Pedro’s Forzabintoolz – Official Support Thread., Custom Forza decals! Options

[SniperKilla]

[*]Direct painting on the texture – using non-XBL auth key – usable on system link, but not useable on XBOX!Live!  See the "Forza Texture Tool" available from http://www.forzacustoms.info/
[*]Direct painting on the texture – Useable on XBOX!Live.  This requires you to use the service offered by http://www.forzacustoms.info/.

usable on system link.. but only to your self.. when your xbox trys to send your paintjob to others, fit hey also arent using the patched xbe.. the sig in the sent over paintjob will cause a corrupt paintjob, and they will just see your car as a normal color

[PedrosPad]

usable on system link.. but only to your self.. when your xbox trys to send your paintjob to others, if they also arent using the patched xbe.. the sig in the sent over paintjob will cause a corrupt paintjob, and they will just see your car as a normal color

Useful clarification

[mrjkwik]

question for you guys. to be honest, i dont play forza much, so therefore havent really been using the tools. but i have been following what everybody has been doing.

pedro, earlier you were talking about making custom shaped decals. ike i said, havent done this stuff in game, but with that, can you take and create a decal based on the shape of the template? as in (if i remember how the templates look) get the template of the hood, do the graphical magic on it, and turn it into a custom shaped decal?

EDIT: i just looked at a the template again on page 1. i'm guessing the answer is no now that i took a closer look.

This post has been edited by mrjkwik: Jun 18 2005, 11:08 PM

[PedrosPad]

pedro, earlier you were talking about making custom shaped decals.  ike i said, havent done this stuff in game, but with that, can you take and create a decal based on the shape of the template?

You could certainly could create an irregular shaped decal - the shape of a hood, door, etc - but the maximum decal dimensions are 128x128 (you can enlarge this in-game to size but it may be a bit blocky).

To avoid this, simply make the required artwork out of a grid of 128x128 tiles - 4, 9, 16, etc. as required. You don't need to worry about shaping to the exact panel edges, the in-game engine masks off any overspill.

This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Jun 22 2005, 08:21 AM

[Gaymer]

can gif. images be used

[PedrosPad]

can gif. images be used

Once you convert them to uncompressed TGAs, yes. Most paint programs are able to do this.

[djdoconthebox]

Hey is there any way to set the transparency colour for logo's/decals you create yourself?

cheers
DJ

[PedrosPad]

Hey is there any way to set the transparency colour for logo's/decals you create yourself?

cheers
DJ

Yup - there's a tutorial, er, 1 page back . Read this post and the one that follows it.

This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Jun 21 2005, 11:15 PM

[PedrosPad]

Transparent mosaics

I've read that some people are finding creating transparent decals with TGAPal24to32 a bit tedious. While TGAPal24to32 is certainly cumbersome, I didn't think it was that bad. This left me wondering if users realised that the companion utility TGAtoTiles actually works with TGA images with any palette? - including palettes that already contain transparent entries!

Here's a walked example....

First I selected an image with which to decorate my Forza car:


Then I used PSP to cut out my character, resize the canvas to 512x512, reduce the palette from 16 million colours to 256, and paint the unwanted background with my chosen transparent marker colour (in this case R=0,G=255,B=0). (The magic wand selection tools was very helpful here ).

In the above image, note the eyedropper tooltip - it contains R=0,G=255,B=0,I=66. I is the palette index of the colour under the eyedropper!

Having saved my image as a 256 colour (aka. 8bit) uncompressed TGA, I exported the palette using
TGAPal24to32 -e Mario256.tga Mario256.txt

Mario256.txt:

Num R G B I
0 2 1 3 255
1 39 23 15 255
2 25 39 23 255
<snip />
66 0 255 0 255
<snip />
254 0 0 0 255
255 0 0 0 255

My chosen transparent marker colour, R=0,G=255,B=0, is right there in entry number 66 - just as PSP indicated.
I used Notepad to edit the intensity of palette entry 66 from the original value of 255 right down to 0 (fully transparent), and saved.

I then used
TGAPal24to32 -i Mario256.tga Mario256.txt
to re-inject the modified palette into the TGA. So I've only modified a single palette thus far.

Then
TGAtoTiles 128 128 Mario256.tga decal
to split out the 16 128x128 decals, and TGAtoTiles ensures each one retains a copy of the master images' colour palette, complete with its transparent entry.

So I end up with 16 decal images, all with the correct transparency, and I've only had to edit a single palette.





This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Jun 22 2005, 08:21 AM

[PedrosPad]

Shared canvas

Another closely related technique is to use a shared canvas of images.

It's best to maintain a full colour master canvas, on which to do any alterations, and export a production canvas, on which all the images would share a common 256 colour palette, for processing into Forza.

e.g. Smilies.tga:


Once the production canvases' single palette is modified to include the required transparency, TGAtoTiles can be used to slice the canvas up into the individual decals.




This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Jun 22 2005, 01:26 AM

[PedrosPad]

Pedro's TGAToolz Release 3

What's new:
Usability improvements:
Added full support for wildcards, on both input and output filespecs, to TGAPal24to32
New functionality:
Added new binary palette entry search and replace functionality to TGAPal24to32.

----------------------------------------
TGAPal24to32:

Description:
This is a very basic utility for adjusting the palette of 256 colour TGA files. It can export a TGA image's colour palette to a simple text format file. This text version of the palette can then be edited as required - such as specifying any translucent colour requirements - then the utility allows the modifications to be injected back into the original image.
The utility also allows search and replacing of palette entries, directly on the binary TGA file.

Usage:
TGAPal24to32 -e <filespec.tga> <palette filename.txt>
- Extract palette to text file.
TGAPal24to32 -i <filespec.tga> <palette filename.txt>
- Inject palette from text file into image.
TGAPal24to32 -r <filespec.tga> <sR> <sG> <sB> <sI> <rR> <rG> <rB> <rI> [...]
- Replaces specified RGBI palette entry(s) with supplied replacement RGBI value(s). You can specify multiple search and replace values - as many as the command line will allow.

Examples:
TGAPal24to32 -r Target.tga 0 255 0 255 0 255 0 0
TGAPal24to32 -r *.tga 0 255 0 255 0 255 0 0
- Search and replace palette entry across multiple images.

Should be downloadable from http://www.forzacustoms.info/ shortly.


This post has been edited by PedrosPad: Jun 23 2005, 11:37 PM

[Angerwound]

Should be downloadable from http://www.forzacustoms.info/ shortly.

FC.Info now updated with the newest release.

[Viper Dan]

Hey, I'm lost on the Command prompt part, I dont know what to type in to navigate my ForzaBinToolz folder or to use syntax. could somebody tell me what exactly to put in there? I have been trying for like 2 days now

thanks

[Dagoth]

(make sure all your tools are in a folder called forza on the root of c:\ )

start
run
cmd

cd\
cd forza

forzabindump decals.bin (extracts the decals.bin file to the current folder)

forzabinpack decals.bin (injects all the decals & vinyls into a decals.bin file from the current folder)

other tools are listed in pedros post earlier

[PedrosPad]

TGAToolz bug report

I've just discovered that all released versions TGAPal24to32 are actually working with the colour order BGRA (Blue Green Red Alpha), and not RGBA as they state. This is true in the exported palettes, and with the binary search and replace functionality. But because this is consistent the program largely functions correctly.

This only catches you out then your hunting for a specific colour, and expecting it to be in RGB order.

Simply think in BGR as a workaround.

This is a bug (I intended it to be "RGB") and will be fixed in the next release.