How to map emergency lights on vehicles for ELS v3 - v6

I decided to make a tutorial about how to map els and make a light for GTA IV.

DOWNLOAD - Contender used in this tutorial

So let's start off with a blank zmodeler

Now what you're going to want to do is click the material button highlighted in the picture.

Once you click that this should come up

Where is says texture layers what your going to want to do is click the first one.

That should bring up the texture browser and it should look like this

To get picture in there all you have to do is press add. The pictures you want are from the car's wtd and the vehshare. You must import the cars textures and vehshare before working on anything always if you're importing.

Now what i want you to do is locate all the texture of the vehshare and the car's wtd.

Like in this picture

When you have all the textures of the cars wtd and vehshare the texture browser should look a little something like this

After done importing all the textures into the texture browser press ok and it should get you back to the material editor

Now keep material editor opened and import the model you want to work with

Like this

Then end result should be a car with all its textures and no errors in the error box saying something about textures.

It will look like this

After done importing and not getting any error you can close material editor

Now for els to work out properly you can't have any original extra that came with the model since els uses the extras to flash.

So open up the hierarchy list and search through the model. This is how you do it

Go where it says (vehicle name.wft) and click it like in the picture

When you click the picture it should say chassis and if you click that then a whole bunch of stuff should come into view.

Now look through the list every where to find extra's. If you find one then delete it like in the picture below

If you want to keep then you're either going to have to rename it or attach it to something.

Once deleted the part should no longer be in he hierarchy list

As shown here

Once done deleting all the unnecessary extra's open up material editor. If you need help with that look up for reference.

When you opened up material editor click the square with the star in it like in the picture.

That will create a new texture slot.

When you press it a new texture should show up and it will be called new material. If you click on it once then it will turn gray. Click on it twice and then you will be able to change the name to something else. What you going to want to call the new material is emerglights_emis lightsemissive. Calling it that tells the game that this texture should glow in game and give off a bright effect. This is what it should look like.

Now once you have done that then you can add textures to this material. What you're going to want to do is click on the first texture layer in the texture layer.

Clicking that should bring up texture browser. Your going to want to hit add since were going to add a new texture that wasn't previously there.

The texture you're going to want to add is the texture you guys use to change the els light colors in game.

This texture

Once you're done doing that just press ok

After pressing ok the texture should be in the first texture layer, but where not done just yet. Were going to have to add three more textures to this material.

The textures that were going to add are vehicle_genericmud_car, vehicle_generic_smallspecmap, and vehicleenvmap128. You're going to want to put them in that order. if you doing everything right then it should look like this

After you've done that you're going to want to hit edit for vehicle_genericmud_car. Don't do it to emerglight texture cause that doesn't need to be touched at all.

When you hit edit for vehicle_genericmud_car hit advance and it should look like this

You're going to want to change something on it.

Your going to want to change the first modulate to mutiadd and manual #1 to manual #2

This is how it should look for vehicleenvmap128

This is what it should look like for vehicle_generic_smallspecmap

Remember were only working with textures in the emerglights_emis lightsemissive material.

That is how you setup the material for els lightsemissive texture.

Next what I'm going to show you is how to make a led for gta 4. a simple way to do it.

You're going to want to make a new box. Go to your top left and click on the box and it should move back like in the picture

You going to want to do it in back or where ever the led is going to be facing. in my case it's going to be the back.

You are going to want to make it not too big or too small.

heres how i made mine.

When you finish making your box, a box will pop up looking like this.

All you have to do is click ok and it will go away and you box will be created.

Now deselect your car model so you can examine your box. Like done here

Now use the select/quadr tool to select your whole entire box so you can move it. to use quadr all you have to do is hold right click and move the mouse so that the whole entire object is in the box quadr created. Make sure you put the box over the whole object or else the box won't be selected. Here's what it should look like when done right.

Now what you're going to want to do is turn selected mode on by clicking it and turning one of the axes off. In my case it will be the y axis since I won't be moving the box up, only across.

This is the outcome you should get.

