Back to black (and white) .. fullsize cars

[FranknFurter]

After my European cars 'debauchery' (sorry for that but it finally had to be done ..) I will now, as I already did in the meantime, focus on uploading some American cars reworks .. which also includes fullsize cars .. which simply mean fun (in a literal sense) concerning NFS

As an example .. again a BaardK based Police cruiser: '77 Dodge Monaco CHP .. see pic (CMon.jpg), any questions still?
.. three-gear Torqueflite automatic transmission, 400ci engine, 9.8ft. wheelbase, does that ring a bell to you?

MOPAR .. no, not 'Motown' but almost as good as that ..

For the younger ones .. simply google that expression

https://www.youtube.com/v/EWdeWITHb6c

.. there's more to come like that .. plain and simple truth .. stay tuned ...

[MADMAN_nfs]

SWEET looking stuff!

Finest Mopar Muscle, camouflaged as Law Enforcement 
Haha... i love them. Very nice work with the liveries.
Could not find any flaws with the Monaco you send btw.

Got some questions tho.
What is the advantage when assigning the rotators and lightbar-base to the :OC part (interior), why not join them to :HB like the lightbar hull? Is it to avoid z-fighting?
What you using to edit the reflections of cars (Zmodeler, FCE-Finish, FCE-Tweak)?

Awesome work. 

Greetings

[FranknFurter]

Thanks MADMAN ...

The Monaco I had sent you is only one of a small series with that car as said, I sat yesterday and reworked the whole roof part itself and the roof interior again a bit (made it symmetrical ..) so the first pic (the Monaco) shows already the updated one, it has as well a slightly reworked more realistic tailight ODL imitating the inner reflectors

Well those part assignments have also something to do with how the graphics engine of HS works .. As you might have noticed the .fce mesh file definition itself has a certain hierarchy concerning parts:
:OC, :OD, :ODL, :OH, ... :HB, :H..(wheels)

:OC is the 'innermost' or 'undermost' part which will not overlay any other parts if polies are assigned to that, this avoids certain 'bleed-through' effects, you're right if you meant that.

You also might have noticed that I use alpha channel method to generate less or darker transparency instead of making many layers of transparent polies which is poly costly but many did so in the past; thing is that the alpha channel method can also produce certain 'cut-out' effects if too close to or on top of other parts, that's why I define non-transparent polies to a 'lower-in-hierarchy' part than the transparent polies close to that, sounds complicated, I know ...

Another advantage of assigning less visible/necessary or, for the recognition of the car shape itself, less important areas of the car to a 'lower-in-hierarchy' part is that NFS also hides some parts earlier than others in distance view. First part to disappear is the driver (:OD) already in a very close distance, then :OC and other:O.. parts while even in farest distance all parts beginning with ':H...' and :OT as the convertible top remain fully visible. This provides a certain relief for the graphics engine and that's how that viewing hierachy was also meant originally I think.

As a result the game runs smoother with many cars visible (as for my experience), in times of contemporary poorer graphics cards of that time it was of some importance, but even with today's high end cards you may notice the game becomes a bit more laggy during a race when -behind a corner for example- suddenly the whole grid of cars becomes visible at once, especially on costly tracks like 'Raceway 2008' or such. This doesn't mainly depend on the quality of your machine or graphics card but the NFS grapics engine is rather old and wasn't originally created for displaying complex and highpoly stuff I guess, the graphics engine simply becomes overwhelmed it seems by having to display such

To the Plymouth again .. BaardK had also released then a 'civilian' or Racer variant of his Plymouth Fury, makes me thinking about to do likewise if that was desired

Uh yes, to your other question still I use ZModeler's 'Adjust normals' function to define reflections if that is what you meant? Thing is you have set the main axis right or to a clever spot to generate certain effects with normals adjusting.

Example: a square of only two polies (or 'faces') can produce a certain 'arched' or 'vaulted' illusion (normally you would need much more polies to do so by creating a 'real' 3D element) if you stretch or 'widen up' normals to a certain or even extreme extend, you have to set the main axis therefore very close behind and to the center of that square, depends on.

