RKM

Mapping Tutorial I have my own way of mapping bodies in an efficient but quick way that works well for me so feel free to experiment and figure out what ways work best for you. I'll include some useful tips that painters will be very grateful you include should you choose to have someone else paint it for you. Step 1 Open Blender (I use 2.49b but you should be able to apply this to all versions) then open the model you want to map. I'll be using Andrew Sheets' Nissan Titan body for this tutorial. Step 2 Once you have your model open it should look something like this You may need to scale and/or resize the windows in blender depending on your monitor size. To scale the bottom panel in blender hold CTRL and use your mouse wheel to zoom in or out. Next we need to add another panel so in total we'll have 3. You'll quickly see why this is important in a moment. Right click along the panel's borders and click split and choose how you'd like to split the split the window, I try to keep them evenly sized so I can see what I'm doing easily. Then in the newly split window we have you need to click on the icon in the bottom left of the window and choose UV/Image Editor. Also while we're here make sure you go ahead and click on Image->New and 2048x2048 or any size you wish and that is all you really need for this step. *TIP: It's never a bad idea to save your progress no matter how minor it may be, just press CTRL+W.* Step 3 Now the real fun begins. Right click on your model to select it and press TAB to enter edit mode. As you can see I have already mapped this so if you wish you can use it as a guide along through this tutorial but just for this tutorial we will be redoing it entirely so don't worry too much if you have nothing that shows up in the UV/Image Editor window. I personally find it easiest to separate all of the parts before I do anything else at this point. I recommend using a combination of vert and face selection for this as well as the actual mapping portion when we get to that. To selected verts/edges/faces press B twice for the brush and left click to select, you can deselect by clicking in your mouse wheel and once you're finished a section you can press X to disable brush selection. You can also zoom in or out by using your mouse wheel and to adjust the camera you can hold SHIFT and drag your mouse while clicking the mouse wheel down. *TIP: Shift+Space Bar will put the active window your cursor is over into fullscreen* *TIP: This small cube at the far right of Vert, Edge, and Face select mode is both useful and annoying, you can see the lines visible on the other side of the body which allows you to see and select the other side without rotating the view though I personally prefer to keep this selected so that I can't see those as more often then not I wind up selecting a piece or two from the wrong side and have to fix it later.* *TIP: The numpad if you have one can be used to get exact rotations which is tremendously useful for mapping. You'll really only need 1 (Front), 3 (Side), and 7 (Top)* Step 4 Once you've got your pieces separated in some fashion the actual mapping process can begin. However you decide to split the body is entirely up to you and as long as it works and doesn't give you any issues then there isn't really a wrong way of doing it. *TIP: Press P and then click on Selected to separate the piece you have selected.* Here is the entire body split apart to my liking, please do not move them apart like this as this is simply just to show you what all I have separated. *TIP: Press Z to quickly alternate between textured and wire frame view.* Step 5 Mapping time! Now, there are several ways you can go about mapping depending on what you want to do. Two examples are you can do each side entirely as it's own piece or you can do it with all the separated pieces being their own mapping section. Either way once you've chosen which you'd prefer to do you can begin the actual mapping process. Just to make this a little quicker I'm going to do each side (Fender, Cab, and Bed) as one large piece. There are good things and bad things about both of these ways so what may work for one person may not work for another. First I'll start by joining the side pieces together like so. Then the same thing for the other side. *TIP: CTRL+J is used to join objects together, depending on the model you may want to press W and Remove Doubles in edit mode to remove double verts however this can impact the actual detail of the model to the point where it may need to be edgesplit again to bring back the lost quality* To map the body or anything in blender press U and then click on Project From View however if we do this from the current angle in the window it will not look pretty at all so this is where the trick with the numpad comes in and if you don't have one you should be able to use the on screen keyboard that comes with your computers operating system. Be sure to zoom in as well for this as we can always adjust the size of the mapping