Modelling (Blender)
The example's examples/blender/whitebox_coupe.blend is set up by these conventions: open it alongside.
Collections
One collection per mesh, named as the mesh:
| Collection | What | Texture |
|---|---|---|
<name> | the outside: body, doors, filler door, tail lamps, rear window | <name>.png |
<name>_front | the front: nose, hood, windshield, headlamps, turn signals | <name>.png |
<name>_wheel | one right-hand wheel, its hub at the origin, its outer face +X | <name>.png |
<name>_cab | the cab: dash, steering wheel, gear lever, gauges | <name>_cab.png |
<name>_seat | the seats | <name>_cab.png |
<name>_engine (optional) | the engine bay, drawn with the hood open | <name>_under.png |
<name>_chassis (optional) | the underside | <name>_under.png |
A missing collection is not drawn. Make one wheel: Vettura places it at the four hubs from the VehicleSpec (track, axles, tyre radius), the left ones turned 180°.
Bones: Empties
A moving part hangs under an Empty: the Empty at its pivot, named as a bone Vettura knows, the mesh objects parented to it. A mesh with no Empty parent belongs to body (fixed).
| Bone | How it moves | Collection |
|---|---|---|
door_l door_r | outward about a vertical axis (hinge at the door's front edge) | <name> |
hood | up about a cross axis (hinge at the hood's rear edge) | <name>_front |
fuel_door | the filler door, about a vertical axis (left side, hinge at its front edge) | <name> |
tailgate | a pickup's tailgate, down about a cross axis | <name> |
wheel | the wheel (origin) | <name>_wheel |
steering | the steering wheel, about the column | <name>_cab |
shift | the gear lever, about the top of its boot | <name>_cab |
transfer | the transfer lever (4WD only) | <name>_cab |
tach speedo fuel_gauge temp_gauge | gauge needles, about the axis out of the dial (needle at zero pointing up) | <name>_cab |
wiper_l wiper_r | wipers (the arms; with pose tables the blades may be their own, wiper_l_blade wiper_r_blade) | <name>_front |
The T15 also has wiper_stalk, turn_stalk, light_knob, visor_l/r, glovebox, ashtray, key and hvac_*; a new vehicle can leave them out.
Parts: the object name says how they are drawn
One mesh object is one part, named <bone>_<what>: door_l_paint, body_glass_front, wheel_tire. The end of the name decides:
| Ends in | Drawn as |
|---|---|
_paint | main paint (the player's colour times the texture: paint this area light grey or white) |
_paint2 | second paint (two-tone) |
_lamp_low _lamp_high | low and high beam, lit when on |
_lamp_park_l _lamp_park_r | parking lamps |
_amber_l _amber_r | left and right turn signals |
_lamp_tail _lamp_reverse _lamp_plate _lamp_dome | tail, reverse, plate and dome lamps |
_dial _needle | gauge faces and needles, lit with the electrics on |
_tire | the tyre (squashed when flat) |
a name with glass | see-through glass |
Damage knows four panes by name: body_glass_front (windshield), body_glass_rear (rear window), door_l_glass, door_r_glass. Only these break. What is printed on a pane (heater lines, a sticker) is a part of its own named the pane plus _decal (e.g. body_glass_rear_decal): drawn as a decal (not see-through glass), gone with the pane. The same four panes get wet in the rain: Vettura works out each pane's shape and curve from the mesh, and the wipers on the windshield (wiper_l, wiper_r; their blades if there are bones like wiper_l_blade) clear what they sweep. Nothing to set up.
Objects of the same name on the same bone are merged into one part (Blender's .001 suffixes are dropped on export): the four tail lamps can all be body_lamp_tail.
Size and triangles
- 1 m = 1 block, real sizes. The white-box coupe is 4.70 × 1.85 × 1.32 m.
- Everything becomes triangles; triangles of no area are dropped.
- Smoothing: the export splits at a 50° crease; no need to mark hard edges.
- Per mesh file (Vextris 0.1.1 and later): 262,144 triangles, 786,432 vertices, 512 parts, 64 MiB of JSON. Over any of them the whole mesh is not loaded (that part of the vehicle is invisible); the export script prints a WARNING.
- Don't decimate a whole vehicle evenly: big panels crumple and grilles break into triangles. Keep the outside as modelled and thin out only what is hardly seen (engine, underside). A detailed car, some hundred thousand triangles in its outside mesh, is fine.