Now your going to use the modify/move tool to move the object into the place you want it to be in.

Now select the model in the hierarchy list by clicking on it again. it should appear and look like this

Now just move the box into place while still in selected mode and having modify/move tool still on.

Once you have gotten the object into the place you want it to be you can unselect the model again by doing the same thing you did before to make it reappear again. now your going to want to go into polygon mode by pressing 3 and select only the part that will be facing away from the car near the window. Your going to want to use select/single tool to select only the front since select/quadr will select the whole entire thing or large amount of it. When done selecting the front polygon use modify/delete to delete presuming that selected mode is still on.

Now you're going to want to want make another box inside the first box. do the same thing you did to the first box to the second. Repeat the steps stated above.

When you get done with doing the same steps over again to the second box use modify/flip tool to flip the box inside out. After you've done that attach it to the first box making them one. After that press 1 and then on the object to get into vertices mode. Once in vertices mode you're going to want to use the tool create/polygon/strip. Click the box next to polygon to change something. Take off smart depth and change it from triangles to quad. This is much easier in my opinion. You can leave it if you want as triangles but you must take off smart depth or else your strip is going to look fucked.

Now in a repeating motion click one vertices and then another just like you did it to the other one. If you don't know how to use this tool then go to the zmodeler website and there is a tutorial showing how to. Once you figure how to use the tool then continue on closing the gaps in the between the boxes. In the end it should look like this with no gaps in between at all.

When you get done with all of that make a grid for the off mode and on mode. Make one grid that fits the led light deck. Then use the create/copy tool to copy the grid once. This is how your settings should be for create/surface/grid

If everything is done properly then your grid should look like this

Now you're going to want to do what we did before with moving the boxes on selected mode just now were going to do it with both grids at the same time using the same tools. If you need any help look up to see the steps to do it. Once you've done that go into polygon mode by pressing 3 and using the select/quadr tool and modify/submesh/dettach tool you're going to detach each polygon so that you can map them separately.

Zmodeler doesn't do well with multiple mappings going on at the very same moment so you going to want to detach them to help you and zmodeler not cause any confusion. Your end result should look like this where every box is independent.

Now you're going to want to do the same thing as above for creating a new material. this time were going to call it mesh since it wont glow or anything of that nature.ok so this time you go into polygon mode your going to have to select the one polygon since their separated into individuals and then click on material editor, after that your going to want to click on emgerligts_emis lightsemissive and hit assign to selection with selected mode on still. After that hit ok and go into vertices mode by pressing 1 and hit right click in a view that the led is going to be facing. Hit mapping and then edit UV. At that time edit uv should pop up and you should select generate new since your not using old materials on the led light and force material which will be emgerlights lightsemissive.

Once you've done all of that change one of the views to UV mapper and click on the material. It should be emerglights lightsemissive that should pop up when hit material. Once you've gotten through all of that the material and object should pop up. If the object doesn't just click object and click the object you want to map to this. Only objects assigned to this material will appear in the object list. Once you're done with all of that turn selected mode off and go into object mode by pressing 4. Once you've done that you're able to move or edit the object in UV mapper how ever you please. This is where I put mine

This is the outcome i got.

To speed things up this is what you get when you repeat the process over again.

When you get everything done this is how it looks

I hope this tutorial can help people out and reduce the request of ^^how do I make a car els enabled? ^^

Here is my tinypic album so you can look at all the photos used in the tutorial. All of the picture used in the tutorial to make the images bigger all you have to do is click on them.

Also I will have a unlocked model of the car used in the tutorial for educational use (see first post for download).

If you need more understanding of how to map in Zmodeler go to the Zmodeler forums they have some really good tutorials there that can help out the people struggling.

Tutorial respectively made by gtapolicetrucker please don't not claim as you own or host on another site without my permission.

Also to make the off mode for els all you have to do is do the same thing for the on mode but instead of calling it lightsemissive your going to cal it mesh and do the same procedures

Level of diffuctly and needed experience: Novice to moderate skills needed to acheive look wanted by person.