An example (as well as a good exercise) for that: an interior mirror of only two glossy ('high blending') faces (its vertices not 'joined' to the mirror's black frontal part though), place the main working axis (not to be mistaken with a part's local axis!) into the center of the four vertices, select them (make sure the normals are facing 'straight ahead' by default before) and then use the 'adjust normals' tool, pull the 'Projection' lever to full extend, you can instantly see the effect in the 3D window

That's also a clever way to 'pretty up' simpler and/or lowpoly cars or cars with let's say it carefully 'unfavourable' done mesh structure like I also consider BaardK's cars although he did a good work on those cars while contemporary muscle cars by others were looking rather poor to that time

[FranknFurter]

... currently reworking the LAPD ('Adam-12') Plymouth Fury cruiser with the new corrected roof of the CHP Monaco I did last night ..

some real pics ... and details of those 'tin can' lights .. pity that HS has that 'bleed-through' effects with single light dummies
Frontal lights of it were steady red ('Stop' light ..) while the amber lights facing rear could be switched either as wig-wag flashers, simultaneous flashing or just steady lighting ...

last pic: current state of the Adam-12 LAPD Fury with new ODL and that mesh corrected roof ..

[FranknFurter]

.. just a short glance at the last Fury, the 'SFPD' and 'Generic Pursuit' Fury, same car, different texture .. plain and simple .. as said ..

.. it uses the same mesh like the CHP Monaco but with that different undivided Plymouth grille and without California Highway Patrol extra equipped Twinsonic lightbar stuff (means w/o forward facing red stop light and backwards facing amber flashlight) .. [add.] this always means horror to do on older CHP cars [/add.]

.. after I imported stuff and reworked the car with the new ODL and the corrected roof I will upload the cars asap (Fury and Monaco), I do not want to hold back those fun to drive cars as longer as necessary ..

There's still the NYPD Fury to do .. it doesn't have yet those updated Chrysler 'heavy duty' wheels the Monaco/Fury already has as well as some other stuff still lacking, so this will take a while to update that, but it's worth it since the Fury had been a very popular and somewhat famous Police cruiser with the NYPD, the cops loved that car and as it was exchanged by the later M-body Dodge Diplomat (which then later, as a matter of fact, became even more popular than the Fury in its time .. ) many older cops quitted service earlier since they didn't want to drive in a 'small car' with 'just' 283ci, strange but somewhat comprehensible ..

I love this very last pic ... straight from way back in the seventies ..

Btw .. there is a certain change when driving this car in a Pursuit game .. the almost 2 tons of live weight produce a noticeable different physical reaction on lightweighted sports cars when being hitted by this archetypal road cruiser ... 

[Rider66]

Hey Frank, I remember doing one of these '70 classics, too. Still got this one on my disk... But in never was finished by me, through. That was supposed to be '71 Custom 500, quite popular fleet car during these days.


As for your project, I believe civilian version should is not desired, it's a must 
Can't recall a lot of decent full-size cruisers for HS.

[Remko]

That looks really neat, I love the old school separate horns and lights, as opposed to the standard rectangular light unit. 

(also, fixed the Youtube link in your 1st post, thought you wouldn't mind )

[FranknFurter]

@Rider: Haha, coooool pic .. crash as crash can be (I also love that old school CHP look in light blue/white colours)

I remember I once had done that old DodgeBoy based '90s CHP Ford (see pic below of my updated version) in excatly that same livery .. but I don't have the texture anymore .. must be that I deleted it when I reworked the car .. dang
Yes, you've seen that right, it has also those updated turbine rims from one of Nils' newer CV's ..

Where have you got the Custom from, looks like one of Robin'7t4's cars for HP2? Cool stuff but very highpoly
Do you have the file still? Go ahead then send it to me, will have a look at it, maybe I can finish it and make it more 'digestible' for HS
I had his Plymouth Fury III running on HP2 with also a custom made Police texture and a single beacon roof light then

And yes, your wish is granted, will then make a civil version, too .. but as you should know me by now, it will then come with also a gimmick .. will do it then as an undercover cop car on serial #32 or #36 but Racer driveable (Police option -> off) with that typical 'teardrop' Police light either internal on the dashboard or attached on the roof each as convertible top option, would you like that?

(Add.) You can see that on the last pic, it is my '86 Dogde Diplomat from DodgeBoy base reworked with that option already ..

