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LMAO .. you really never heard of the 'Village People'? Where've you been living, under a rock?
It was a famous gay singer group in the seventies/eighties .. 'Y.M.C.A.' (most famous and best recognized title), 'In The Navy', 'Go West', 'Macho Man' and and ...

https://www.youtube.com/v/QINoUyrP0BI

Funny thing is, we as kids back then and here in Europe didn't know that they were all depicting some favourite gay 'archetypes' like the 'leather lad', the policeman, the construction worker, the sailor ... but the music was  a b s o l u t e l y  cool

Named themselves after 'Greenage Village', known as a gay and artists (or simply just crazy people, in good sense) stronghold district of N.Y. City then

Except the fact that I didn't think anyone would ever understand this calculation tutorial let alone use it then it's nice to see that some further information can be found, thx Rider

For German cars, especially Volkswagen of recent times you often really get spoiled for choice for there is too many information found .. too many gearboxes and drivetrain data that makes it sometimes hard to decide which powertrain (engine) data used which gearbox (with what final gear) etc ..

Had that on the T4: '.. this particular engine was used until that day with the choice of these gearboxes as follow: ..', but two years later completely different engines were introduced again with different gearboxes ..

Thx WiLL .. as far as I know 'Sheriff Little' should then be the first black cop/driver for NFS ever? Just Paul made a different skin coloured (and well-done) Chinese driver/cop for his 'Chinese VW Passat' ...

As said I haven't seen the TV show but in my very young years actually, the show was then called 'Ein Duke kommt selten allein' on German TV but I cannot remember anything of it ..

That's why I have to rely on the community's tipps and hints for so many things concerning the show except for 'hazzardnet.com' and other sources for details ...

Frontal view of Sheriff Little's car as it looks like in-game ... take-downs altered to wig-waging headlight dummys, think this is a better compromise than white siren dummys ..

Edit: Added buttons to the cop's jacket now and mapped a belt buckle ... looks more 'complete' now, see below attached pics

Although his tough overall look now reminds me of something -erhm- even more 'tough':



''Young man - there's no need to feel down, I said - young man, pick yourself off the ground,
I said - young man, 'cause your in a new town - There's no need to be unhappy ... deeh deeh deeh deeh .. ''

Car is attached for testing (serial #30)
Convertible option hides or lets now both the bumper fangs and side windows appear .. any comments are welcome

If there are no objections to the current final state so far I will upload it yet today ..

Thx Dark One, though I'm not sure wether Sheriff Little's car had the bumper fangs most of time or not

'Sheriff Little' cop almost finished, what do you think folks?

Sheriff Little's car is almost finished (actually the car itself is done ..), needs a matching cop still, think I will base it on NJ's reworked 'Camaro Cop' (Officer_BCLJ)

Managed to do Sheriff Little's Police helmet now with a white star and that golden string by some mapping tricks w/o adding too many polies ..

Hey folks .. work on Sheriff Little (and his car of course) continues .. searchlights, chrome trim and bumper fangs now added to the car and Sheriff Little is wearing sunglasses and a helmet (though some detail on it is still missing) but his uniform is now properly coloured

Tried a different lightbar setup with white takedowns on the outer edges ...

the in-game pic still shows the wrong uniform though ..

Looking great and challenging, too as always ...

.. just as a tipp Paul, simply add (after a blank) 'width=640' to your pics' source codes so they will be displayed w/o exceeding the .html frame .. by clicking on them they will be fully displayed ..

Hehe, thanks for that hint Paul ...

'wrong' car here from Belgium (actually a '77 Plymouth) but really large detail pic of the '75 Coronet taillights:



'77 Plymouth Fury with 'recycled' '75 Coronet taillights ... all you can use

Decided now to already upload the Sheriff Rosco '76 Fury since the Sheriff Little car will yet take a while .. not because of the car itself but the external cop, have to 'create' a new one with darker skin, a helmet and pilot's sunglasses
Just d/l the Rosco car and have fun yet even w/o MADMAN's Gen'l Lee already online ..

