West Midlands Mod (In Progress)

[Forensics]

I'm not from the West Midlands, But are you sure they use Aurmoured Land Rovers as ARVs. As far as I know ARVs are normally Volvos and BMWs. Also they probably use a Volvo V70 as a traffic car and general patrol car.

Some police services use Land rovers as ARV's.

I don't think they use Volvo's as normal panda cars. Just traffic and ARV.

Where is the mod based on, Birmingham? I can sent them a freedom of information request, asking what vehicles are currently in service if you like.

[Kookas]

Some police services use Land rovers as ARV's.

I don't think they use Volvo's as normal panda cars. Just traffic and ARV.

Where is the mod based on, Birmingham? I can sent them a freedom of information request, asking what vehicles are currently in service if you like.

Yeah that would be cool if you could do that, thanks.

Some more possible cars I saw today: A Skoda Octavia marked police car - low profile lightbar, all-blues but a couple of reds on the back. Same with a BMW M5.

Also, anyone willing to join the project is welcome, I need someone who can script, and someone who can map. I'm not very good with that.

[Kookas]

It's in-game but it has terrible smoothing issues, so I'm going to remake it from scratch again.

[Wkboy714]

That model does look good.

What kind of area do you want the map to be? Country or city, realistic or made up?

[Kookas]

What kind of area do you want the map to be? Country or city, realistic or made up?

I'm not too sure .. maybe the map could be set where it's mostly city, but there's a section of countryside with a bit of river? Maybe the map could be set at the corner of a city, where the city then ends and it becomes a bit more rural (although the transition is normally gradual, but it could be different).

Updated Vectra pics in original post.

[Kookas]

Hello, I have a little question.. I've UV Mapped the Vectra in Blender and generated its texture from there too, with Ambient Occlusion .. in Zmodeler, I have it all set up right (with the UV Mapper and everything) except for one thing - no texture. How do I load the texture? I found a button called Texture Browser, but this doesn't seem to sort my problem at all :\

[Tian318]

Hello, I have a little question.. I've UV Mapped the Vectra in Blender and generated its texture from there too, with Ambient Occlusion .. in Zmodeler, I have it all set up right (with the UV Mapper and everything) except for one thing - no texture. How do I load the texture? I found a button called Texture Browser, but this doesn't seem to sort my problem at all :\

press "E"

and a material editor will come up

make a new material, load your skin/uv-map into it.

in object mode(hotkey "4")

right click the name or the model it self.

Go to properties.

Under polygons you can set a skin/uv-map.

Then press the assign to selected button.

and start skinning your model

[Kookas]

Thanks, it worked! But now I have another problem .. in-game, dark blotches appear on the car -.- No such problems are visible in Zmodeler or Blender but they just pop up here, it's very annoying. The normals are fine. How can I fix this? If it's some sort of smoothing error then I am going to just use low-poly boxes with textures on... to me, it looks like shadows are being cast onto the model :| .. if so, I really hope you can turn that off.

[Tian318]

Thanks, it worked! But now I have another problem .. in-game, dark blotches appear on the car -.- No such problems are visible in Zmodeler or Blender but they just pop up here, it's very annoying. The normals are fine. How can I fix this? If it's some sort of smoothing error then I am going to just use low-poly boxes with textures on... to me, it looks like shadows are being cast onto the model :| .. if so, I really hope you can turn that off.

Looks like a reflection of the normal lights to me.

Go into Z modeler.

switch to top view.

go in to object mode(hotkey "4")

Press "Surface->Normals->Calculate"

go to the center-top of the car.

And press once with your left mouse button

you see the lighting change.

save it, export it.

load it into the editor and you should see a difference.

If not, go back into Z modeler.

and look for darker area's on the car(where they should be according to the editor).

go in to polygons mode(hotkey "1")

Press "Surface->Normals->Calculate"

And click on the polygons that still remain faulty.

EDIT: and you can turn reflections off in the edit of the prototype.

You should see 2 options for that.

Receive shadows, and shadows/create shadows(or something like that).

I don't know witch one of the two you need, but you can try that out.

Edited February 14, 2010 by Tian318

[Kookas]

I feel like spamming smilies now thank you very much, the first method worked! Now I know how to counter all these problems, I can get on with the project! I'm not far away from getting the first police car in-game, and this Vectra can be part of traffic.

Police Vectra work:

[Guest Benz]

Looks like there quite a few of us from the West Midlands then!

Glad to see a mod based near enough where i'm from. Looking good so far, looking forward to more updates!

[Kookas]

The images in the original post slowly change over time because I update those pics every 20 minutes or so .. only very significant changes deserve a whole post

[randomperson139]

The vectra in the first post looks great

[Forensics]

Very nice job on the car!

[Kookas]

To save other modders some work, just a tiny bit of info I found out - the font used on the side at the bottom of some British cop cars which says "POLICE" is BankGothic MD BT.

Also, the police car's ready to go in-game now.

[dyson20]

does tamworth count as west midlands because that looks like it could work as a good map not quie a city but fairly big has a large varity of areas like estates big buildings river:)

[Kookas]

I guess you could make a city like it, it doesn't really matter, but it shouldn't have any mentionings of Staffordshire because this mod's set in West Midlands, the county, and not the region ..

[Tian318]

What do you mean by flip the car?

[Kookas]

What do you mean by flip the car?

Doesn't matter, I Googled the problem and found my answer .. basically, when I mirrored the mesh in Zmodeler, the mesh went completely black .. the solution: to calculate the normals again.

Anyway, it's in-game now, needs wheels and maybe I'll cut out the door and make that separate. Tian, you have helped alot in getting this to work! Thanks!

[Forensics]

Very good!

BTW: I just got this reply:

Dear Mr ******,

FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT 2000

Thank you for your request for information, received 12 February 2010 concerning police vehicles.

Your request is being considered and you will receive a response within the statutory timescale of 20 working days, as defined by the Act, subject to the application of any statutory exemptions. Where consideration is being given to the application of any exemptions the 20 working day timescale may be extended under the terms of the Act to a period considered reasonable depending on the nature and circumstances of your request. In such cases you will be notified and, where possible, a revised time-scale will be indicated. In all cases we shall attempt to deal with your request at the earliest opportunity.

There may be a fee payable for the retrieval, collation and provision of the information requested, where the request exceeds the statutory limit. In such cases you will be informed in writing and the 20 working day timescale will be suspended until we receive payment from you or your request is modified and /or reduced. If you chose not to make full payment or modify your request then the request will remain unanswered.

Your request may require either full or partial transfer to another public authority. You will be informed if your request is transferred.

Yours sincerely,

Freedom of Information Unit

If it does turn out I have to pay something to get the info, I won't bother.

[Kookas]

Thanks for doing that though.

I have a very annoying other problem to sort .. when I create a new group with the Editor, even with AutoSave enabled, if I change mod and change back or quit and start the Editor again and return to the mod, it's gone -.- help would be great, please.

[randomperson139]

The police car looks great

[Kookas]

The police car looks great

Thanks!

The Vectra is in-game now, although of course the boring "paperwork" (config files) must be done to get it to function correctly ...

** video & pics relocated to the original post

[dyson20]

waaaw if you ddo the rest of the mod with this kind of quality this is gonna be awsome

[Kookas]

waaaw if you ddo the rest of the mod with this kind of quality this is gonna be awsome

Thanks! The comments are very motivational

This car's going to be hell to model. Can't wait till I've finished modelling this ._.