Vehicle Creation

Use this space to explain vehicle creation.

Vehicle Creation

I know a lot of people want to make vehicles for the Sims 3 but have no idea were to start. This thread explains a little were to start and what to do.

Required and Recommended Tools

Various tools can be used to create cars to perfection, here are the most common.

• TSRW

  Using TSRW for cars as it gives you nice 3d view of the car complete with specular/reflection Bone and slot settings etc etc.

  Download the latest version 0.28. TSRW 2.0.28

• S3PE

  S3PE

  • Install Atavera's RIG Helper

  These are needed for the RIG editing in s3PE.

  • Install Peter's S3PE plugin for TSRW:

  This plugins allows you to edit the RIG(and other files) from within TSRW.

Meshing Program

• Milkshape 3D

http://chumbalum.swissquake.ch/ms3d/download.html This is not a free program! Has a simple built-in UV mapper.

• Blender

  http://www.blender.org/

  This program requires a learning period, but is very useful and free. It has a built-in UV mapper as well baking abilities.

  • Sims 3 Tools for Blender by cmomoney: http://www.modthesims.info/browse.php?f=139&u=2545457&gs=0

• Photoshop/Gimp or any other texture editor

  • DDS plugins for the Texture editor program of your choice
    • http://code.google.com/p/gimp-dds/
    • http://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

  • GIMP - http://www.gimp.org/downloads/
  • Paint.net - http://paint.net/

UV Mapping Program

• UVmapper

http://www.uvmapper.com/downloads.html A commonly used program, Classic version is free, simple yet powerful.

• LithUnwrap

http://files.seriouszone.com/download.php?fileid=198 Another common alternative.

Attaining a model

First thing you need is a 3d model of the vehicle. There is a lot of free stuff on the net but be warned, 90% is crap. Free stuff often contains reversed faces, has welded vertices, has no UVmap and are not always easy to repair.

Model Sites

Most all car creators download an already mesh version of a car and convert that to a Sim format. Here are some commonly used sites.

• http://archive3d.net/?category=28
• http://www.archidom.net/ddd/model_F.htm
• http://thefree3dmodels.com/stuff/vehicles/13-3-2
• http://www.dmi-3d.net/rescue1.html
• http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/

Model Checklist

• Does it has reversed faces?

You can check in Milkshape by turning off draw backfaces If the model contains alot of holes in complex area's dont bother to repair.

• Does the model has a UVmap?

Apply a material to the mesh(select all/mattab/new/none/browse for texture/apply) and visit the texture coordinate editor(Window) to see if the parts are uvmapped properly. If not then you need to do it yourself, wich is alot of work.(but fun to do)

• Is the mesh seperated in diffrent meshgroups?

The more meshgroups the better as it is very hard to split all those meshparts up from one solid model.