Sheriff Little's car will follow asap as well as a matching '77 traffic State Police cruiser later on, keep an eye open folks ..

Speaking of it, the 'Roseville PD' cruiser is much the same base (the '77 Monaco) but since it uses a TwinSonic the resulting mesh would have much less polycount because of the square surfaces of it (.. and because it wouldn't necessarily need a lightbar interior as for a traffic cruiser), that an alternative, too?



Good thing is also that hazzardnet.com provides nice large renditions of the decal (middle here)



and artwork of the car (aside many others, too) ...



I haven't used stuff from the site yet (Rosco's car which is now published uses a photo rendered decal) but if so I'd better ask for permission to use their stuff actually?

[SOLD]

You're right Paul, the doty hubcaps are the correct Chrysler basic type ones, this is a continuous mistake I made on the Fury from beginning, seems I mistook it with the 'dog dish' caps from Chevrolet -LOL

It's not that I wouldn't have them -like on the '80s Gran Fury/Diplomat I reworked- but those still have old 12-sided wheels/caps and when I made the better 16-sided wheels for the Fury I forgot to alter it to the 'doty' texture ..

You described the 'bleed through' problem with his cars very well -caused by the layered polies- so this is one reason why I reworked the '76 Fury to 'real' 3D lights now with 'cut-outs'

When I'm finished with Little's car (Rosco's is as said finished as you can tell from the 'testcar' so should I perhaps upload it seperately from Sheriff Little's yet? My intention was to add it as a bonus 'sorry' car to Rosco's cruiser ) I'm planning to do a matching traffic pursuit cruiser as Dark One suggested, the '77 'neutral' State cruiser so there will be a new '77 base soon ..

For the grille and taillights I can 'recycle' the Monaco textures and mapping (so much alike Chrysler did in those years, too ), changes will only concern the mesh (hopefully) so it should be easy to update any '77 to it then later ..



.. notice the different lightbars again: with alley lights (above), 'Cali' style (rear driver side amber) w/o alley lights (below)



Good thing is, I will have to rework the front bumper to 3D marker/directional lights, too, if even to avoid the bleed through effect but looks better anyway, so it can again then be used ('recycled' ) for a '76 Coronet



Even found a usable pic showing the authentic '76 tailights for texturing, so it's 'all in' folks ...



http://bluesmobiles.proboards.com/thread/1300/sold-1976-coronet-chp-nevada .. the car is SOLD btw

Never understood why there had been the Monaco until '74, then the Coronet (which always had existed like the famous '65/66 and the early ones) and then later again the '77/78 Monaco ..



For some reasons I like the round older style headlights better than the square double lamps on the '77/78 model ..

Speaking of strange or rare lightbars ... my reworked '91 CV NYSP is just out on Police H.Q. which I had retrofitted with an authentic Whelen 8000, I think this was one of the first halogenic 'flashing-only' lightbars ever Paul?

P.S. I wrote a little tutorial concerning the 'alphaing' method in the H.Q. members' area ...
I'm afraid the alpha channel method cannot be done just by the CarCad mapping function since the mapping points need to be moved even less than a pixel's width (about a tenth or less of it until the greyshade looks 'ok' in 3D window - check this parallelly there), when I'm moving the points I even zoom in the ZModeler's mapping window to almost maximum resolution ..
But even I have to check the result in-game mostly but as said if the 'test' greyshade window looks ok (= grey) it roughly works, the rest is 'fine-tuning' (the brighter the grey, the less transparent and vice-versa) by moving the points about a 'μ' again then ..

There's a nice test method for 'alphaing' you can do as an exercise perhaps:
Don't move the aligned mapping points as a whole but just a single end point (or rotate the mapping points line slightly over the b/w border), the resulting greyshade in 3D window will then show a grey tone gradient so the resulting transparency will also produce a gradient from least (opaque) to most transparency (means invisible = 'cut-out' )

This is how I ever found out about this method and gathered experience btw ...

