'75/76 Fury continued: Sheriff Rosco's car

[FranknFurter]

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

[Dark One]

I know what do you mean. The thing with this show is, that one car might have started the pursuit with lightbar that have single amber, and alley lights, then switch to the one without alley lights, then to double amber and alley lights, back to the aforementioned, and finally end up with double amber and no alley lights, all in the same chase.

[FranknFurter]

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)

[Paul Spain]

This is exactly the design that was on the 1978 Dodge Monaco he drove up to Greenville that day I met him  .

For his personal 1976 Plymouth Fury it has the opposite of this, Move that white to the left and you got it  .

Although it might have been changed since his death, Both cars might have been changed as a collector purchased them and now owns both.

[WiLL]

Looks good there, Frank.... yup, yeah, what Paul said on your your, post, was good too, from Rosco's real car that people bought..? I'm trying to enjoy this Gen'L from my other game, this car has no Animated driver so isn't very good. 

But brings some enjoyment, I been going tru- hard battles, this month!( my bank account. Was stolen from, Amazon.Com,, they are spos,, give my bucks back,.. Damn Thieves website,,  I wasn't no Prime" member! Lies, they did. Hassel, has messed me up more..with my bank, on Over draft Fees, peer B. Sheeet,, all I did was Order, a Nice Video card, from that Damn, site!,.last month 

I'm not having a very good month.!. but I Won this other battle,, on Me!. I was Sued,,,. That was great an I thanked them, all!)

So it's been not great, so like everyone else at times.. here an there. 

Frank why on Empire,cops, Cape in back, why is it, Upside down,.for, I think I got it from, your other Terminator Fury car months ago,.why is it like this for, any Reason can you tell me how fix thus peace Bud.. k?

[FranknFurter]

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 ..

[WiLL]

Funny SpongeBob,face there, I've felt that way all week,, from my Bank issues, of being Ripped off, enough.. Sheriff's Littles, Face looks great w/o, Sunglasses, frank? This Art to Tag, is it around anymore?
So it's a Converted,.Tag file, from Nfs'3 so that's in the Cop.art in car.Viv'', yea. Thanks for talking  back to me,again   
Well,.sorry you had Sickness,.Spring colds can be the worse,.unless you was on a Bender" Sickness,.lol my old grandpa did those for 2,weeks Straight long ago, glad he stopped Drinking yrs ago he's,80 now I try fix this like you say but need the art,tga-,,program. Thanks,
Nice Combo set too.   

It's nfs'4 Frank

[FranknFurter]

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

[Dark One]

Good to hear that you are feeling better, and nice work so far. I chuckled at the sight of sheriff Little wearing the Hazzard county uniform.


As for the traffic cars, I guess you can't go wrong with either the Roseville PD, or the State Police. Both are black and white '77 Monacos, one also have the Aerodynic (so you can actually save your time by recycling either the CHP Monaco or the LAPD one from your previous projects ). Unless you feel like going all the way with that blue/white South Dakota wannabe, which happens to also be the '75 Fury.

[Paul Spain]

Thought you might like to know, I was toying around with the 1978 Monaco and I managed to delete those pesky hidden polys that was giving me trouble modding textures and schemes, It wound up being a bit more complicated than I thought though as I didn't just have to delete some, I then had to move and stretch the existing ones as the ones that was being buggy was filler for gaps so to speak ???so I guess that's why Baardk built the hood by having so many layered polys but in the end I got it worked out and even did a Rosco car from the CHP Monaco, I ripped your AeroDynic from that 1985 LAPD Impala. I'm not good a alphaing though so it has the old copy lenses method to achieve transparency.



I made the sheriff decals for the fenders as seperate pieces since I ran out of room to map them and Rosco's face too  .

[FranknFurter]

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 ..

[Paul Spain]

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 ..

I also changed the hudcaps to the official MoPar ones and swaped the mirrors to those from RenaFox's car (you know,the one used to make that Surete Du Quebec car) (since I only remember seeing these type cars with the doty caps vs solid 1940's-1950's style moon caps (as they was known). It was odd the alphaing didn't work on my work for some reason  I even put the lens texture exactly where you had the TwinSonic lens texture on the original car I used (1978 CHP Monaco) I also tried it when I made the 1977 HotWheels emergency service fleet of Monacos, Same thing, Wouldn't work, In game the lightbar lenses looked solid and not see through so I had to use the old tried and true method, The HotWheels cars feature a rarely seen lightbar (Mars  Aurora Borealis) which oscillates in several directions rather than rotating AND you wanna talk crazy lighting LOL..Although it wouldn't be good to light them up these cars are decked out with spotlights, They got 2 front facing and 2 side facing on the roof and twin windshield spotlights  . I'm posting about it in my thread on bringing my diecast vehicles to life now so all car see them. 

Still though there is one bug I can't solve, The disappearing head and tail lights that happens as the car goes further away, It only happens on replay views but still annoying to have it. I tried moving the lights in a bit more..Nope,Tried pulling them a bit out,That didn't look right, So we're stuck with it. You mentioned you'd solved this on your latest though (the 1975-1976 Plymouth Fury) Maybe you can on the 1977-1978 Monaco/Fury too?

[WiLL]

Strange light effect, bug Paul but a good story.
To bad it won't get fixed rite, oh I'm trying to have a better weekend.  Now an I been fixing up the last track more.
With better road sides, an fixed that,left bank sticking things. So I try not being so... Serious so much. Maybe Frank has his magic on this?
He sure knows, his stuff on Cars.
Cheers pal. )

[FranknFurter]

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

[WiLL]

Have a well, weekend... guys