How to make NFS3-styled manufacturer logos and loading slides

In this tutorial you will learn how to make a manufacturer logo (the one that appears behind the car in the car select screen) and loading screen for your car in a style that's quite close to the one used in the vanilla game's ones.

Stuff you'll need

• NFSWizard [portable] or VIVEdit - VIV file opener, needed to export/import the logo (the FEDATA.FSH file)
  
• GIMP [portable] - image editor
• My FEDATA.FSH and loading slide templates
  
• FSHTool [download] - QFS/FSH file unpacker/packer, for slides and vidwalls
• Earth Normal font [download] - font used for the car names in the slides
• Future Earth [download] is also a good alternative (there's a layer in the template that uses that font since it has different metrics)

GIMP's user interface

If you're not famliarized with GIMP, I will give you a quick rundown of the UI so you can get yourself acquainted with it. Here's the default UI for version 2.10

1. Toolbox: here's where you will find most of the tools used for editing, like selection, paintbrush, bucket fill, text, etc. By default tools are grouped into several groups (which are indicated by the small arrows on the bottom right of the buttons); to select another tool in the group, right-click on the button to display the available tools in that tool to select them. Also, you can select the foreground and background colors (the black and white squares, respectively)
2. Tool options/Information/Undo history/Recent files tabs: for this tutorial we're just going to focus on the Tool options; here's where the selected tool's parameters can be configured.
3. Brushes/Patterns/Fonts/Messages tabs: not important for this tutorial.
4. Layers/Channels/Paths tabs: here's when you can manage the image layers, channels and paths. We'll just focus on layers.

 

Step 1: Uncompressing the .qfs files

1. Unzip FSHTool into a folder 
2. Extract the FEDATA.FSH file from an existing car.viv with NFSWizard or VIVEdit
   
3. Copy the FEDATA.FSH you extracted and any fedata\art\slides\##_00.qfs file from the game's folder into the FSHTool folder
• The ## stands for your car serial's number, so rename the file to match your car's SN (for example, if it has a serial number of 7, the file should be named as 07_00.qfs)
4. Now drag the files you copied into the FSHTool.exe file to uncompress them; a new folder with the file name will be generated for each file. 

Step 2: Making the manufacturer logo

1. Unzip the files of the templates to a folder and open the nfs3_fedatafsh_template.xcf file in GIMP. Select the logo_back layer in the logo_back_grp group by clicking on its name in the Layers pane.
   
   
   
   
   
2. Get a logo with transparency (preferably a black monochrome one) of your car's manufacturer, open it in GIMP, copy it and paste it on the template's logo_back layer
• If you only have access to a black and white logo with no transparency, you can use the Colors > Color to Alpha command to make the background color transparent
• If your logo comes in other color than black, you can lock the transparency by clicking on the checkerboard button above the layer list and fill it up with black by picking the Bucket Fill (Shift+B) tool and shift clicking on the logo to color it.
• If the logo is just a part of your source image, you can select it with the Rectangle Select (R) tool, copy it, paste it, unlock the transparency then crop off the empty borders with Layer > Crop to Content, cut it and paste it on the template.
  
  



3. Pick the Unite Transform (Shift+T) tool and resize the logo until it fits by clicking and dragging on the squares alongside the logo's border; Ctrl-click and dragging them will resize the logo while keeping it centered. You can rotate the logo by clicking and dragging outside it and if you Shift-click and drag outside the logo, you can rotate the logo in 15 degree steps. Once you're done, press the Transform button or press the Enter key, then press the anchor button in the layers pane (or press Ctrl+H) to anchor the pasted selection to the layer below.
   
   
   
   
   
4. Select the logo_back_shadow layer, then right-click on the logo_back layer and click on the Alpha to Selection command, then go to Selection > Grow, pick a value of 3 and click OK. Next click on the foreground color in the Toolbox and enter the color depicted here (8f93bf), then click OK. Pick the Bucket Fill tool and click on the selection to fill it.
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
5. Deselect the area with Select > None (Ctrl+Shift+A), then go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur, set it up with the values below and click OK.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Right-click on the logo_back layer, then click on Alpha to Selection and delete the contents of the selection by pressing the Delete key. Next, deselect the area. The back logo is done.
   
   
   
   
   
7. Now, onto the front logo. Go to the logo_front_grp group and select the logo_front_layer; paste the wordmark of the manufacturer (for best results it should be white), then resize it and move it with the Unite Transform tool. Use the guides to place the logo.
   
   
   
   
   
8. Create a new layer by either going to Layer > New Layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) or clicking the New Layer button that's on the lower left corner of the Layers pane. Name the layer logo_front_shine and set it to Grain Merge mode. Place the layer above the color layer with the arrow buttons on the bottom of the Layers pane and fill it with a white color.
   
