Gray/White cars after import to GP4?

I have a question for you masters of importing/exporting car files and textures to GP4.
If I modify a carshape at all using zmodeler and then export it back into GP4, all the textures from the carshape are lost and the car appears as grey.
What the heck am I doing wrong? Within Zmodeler, the car display's all the textures. Does Zmodeler do something to the names of the textures or something?
Sorry if this has been asked many other times, but I cant seem to find the answer.

Thanks for any help

Schalle

Ok, i will expalin best i can

Say you are using these file names as textures for ZM

texture_1.bmp
texture_2.bmp
texture_3.bmp

(you know ZM needs to see them as bmp files)

What you do is this, save these files as TGA files (with an alpha layer), and then save them as tex files. So they will be this

texture_1.tex
texture_2.tex
texture_3.tex

THEN rename these files to this

hi_texture_1.tex
hi_texture_2.tex
hi_texture_3.tex

This will save the same textures but GP4 will see them as the high res ones

Use the TGA files u have of them, and half the size of them. Then save these as the orgional texture names -

texture_1.tex
texture_2.tex
texture_3.tex

GP4 should now find some sort of texture set for your car

dont forget to downsample the textures of course in GP4Master




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps

Thanks for the help.
I am able to use tga's in Zmodler. i'm using zmodler 1.7a maybe that was an ehnancement

I have not even modified the images for the car at all.

Is there something special about the name of the textures while in the zmodeler materials editor? With the TGA extension. I know I played around to get them to work in zmodler, maybe I screwed them up. The car in Zmodler looks fine. I see the textures on the car in the 3d view window.
But I still cant get it to work.
Sorry to be so thick headed. I was editing cars in GP3 quite a while back and wanted to get involved in gp4 and thought it would be quite similar, but there's just this 1 thing that is holding me back. If I remember correctly, I think I had this same problem with GP3, but to much time has passed and it totally illudes me .

Any help is appreciated.

Thanks

Schaller

Dont worry bout it mate, theres a massive change from GP3 to GP4, this is much harder now and it took me ahwile to grasp it

you are possibly right about ZM using tgas, i always thot it was bmps, but im probably wrong. With the files you are using, simply convert them to tex. Remove the tga file extension, and use tex (convert it using GP4MAster).

car1.tga will be come out as car1.tex




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps

Thanks for being patient with me Ellis.
Ok. The tex files I am using are allready in the directory (c:\cars). This is the directory I am wadding up. Its the directory that contains the complete unpacked cars.wad file. The 3 textures I am concerned with are:

prost_1.tex
prost_2.tex
prost_3.tex

To be able to see them in zmodeler, I used gpmaster and unpacked the prost1/2/3.tex files to tga files into the c:\work directory.

Then I launch zmodeler, open my car file and modified the materials to read those tga's I just unpacked in the c:\work directory.
Now I can see the textures on the car in zmodeler.

Question: should I leave the names of the textures in the zmodeler materials editor as prost_1.tga etc..? or change it to be just prost_1, or prost_1.tex? I mean the name of the texture, not the name of the tga image file I am pointing the texture too.

Maybe here is where I am going wrong, because I have the .tga image files from c:\work mapped to the textures in zmodeler, but the .tex files are in c:\cars.
However, I have been regenerating the prost_1/2/3.tex files using the c:\work\prost_1/2/3.tga image references.

I need a tutorial. Anyone know of any?

Once again, any help is really appreciated. I really want to get MY car on the road

Schaller

Question: should I leave the names of the textures in the zmodeler materials editor as prost_1.tga

Im not very good at expalining, im more of a 'doing' person.

Lets use the origional names yeah, to keep it bit simple at the moment. Keep the names as they are in ZM. ZM will fimd the textures called "prost_1.tga" (etc), but when you save the shape as the .gp4 file, ready to put in GP4, ZM changes the textures to be mapped to "prost_1.tex" - so GP4 will look for the "prost_1.tex" files.

BUT

If you are using high detailed cars, then GP4 will ignore the "prost_1.tex" and look for the hi res versions of this file, which is "hi_prost_1.tex"

Try to keep the texture files in the SAME dir as the carshape is, that way it doesnt have to change dir to map. GP4s texture files are in the same dir as the carshapes. GP4s carshapes are in the "cars.wad\cars" folder i THINK yes?

Well what your shape is doing is looking for the files here ---> "cars.wad\work"

It is looking for a folder on the same level as the "cars" folder, called "work" because thats where ZM has told it to look

If you move the files to the same dir as the shape, and resvae i THINK it will work. dont forget the hig versions of it too if yo are using hi res ones




Racing Is Life. Anything that happens before or after is just waiting
Jesus may be able to heal the sick and bring the dead back to life, but he can't do shît for low fps

EURIKA!
I finally got it.
I cant thank you enough for taking the time to answer my questions Ellis.
Its truly appreciated!
It took me 3 full days of pounding my head, but I finally had the breakthrough.
FILENAMES OF TEXTURES AND IMAGES MUST BE THE SAME. You said it quite a few times, but it wasnt sinking through.
I'm of for more Zmodeler fun.


thanks
Schaller