ZT CC Mod creation

[Sixpounder]

Hi, I just wanted to know, if somebody knows how to make their own mods? (not just a color change but a complete change of look on a animal, dinosaur, etc. or even from scratch) for the Zoo Tycoon CC. I really really need to know how to make my own. Thanks.

[Hawkkeye666]

Here is great tutorial:

And here is forum that answers a lot of questions you will have:

 

[Sixpounder]

30 minutes ago, Hawkkeye666 said:

Here is great tutorial:

And here is forum that answers a lot of questions you will have:

 

Thank you SO MUCH tomorrow I'll start learning how to and maybe with time I will upload my creations :) thanks again.

[Fern]

One thing you need to be careful of is using ids that will cause conflicts with other ids.

Also read Hawkkeyes project thread as there is a lot of useful info in that.

Have fun learning.

[Hawkkeye666]

1 hour ago, Sixpounder said:

Thank you SO MUCH tomorrow I'll start learning how to and maybe with time I will upload my creations :) thanks again.

If you have any questions, ask. I learnt how to make animals just few weeks ago (and I am still learning), and there are many things you will struggle with at the beginning, especially if you do not have prior experience with Blender/Gimp.

Question can save you a lot of time.

[Sixpounder]

7 hours ago, Hawkkeye666 said:

If you have any questions, ask. I learnt how to make animals just few weeks ago (and I am still learning), and there are many things you will struggle with at the beginning, especially if you do not have prior experience with Blender/Gimp.

Question can save you a lot of time.

okay okay so.. what do you recommend? like, what do I need to know or what could you tell me as a beginer that you struggle with and you wish someone told you, or what do I need to know/do like small things to know when making it, I'm a fast learner, but since I've never used blender... I'm a designer if that helps me with something.

[(Designer)Z.Z.]

Hi Six, welcome to Tek!

We cant wait to see what you create!

:D

[Truly_happy]

Hi, Sixpounder. I'm a bit of a designer here. I just recently had to re-learn all my modding skills. I had trouble with the programs. You'll need APE to make animals. Zoot allows you to fix the alignment (called "rotations") of the images. I have never used ZTStudio, so no idea what that one is for.

Programming is a booger, too. Thankfully, we have Fern and Jay to help us. :)

[Hawkkeye666]

1.) You may change the size of model in Blender, but only right after you import it. Hold shift and click on both model and skeleton, and then push S. Left click when model has desired size. If you are not sure if size is ok, render one animation and then load frames into APE next to some animal you know - you will see how big it is and if you have to make it smaller/larger.

2.) sometimes after rendering animations, Hendrix´s script makes animation named !scale. Delete this file from folder with animal animations before converting sprites or you would not be able to continue with conversion. Very often, script creates palette file that do not have bright green colour as a first pixel. I could not understand what Hendrix is doing in video, so I figured out my own procedure - copy palette file to desktop, rename it, and open both in Gimp. Zoom (25,000x) and copy every pixel to the place of the previous in the palette file (of course only from bright green pixel to the first one on top left)  untill you are left with file without bright green pixel and first two pixels are the same colour. Then switch to copy of palette, and copy bright green pixel from it as a first to palette file.

3.) do everything precisely as Hendrix in video. Even names of folders (animals/codeofanimal/m) are very important and animations would not work, if they were created into wrongly named folders. Choose code for animal before you start making it.

4.) APE is doing many redundancies, wrong codes, etc. while you save animal in it. Save it only when it is needed, and when you change in it something that do not need to be saved in .uca (for example you delete/add some frames to animation), do backup of animal´s .uca file and after saving, put it into animal´s .ztd.

5.) .ini and .uca files can be opened in notepad or similar program.

6.) read this: http://www.lunamanar.com/zklounge/viewtopic.php?t=116

7.) read my projects thread (Hawkkeye´s projects), Fern is explaining there a lot of things I asked about.