Btw. should it also have that inevitable vinyl roof those cars had back then? The 'Brougham' luxury variant had that ...



@Remko:
Yeah me, too ... that's why I also love that old Gran Torino Sheriff from BaardK I just had uploaded

https://www.youtube.com/v/nFvRvSxsW-I

So ...what the heck was wrong with that youtube link you mentioned? It worked for me ..?

Slowly gettin' into that '70s mood again .. yeah groovy Baby ..

https://www.youtube.com/v/CeE0fpKjbKI

Have you got your Mojo workin' fellas?

... the NYPD Fury has that old school Signal Stat lighbar, tried to rework it from some prototype pictures ... I love these old slow turning rotators though hard to simulate that in HS because of that very slow red/white change ..

what a mess of lighting .. that's why they finally got rid of seperated lights I guess ...

Yet another picture of the Adam-12 Fury .. having arrested a '69 Dodge Charger speeder ... yeah that fits..

[Rider66]

Hey Frank, that Custom was one of my personal projects. Like many others, scratch-made. However, in some cases I'm just too plain lazy to finish them for good 
The whole idea of me these days was whole '71 series of Ford fullsize products. It's my second personal favourite frontend:

While as first place always been 1970 Pontiac (never started, but maybe - in future):

I'll send you that Ford later, when I'll be back at home. Ain't that bad in terms of polygons, too.

Yeah, undercover sounds like a good thing.

As for the vinyl tops, yeah, some Mopars with pillared sedan bodystyle had them, too, like here:


Thus I guess your proposal sounds quite correct. However, most of these were top trim levels, so I guess you'll need to add some additional details here and there.

[FranknFurter]

Thanks Rider

I will use another trick for the roof I already did on the '83 LTD Pursuit/Racer combination .. the Racer 'luxury' variant will have a vinyl roof by default while the 'cheaper' Police variant has a plain metal roof ... Made that by adding a second roof that is assigned to the Police parts as (:OT), the default roof is therefore slightly downscaled (100 * 99 * 101 = 99.99%, less than 100% but notably more than just 99% - what you would perceive optically), this works fine with the Ford and you don't even notice any difference except the car having a metal roof instead of the vinyl roof then .. and it doesn't even 'bleed through' ..

Another question still is if I should make different rims like the 'luxury' version has it, but the heavy duty rims were mounted to Police cars even if they were undercovers

Current state of the 'civilian' Plymouth (just a test phase) with already that internal teardrop light (left it visible ('top up') for testing issues..) This is just a test texture with one colour only ... have to make a customizable one still ..

Those Seventies' fullsize Fords (LTD) are ugly, sorry .. a sheer debauchery of too much sheet metal IMHO ... I like the Chrysler and GM ones better, they were somewhat 'classy' ..

[FranknFurter]

A first test with a recently created customizable texture, I imported the mesh colour palette from Baardk's original civilian Fury '77. The vinyl roof has the secondary body colour of that palette, although I must admit that I don't really like the provided colours of it .. perhaps I'll find better palette from another Chrysler car or I'll create one myself from real factory colour tables (if I find some) ..

Gave the car now serial #20 for a test Pursuit lap, you can see that the cop car uses the convertible option which is in this case the 'teardrop' Police beacon behind the windshield.
The Racer has also serial #20 but with 'top down' (w/o the light then) and a custom colour I could now choose in menu.

I didn't change the rims, just made the hubcaps a little larger what looks a bit better IMO, looked up some prototype pictures and found that those Steel rims also came with the basic car and with just several different optional hubcaps (means that I will also have to import the altered wheels into the other Furys and the Monaco .. )

Next test will be with the downscaled vinyl roof plus that second layer 'metal' roof which I will assign then to the 'police parts' (:OT)

I will also map some bodylines to it later if I manage to, the car looks a bit too 'plain' without. I'm also considering 3D bodylines but that will raise polycount too much again, but I will test that ...
I will not just lay them onto the car like it was with the Baardk original car but detach and downscale the doors, trunk and bonnet, rearrange them and 'fill the gaps' afterwards .. bunch of work to do still ..
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2nd test with now altered mesh colour palette and somewhat more darkened 'plain' textures, looks much better I think and I also added the metal roof as cop part to the car. You can see that the cop car uses the metal roof (the dashboard light is just hidden by the cop ) while the Racer car has the vinyl roof. The cop car uses of course the plain Racer texture by default, but that medium grey is now quite ok compared to the much too bright light grey from the picture above I think ... could perhaps even be brightened up again still a bit, what do you think?