later in the UV/Image Editor and I prefer to scale things down as opposed to up. Press 3 and zoom in a little then press U->Project From View and it should look something like this. Just slightly bigger than our blank image on the right, now for the other side DO NOT ZOOM on the MODEL WINDOW (left) or it will throw off the scale and it can be an annoying thing to fix so once you find a comfortable zoom level to use for mapping a particular item I recommend leaving it there while you finish mapping with the same method. You can use the numpad keys to rotate the camera around (2, 4, 6, and 😎 which I find to be very useful. Also be sure to select each piece once you've rotated to that viewing side otherwise you may wind up remapping the previous item and you will have to go back to fix that. I also HIGHLY recommend that instead of leaving items on the blank image you position them around it and try to keep track of where they are. If you are having an issue and it's just downright annoying you can always try using unwrap or unwrap from smart projections both of which can be extremely useful for very curvy models. *TIP: It's always a good idea to save, press CTRL+W to automatically save. Just click okay on the pop-up but please note this will overwrite the .blend of what you currently have open so you may want to create a backup just to be safe.* Step 6 Mapping certain things like the headlights on this body for example can prove to be a bit of a challenge so you may need to experiment with a viewing angle that covers as much of the item as possible. Don't be afraid to zoom in for these otherwise it may be difficult to see what exactly you're doing. Sometimes you have to get a little creative to make things easier but you'll more than likely be thankful that you took the extra time to do this as lining things up just from paint can be an extremely time consuming process if the mapping isn't the greatest. Step 7 Select everything (CTRL+A) and join it all together (CTRL+J) Even trying to keep track of things I still wound up with a potential problem area, I'm actually glad this happened because it really makes it clear what you're trying to avoid running into by spacing everything out around the blank image. Now we can place everything on the blank image in whatever configuration you wish. I try to make it easy for painters to follow that may not have access to blender. I like to start with the bigger pieces and then fit in the smaller pieces wherever I have room without scaling them down too much. You can move things around in the UV/Image Editor just like we did in blender earlier when separating our pieces. Press B twice for the brush select tool, left click to select, click the mouse wheel to deselect. Should you need to scale anything down I highly recommend you do identical pieces together so they are the same size as this will save you or your painter from a headache later on. Once you have the pieces selected just press S to scale it down by scrolling the mouse wheel. You want all of your pieces WITHIN the blank black image, anything that is too close to the edges or simply not on it will have problems being textured or not be textured at all. *TIP: Press G to move objects around.* Finish placing all of your pieces, whatever orientation you choose is entirely up to you as everyone has their own personal preference but make sure to not that if someone painting it rotates it to make it more convenient for them that they rotate it back otherwise it will have some obvious issues. *TIP: This little magnet is incredibly useful, you can either click it to activate or press SHIFT+TAB, it will snap to the nearest verts if you hold CTRL while moving an item which can make lining things up perfectly incredibly simple and easy.* Step 8 You're pretty much done mapping now and It's best to bake the body or object at this stage which you can learn how to do here. Make sure once you've finished the bake you save the image or you will have to do that part over again. I would suggest exporting the wire frame for you and anyone else to overlay in their painting program of choice so they know exactly where everything is. To do this go to the UV/Image Editor window and click on UVs->Scripts->Save UV Face Layout... and it should be sized the same as your blank image. Simply click export and you now have a wire frame to go with your mapping. The UV wire frame you exported will by in .tga format, you can leave it as that or convert it something else if you wish. If all went well you should have a pretty good idea of how mapping in blender works. Hopefully you were able to learn something new from this tutorial or find some information that will prove useful. If anyone has any questions, feel free to ask as I or another member will more than likely be able to help. Also just to make sure it's noted clearly, a very large part of this entire mapping tutorial that is mostly geared towards bodies can really be applied to anything in blender with some minor tweaks.