Add.: If you send to me the files that don't seem to work I can have a look, correct them incase and send them back so you can compare of what was possibly wrong ...
I didn't have that, so it was a long way of gathering my own experiences when discovering the method

WiLL: It's not 'magic', just the simple fact that a singular mapping point set near the border of 'full' and 'cut-out' produces something inbetween, neither opaque nor invisible but 'half-transparent' or to speak in alpha colours: neither black nor white but grey

You can watch this effect at the border of cut-out objects (in a smaller dimension), MADMAN had told about it as he described the 'frayed edges' of the side emblems on his Charger ..

... a matching parallel in physics would be Mr. Heisenberg's 'Unschärferelation', 'Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle' (HUP)

Speaking of physics .. the border between alpha = 0 and 255 could also be called an 'event horizon' like of a black hole (.. or a refrigerator door, you never know what's behind until you looked behind .. btw can you really tell if the light is actually 'off' when door is closed? xD) ... watched too many SF movies, I know ... well, time to be back in my padded cell and take my meds



A happy weekend @all

[don't]

Veeeery good Paul, and highly inventive as always ..

But you know what .. I could've made your life much easier by just sending you the new '76 'Rosco' Fury (it is so far finished, I only got sick before I could prepare the uploading files ) since it uses the same (not almost ..) mapping scheme like the Monaco or the '77 Fury, so you can simply import the AeroDynic to your Rosco Monaco and use it without those many layered transparent polies since it uses the alphaing (nice word you invented there.. -LOL) method.

First texture in car.viv (Car00.tga) is the plain red and blue with alley lights visible, second (Car000.tga) is plain red and blue w/o them visible (so you might notice the simple difference between them, just 'a pixel's width' .. )

Have a look at the attached NFSWizard pic showing Car00.tga (normal) and Car001.tga in just alpha channel (zoom in several times), the encircled area is the alpha string that makes the circular alley light discs either visible or not, you don't even need 'alphaing', just move the cut-out area downwards in your graphics editor (and colour them red/blue), that's it ..

Third (Car001.tga) is rear amber on driver side only w/o alley lights visible, fourth (Car002.tga) is both rear sides amber w/o.., fifth (Car003.tga) with alley lights visible ('full 'freaky' lighting') like you love it ...

All you have to do is alter the left outermost (driver side) or both outer dummys to orange or, if you will, adopt the Impala lighting scheme like you already did for it, good thing is you've got two more dummys since the Monaco only uses two taillight dummys ...

... uh yes, and the lightbar interior is updated with alley light reflectors/beams adapted and scaled 'onto the point' of course

Can't wait for a nice pursuit game setup for it .. with several different Cop cars (by our genius Ghostfile tinkerers maybe?!) and of course the much-anticipated General Lee from MADMAN ..

Came allover sudden during that one night and hit me like a sledgehammer ...

Sunglasses and helmet (and a correct uniform) are still to be done, it's just a first sketch again ..
See if I can manage to do also a matching cop.fce file (btw .. looks like an Army Trooper helmet to me he is wearing?!)

.. being in quite a hurry here (or is he running from that girl .. wouldn't know why ..?? )



Should also show that the new Rosco/Fury base is quite a good start for other Police cars from the TV show or maybe also for other cruisers from the Bandit movie still to come ...

Any idea of what should be a matching traffic pursuit cruiser beside Rosco's or Little's car?

@WiLL: the texture ART file from Empire City cop is ok, it's the conversion from NFS3 to an NFS4 file itself by CarCad that seemed to have inverted the mapping assignment, since all other textures within the cop.ART file are just plain 'colour fields' I haven't even noticed that mistake

Hi folks, sry. for late reply and delay on the Rosco car but I had to struggle with some short sickness ..



