ProMods

Are you interested in ProMods work, you don't have the skills to map but you are able to make some buildings for example in modeling software like Blender? Please read on because we have a nice exersice for you.

Modding is not only about mapping. Earlier the British Isles project has been announced. Unfortunately SCS didn't add the characteristic building type you can notice on the British Isles into the game. So, are you able to make building models from a photo reference, please show your work here! (Make sure your model has been captured in the map editor, this proves that you can make models ready for the editor. If you are really not able to convert your model then please show it anyway, but then in your modeling software).

If we like your work there might be a chance one day that one of our staff members contacts you with the question to help us further out when it comes to modeling buildings.

So in other words, show the best you can make in this thread.

I'd love to try this! However I would need some introduction on how to use this software, but I should get somewhere as I have plenty of time on my hands.
For example this building : Should be replaced with this texture : http://i.imgur.com/ortFWKv.jpg

Modeling can have a steep learning curve so make sure your going to dedicate a lot of your free time to doing it. A texture change is fairly easy though just make sure you are using a 1024x1024 or 512x512 canvas for your new texture.

I've always had fun doing 3d modelling as you can see in my tree models thread. The fun comes in actually creating the meshes shaping and conforming them to suit what you are going to use them for. I use 3ds Max as its so easy to pick up and intuitive for a beginner and there isn't much fuss with menu this and folder that etc. etc. like Maya will serve you up with. Though Maya is some of the best software out there for modeling and can support lots of formats for whatever you might be doing. Its the Pro software on the market. Both of those cost a good hunk of money.

Blender is the choice if you just want something to use and doing want to drain your bank account. Its more than sufficient software to use for modelling though the menus are kind of complicated for a beginner and the process is not so easy to figure out, when you want to create a new model. There is however addons that the SCS community has developed to utilize Blender for creating models SCS tools and Blender2SCS essentially these are the only two ways to convert the models into the game formats.

One last choice for modeling software is called zModeler which was developed by Oleg for editing and creation of specific software formats mainly the Prism PMD files and files from Grand Theft Auto. Its not what I'd call user friendly yet. Its not even in a traditional enough sense modeling software as I am accustomed to seeing. I think its mainly useful for changing in and out textures and possibly doing some pre-fab work that can't be done on the other software that is out there. Its fairly cheap as far as 3d software goes the price is dished out by timeframe which is about 6-12 months for a license.

Thanks for the advice I've taken a look at all of these and it's likely I'll go for blender (although 3ds max looks great)
Looks very complex to me but ill have a go.

yea, best way to go about it is to start by doing some tutorials on Youtube, play around with the models a bit and get used to the interface as that is the big thing that is daunting at first, what do all the buttons do and mean. Where is option xyz, how to move the objects and apply simple textures. all that good stuff. Just work your way into the process. It'll take some time so like I say don't give up too quickly as this can be pretty tough at times. take a break if you get too frustrated as it happens quite a lot.

I am currently in the early stages of setting up my own UK map, and ATM my best option is to change textures for some prefabs. How would I go about doing this using blender (already set up with SCS Tools)? I have tried extracting the base.scs file using the extractor, but the folders containing any of the models and textures are empty.

Changing textures usually doesn't require a modelling software. You can simply make copies of the mats tobjs and dds, edit the dds and update the file names in the mat and tobj , and use SCS Editor to assign a new look.

Quick question: is there any way to measure the scale of the model I'm making in Blender? I'm going to try making a bin for the map I intend to make whenever I have the ETS2 DLC I'm missing, but I don't want to end up making a bin bigger than my truck.

In Blender, 1 unit usually represents 1 meter (or 3'3.4" for those wo work with the imperial system).

In the textures what does the alpha/transparency value do in terms of how it will look in game? Looking at default textures I have seen all sorts of values for it yet all seem opaque in game.