Basics

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Making Textures

 

1.) How NoLimits deals with textures.

To be able to make good car textures you´ll have to know how NoLimits handels car textures.
And that´s where the Targa-format also comes in again.
First of all there are two ways of how textures are applied to a coaster:

The first one is the way NL handles textures of "first Generation" templates

1. You have to think of the texture as one slice of a sausage. So it doesnt matter where you cut out that slice, it always looks the same.
Now we make a cube out of that sausage, and we cut out the form of the NL-cars. What is going to happen? On some parts of the car the texture will be distorted or mirror-sited (like you´re looking on the wrong end of the sausage).
The mirror -site effect isn´t very good when aplying a text to a texture, but we have to live with that.

On the original texture are the three circles(blue, red and yellow) perfectly rounded!	On the pics above you can see how the red and the yellow circle are still round. But when taking a look at the first car you see that the blue circle is distorted as well as the red one.

So that means that the form of this coaster was cut out of the cube from left to right, except for the bright green nose section of the front-car.

2. This is how textures are applied to "second Generation" coasters.

You have to think of the different section on the templates as of stickers.
You simply take one section and put it like a sticker onto the car.
This means, that there are no longer distortions or mirror sided textures.

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2.) Here we go, lets open the graphic!

Since we now know how NoLimits deals with the textures, lets make our own texture.
A very good idea is to print out the appropriate Worksheet of the coaster, you want to make the texture for, first.
You´ll find them in the Download-Section. As an example we start with the corkscrew coaster.

(File-Size: 1.97 MB)

Now start your favorite graphics program.

I already made all texture for you, with all the masks required.
Just download the appropriate file. In this case the file is named TutTSC.tga.
Now you choose open Graphic within your graphics program, and choose the downloaded file.

The following pic should appear:

(File-Size: 19.2 kB)

If you´re getting an error-message while opening the file, try import Graphic in your program.

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3.) Now we start with the painting

On the opened graphic you´ll see the outlines of the car. And that´s the place where your personnell graphic is placed within.
I´m not going to explain how this is going, you all should now how your graphics prog is working.

Now put your graphic on the outlined section. The outlines itself HAVE to be colored as well if you want to use the whole usable Section.
If you´re not sure what outlines, is showing what part of the car, take a look at the Worksheet, in the appropriate Templates-Section, or built a Coaster with the ncolored texture (Filename for this coaster: TutCorkscrew), and take a good look within the NoLimits-Simulator.

If the texture will not show up in the simulator, you may want to try the following:
change the graphic into the jpg-File-Format , color it and save it as a tga-File, since some progs require additional steps to convert the graphic made, into the appropriate tga-file that NL needs to have.

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4.) I just want to apply a small part of the usable texture area!

You just want to add a text or smaller graphic to the car, and not the whole usable textue area, like the NL textures that came with it.
Now that´s the part where most people have problems with!

To choose a smaller part of the texture, you have to apply a MASK (most programms use the term Mask, but it may differ) to the choosen area. This MASK has to be applied to the texture, even if you use the full area, since NoLimits just applies the parts of the texture that are surrounded by aMASK.

Here you can see how all the areas are surrounded by mask (the small doted line, in most programs it is animated)	In this case you can see how only the NL-logo is surrounded by a mask, so only the logo will be displayed on the car and not the white part thats surounds it.

NoLimits will apply the Color-Coaster-Settings to all parts that are NOT surrounded by a MASK.

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5.) Coaster-Color-Settings

You should already know what color scheme you want to use for your cars, since this makes it easier for you to set the right car color and textures.

NoLimits gives you five different sections, where you can set a color for:

To know what color setting will change what parts of the car, take a look at the Worksheet, or into the Templates-Section.

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6.) Save it and ready!

Now that you´ve finished your texture, and a MASK is applied to all areas you want to see later on, save the texture in the tga-File-Format, in your NoLimits/cartextures folder. In some programs you have to use the export Graphic option to save it in TGA- or PNG-File-Format.

Now just activate the texture in the NoLimits editor, and have fun!

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Summary:

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