News: As probably most already know jonwil is back and we are nowworking together on the importer. This means 1.5.1 was the last "modded"version. From now on we will follow the original numbering scheme.

Important: All importer development has now been moved to sourceforge. New versions will only be available there.

New Importer Homepage on sourceforge.
Download old versions.
Available Tutorials
Full Changelog (on Sourceforge)
Effect Point Changes
RGB Recolorable Textures
Visual Options

Matrix and Matrix Editor Tutorial (unfinished)

v16fix3 Binary (Fixed Version) Source, Unfixed Source, Fixed (Contains only changed files)
v15 Available on jonwil's page.
1.5.1 Binary Source
v1.5.0 Binary Source& Debug Version - Get this if you suffer crashes and want to help me fix them.
v1.4.6 Binary Source
v1.1.0 Binary Source

Explanation of my effect point additions, extended version.

First we need to get some terms straight:

• scenery item - what you eventually want to be able to place in RCT3
• object - a part of your item, what will be listed as 'mesh' in the importer, so essentially a separately texturable piece of your scenery item. In Blender these are objects, so that's what they will be called =)
• mesh - connected bunch of vertices that make up faces.
• vertex (pl vertices) - a point in 3D space.

Probably much of this is common knowledge, but you need to know what I exactly mean (especially with 'object').

So let's say you want to create a lamp, a pyramid with the light floating over the tip:

You'll notice the point over the tip of the pyramid in the center of Blender's 3D cursor. This is a (from the pyramid) separate object which consists of only one vertex. This is essential, separate object, only one vertex.

Now you export, convert etc. and bring your item into the create scenery dialog of the importer. You should see at least two meshes (in the example: the pyramid and the single vertex object). If you go to the mesh options you'll find that the single vertex object has been automatically disabled (like the root object created by biturn).

If you now add an effect point you'll see a combo box that says 'Reset Default'. If you open it you'll see your single vertex object listed. Select it and press 'Pos'. The position of the vertex will be entered into the matrix, effect point set =)

If you press the Create button you'll get a list of templates for effect point names. The ones for lightstart and particlestart lead to dialogs with more options, the other ones just paste in the effect point name and select the number part if there is one.

An even slicker option is that if you name one-vertex objects like the effect point you want to create (and the conversion of the item in biturn doesn't mangle them) you can press the 'Auto' button below the effect point list and they will be created automatically. Even if you don't name them, just press 'auto' to add all your one-vertex objects as effect points and edit their names.

Introduction from the changelog: Make the first color shades of red, the second shades of green and the third shades of blue. Colors should be clean (eg no green in red). The darkest color should be still slightly colored, not completely black (eg RGB 1,0,0 for red is enough).
The brightest color should be the full color (eg RGB 255,0,0), not the lightened color like in the original Blue/Magenta/Yellow scheme.
Important: These textures need to be truecolor, indexed images will be used as-is and need to use the old Blue/Magenta/Yellow palette. Also the RGB textures are saved with the old palette, so don't be surprised if they look Blue/Magenta/Yellow in the RCT3 dumper =)

Now here is the tutorial to explain why this is easier (at least for me) than the other method:

• Create your texture in grayscale. Convert to RGB truecolor before continuing (if it was already, convert to grayscale and back to ensure clean grayscale).
• Now select the part of the texture for the first color choice.
• Adjust the values. This works like this:
  • Go to Layer->Colors->Values (Gimp) or Image->Adjustments->Levels (Photoshop)
  • At the top of dialog that opens there is a combobox called 'Channel', select 'Green'
  • Output levels: Draw the right slider completely to the left (the corresponding edit box should read '0')
  • Do the same for the Blue channel
  • Go to the red channel. Leave the right output values slider alone =)
  • Slide the left output slider one tic right (the corresponding edit box should read '1')
  • Click 'ok'
  • Your selection should now be colored red. (bdw the manipulation of the red channel ensures that the darkest part is slightly red).
• Deselect, select the part for the second color choice
• Again adjust the values like above, only switch green and red.
• Repeat for the third choice, you should know what to do by now =)
• The resulting picture should be saved as truecolor.
• Import and have fun =)

Welcome to the first in-game feature addition =D
Browsing through ovl dumps I finally found out how to make trees, or rather how to activate the special tree-placing features and swaying.

Here are a few pics, in all of these I placed the same object four times beside each other:

1) Without any feature activated:

2) Swaying set. It doesn't look too spectacular on a static image 

3) Randomized Rotation:

(As you can see the shadow is unaffected. Effect points are also unaffected)

4) Randomized Brightness:

5) Randomized Scale:

(Looking at the shadows you can see the size is varied larger and smaller)

These options are saved in the scenery ovl, so they are independent of the sid data.

If you look at the additions you'll see an unknown factor. I did a small test with this factor (which is always 1.0 in the game ovls I looked at). It seems like it also varies brightness:

Maybe in a more drastic way, although thats hard to say for sure on a sample of four =)

Both factors seem to be cumulative:

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