.. seems that the sustained cold spell here in Middle Europe had gotten me by the balls

I'm back proudly reporting having survived my severe (and almost deadly) cold -LOL .. and here's my 'sorry cake' for you:
I started doing Sheriff Little's (aka Don Pedro Colley) '75 Fury as a 'bonus vehicle' to Rosco's car ..
So now you can chase Bo 'n Luke in multiplayer using two different cars ...



attached pics: main body remapped (A-pillar mounted searchlights, additional trim and the bumper fangs still missing), Sheriff Little's face/head yet w/o typical sunglasses and that helmet he usually wore (and wrong uniform colours of course ) ..



here an obviously different car w/o bumper fangs:



@WiLL: .. never noticed the mirror-inverted emblem on the Empire cop's back ..
I haven't got NFS3 anymore so I can't tell if it is correctly displayed there .. how to fix? well, you need ART2TGA and export/expand the textures, mirror the corresponding file in your graphics editor, save (again as TGA) and reimport/insert and import again to car.viv, that's a bit complicated I'm afraid ..

It's more the other departments' cars seen in the show like the Atlanta Police Fury ..



.. the Finchburg's Sheriff's Patrol car ..



or Sheriff Little's car of Chickasaw County ..



.. Sheriff 'Droopy' Cathcarte of Osage County ..



.. Hatchapee County Sheriff Fury and and ..



Since the 'hazzardnet' site offers quite usable renditions of the various paint schemes I'm hoping someone will take the challenge to make them once the new base is out (and an 'easy to configure' lightbar schematic, too)

[and]

ZModeler pics of the probable 'James Best' variant by Paul ..

.. as said, needs just one or two small alterations in the texture - finished!

red encircled area on 'marked.png': lightbar cover (complete), red fields: driver side of lightbar (red coloured ), upper string of red fields: frontal half sections, left sectors: innermost, right sectors: outermost sections, whitish area (on the right) next to it: round alley light covers (white/clear here)

now compare with 'marked_1.png': whitish area is red/blue on upper half so alley light covers are 'hidden'/coloured (green circle), both left sectors (of which both upper and lower strings) are now greyish so innermost sections on lightbar are white/clear (yellow circle) on front and rear side

another example ('marked_2.png'): just the lower right strings/sectors (green circle) are orange means -> outer sections on rear side of the lightbar are now orange (= 'double_orange' scheme) with alley lights hidden/coloured (upper white area is red/blue)


Now an exercise for you: 'How to produce a Sheriff vehicle's AeroDynic lightbar by the following scheme ..' -LOL

[one]

Wasn't aware that I stirred up a hornet's nest here -LOL

The reason why I'm offering all these variants to you is that now everyone can easily use the lightbar and/or the base car for his own projects, simply choose the matching variant and alter it for your purposes if needed (thus uttering a certain hope that it's not me who will have to do all the other Police departments' variants seen in the show .. )

For example the alley lights can simply be 'hidden' by just moving the cut-out area on the texture by one pixel's width (there we go again .. -LOL) and altering the upper white area (which are the clear alley light covers when visible) to half red/blue

.. just compare the different textures later and you will know what I mean .. )

Now to the variants ... let me add this first: I didn't place the siren dummys at their 'proper' positions but a little wider apart and more to the outside so the outer ones might safely be altered to orange, additionally the individual timings are far enough 'apart' (delayed by '3' at '6er' timing) to avoid a certain 'dislimned' impression ..

As said, here are some pics of the different variants:

1) red/blue w/ alley lights ('basic_plus'), the standard setup the car will come with ..

2) red/blue w/o alley lights ('plain_basic')

3) red/blue w/o alley lights and one orange sector on driver side, the 'Cali setup' ('single_orange')

4) red/blue w/o alley lights and two orange sectors, the later '77/78 setup ('double_orange')

5) red/blue w/ alley lights plus two orange sectors .. 'for the freaks' ('double_orange_plus')

.. 3) to 5) might be altered to outer orange dummy(s), but this is optional and up to your own gusto

btw .. Paul, according to this scheme the private owned car by James Best can also be done (well aware that you cannot resist on that, eh?) if you alter the inner sections to grey/white (= clear), have a look at next posting