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The Beginner's Guide to NFSHS Car Editing
- By Justin Martin aka IH8COPS
The purpose of this tutorial is to teach people the basics of editing NFSHS cars. Please do not email me with questions regarding this tutorial, I will not respond to questions about car editing. If this tutorial does not answer your questions, try posting a message on the Total NFS Message Board
As always, when making mods to any portion of your game, make a backup of the original files. Done correctly, none of this should have any undesirable effects on the game, however, you do run the risk of screwing up the car you are editing, which is why you should keep backups. You use the information in this tutorial at your own risk.
And one final note. Making cars for NFSHS takes a considerable amount of time and effort. Many of the best car designers could easily do this freelance, and make money for designing cars. However, they are nice enough to allow us to use the cars they make for free. NEVER edit a user made car without asking the original designer for permission. And when you do get his permission, always give him credit for making the original car when you release it. Nothing is worse than to spend months working on a car, and see someone change the wheels, lower it a little, and claim they made the whole car. That has happened, and it has driven great car designers into retirement.
Tools Needed
CarCad 1.5b
NFSWizard
Paint Shop Pro
Serial Number Editor
Index
Introduction to NFSHS Cars and NFSWizard
Making a standalone NFSHS car
Car Mesh Editing
Texture Editing
Performance Editing
Editing the fedata files
Introduction to NFSHS Cars and NFSWizard
NFSHS cars are located in seperate folders in the directory \Data\Cars. This directory is located in the NFSHS root directory (ie, where you installed NFSHS to) with Full and Typical installs of NFSHS. Compact installs of NFSHS read the cars off the CD, and therefore the cars cannot be edited. If you have a Compact installation, reinstall NFSHS to Full or Typical. Also, the two latest patches for NFSHS, v4.44 and v4.5 force the game to read the cars off the CD, even with a Full installation, to curb the use of hacked cars online. If your game is patched to v4.44 or later, you will have to install a earlier patch, v4.43 is recommended. NFSHS Patch v4.43
Each car is contained within it's own folder, for example, the Camaro is in the folder Ccam. Within each car folder will usually be just one file, car.viv. This is the file you will be editing. Most of the EA cars have additional .viv files in each car folder, however, these have to do with the cop's radio descriptions of the car and are not used with edited cars.
NFS Wizard (click to enlarge)
By right clicking on any of the files, you open a menu that controls the importing, exporting, renaming and duplication of the files contained within the car.viv. The car.fce and car00.tga files must be exported to be edited, NFSWizard does not edit those files.
Making a standalone NFSHS car
Unless you want your car to replace the car you are editing, you must put the car in a different folder than the car on which it is based. This is very simple to do, simply create a new folder in the directory \Data\Cars. Give it a four letter name. Now, copy the car.viv of the car you are editing to this new folder. Use the Serial Number Editor to give the car a new, unused serial number.
Then open the car in NFSWizard, and click on the file fedata.bri. You will see a box that says Identity. This is the name of the folder the car.viv is located in, so change it to the name of the folder the car is in. Click on the Data tab, and under Car Name, change the name to something else. Now repeat this process in all of the fedata files. (fedata.bri, fedata.eng, fedata.fre, fedata.ger, fedata.ita, fedata.spa and fedata.swe) The fedata files are the text data for all the different languages NFSHS comes in. More on those later.
Car Mesh Editing
As said earlier, the car's mesh (ie, the shape of the car) is in the file car.fce, located in the car.viv. Use NFSWizard to export this file out of the car.viv. There are two mesh editors for NFSHS, CarCad and ZModeler. CarCad is the prefered editor for beginners due to it being vastly easier to learn than ZModeler.
I highly recommend that you read the file manual.txt included with CarCad, however, here's a quick run down on how to work with CarCad. Open the car.fce in CarCad. You should see something similar to the pic below.
CarCad (click to enlarge)
The other thing you need to know about is the Parts drop down menu on the right side menu bar, click on the + to activate it. NFSHS cars are divided up into several parts, mainly outside body, (HB) interior, (OC) wheels, (HLFW, HRFW, HLRW, HRRW) and a few other parts. By clicking on each part, you should be able to see what they do. Note that in order to edit a part, you must click on the box to the left of the part name, which will place a check mark there.
A few final notes, Dummies are the light sources of a car, ie, where the lights appear from. Again, read the CarCad Manual to learn more about this. The small row of buttons under the main menu bar control the views. 3D is a 3D view of the car, XY is the front view, XZ is the top view and ZY is the side. UV shows how the car is mapped to a texture, and the All button causes all three 2D views plus the 3D view to be shown at the same time. (the default view you see when you first run CarCad) V1 is the first set of vertices, V2 is the second set. DO NOT EDIT IN THE V2 MODE. Always edit the car's mesh in V1. D shows the car's damage model, which is edited just like the rest of the car.
When you are done editing the mesh, import it back into the car.viv with NFSWizard.
Texture Editing
As with the car.fce, to edit the car00.tga, you will need to export it. Once you've done that, you need to open it in a photo editor that supports the .tga format. I highly recommend Paint Shop Pro, it's fairly easy to learn, and although it lacks some of the special effects functions the Corel and Adobe photo editors have, it is substantially cheaper and you don't need that extra stuff for what we're doing here anyway. And it comes with a cool animation program to boot. PSP costs about $50 to $90, or you can download a demo version here. http://www.jasc.com
Once you've opened the car00.tga in PSP, there's only a few things you need to know. The basic editing of the texture is done just like any other photo editing, and PSP has a great tutorial that you should read, so i'm not going to go over that. However, there are several big ways to get into trouble with NFSHS textures.
