WorpeX

Not sure exactly, I've had that issue before though. What I usually do when I have issues with specific .mesh files might sound a bit weird. I create a fresh new blender file and import them into that. For some reason, that usually always works. From there, I save the new blender file and go back into my working truck blend file. Then go to file -> append -> new blender file. Then import the mesh in from that method. Usually works, no idea why. Hopefully it works for you if not someone else might need to chime in.

That is what it's supposed to do! You've done everything right. The .mesh.xml needs to be converted to a .mesh via the OgreXMLConverter.exe file located in your Rig of Rods directory. Simply drag the .mesh.xml onto the exe and it'll automatically convert the file to a .mesh. This works the same in both directions. If you want to view a .mesh in blender you'll need to convert it to a .mesh.xml first.

Rare look into Harper's secret garage somewhere... And no, this ain't gettin' done in time for XMT.

Sweet! Very cool. I liked the look of BT on the PEI better and since green is my favorite color, i'm already liking Trantina as the new owner.

Looks good. Just curious, when was this Bearly Tame run? The new one has orange shocks/hubs (not green) and is on the old Stinger Cohen chassis.

Track clean up!

If you make me a new body which is more accurate I will gladly use it. That said, I see some differences but nothing glaring or noticeable unless you're comparing side-by-side. Nothing worth me putting more hours into the body then I already have. My goal was never to make it perfect, I just don't have the time for that. I'd rather use what little time I have to continue developing the body lift, getting started on the 1991 variant and making the Harper trucks.

That's what is supposed to happen. You'll need to convert it using the converter that comes with RoR. Just drop the .mesh.xml right on top the of the "OgreXMLConverter.exe" in your RoR directory.

Paint is done. Oh, and the body lift is working too!

Thunder Chicken had the coolest rims ever! Just finished making them and I think they're gorgeous! At this point I think the chassis pretty close to being replica accurate. I also think the front end is starting to look real close to the original! Body still needs some work though as does the cabin. I really disliked the logo I made so I scrapped it and plan to start over with that. Progress has gotten pretty slow.... Also building the Harper truck has slowed progress down on the Leafer...

Nope! Unlike Beam you can pretty much just download whatever tracks or trucks you like and there aren't any required add-ons. This wasn't always true, I would stay away from anything listed under "archived content" for that reason.

I made a short(ish) video, hopefully this helps get you started! I did this completely off the cuff and only did some minor editing. Hopefully its coherent.

I made a short(ish) video, hopefully this helps get you started! I did this completely off the cuff and only did some minor editing. Hopefully its coherent.

Unfortunately I don't have a lot of time right now and the time I do have is going to Thunder Chicken. I would love to contribute to truck pack if you're starting one, but I'm not going to do the whole thing myself. Are you planning on making any?

Thunder Chicken is a leafer. Monster Wars pack would be cool, there are a couple of trucks in there that I'd like to build. I think a few of them are done though like Taurus & Grave Digger. I could also make a more accurate Invader for this as the one I made was only my second ever truck - feel like I've improved a lot since building it. I think someone was working on the Equalizer from this era, although I haven't seen a recent update of it and I forget who was working on it, i'd have to dig through discord.

Yep, I'm currently working on Thunder Chicken!

Yes you can absolutely use Gimp for painting! Ehhh yes and no. Most of the top authors will just create their own UV Bake and use that as the template. Rarely will you find the bakes still with the trucks though so you'll probably need to ask around. For someone just starting out, I recommend just repainting right over top of someone elses paint. It wont look much different apart from some shading loss. Hell, I still do it pretty often cause baking is annoying. Yep. Everything. The nice thing about RoR is that it uses open .zip files so you can find any part of someone elses truck and load it into Blender. You'll need blender 2.79 for this and the OGRE export tool. Alternatively, you can simply find pre-made files in the truck building items scrapyard here on Sim Monsters. https://sim-monsters.com/files/category/14-truck-building-items/ https://www.blender.org/download/releases/2-79/ I forget where to find the OGRE exporter, google I guess

I've wanted to make a tutorial video for awhile, but I struggle to find the time nowadays. There are a ton of different skills involved with creating a custom truck (one of the reasons why I enjoy it so much actually). My biggest suggestion would be to take things piece-by-piece and don't try to make an outlandish truck all at once. This isn't something that is going to happen in one day or your first truck. Take it slow, learn from what others have done and just have fun! For your first truck, here is my recommendation - Repaint a pre-built truck. For me, this was my (awful) Bounty Hunter Release. Start by simply exploring how RoR handles truck files and doing a simple repaint of someone elses truck. RoR can read folders as well as .zip files, so extract the .zip of the pre-made truck into a folder and put that folder into the folder you place your RoR mods. Find a paint program which works best for you (paint.net, photoshop, etc). Inside the pre-made trucks folder you'll see the a .png picture of its paint. Paint your custom skin! Just paint right over that sucker. Save when done with a different name. Find the .truck file in this folder. This is the file that tells RoR how to put every single file in this folder together. For now, just change the name at the top to the name of your re-painted truck. Apply your custom paint. This part might get confusing depending on the truck you've selected to repaint. Some authors use the "managedmaterials" line in the .truck file to direct RoR to the paint. If you see a ton of image files listed under managedmaterials, then find the name of the original trucks paint in the list and change it to the name of your new paint. Other authors use .material files. You'll have to figure out which .material file is for the truck body and open it up with notepad. Dig though it and find the image name and replace it with your new image file. Whats the difference?? Both have advantages and disadvantages. Material files apply different effects directly to an object and it has less bugs. However, using the managedmaterials section is much easier and cleaner. Furthermore, it lets the author change an objects paint from the truck file, which means less objects. Test it in RoR! Keep playing around with it until you like it. You can keep RoR open and just hit reload truck if you make changes. From here, you can start exploring the .truck file further. Lets just say you don't like the tires. Lets replace them with the BKT's off of another truck. For this example, lets take the tires off of Bearly Tame 2020 and put them onto your repainted truck. Lets open up the Bearly Tame 2020 zip file and find the files for "3rdGenBKT.mesh" you'll also need the paint for these so don't forget that! Copy the .mesh and .png into the folder for your new repaint truck and then open up the truck file. The tires are usually towards the bottom of the truck file. Replace the mesh name of the tire with the mesh name of the BKTs we just grabbed. Save and reload in RoR.... Ah! They're white! Right, Lets tell RoR how to paint them. Near the top of the BearlyTame truck file, you'll see the managedmaerials section. Copy the 3rdGenBKT line from this truck file and put it into your repaint trucks file under the managedmaterials section. That should fix the problem. Save and reload the truck. Now you should have a simple repaint with new BKT tires on it. Ok this is a pretty simple tutorial and nothing here is overly complicated. The goal of doing this is to learn the basics of the most important steps in building a truck: the .truck file and your paint editor. I wouldn't even start touching Blender until you have made a simple repaint truck and learned how to adjust different truck components. I can't really do step-by-step with blender, so i'll stop here. Message me on Discord if you have any questions! I would still recommend using the older version of blender (2.79 specifically). As far as I know the OGRE exporter still doesn't work with the newest versions of Blender (I could be wrong, I haven't looked recently).

It'll be an S10, just haven't finished it yet. Gotta change the lights, add the logo, paint and fix the grill but its otherwise pretty close as is. I should probably fix the cut fenders too but i'm not really sure how much I care about that.

Progress picture! Thunder Chicken is in game and I have almost all of the features that I really wanted already built out. Its iconic wide stance, the awesome headers, engine through the hood, the weird shock set-up and probably my favorite feature - and the reason I even started this build - is a working bed tarp! If you've ever seen the old videos of this truck in action, its pretty easy to notice that Kid just never could keep that darn thing bolted down right! Huge shoutout to Diggerfan - this truck is essentially his USA-1 and Grave Digger 1 smashed together. Still plenty of work to do yet. I haven't even started painting the body (aside from throwing yellow and the logo on it), the tires & rims are placeholders and there is more work to do on the driveshaft. I might re-work the axles too, recently noticed something inaccurate that will likely bother me but its outside the scope right now. Anyway, I'm loving the progress so far - its been a super fun build and I'm loving how its turning out!

Probably way too early in the build process to be posting this in SYP, but i'm doing it anyway. Been a quick build so far, largely thanks to Diggerfan having the majority of the parts already built on at least one of his many leafers. Logo has been hardest part up to this point.