Trackmania Tutorials

TutMania Introduction

2008-07-03T15:44:00.010+01:00

Welcome to TutMania the site that helps you to customize your Trackmania game to it's full potential.

This site is to help you with getting to grips with the basics of editing files, customizing skins, downloading and modifying track data, locations of files and images, converting music and anything else you can think of when it comes to modifying this game.

Below is a list of tutorials for you to follow and take in, please browse as much as you wish and if you have any questions, then just make a comment on the tutorial in question and I, or another Author will do our best in order to answer your questions.

Thank you for taking the time to look at our website, and read through this introduction. We hope this prooves to be of some help in your Trackmania editing and give you the benefits of what other players have been experiencing since it began.

List of Tutorials are as follows:

» Custom Sticker.
» Custom Neons
» In-game GPS
» Locating your cache
» Installing new skins
» How to access p2p content

Hope you enjoy these tutorials provided by myself, and other Authors of the board.

TO ENABLE P2P

2008-07-01T23:23:00.005+01:00

ACCESSING P2P CONTENT
To do this you need to authenticate ur TMN account by buying TMUnited, and enter your CD-Key to the account you're currentley using, You normally find the CD-Key located in your TMUnited manual (inside front cover) once this is done, your p2p will be set and ready for you to display and download skins from other people.

Custom Stickers

2008-07-01T22:50:00.007+01:00

MAKING CUSTOM STICKERS

First locating stickers for TrackMania and knowing where they go. All stickers will be located here

C:\Program Files\TmNationsForever\GameData\Painter\Stickers - Windows Vista.

C:\Program Files\TmNationsForever\GameData\Painter\Stickers - Windows XP

(Both locations are the same for each OS.)

Each sticker will have it’s own folder with the name of your choice. Inside each sticker folder will be your sticker named Sticker.tga and it will also contain an icon for your sticker (so you will recognise it when using it in TrackMania) called Icon.dds.

We will be using PhotoShop to make your stickers and here’s how.

First you need to find what sticker you would like. I myself search here www.mobango.com. It’s a very good source for pictures and even sound for in games but that’s for another time.

First I will show you what not to do (because some people will just open with PhotoShop and save as sticker.tga, make an icon and this will be the results. Ok if you’re working on a black car but your picture may have a different colour background and we want to choose the colour of our car, not let the picture choose our car colour.

Ok so we have our picture we want to make into a sticker and we have it loaded into PhotoShop. Now we should be at this stage.

First we want to make a Alpha Channel, this will determine what part of our picture will not be seen (here it will be that black background. Notice the layer box (bottom right) and click on Channels. You have a small recycle bin (very bottom right corner) to the left of this is an Icon to create New Channel. Click this once. You work area should now look like this.

Now in the same box click on RGB. We should now see our picture again and boxes RGB, Red, Green and Blue boxes will be highlighted. Now we want to select our magic wand and click on the background area using these settings shown at top of picture below and it should now look like this.

Now lets go back to the channels box and click on the Alpha channel we made so it is highlighted and press shift + F5. Using settings shown below press ok so it then fills the selected area black. Black will be transparent and white will allow whatever part of the picture is about it be shown. As for greys in the alpha channel will be semi-transparent.

Now press Shift + Ctrl + S. Change format to TGA and save as Sticker.tga to a place you wot forget. With the resolution 32 bits selected press ok.

Now to make the Icon for you sticker. Press Alt + Ctrl + I. A box will pop up. In this box make sure constrain proportions is un-ticked ad change both width height in pixel dimensions to 64 ad press ok. You now have what is shown in picture below.

Press Shift + Ctrl + S. Select DDS format and save in the same place as sticker as Icon. Using NVIDIA settings shown below press save.

Now make a folder with your stickers name of your choice and copy your new sticker and icon files to this folder. Now copy this folder to here

C:\Program Files\TmUnitedForever\GameData\Painter\Stickers. You are now ready to go to TrackMania to paint a car and apply your new sticker.

Now when you apply your sticker it should look like this. Much better I think. Once you get the hang of this you will be doing it very quick. Good luck and have fun with your creations.

This tutorial was created and provided by Skeleton.

Custom Neons

2008-07-01T16:26:00.008+01:00

CREATE YOUR OWN NEON

People have been asking about putting neon's on your cars, this is how I do it. You will need Photoshop and NVIDIA plug in.

Please go to link for NVIDIA Plug in Click here.

1) First your car needs to have a file called ProjShad.dds in it's zip file. If you're car doesn’t have one you'll have to find the same model of car and use the one from there. If you're using a regular stadium car you'll find one here
C:\Program Files\TmUnitedForever\GameData\Vehicles\Media\Texture\Image

but it will be called StadiumCarShadowProj.dds. Load it up into Photoshop then go to Layer/New Adjustment Layer/Hue Saturation (shown below)

A small box will open, just press ok then another box will open, in this box tick box colorize (shown below)

Now move sliders for Hue, Saturation and Lightness until you get desired colour for your neon‘s, then press ok.

Now go to layers bottom right. Right click on layer called background, then click Flatten Image (shown below)

Now press Shift + Ctrl + S and save as ProjShad.dds and save it somewhere you can find it. With NVIDIA plug in use settings DXT1 ARGB 4 bpp | 1 bit alpha. Generate MIP maps 10 (shown below) and press save.

Now all you need to do is drag and drop this into your Car’s zip file. Hope this was useful

This tutorial was created by Skeleton, credits to him for doing so.

GPS For your tracks

2008-07-01T11:57:00.002+01:00

GPS GHOST

This Tutorial will show you on how to easily make a clean GPS using the new ability of importing ghosts:

1) Record a good Replay on your track and save it
2) Load your track and go to the InGame MT
3) Add a Clip and place it on the startblock ; add an info-text (for example "go back for GPS" )
4) Add another Clip (GPS Clip) and place it one block behind the start
5) Now we import a ghost by clicking on "Import ghosts"
6) Search for the Replay you made in Step 1 and import it
7) Now add "Camera Race" to the GPS-Clip and select your Replay ghost as a "Target" and activate the "Keep playing"-Button

That's it, now you should have a clean and nice GPS-Ghost

Tutorial created by TimeBreaker.

Trackmania Nations Forever (Cache)

2008-06-30T19:26:00.002+01:00

LOCATING YOUR CACHE

Alot of people have been asking where their CACHE is for TMNF/TMUF. Well it's not located in the same place where it used to be, causing alot of confusion for players surrounding.

If you're one of those people who're wondering where to find your CACHE, then it can be found in the following location.

"C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\TrackMania\Cache"

Note: you'll need to have "show hidden files and folders" enabled.

Installing custom skins

2008-06-30T19:07:00.001+01:00

INSTALLING NEW SKINS.

1) First off you need to download your skin, I'm assuming you've already done this. So go to next step.
2) Locate your Documents on your C:\ drive.
3) Now browse to the following destination.. Windows versions may vary.

Windows XP :-

C:\Documents and Settings\YOURWINDOWSNAME\My Documents\TrackMania\Skins\Vehicles\CarCommon

Windows Vista :-

"Documents/Trackmania/Skins/Stadium/Mod"

4) Note: If you're missing the folder "CarCommon", then create the folder with the exact name I've typed, but do not include the quotation marks.
5) Place your skin into the directory, and close.
6) Open up your game, and browse to your profile. Select Vehicles and select your newly installed skin.

--- If you have any questions concerning this tutorial, please don't hesitate to ask.