Modding NHeat - Brakelights

When cracking up some NHeat CAR file, you'll notice there's always files named

  • highb.mod
  • lowb.mod
These files are 3D models that NHeat will show up at braking a car - it's supposed to be the brakelights.

Now Heat does not only load these models and shows them up at braking, but it adds some kind of "highlighting" to the mapping of those models. Which is some feature that can be used in some certain ways :)

But first of all we'll want to have brakelights

  • