.GBX format?

[dfacto]

I DLed Trackmania Nations and wanted to go ahead and make a custom texture for the player car, but the model appears to be a .gbx, which I've never heard of. I searched a bit for some kind of importer or converter and found two, both apparently Halo related. One doesn't seem to work in max9, and the other imports .gbxmodel, not .gbx.

Anyone know anything that could help me or am I unlikely to find an importer for this format?

[perna]

Sounds like "gearbox", so check their pages for tools.
I can't be more helpful, but just thought I'd hang in this cool thread with the cool peeps, yo.

[MoP]

I think the GBX format is actually some sort of compressed archive, since it's used for tracks as well as vehicles. Nothing to do with Gearbox AFAIK.
Can't you use the in-game car painter?

[perna]

MoP: Leave him alone, why so many questions? Maybe his dad had a bad experience with the in-game painter, did you consider that? Ur so PUSHY

Looking at my posts today, when I'm sick maybe I should not stay in front of the computer.
360 here I come.

[Rob Galanakis]

Gearbox made the Halo PC port.

That's my contribution to this thread.

[dfacto]

Thanks for the replies guys. Looks like there's no way to unpack those models, but at least I found a sort of workaround. I unzipped the skins for the other cars (.dds format), and can combine them with custom skins in PS, then export as .dds again and put them into the zip folders.

http://img513.imageshack.us/img513/8628/usa2kc4.jpg

First noob edit of the USA car (mine bottom) since I don't really like it. Need to figure out how to save out the alpha map properly since I think it regulates the shininess, but otherwise I can go ahead and see what I can do. Annoying that I don't have UVs, so I have to wing it, but I think I can still cook up something fancy.

As a side note, some of the car paint schemes in TMN are really nice.

[ElysiumGX]

The .GBX format is the Nadeo Game File format, and MoP is probably correct in it being a compression format.

If I remember correctly, you create new skins for cars by creating a new folder for them. Check the folder which has all the directories with abbreviations for each country. Create a new folder there, and copy the files from another. Paint over that, so you keep the original. You may have to save the skin from inside the games editor, then paint over Diffuse, Details, and Icon dds files. I may be a little off, as I'm trying to recall this while at work, but it is possible to paint completely custom skins. I'll try it when I get home later, as I've been playing around with Trackmania United, which is structured a little differently. The games tools allows you to import files into .GBX format, but I don't believe it allows for export.

[dfacto]

Thanks Elysium. That's basically what I've been doing. Saving the basic gradients out from the in game editor, then painting over the .dds file in PS, as well as bashing the premade maps in for details and such. I'll see if I can create something spiffy. /images/graemlins/smile.gif