Double Test.... New stuff is fun, we're moving up in the world until you break the site again. Seeing as the entire site underwent a software upgrade and just not a layout addition like previously, I doubt it is an option at the moment.

My average frame rate.

To put it quite bluntly, no. You want a dedicated graphics card not the onboard chipset if you want to get any kind of decent performance, a good strategy is usually to read ratings and reviews for what you're looking at in your price range.

It's definitely sad any time a life is lost but sadly it seems like that has to happen before anything to do with safety is improved upon. I watched a majority of the race because there wasn't anything else on that interested me and several of the crashes before Karam's I noticed an absurd amount of debris coming off of the cars even going back to Kimball's qualifying crash. I didn't like the feeling I was left with seeing that in all honesty. Yes the debris is helping dissipate the energy that the crash causes but the chance of someone driver or even spectator being hit with something are far more likely than they have been in the past. The one concern I do have moving forward if they decide to bring some form of canopy for driver safety is that no matter how strong they make it and how many things they test on it is that at some point it will give or break, how much that will take to cause will hopefully forever remain unseen outside of testing facilities. The energy always has to go somewhere, if any of you take a look at some of the crashes in the past that have claimed the lives of race car drivers you will notice that a large portion of them do not seem to be severe but you need to always keep in mind that a collision of any kind results in energy transfer and more often than not the damage we don't see is what claims lives. I may be in the minority but even I'm not sure a canopy would have saved Justin Wilson, it's possible he may have lived but with severe brain damage but one thing I am quite sure of is that he did not suffer at all and I do in fact think that he was killed on impact. We're left with a lot of questions that have yet to be answered but one day they will be answered and racing will be a little more safer but you can't make it injury or death proof. Rest in peace Justin, you will definitely not be forgotten.

Steam Afterfall InSanity Extended Edition BattleBlock Theater Battlefield 2 Borderlands 2 Castle Crashers Counter-Strike: Global Offensive Crash Time II The Culling Of The Cows Dead Island Dead Island: Epidemic Don't Starve Don't Starve Together Beta Euro Truck Simulator 2 Farming Simulator 2013 Garry's Mod Guns of Icarus Online Insurgency Ionball 2: Ionstorm Left 4 Dead 2 Left 4 Dead 2 Beta Metro 2033 Metro Last Light Redux Monaco Nosferatu: The Wrath of Malachi Pool Nation Portal 2 Serena Space Hack Team Fortress 2 Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory Toribash Trine 2 Weird Worlds: Return to Infinite Space Worms Reloaded XCOM: Enemy Unknown Not Steam League of Legends Minecraft rFactor Rigs of Rods World of Warships And some others that I don't remember.

Name: Ryan McCauley Truck: Stone Crusher AIM: rkmphotog07

In addition to what Chad posted in the mega thread, I figure perhaps it would be a fairly good idea to make this it's own thing just so it's easier to find since we do actually have members from outside of North America even if they don't post. (Hi! ) I did some searching and found that in addition to Japan there appear be quite a few number of additional events however at the moment none of them link to anything but a page with a description about Monster Jam in the main language for that event's region. The events found so far are as followsource Argentina Australia Brazil Chile China Guatemala India Ireland Japan source South Korea Malaysia New Zealand Norway Panama Singapore United States Venezuela Now, I am completely aware that just because there is a page listed labelled as "International Events" doesn't necessarily mean they are going to happen. For all we know aside from the ones confirmed on the official Monster Jam website these could just be served as translations about what Monster Jam is but then I must ask the question why is this page not somewhere on the actual Monster Jam website other than what I've linked above? So with all of that said what do all of you think that the possibility of Monster Jam being a real global form of motorsport entertainment with what looks to be several events in countries they've never been to or have not been to for several years? Also could we maybe get this pinned as a sort of Non-North American Monster Jam thread? (Non-Monster Jam is also welcome.) *Also given a large portion of these appear to be in areas that may not speak English very well if at all should not deter anyone from joining in on this conversation. All we ask is that you provide some sort of translation if your English is not very good as most of us here aren't capable of reading or communicating in other languages.

Pretty much what has been said by Mark and Johan is right, this has been a problem for a long time. Stuff like that is what kills communities like this. I see people complain about Grave Diggers being made multiple times but do you have any idea how many of those were made for MTM2? I see no reason why having multiple versions of the same trucks or tracks is a bad thing because it adds content and lets people learn. Sure it can be a little repetitive but as long as they're learning something we shouldn't care how many people make the same truck. Another problem related to that is what's going on in this thread is people saying how their unreleased (and most of the time there isn't even a picture of it on the site) is better than what someone new released. You are not helping in anyway when you or anyone else does this. All it's going to do is drive people away that want to help create content. I'll put it simply like this, shut up and post yours when it's finished and let the community decide which one they like the most.

