so much
I feel like for me learning modding is like learning the path to becoming a Jedi. An elusive art form that training is difficult and rewarding. I feel like its such an undertaking to explain in a way that makes sense is just as challenging. I read your post about what your looking to do, I am in the same boat as you. I only messed with the world editor and modified an existing mod with some success. The beam editor crashed often when I tinkered with it.
Did you read the documentation for the texture cooker they added in the last update ? All the textures if starting off as PNGS in blender for example should be named whatever.color.png or whatever.normal.png for normal maps. The game will automatically convert the textures once you load the model into the dds format. As long as the texture meets the power of 2 in resolutions, assuming they mean 512x512 1024x1024 256x256 4096x4096 ect. It works fine for me but I am not able to further modify the textures. There is no reason why you should not be able to still get those DDS to work assuming they are in the format Torque3d recognizes. I tried to export some in photoshop as dds's and they would not work in my models in the game. The Texture Cooker documentation mentions the compressions and formats it is compatible with. You can simply open the model in the shape editor and select the materials for that model, then manually create them and point to each texture where they are stored (blender exports to where it saves the DAE to) It can be time consuming with many parts. I usually start from PNGs but still run into this red no texture from time to time. If you do make new textures in the world editor for every texture missing, be sure to save the level, and the texture after creating it, exit the game completely, and reload. Dont know why that is, but seems to fix that problem. I need to make a video where I have the problem you have to better explain how I fix it. Difficult to explain in a post. I will also add, I only messed with one vehicle model so far, being I put my own head on the crashhard dummie and I had to manually point in the editor to where the texture was for the replaced vehicle part(the head) I assume in the materials file you should be able to point to that location also. I did things through the editor. I mostly mess with the static models. Texture Cooker (in-game PNG to DDS converter) | BeamNG Texture Cooker (beamng.com)
