USAGE TIPS

CONFIGURING THE CAR LAYOUT

- The following figure objects are optional parts, that is they are not meant to visible
  at the same time:

  AIRDAMA, AIRDAMB, AIRDAMC - These are different front airdams for the car. You should
                              only have one of these visible at any time.

  WINGA, WINGB - These are different types of rear spoilers for the car. You should
                 only have one of these visible at any time.

  LHMIRRA/RHMIRRA, LHMIRRB/RHMIRRB - These are two different styles of side mirrors for 
                                     the car. You should only have one set visible.

  The easiest way to hide and unhide these parts is to use the Hierarchy Editor in Poser.
  With the car figure loaded, open up the Hierarchy Editor and you should see the list
  of car part names. By clicking the eye shape icon beside the part name, you will hide
  or unhide that part.


- The following figure objects can be rotated so that the car can be posed in a certain
  way:

  HBACK - This rear trunk or hatchback door and you can apply a XRotate to show it being
          opened 

  RTIRES - These are the rear tires and you can apply a XRotate to show them spinning

  RSEAT - This is the rear seat and you can apply a XRotate to show the seat being folded
          down

  LHDOOR,RHDOOR - These are the left and right hand car doors. You can apply a YRotate to
                  to show them being opened or closed. 

  LHDRWIN,RHDRWIN - These are the windows for car doors. I couldn't set them to roll up
                    and down proper so you will have to hide or unhide them to show them
                    as fully closed or fully opened.

  STWHEEL - This is the steering wheel and you can apply a ZRotate to indicate the front
            wheels are turned. There are no Inverse Kinematic chains setup so you will need
            rotate both the front wheels manually. You can do this by applying the same
            YRotate to both the LFBRAKE and the RFBRAKE objects.




TEXTURING THE CAR

- I have supplied texture templates for the car body and the windows so that you can 
  create you own customized car graphics. You can resize them to suit the type of 
  graphics you want on the car. I would recommend at least 3000x3000 pixel resolution
  for the car body if you are going to have text, sharp lines or pictures. 
  
  The 3 templates (MODELA,B,C.JPG) are basically the same with the exception of the 
  front airdam area which is changed on each template to show the UV lines of the 3
  types of airdams that are supplied. If you don't use a lot of text or logos in that
  area, you can probably get away with having just one body.jpg that will work with
  all 3 airdam styles.

  A note on that mess of UV lines on the template at corner of the doors. This is an
  optional UW mapping for the LH/RH MIRRB style mirrors. The mirror casing are normally 
  colored black but for this style of mirror  you can apply the body.jpg texture to the
  casing material to add some color variation. For example, you had a color scheme 
  that was a gradient along the length of the car, you could apply the texture to the
  mirror casing so that it would be the correct blended color for that location. 
  In most case, just ignore that area and just color right over top of it as the rest
  of body is still properly mapped beneath it. 

- For creating complex car graphics, I recommend just painting half of the car on one
  layer and then duplicating the layer and flipping it vertically along the center
  line to cover the other side of the car. Then depending on how you handle the text
  or logos you maybe need to flip those elements horizontally on the mirrored layer.
  I know that sounds complicated but it should become obvious as to what to do if you
  get text that is backwards on one side of the car.

- On some materials the body.jpg can be used or removed depending on how you want
  the car to look.

  BODY : This is main material for the car body. You can remove the body.jpg and just
         change the object color if you want a car with no graphics and just one color.

  HOOD : This is the material for the hood of the car. This should normally be identical
         to the BODY material in every aspect (i.e. object color, reflective quality, etc).
         The only reason this was added as a separate material was to allow the use of 
         a carbon fibre hood material. To simulate the look of the carbon fibre hood,
         you will need to adjust the highlight settings to give a less shiny look and
         add in the supplied HOOD.JPG for the texture.

  BODY2 : This is for the drainage area below the wiper blades. This is normally just black 
          but if you apply body.jpg texture to this material you can get graphics or 
          other colors extending into this area.

  BODY3 : This is for side mirrors and is normally black. For the LH/RH MIRRB style
          mirrors you can apply the body.jpg texture to the material to add some color
          variation the mirror casing. The UW mapping is overlapped onto the door so it 
          is really only good adding subtle color gradients.

  TRIM : This is for the window trim on the car and is normally black. You can apply
         the body.jpg texture to this material as well to show color or graphics painted
         on to the trim.

  WING01,02,04 : This material is for the WINGA type spoiler. You can have the body.jpg
                 applied to add text or graphics. Note the WINGB type spoiler uses the BODY
                 material so adjusting that material will affect the WINGB spoiler.

  WGLASS: This is the material for all the window glass on the car. You can create your own
          additional graphics or text for the windows by using the supplied WINDOWS.JPG 
          template. 

- A simple way to quickly change the look of the car graphics is to (assuming you
  have the original file backed up) is to overwrite the body.jpg in the 
  .../runtime/textures/95ME folder with your own creation or the extra body skins
  that I have supplied. That way you can try out different car graphics without having
  to adjust any of the materials.
  
- If you are going to use simulated global illumination in your renderings with the car,
  I recommend that you darken some of the whiter object colors of materials with textures.
  For example, on the BODY material, the object color is about 3 shades below pure white.
  I would suggest changing that to about 5 to 7 shades below white if you are using multiple
  low intensity lights. The reason for this is that it appears (at least in Poser 4) that
  object color affects the brightness of any texture map that is applied to it. In a scene
  with lots of lights, a textured material with a white object color can appear to be over
  exposed or extremely bright. This is what I found with the simulated GI set up that
  I was using but your setup maybe different and could work perfectly with the materials
  as is.
  
  
