Pedro’s ForzaBINToolz – Official support thread.
(Devised by Angerwound, implemented by Pedro)
(The announcement of the release of these tools was buried deep in an unfocused thread, so I thought I formalise their release by creating their own support thread – apologies to those to whom this not new information.)

M$’s Forza Motorsport allows limited car paintjob customisation. This is achieved through a limited set of decals and vinyls that users can apply to their cars. Some very creative people have already achieved amazing effects layering the supplied decals to create highly personalised cars (examples here).

For the less imaginative of us, I present Pedro's ForzaBINToolz. (Initially available for download from the tools page of http://www.forzacustoms.info/)

The ForzaBINToolz allow the user to replace the standard collection of available car decals with their own images (photos, clan logos, etc.). These can then be applied to the cars using the in-game tools in the “garage”.

Going technical for a moment, when you exit the in game “garage”, any custom decals are stamped onto the car’s skin (which is stored in the gamer's profile on the HDD). And it is this skin that is transmitted to others players over system link or XBOX!Live – so they do not require your personal decals to actually view and appreciate your handiwork.
fyi - The skin looks like this:


The standard decals are stored in a custom format on the game disk in the file \media\decals.bin.

Pedro’s ForzaBINDump program extracts the existing decals and vinyls into separate TGA files, readable by most graphic painting programs. And Pedro’s ForzaBINPack will reassemble a collection of TGA files back into the decals.bin file. Once the game’s decals.bin file is replaced with the new one, your own decals will be available for use in-game.

Single decals can be replaced:


Or, with more imagination, several decals can be utilised to facilitate more options. (See Pedro's TGAtoTiles also available from http://www.forzacustoms.info/)


Thanks to Angerwound, krash, jackbauer, & Nunim for their assistance and testing.
Thanks to the ForzaCustoms.info team for hosting the utils (http://www.forzacustoms.info/).
And thanks for all the posters on the xbox-scene & forzacustoms.info forums for their encouragement.

Pedro's ForzaBINDump:
Version History:
Version 1.5 - Source code tidy up.
Version 1.4 - Now flips decal image itself & tidied up source code.
Version 1.3 - Add dumping of CarRights information.
Version 1.2 - Integrated zLib inflate() library.
Version 1.1 - Added zLib inflate() via zLib1.DLL
Version 1.0 - 1st release.

Pedro's ForzaBINPack:
Version History:
Version 1.2 - Fixed bug preventing Ferrari logo appearing.
Version 1.1 - Source code tidy up.
Version 1.0 - 1st release.

Pedro's ForzaBINToolz Release 2 included full 'C' source code. The source code documents the decals.bin file format and is probably the major value of the project. The command line toolz are really just proof-of-concept, and were simply used to validate the file format assumptions. Hopefully more dedicated fans will take this work further.

are you limited to the amount of decals that you can put into the game?

or is it you only replace certain decals with the new ones?

Short answer:
It's safer to simply replace existing decals, althrough you can replace any size decal with one up to the maximum size of 128x128.

Long answer:
On the decal picking screen, the Forza game engine displays the title of the selected decal in the footer. These names aren't contained in the decals.bin file - they exist elsewhere in the game engine. They appear to relate to the decals solely based on the location/order of the decal in the decals.bin file (decal 1 is always "3DLogo", etc.).

Tests appending a small number of additional decals did work, but resulted in rogue decal titles being displayed. It is anticipated that further appending would eventually cause the Forza game engine to crash - although this was not proven. Now that the source is available, others are welcome to continue this investigation.

Angerwound has written a step-by-step tutorial on using the ForzaBINTools.

I've just completed a new utility that allows irregular shaped decals to be produced. It's a generic TGA utility and not Forza specific (although I can think of no other use for it ). Thus it'll be released in a new version of TGAToolz (along with the old TGAtoTiles utility). It should be available for download from http://www.forzacustoms.info/ shortly.

From the readme:


Many thanks to Qwaz for his ideas, which ultimately led to this

In order to produce the livery below in Forza using the custom decals approach, you need a "Gulf" logo that is truly round, as it appears on both an orange and blue background (bonnet and door).


A way to produced such a decal is to reduce its colour palette down to 255 colours and use the 256th palettes slot as a transparency colour. PaintShopPro 9 allows such a palette reduction to any number. I then set the colour of the vacant palette slot to a vivid green (R=0, G=255,B=0), to make it noticeable, and filled the areas I wanted transparent.


I then saved the image as a 256 colour TGA. And used TGAPal24to32 to export the palette to a text file. Using TGAPal24to32 -e Gulf.tga Gulf.txt


I knew the final palette entry was my transparency colour, and the RGB values confirmed this (Entry=255,R=0, G=255,B=0, I=255)

Using Notepad, I edited the intensity value right down to 0 (completely clear) and saved the file as "GulfModified.txt".


I then used TGAPal24to32 again to inject my palette alterations back into the TGA.
TGAPal24to32 -i Gulf.tga GulfModified.txt

I coped the modified Gulf.tga across into my decals directory as decal000.tga, and used ForzaBINPack to produce a new decals.bin file. The Gulf logo transparency now appeared in-game


This was very coarse use of the technique. With a little more imagination, alpha blending, and transparent gels offer up all sorts of opportunities. By setting multiple (all?) palette entries to an incrementing ‘intensity’ nice fades can be achieved.

Well, enjoy.

I’ve seen a few posts around saying that some people are disappointed with their reduced colour palette decals in-game – complaining about muddy whites, etc. (I've not encounterd this myself).

Not sure about this but...
AFAIK the displayable colour gamut of a TV set is a lot less than a computer monitor (colour calibration may also contribute). So you may need to 'palette map' to a TV safe palette. Googling for information on this may throw up some useful links (e.g. like this and this).

It could be the XBOX hardware simply takes care of all this.

Just an idea.

I haven't experienced the problem either however I'm running in 480p i believe. Might display colors a bit better then the average television set.

NTSC:

• Never The Same Color.
• Never Twice Same Color.
• Not The Same Colors.
• Never Tested Since Christ.

haha

just a question...i havent used this so i am just asking here..i know you can extract the car textures..now can you paint a picture right on it...or can the decals be the only way to put a picture on it? say i got a viper and i want it to look like ...samurai jack. can i place the picture in the texture area or do i make the picture into decals and puzzle them together?

You have several choices:

• Design you own car using the game’s built-in editor and the standard in-game decals. These are useable on XBOX!Live. Examples here.
• Design you own car using the game’s built-in editor and custom decals. These are useable on XBOX!Live. Examples here.
• 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/.

A couple of less obvious abilities/techniques with using TGAPal24to32 and the fact the palettes are exported to tab delimited TXT files…

To re-colour a existing decal that already has a complex palette alpha channel you don’t want to lose:

• Export the palette from the original decal to txt (saves alpha channel).
• Load the TGA into PS, re-colour (by adjusting palette entry colours), and save.
• Export palette from new image.
• Load both TXT files into Excel, cut/paste 4 column, and save. (Transfers the alpha channel values).
• Inject new palette complete with old alphas into new decal.tga.

Excel can also be used to sort the palette entries, in order to group colours (useful for blended drop shadows), and can also be used to auto-increment the alpha number to author gradients.

The TXT file is tab delimited, and contains palette entry number, for use with Excel in mind. The TXT file palette rows can be safely reordered, and the palette entry field ensures the colours are still injected back into the right palette slots.

ok..i was wondering i am not much for xbox live so i was just wondering because i see some sick looking vehicles and i wasnt sure if the car had to be painted one colour and a picture of whatever had to be decaled or just use it as a texture...so what does the key do then?

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

Useful clarification

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.

