How can I open .car on 3dmax?

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garrett1127

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I do not believe you can convert a .car file to either of those in max. You'll need the max render scene for the model you want to convert, then you can export the fbx or obj out.
 

garrett1127

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You can't open a .car file in max, no matter what version you have. What r you trying to accomplish to be exact.
 

Rogue

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.car is not a max format, it will never open. If you want to convert to fbx or obj you need the "car" in .3ds or .max format first.
 

tankdriver245

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i dont even model and i know thats impossible
but if you made a 3dmodel and want to export it save the template and make a .pas file or something like that and convert it to a .3do
 

Skynetxp

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Hi guys,
sorry if I jump into the discussion, i never made a mod for NR2003 so forgive my ignorance about that.
I had a similar question, so from what I understood it's not possible to open existing cars and modify them without the source scene, am I right?
 

Will Farmer

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Hi guys,
sorry if I jump into the discussion, i never made a mod for NR2003 so forgive my ignorance about that.
I had a similar question, so from what I understood it's not possible to open existing cars and modify them without the source scene, am I right?
Correct. From what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) A mod creator creates a source 3d model which is used for the game/mod. They use that 3d model to create the paint template etc. The mod creator and usually a few other extremely talented artists detail the 3d model with textures to make it look real (engine bays, underbodies, TIRES, etc.) which makes up the complete model you see in max. Once you add some lights, backgrounds, and tweak a lot of things, you have a scene. (and that's a very brief description, it's a lot more work than that...)

Once that 3d model is converted to a .car, there is no way to get a 3d model from a .car. Its compiled at that point, and there's no way to get it back.
Unless if you have the 3d model created by the mod creator, there is no way to make a render scene from a .car.

I've always assumed that maybe if you're really talented in 3d modeling, you could reverse engineer a 3d model based on the template, but that would be painfully hard work that I doubt anyone would do for free, or for fun. (I also have no idea if that's even possible).. Hope that helped, I had a hard time figuring that out myself at first.
 

garrett1127

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Hi guys,
sorry if I jump into the discussion, i never made a mod for NR2003 so forgive my ignorance about that.
I had a similar question, so from what I understood it's not possible to open existing cars and modify them without the source scene, am I right?
What do you mean modify them, the model itself or just the paint that is on your car file?
 

Mystical

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.car file is not a model in any shape whatsoever. All it contains is metadata for the driver info/stats and embedded texture files for the paintjob and the crew. For a mod ALL the 3d model data is with in the makea3do files which is completely different from a .car files. The 3do's are compiled within makea3do.exe using an exported model scene from 3ds known as a PAS file combined with the script written for the mod being created.

If you wanted to edit the model/UV's for a mod you'd need the originla 3ds scene and script written by the mod creator, then you'd have to recompile it to inject it back into the game.
 

Skynetxp

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Correct. From what I understand (correct me if I'm wrong) A mod creator creates a source 3d model which is used for the game/mod. They use that 3d model to create the paint template etc. The mod creator and usually a few other extremely talented artists detail the 3d model with textures to make it look real (engine bays, underbodies, TIRES, etc.) which makes up the complete model you see in max. Once you add some lights, backgrounds, and tweak a lot of things, you have a scene. (and that's a very brief description, it's a lot more work than that...)

Once that 3d model is converted to a .car, there is no way to get a 3d model from a .car. Its compiled at that point, and there's no way to get it back.
Unless if you have the 3d model created by the mod creator, there is no way to make a render scene from a .car.

I've always assumed that maybe if you're really talented in 3d modeling, you could reverse engineer a 3d model based on the template, but that would be painfully hard work that I doubt anyone would do for free, or for fun. (I also have no idea if that's even possible).. Hope that helped, I had a hard time figuring that out myself at first.
My idea, assuming i can reach the author of the mod to ask his permission, was to do a few fixes on the 1997 cup mod.
There are a few stretched UVs, tachometer seems to have has hard edges when they should be soft, and thunderbird front bumper has also a wrong hard edge that should be soft. Plus would like to add some bevels and smooth out some shapes to make cars looking a bit more up with times. Nowadays PCs would have no issues to handle some more polygons - not sure if there's a limit to how many polygons a 3do file can contain - or the game engine itself.

Of course this would break the skinning since target (the damaged model) would be different than the new source one, so I doubt that would be possible without reworking also the target mesh.
But yeah it seems more work todo doing reverse engineering of a .3do file than making a brand new mod maybe. I understood that there are some tools to do reverse engeneering of the mdo, but then once imported back to 3ds max it would be like a huge single mesh with eveything merged in, so also to detach one by one every single element, rebuild the right hierarchy etc.. would not be a joke. I also have no idea how the script to regenerate the 3do works, so overall it seems a huge work. I definitely have no time for it, and thought that there was a simpler way to reconvert back a 3do to a 3ds max input, something like an FBX that you can easily import in Maya or 3ds Max.
 

Mystical

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Yeah it is irrelevant if modern day pc's can handle a high poly count. NR2003 is constrained to the same poly limit as it was when it came out in 2003. So for every extra detail you add on if proper lods are not generated or LOD 1 model is too high in poly count the game will crash more often.

Also you can't just have the models but you need the original script source code to do a re-compile as well so the original mod creator would have to be willing to hand that stuff over (if they even know where it is).
 

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