As far as I know, there are no body mods. Creating 3d artwork for the game is quite difficult because of the morph animation requirements.

A couple people have attempted to use the system, but I don't think they publicly released anything outside of a wiki tutorial.

Hmm... Are there currently and more content or expansions planned in the future that may add more bodies?

The game is feature complete. There won't be any new features added between now and full release. It is just bug fixes, tutorial videos, manuals, and maybe a missing map or two left. So what you have now, is the full game.

Post release, I plan on doing some crowdfund raising, which we call "Feature Bounties". Users will donate money, once a milestone is met, contributors will vote on which bounties the funds should go to. Whatever the contributors vote on will be what I implement.

Several of those bounties are related to adding more vehicle types. There is no guarantee that enough money will be raised to work on anything, nor there is there a guarantee enough people will vote on new vehicle artwork over other features. For more information on this, do a search on the forums for "Feature Bounty", or "Expansion" and you'll find this topic come up ad nauseam.

So its possible, based on community interest. Understandable.

To encourage modders to create new car bodies, it might be a good idea to make the original blender files of the preexisting bodies (including the model and morph animations) available? Of course, only if it doesn't cause any copyright issues with the 3d-artist who supplied these models. While it is quite difficult to create completely new car bodies, slight modifications should be easier to make. For example, I think my blender skills may be sufficient to turn an existing sedan model into a suitable coupé.

Originally posted by tbjack:

To encourage modders to create new car bodies, it might be a good idea to make the original blender files of the preexisting bodies (including the model and morph animations) available? Of course, only if it doesn't cause any copyright issues with the 3d-artist who supplied these models. While it is quite difficult to create completely new car bodies, slight modifications should be easier to make. For example, I think my blender skills may be sufficient to turn an existing sedan model into a suitable coupé.

Unfortunately I have none of the source files for the cars models since it was all subcontracted work. If memory serves me, none of the contractors used Blender.

I may make one myself sometime post release. I'm a bit rusty doing 3d, but I think a video tutorial will do everyone well.

There is a user submitted, written tutorial on our wiki for Bforartist: http://wiki.gearcity.info/doku.php?id=artwork:models_vehicles:bforartist


That being said, you can import the files in manually to blender: https://forums.ogre3d.org/viewtopic.php?t=84727

Although I am not sure if that importer supports morph animations that are built into the .mesh files.

Originally posted by Eric.B:

Unfortunately I have none of the source files for the cars models since it was all subcontracted work. If memory serves me, none of the contractors used Blender.

Oh, how sad. I saw a great potential to increase the selection of car bodies. Unfortunately, the bodies are not matched in many eras. Too often I feel that there is no matching counterpart in the same style. For example, 'General' and 'Caponne' could use a matching coupe counterpart in the same style, which could have been created by shortening the rear passenger compartment. Or 'Telos' and 'Orbit' could have been made into a typical European sedan of the 50s/60s with a slightly enlarged rear passenger compartment. Again, a shorter 'Astura' without the landaulet top would have been a perfect European luxury sedan of the 40s/50s.

Originally posted by Eric.B:

There is a user submitted, written tutorial on our wiki for Bforartist: http://wiki.gearcity.info/doku.php?id=artwork:models_vehicles:bforartist

I tried the tutorial yesterday. It all worked out pretty well. However, the animations didn't quite work at first. I had to make manual changes to the mesh.xml and then convert the xml again. But with that it worked fine. Maybe I will find the time to create some (simple) vehicle bodies soon.

Originally posted by Eric.B:

That being said, you can import the files in manually to blender: https://forums.ogre3d.org/viewtopic.php?t=84727

Although I am not sure if that importer supports morph animations that are built into the .mesh files.

Unfortunately, from what I understand, this will not work. But I will give it a try.

Let me know if you run into any issues, i'm more than happy to debug them for you.

Originally posted by Eric.B:

Let me know if you run into any issues, i'm more than happy to debug them for you.

Hello Eric.
I try to make a new vehicle body for GC and I have an complete model in blender made by me, I have shape keys,animations(keyframes) and submeshes done,but if i want export model to the ogremesh, so I receive this error log:

.
Can you help me please? :D

Here is what I could pull up:
https://github.com/OGRECave/blender2ogre/issues/56

The reporter's solution is in the bottom comment.

I believe the morph animations won't export then, but we'll see.


If that doesn't fix it for you, shoot me an email with the files (zipped), and I'll poke around the code for it and pester Paroj the current maintainer for a solution. (admin@ventdev.com)

thank you for advise, i'm going to check it. :)

Yeah, seems like an issue with blender perhaps: https://developer.blender.org/T46019

Try just disabling shape normals when exporting.

Originally posted by Eric.B:

Yeah, seems like an issue with blender perhaps: https://developer.blender.org/T46019

Try just disabling shape normals when exporting.

Hello.
Today I have tried export it without shape normals and successfully done. I have implement new model to the game (my experimental mod of course) I wanted to check body in the Car designer and game crashed :D Maybe model is oversized,or bad submesh name,or... I don't know :D

Check the log file for the game. It expects at least 3 animations with specific names.
http://wiki.gearcity.info/doku.php?id=troubleshooting:steam_logfile

You're looking for text saying "exception" at the bottom of the log.

Alternatively, you can email me the .mesh file.

Id like to cut back in for a moment about potential future body models (Either in-game or mods)

Earlier I referenced the RMR Drivetrain and how it didn't truly feel like any bodies fit what i was looking for. But it dawns on me that the body models that are all available are more... "realistic" in their depiction. Sure they all look like McDonalds happy meal toys but the lay outs are correct to what would be expected of the time period (Basically you didnt really have RMR Super Cars rolling around the busy New York streets in 1950)

While it all makes sense in historical context the beauty and fun of Gear City is maybe I don't WANT a car that "makes sense". Maybe I want a Roadster that uses a rotary airplane engine and has a non sequential 8 speed manual transmission! Maybe it will have Leaf Springs in the front and Air Bags in the rear! Will it be a good car? PFFFFT NO! But god willing, you can make it and sell it to the public!

Point is, the RMR Drivetrain is available as early as 1940 if you work hard on R&D. I feel like it would be good to have crude 1940s looking models that appear to have space in the rear to accommodate rear engines. Sure, maybe the world didn't have RMR Sports Cars back then but I like to imagine I am the crazy SOB who pioneered the design.

I look forward to the "Feature Bounties" and Mods that may expand this game further. Gear City is a great game as is, but the future possibilities excite me!

PS. Eric, any ideas as to when you were starting the crowd funding? Or is that still a ways off from now? I wouldn't mind donating to it.