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.

can gif. images be used

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

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.

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:

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.

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.

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.

FC.Info now updated with the newest release.

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

(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

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.

Transparency works like a charm

I wish I could add graphics to the windshields...

Pedros -

One issue i have found is that when you have applied the transparency (with 24 to 32) you sometimes still have some green outlining around the image (colour bleed)

you can see this in the above example of Mario.. (the faint green line around the top of the star)

Is their a simple way to avoid this, or do we just have to edit out all the 0 245 0 to 0 255 0 range?


edit: thinking about it, we could probably use a less conspicuous colour ie. grey rather than vivid green

I could be wrong here but.....

I think this is a case of the art tools trying to be too clever.

When you flood fill the background area with your marker colour, on collision with a border colour the art tool blends the colour into the borders it hits, using a generated half-tone colour - between the pure marker green and the border colour. The fact of the matter is, you are making the marker colour’s palette entry fully transparent, so any green remaining isn’t the pure marker colour.



You may be able to lessen/stop this effect by turning off any anti-aliasing, and blending settings.

Upping the flood fills "tolerance" (from 20 to 50), and repeating the flood fill captured the half-tone pixels for me.

all i do is simply use the background colour that i will use in the game behind my image, then the half tone colours look perfect

Thanks Pedros - looks like I'll have to perform some editing on my images with a 1 pixel brush & block out the halftones

or, up the flood fills "tolerance" and repeat the background flood fill. Easier.

What I do (In Photoshop) is choose my transparent color as my '2nd' color then bust out the ol' magic wand and delete the selected area. The deleted area is filled in with the 2nd color choice. No anti-aliasing there.

Quaz, I find that "32-bit PNG, BMP & TGA to TGA... EXE" creates the transparencies in alpha, but doesn't use 256 color palette. How can I reduce palette without losing the alphas?

I'm unaware of any existing tool that supports 32bit transparent TGA palette entries. I looked around before I succumbed to creating TGAToolz.

AhaView (only a slide show program unfortunately ) is the only program I found.

An email exchnage with the authors of AhaView:


Reply:


So no help there .

i cant get the hang of this. is there a website that has decals.bin files with custom images already on it and have them in catagroies like if someone made a decals.bin file with Mostly or new Star Wars decals this would be under a catagorie called Movie images or a star wars catagorie etc. can some one help? i have tried all the tool and programs to do this but i still cant get it to work!

Unfortunately this won't happen, as the decals.bin file is a copyrighted file from M$ (I mentioned this exact same scenario to Angerwound a couple of months ago)

The was some talk of an Images section of the Forzacustoms site that was going to be created but this till has not happened yet

Unifying Forza car skinning tools.

I've been considering a kind'a hybrid Froza car skinning process – unifying the Photoshop based "Forza Texture Tool" approach, and the decal mosaics. My hope is that this will allow designers the full power of Photoshop, but still allowing anyone to use their car designs online.

See here for the details.
(Because X-S doesn't like ImageShack images. )

fyi - M$ TGA Viewer (Windows Explorer Extension) (Swap '$' for 's' in URL ).
(Useful to Forza decal modders).

***edit***
I got it to work, don't need any help.

so i have edited and repacked the decals. i just wanna know where to transfer it (which folder on my box, back onto d?)

From the, er, very first post :

So, if your burning your own DVD-RW, It'll be D:\media\decals.bin.
Or, if you've Forza running from HDD, it's likely to be F:\Games\Forza\media\decals.bin.

Hmm, forzacustoms.info seems to be closed. I am really looking forward to adding custom decals to my car, but I don't know where to find your program now. Are there any other download sites?

Oh, and also, these cars ARE usable on Live you said?

Yeah site no longer alive and all google links for this program all link to the dead site looked for 2 hours on google with no luck.

k im using forzabinstoolz when i open it i and go the the EXE all it does is open a cammand propt the quickly close? whats whit that