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| A custom track is a track created or ported by an individual. This could include retro tracks based on other games, or original tracks designed by the creator. There are many components that a custom track is comprised of. This tutorial aims to provide you, the reader, the resources necessary to create your very own custom track. This tutorial will assume you have a basic knowledge of modelling, as it will be necessary for a number of steps in the creation of a custom track. If you are not familiar with any modelling software, [Blender] is most recommended for both beginners and veterans alike. There are many resources you may find on other platforms that cover the fundamental basics of blender which is all you will need to know to get started. |
| A custom track is a track created or ported by an individual. This could include retro tracks based on other games, or original tracks designed by the creator. There are many components that a custom track is comprised of. This tutorial aims to provide you, the reader, the resources necessary to create your very own custom track. This tutorial will assume you have a basic knowledge of modelling, as it will be necessary for a number of steps in the creation of a custom track. If you are not familiar with any modelling software, [Blender] is most recommended for both beginners and veterans alike. There are many resources you may find on other platforms that cover the fundamental basics of [Blender] which is all you will need to know to get started. |
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| Most custom track creators will opt to use blender. This is for a wide variety of reasons, such as the software being free, open source, fast to use and most accessible to MKDS with the current toolkit. |
| If you are using blender, you will need [nns-blender-plugin]. This can be installed from the blender plugin manager and enables you to export to IMD (An intermediate file for the nsbmd), Texture SRT animations and Texture pattern animations. The IMD is converted to nsbmd with another tool which I'm not sure I can name or link, if someone else can confirm that would be great. |
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| Most custom track creators will opt to use [Blender]. This is for a wide variety of reasons, such as the software being free, open source, fast to use and most accessible to MKDS with the current toolkit. |
| If you are using [Blender], you will need [nns-blender-plugin]. This can be installed from the [Blender] plugin manager and enables you to export to IMD (An intermediate file for the nsbmd), Texture SRT animations and Texture pattern animations. The IMD is converted to nsbmd with another tool which I'm not sure I can name or link, if someone else can confirm that would be great. In order to export these files, there are a few things that must be done to the model first. |
| !NNS Materials |
| Mario Kart DS doesn't understand blender materials, so you must create special materials, called NNS Materials. The button to create NNS Materials can be found on the material panel in blender. An interesting quirk of the NNS Blender plugin is that if your object currently has no materials, then the Create NNS Material button will not appear, so you must have a material assigned to your object before you are able to create an NNS material. If you still do not see the option to create an NNS material after you have assigned a material to your object, then ensure that you have the plugin installed correctly. |
| Once you have assigned an NNS material to your object, you will be presented with a mostly accurate view of your model as it would appear in-game, and a handful of options to configure your material. Note that newer versions of blender may throw an error when creating an NNS Material. You may just ignore the errors as they have no significant impact. From here, you can define how your material will look. The necessary options presented should be simple enough to follow. |
| Note that you must use Nitro TGAs as explained earlier. The IMD converter is not capable of handling traditional PNGs and, as such, will not export properly. You can select your Nitro TGAs in blender and they will render in the viewport just fine. |
| !DS Topology |
| The DS is interesting because it's capable of natively rendering convex quads. When you're creating a model for the DS, it's capable of rendering up to 2048 triangles on-screen at a given time. If you exceed this limit, the polygons will begin to flicker much like how sprites on an NES game would. However, if you use convex quads in tandem with triangles, you can increase the number of faces capable of being rendered on screen at a given time. If your quad is not convex, or if you're noticing issues with the way a quad is displayed, you can triangulate it to fix any issues or move the vertices of the quad until it's convex. |
| !TexCoords |
| One very annoying limitation you will probably learn very quickly is the Tex Coord limitation. If the coordinates of any vertex on your UV map exceed a certain value, you will be unable to convert your IMD to an NSBMD. This can be fixed by modifying the UV map to ensure that problematic vertices outside of this range are moved closer to 0, 0 in order to make your UVs fit. |
| !Exporting from Blender |
| Once you have created your NNS materials using your Nitro TGAs, you can export your model as an IMD. This is found in [Blender] at the top left under the File context menu, from there you can export as Nitro Intermediate (IMD). If your model has no issues, it should export properly and you can then proceed to the next step. |
| !!Maya |
| This is where the Maya section would go...IF I USED IT! |
| !!Tips |