   
   
   
   
9. Pick the Move (M) tool, then hold the Alt key (to move the selection) while you click and drag the selection 2 pixels to the down and right. Delete the selection contents and deselect your selection. You can zoom in and out with the plus (+) and minus (-) keys or by Ctrl+mouse wheel to help yourself out.
   
   
   
   
   
10. Make a new layer called logo_front_shadow with Grain Merge mode and place it below the logo_front_shine one. Right-click on the logo_back layer, click on Alpha to Selection, fill with black color, move the selection 2 pixels up and left, and delete the selection. Deselect your selection, you're done with the manufacturer logo.
    
    
    
    
    
    
11. To save the manufacturer logo, go to File > Export (Ctrl+E) or File > Export As (Ctrl+Shift+E). Save it as 0000.bmp in the FEDATA folder of the qfs file you uncompressed with FSHTool. When the export options dialog shows up, use the settings shown below and click on Export
    

Step 3: Making the loading slide

1. First you'll need a pic with transparency (that means, without background) of the car you're making. You can use GIMP's own Foreground Select and Quick Mask features to select the image's foreground, then invert the selection and delete the background. There are also background removal apps such as the one provided by DepositPhotos that you can use.
2. Make sure you have the Earth or Future Earth font installed
   
3. Open the nfs3_car_slide_template.xcf in GIMP
   
4. Copy your car image and paste it on the car_bg's group car layer, then scale it and rotate it with the Unite Transform tool. Anchor the layer (Ctrl+H) when you're done.
   
   
   
   
   
• In case there are background bits sticking out of the car's image, pick the Eraser (Shift+E) tool, pick a brush size of 10 px and erase them away
  
  
  
  
  
5. Select the car_shadow layer, then pick the Free Select (F) tool and make a selection by placing points where roughly where the shadow would be placed -don't worry about making it perfect because it will be blurred anyway-. Either connect the points all the way to the end or press Enter to make the selection active. Next, pick the Bucket Fill tool and fill the selection with a black color.
   
   
   
   
   
6. Go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply a blur with these settings
   
   
   
   
   
7. If you need to adjust the contrast of car layer, select again the car layer and go to Colors > Curves. Make sure it's set to Value and move the points to adjust brightness and contrast; lower-left point controls the darker colors -if you move it upwards it will make the dark colors brighter; if you move it towards the right it will make them darker- and the upper-right one controls the brightest colors -if you move it downwards it will make them darker; if you move it towards the left it will make them brighter-. Click OK to apply the adjustments.
   
   
   
   
   
• You can also add points by clicking in any point of the curve and dragging for more precise control. You can also apply curves in different channels (such as red, green, blue, alpha, etc) for different effects, like I did here: I changed the image tone using the rim color as a base (if you click on a part of the image while in the Curves dialog it will pick the color you clicked on as a sample which will displayed as a vertical line) and reduced the blue channel value while raising the values on the red channel to make the image tone match the background.
  
  
  
  
  
8. Go to the car name (Earth) layer in the text group, pick the Text (T) tool triple-click in it to select all the text and type the car's name in ALL CAPS
• If you're using Future Earth, hide the car name (Earth) by clicking on the eye icon next to the layer in the Layers pane, show the car name (Future Earth) layer, proceed as step 8 but use small caps instead
  
  
  
  
  
9. Select the shadow layer below the text, right-click on the text layer and select Alpha to Selection, then go to Selection > Grow and grow the selection by 3px. Then pick the Bucket Fill tool and paint the selection black
   
   
   
   
   
10. Deselect your selection, then go to Filters > Blur > Gaussian Blur and apply a blur using these values. Then go to Layer > Crop to Selection to crop out the empty space in the layer.
    
    
    
    
    
11. Select the text group and pick the Unite Transform tool. Move the pivot point right to the text's upper right corner, then Ctrl-click and drag to the right the diamond shaped point on the top side of the layer; use the placeholder text below as a guide for the shear (which is around 11 in the upper-right value of the Transform box). When you're done, click on Transform or press Enter.
    
    
    
    
    
12. Hide the org_text_guide layer. You're done with the loading slide
13. To save the loading slide, go to File > Export (Ctrl+E) or File > Export As (Ctrl+Shift+E). Save it as 0000.bmp in the ##_00 folder of the qfs file you uncompressed with FSHTool. When the export options dialog shows up, use the settings shown below and click on Export
    
    
    

Step 3: Compiling the logo and slide files and setting them in-game

1. Go to the FEDATA folder and drag the index.fsh file into the FSHTool executable (you might need to open a second window to do this)
2. Go to the ##_00 folder and drag the index.fsh file into the FSHTool executable (you might need to open a second window to do this)
3. Open you car's car.viv file with NFSWizard or VIVEdit and import your FEDATA.FSH file, then save.
   
4. Copy the ##_00.qfs file and paste it into the fedata\art\slides folder of NFS3
   

And that's it! This is how you can make NFS3-styled manufacturer logos and loading slides. Hope this tutorial has been helpful.

See you around!