The first thing is that they must be saved in the .tga format. Probably the best way to get in trouble is using the Save As feature. If you simply press Save, PSP will automatically save the texture in the same format, bit depth and compression used by NFSHS.
Also, the texture needs to be either 256x256 or a multiple of that. (ie 512x512 or 1024x1024) I do not recommend using any size other than 256x256, the game automatically resizes the texture down to 256x256, and sometimes, expecially with older video cards, the texture will look messed up in the game. So don't change the size.
And lastly, there are the alpha channels. Alpha channels are overlays that go over the texture. The control what parts of the car changes colors, and what parts don't change colors. (like tires, headlights, etc) Here's a chart on what alpha channel colors do what.
| Transparant | 0 |
| No Color | 255 |
| Primary Color | 223 |
| Secondary Color | 96 |
| Driver's Hair Color | 224 |
| Car Interior | 164 |
So you're probably asking yourself, "how do I edit these alpha channel thiniges?" Well, not to fear, it's fairly easy. In the main upper menu bar in PSP, there is a drop down menu called Masks. Click on it, then click on the selection Load From Alpha Channel. Click on OK, and you will notice the texture changes color slightly, like a semi transparant fog over the texture. Well, that's the alpha channel.
Now, click on Masks again, then select Edit. If you don't select edit, you will still be editing the texture, not the alpha channel. If you have a hard time seeing the alpha channel, select Masks, then select View Mask. This will give the alpha channel a pink tint, which does not show up in the game. Now simply select the color you want, either with the color picker or the color floating menu, and edit it with the paint brush. Just to see how it works, paint a portion of the car the color 255,255,255. In the game, this will show up as the bare texture, with no paint.
So you're done editing the alpha channel, eh? Now you need to save it. No, don't press the Save button, that'll screw everything up. Click on the Masks menu, and deselect Edit. Select the Masks menu again, and press Save to Alpha Channel. A box will popup, click on Alpha Channel 1, then Ok. Now click Masks, then Delete, then press No in the dialog box that pops up.
Now simply press Save, and import the texture back into the car.viv with NFSWizard.
Performance Editing
To edit a car's performance, open the car.viv in NFSWizard, and double click on the file carp.txt. Now, you are probably thinking, "Oh my gawld, where do I start?" Well, it's easier than it looks. NFSHS has a pretty lousy physics engine, so just by adjusting a few variables, you can be on your way with a car that drives somewhat like the real one.
When you open the carp, you will see alot of variables. The main ones to worry about are Mass, (under the General tab) Velocity to RPM, Redline and Torque Curve (all three under the Gearing/Engine tab) and Lateral Acceleration Grip Multiplier. (under the Tires/Grip tab) I'll go over them one by one.
Mass - this is how much the car weighs, in kilograms. Now, if you're like me, you normally use pounds, so you need to be able to convert to kg. Simply divide weight in pounds by 2.2, and that will give you weight in kilograms.
Velocity to RPM - VTR is basically a calculation of how fast a car is going when it hits redline. Click on the graph icon beside the text box, and a box will pop up with a graph in it. The first dot is reverse, it is a negative number. Second is neutral, it is always set to 0. The third dot is 1st gear, fourth dot is 2nd gear, and so on. Drag the dot upward to decrease the speed at which you hit redline, drag it downward to increase the speed. Play around with it, drive the car in the game, and you'll see what it does.
Redline - The maximum speed at which the engine can turn.
Torque Curve - This should be familiar to any car nut, but for the rest of you, a torque curve is a graph that shows how much torque the engine is putting out at what rpm. As with the Velocity to RPM, there is a graph icon beside the text box. Click on it, and a torque curve will popup. Click on a dot, and drag it up and down. For those of you who still have no clue, more torque = faster acceleration.
Lateral Acceleration Grip Multiplier - This has two effects, higher numbers give a car more grip, and at the same time, make the steering faster. Lower numbers have the opposite effect.
Oh, when you are done editing the carp, click the close button in the upper right corner, and save the car.viv. Otherwise, the changes won't show up in the game.
Editing the fedata files
The fedata files are files that control the text shown in the game. There are seven fedata files, each for a different language or region They are fedata.bri, (England) fedata.eng, (North America) fedata.fre, (French) fedata.ger, (German) fedata.ita, (Italian) fedata.spa, (Spannish) and fedata.swe. (Swedish) They are all edited the same, double click on one and a box similar to the one in the picture above will popup.
The fedata files are divided into four section, General, Data, History/Color and Compare. I'll go over them one by one.
General - The general section is pretty much self explanatory. Identity is the name of the folder the car.viv is in, Serial Number is the car's serial number. Pursuit makes the car a pursuit car, (note, this does not add lights or anything, those must be done in CarCad or PSP) Class changes what class the car drives in. Bonus is whether or not it's a Bonus car, (always set this to no) Upgradable tells the game if the car has upgrades. (the upgrades must be added seperatly for this to work) And lastly, Convertible makes the convertible top up/down option work in the game, but only if the car has a convertible top.
Data - Car Name is the only thing you need to worry about here, the rest is only used in the showcase.
History/Color - The History section is not used, it was a showcase feature in NFS3, which NFSHS is heavily based on. The Color section contains the names of the car's colors. This does not change anything but the name displayed in the game, the actual color of the car is changed in CarCad.
Compare - This sets the car compare function in the game, play around with it and you'll see how it works.