So you are the Greeny from MTM2.... you may see some old names from those days floating around here. If you're interested in learning and are afraid of posting it publicly you can always show it to a few people privately and get some opinions but remember we ALL started with very basic things to get to the point we're at now. I haven't really posted in SYP as of late because to me nothing I make will ever be good enough. Is it easy to learn how to make things for any game? No. It almost never is but if it is truly something you want to do then the only thing that is going to stop you is yourself.

Not sure why we aren't placing some blame on the driver as it looks to be very clear there are no wheel tethers on the truck. I'm interested in finding out if that is indeed the case as this truck has competed in Monster Jam before. If there are it's not impossible for them to break but they usually slow the tire down quite a bit either way. This along with the lack of proper wall protection are the biggest issues I see from the video although there isn't really much that is going to keep a 500lb+ bouncing tire and rim assembly from clearing some walls if they're not tall enough. I watched the video a few times and the tire is just no match for the flimsy fencing they used to section off the areas of the track as it simply ploughed right through the fence versus scaling it. Either way it's a freak accident and could have happened anywhere and I hope everyone recovers fully.

So we're just your cheap entertainment these days eh!? I'll keep all of you in my thoughts, keep us posted if you're able to.

That's pretty awesome that you get to see your designs running on the track, I've always wondered how difficult it would be to get into doing that for a race team. Congrats! Sucks any time a car gets tore up like that but I found it somewhat amusing seeing that and then your signature that says potato.... oddly fitting somehow.

CVH's Digger was the only one to run that coil set-up unless we count Adam's legend, and just in case anyone needs a brief overview of Roman numerals... I = 1 IV = 4 V = 5 X = 10 XXIII = 23 XXIV = 24

Even though you already solved the problem, in the controls tab you can change every command key if you really wanted to (and I mean everything). I had the same issue on my laptop and just moved them to the 1 and 2 keys on the main keyboard because of the positioning. I will however mention it can be a bit odd to get it to recognize certain keys if they are used for other tasks.

The tracks look very good Edy. If that Dragon Slayer came from where it looks like it did I'd highly recommend actually painting it over using the MTM2 version (I don't seem to have the .psd from when I originally painted that anymore or I would offer it) as the quality you can accomplish is far superior than anything you will be able to pull from that old game. Other than that it looks quite good.

Demko, did someone leave you in a salt shaft? Turn it into a trap that only you can work around. Minecraft can be fun but for me personally it's a game I play for a few months and then forget I have it for a few months. Just about every major game seems to get DDoS'd these days, I wouldn't be shocked one bit if they went after Valve at some point in all honesty. It's pure stupidity at work, thousands of people possibly hundreds of thousands or even millions in some cases are being punished by these idiots for no reason, it's not going to hurt the game/company for anything longer than a short period and then after that they will grow from the free publicity that they'll get from news of them being attacked spreading. If they really want to play the hacking game I can think of hundreds of places they could start although if they get caught by them they likely will never be heard from again.

I know quite a few of us explore the world of Euro Truck Simulator 2 and with this on the horizon with possible release for later this year I think it's time we learn a little more about it. http://americantrucksimulator.com/ Trailer Alpha Gameplay Interview with some interesting information From what I've been able to find Amazon UK has a release date listed of October 15, 2015[1] along with what appears to state the initial release will contain California while the retail version will include Arizona DLC for free along with California[2]. In the interview there are mentions of the DLC being free but we will most likely have to wait to find out on that.

DiggerFan, we love you.

This is an excellent idea for a thread. I originally planned to redraw many of the lower quality ones and upload them to my Google Drive which you can find here once I'm finished them. https://drive.google.com/open?id=0Bzpg84eva_lvfmNTTEZHT0RydnNXMEotcko2c1RZUjhwejgtOWE2VjVPUi1JdnhnYS0xU1U

You don't need to create this thread on your own, once your download is approved it will have a similar thread like this automatically created.

That sounds more like a hard drive failure than anything else.

Save what you can as fast as you can; Hard drive failures are never fun to deal with and I've had more than my fair share with my old desktop that ate one every month for 5 months. Hopefully you don't lose too many things and are able to come back to the track soon. Kind of an unnecessary post...

Thursday.

Just a little something to look forward to...