I attached the intermediate state car for testing .. as said, it is yet far from finished (bodylines etc.), but before I continue working you may have suggestions, questions etc., please test it; I will be thankful for comments, hints or other feedback ... It comes with just the AI external soundfile (Ocareng.bnk) for attachment file size reasons, simply drag and drop (copy) the missing soundfiles from default EA Camaro into it still for proper V8 sound

.. looks also well as a serial #32 on Hometown it seems ... but weren't fleets normally 'single branded' ..?

Forgot to mention (my age, sry..) that the car is 'classless' because I wanted to have also the auxiliary cop car (which in this case is the Fury ..) as a pursuing car ingame

[Paul Spain]

A first test with a recently created customizable texture, I imported the mesh colour palette from Baardk's original civilian Fury '77. The vinyl roof has the secondary body colour of that palette, although I must admit that I don't really like the provided colours of it .. perhaps I'll find better palette from another Chrysler car or I'll create one myself from real factory colour tables (if I find some) ..

Gave the car now serial #20 for a test Pursuit lap, you can see that the cop car uses the convertible option which is in this case the 'teardrop' Police beacon behind the windshield.
The Racer has also serial #20 but with 'top down' (w/o the light then) and a custom colour I could now choose in menu.

I didn't change the rims, just made the hubcaps a little larger what looks a bit better IMO, looked up some prototype pictures and found that those Steel rims also came with the basic car and with just several different optional hubcaps (means that I will also have to import the altered wheels into the other Furys and the Monaco .. )

Next test will be with the downscaled vinyl roof plus that second layer 'metal' roof which I will assign then to the 'police parts' (:OT)

I will also map some bodylines to it later if I manage to, the car looks a bit too 'plain' without. I'm also considering 3D bodylines but that will raise polycount too much again, but I will test that ...
I will not just lay them onto the car like it was with the Baardk original car but detach and downscale the doors, trunk and bonnet, rearrange them and 'fill the gaps' afterwards .. bunch of work to do still ..
.
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2nd test with now altered mesh colour palette and somewhat more darkened 'plain' textures, looks much better I think and I also added the metal roof as cop part to the car. You can see that the cop car uses the metal roof (the dashboard light is just hidden by the cop ) while the Racer car has the vinyl roof. The cop car uses of course the plain Racer texture by default, but that medium grey is now quite ok compared to the much too bright light grey from the picture above I think ... could perhaps even be brightened up again still a bit, what do you think?

I attached the intermediate state car for testing .. as said, it is yet far from finished (bodylines etc.), but before I continue working you may have suggestions, questions etc., please test it; I will be thankful for comments, hints or other feedback ... It comes with just the AI external soundfile (Ocareng.bnk) for attachment file size reasons, simply drag and drop (copy) the missing soundfiles from default EA Camaro into it still for proper V8 sound

.. looks also well as a serial #32 on Hometown it seems ... but weren't fleets normally 'single branded' ..?

Forgot to mention (my age, sry..) that the car is 'classless' because I wanted to have also the auxiliary cop car (which in this case is the Fury ..) as a pursuing car ingame

You've really made Baardk's car look good, Congratulations..I thought it would be hopeless as the car was way too big and also too wide, Now all I see is it's kind of wide still and toward the back a bit big.

Here is the base I use (From RenaFox)

https://sketchfab.com/models/c2c00ad1e8ed4e67ba9dd3f719f0b4ca

You can use it to guide you along in your reworks on the car Baardk made.

I have made several police cars using her base and it works well too if you'd rather just use it .




I'm sure you know that one  .

