NFS Model Viewer

The Need For Speed Model Viewer allows the user to open and view the car models from Need For Speed Hot Persuit 2™, and can aid in viewing a custom made car as it would appear in the game.

The Model Viewer can show or hide individual parts of the model, apply transparency, enviroment mapping, or textures to any of these parts. The program uses OpenGL to display a view of the model and can load textures in Bitmap, JPEG or TGA format.

Each car in Need For Speed™ is described via a model data file, a geometry info file and textures.

In each directory in the Cars directory, there are several important files. Geomdata.ini - This file holds the names and configurations of all the parts within the model file. Viv files - These files are containers which can contain many separate files (usually data files). Use a program such as VivMagic to open them. Fsh files - These files are also containers, but they hold art work and textures. Use a program such as fshTool to open them. Car.o - This file holds the actual geometry of the car. This is the primary data file used by the Model Viewer. Skin.viv contains the different body textures for the car, stored in fsh files. There may be more than one and they are usually named skin00, skin01, skin02 etc. These contain the actual bitmap images used for the texturing. These can be loaded into the Model Viewer. Car.fsh contains the different wheel textures for the model. The first and second bitmaps are textures which are used on high detail wheels, while the third is used for low detail wheels. These can also be loaded into Model Viewer.

There are two windows used in the Model Viewer:

The Main Window:


1: The main view where all models are displayed. Left click and drag to rotate the model, Right click and drag to zoom in and out.

2: This list shows all the parts of the current model, their number of vertexes and weather they are visible or not. Just click on the checkbox next to each part and it become visible or invisible. The currently selected part will glow blue in the main view. The names of the parts in this window are loaded from the Geomdata.ini file. Since these files are not standard and depend on the car, not all parts may have descriptive names (Mostly, if a part does not have a descriptive name, it will be called 'Shape1' or '1Shape' or 'Shape2' or 'Shape3' etc.)

3: These controls alter the currently selected part in the viewer (This will have no effect on the model in the game). You can change it's colour and texture, and set it transparent or enviroment mapped. Enviroment mapping is a technique which adds reflections to metals and glasses.

4: The car model is not always displayed with full detail in the game. It would be wasteful to draw a steering wheel in the car when it is too far away to even see inside it. This slider shows the car at 0% to 100% detail. As the slider is scrolled from 100% to 0%, Different parts of the geometry are hidden and shown. For example, at 100% the model's high-detail body is shown, but at 50%, the model's medium-detail body is shown while the high-detail body is hidden. You can turn this off by clicking the checkbox beneath it, but all the parts will be drawn on top of one another.

5: This is the main toolbar. Every function here can be reached through the menus as well, but these buttons are a selection of the most commonly used functions in the program.

A: This button opens a '.o' file which contains model geometry and looks for the Geomdata.ini file. If geomdata.ini is not found, it tells you about it and asks for you to find it.

B: This button closes the currently opened model. It does not remove any textures you've loaded.

C: This button brings up the Textures window. If your model has no textures applied to it, The textures window will have an option to apply the textures to the model. Otherwise, this just displays the texture window for addition and removal of textures.

D: Hides all parts in the list. (Equivalent of unchecking all parts in the list)

E: Shows all parts in the list. (Equivalent of checking all parts in the list)

F: Reloads the settings from Geomdata.ini. These settings override each parts visual appearance and name to the defaults descriped in the geomdata.ini file.

G: Switches between normal view and wireframe view, in which the model is drawn with lines, not filled polygons.

6: The 'Log' tab, shows the program log, which displays messages on the internal working of the program. If an error occurs while opening a file, the log should display where the error occured and what the error message is. This tab is the one which is shown first when opening the program. Click on the 'Geometry Part Options' tab to bring up the geometry controls.

The Textures Window:

1: This button opens a dialog box which will browse for Bitmaps, JPEG's or TGA files.

2: This button removes the currently selected texture from the program. Any car parts using this texture will revert to being untextured.

3: This button hides this window.

4: The Textures Window has two modes, one mode for managing the textures (in which this button is disabled) and one mode for applying a texture to the car parts. If this button is enabled, by clicking it, certain car parts will be textured with the selected texture. You can select either 'Texture Non-Wheel Parts' or 'Texture Wheel Parts' from the Main window's menus to texture certain parts of the car. This is neccesary because wheels and brakes use a different texture from the rest of the body.

5: This is a list of the textures currently loaded and avaliable in the program. You can rename it by clicking it's name once while it is selected.

Version History:

• 26 April 2003 - First revision of help file. First release of the model viewer. Version 1.00

Future Additions to the Program:

• A Texture UV editor which would allow viewing and editing of the texture UV coordinates.
• 3D Studio Max Export. This is currently not allowed since the models are still under copyright by Electronic Arts™.
  

This program was created by Michael Pote in Delphi.
If you find any bugs or errors, please contact me.

Many thanks go to Arushan for helping me with the .o Model file loading.

All Trademarks are property of their respective owners.