I have also begun to convert the 1974 Dodge Monaco base to the 1975-1977 Royal Monaco (was the Illinois State Police and Chicago Police cars in The Blues Brothers movie)

[WiLL]

Hi there PaulSpain, an Frank, too ahh, you guys are doing a cool job! on old heavy Steel Classic, Cop cars! The white one,looks Simular, to Rosco,Guys, Copcar from" Dukes of Hazzard"Tv show,,so.. an Awesome, good luck on the Blues,brothers remake)  doesn't that police HQ. Cop car site, have them,already.. I can't remember,  but... great keep on,it... I try to Cheer people up, on this site, not cut them down.. so,to give Encouragement nice pics! )

[FranknFurter]

Thanks to both of you Paul and _WiLL_,

@Paul: Concering Baardk's base car ... well, as if I didn't excatly do what you mentioned when I reworked the car for the first time many years ago .. scaling its width and height ... I imported prototype pictures or blueprints if I had found some into ZModeler as background pictures .. I'm not an absolute beginner with CAD you know .. it was a part of my job for years, a rather small and sometimes annoying but an important one ...

Well .. as I already mentioned, Baardk was very eager to produce cars with a good intention since those American muscle or fullsize cars weren't as popular back then than they are now meanwhile again, I have much respect and a certain admiration for that.

As I spoke to people in Norway I found out that it has the largest muscle car fan community in Europe .. but this is no wonder since fuel is somewhat cheap compared to other European countries because of their State's own oil company 'Statoil'...

Ok, he had been building his cars with a method I know from CAD modelling as to create several geometric figures for a start, refigure and reshape them and then merge the different parts into each other what produces a lot of unnecessary polygons you don't even see in the end, I did the best I could to eliminate those 'invisible' polies for filesize and poly reduction.

Nevertheless it is a good base and if you are clever enough you know how to model such things properly, and you can also generate nice reflections and correct normals in a suitable CAD program which ZModeler undoubtedly is, it has many basic functions I know from professional CAD of which I was astonished about the first time I used it, ok it is mainly focused on importing and modelling car models concerning formats but you can also load 3DS or even *.lwo objects ('lightwave object' that is related to the common blender format) which was very common in 3D and still is.

As I already mentioned ..many times before I think .. I do refrain from using too highpoly bases for the .fce format since this lags the game immensely and many polies and details aren't even displayed properly by the poor HS graphics engine so I consider this as more or less useless ...

I do rather prefer simpler but usable bases the game can handle concerning fluent rendering ingame than overwhelming the graphics engine with detail that isn't even displayed in the end IMHO.

Here are two pics of what the base car looked like before (it is the original base car file in a different display order or 'hierarchy') and what it is now .. ok, there was still a lot more to do better undoubtedly, but since the Fury is again a very old project of mine I recently started to get into it again, let's see what still can be done

@WiLL: thanks for your kind words and encouragement

Can I ask your for opinion of something still? Baardk gave his Fury those five spoke 'GT wheels' which are very popular with muscle car fans .. does that look to extravagant and/or inadequate since it also used as an undercover cop car? .. don't know, just an experiment

The rims on that company pic are mounted to the top trim level car it seems .. should be somewhat highpoly even if I found them on a different car, and just a textured multispoke wheel doesn't look to well I think

.. and if you read the company text carefully those are also just wheel covers, I mentioned that in an above posting that the basic wheels were just steels rims, something like GT wheels or other snug stuff were all of them aftermarket products

What also not should be forgotten is the fact that Plymouth was just Chrysler's basic product line with 'the cheap stuff', Dodge was intermediate and Chrysler branded products themselves were the top level and most expensive company cars ..

[Paul Spain]

Thanks to both of you Paul and _WiLL_,

Can I ask your for opinion of something still? Baardk gave his Fury those five spoke 'GT wheels' which are very popular with muscle car fans .. does that look to extravagant and/or inadequate since it also used as an undercover cop car? .. don't know, just an experiment

In all honesty I never have saw them on a police type car/ 4 door sedan, I have on 2 doors like the Sport Fury and Sport Monaco, I don't know if you was planning on doing the 2 door versions also later or not, I'd thought about it on the base I showed you BUT I'm annoyed they used totally diffrent taillights on that type and it was be very difficult to reshape in so I opted out of that idea. 

I also tried to make the base you gave me more Dodgey and hoped at first maybe to use it to make the Royal Monaco but in the end I found it much easier (given all the reshaping I'd have had to do) to just mod the 1974 Monaco to the 1975-1977 Royal Monaco. It's coming along nice,Just have some gaps to fill here-there and then put your better wheels onto it.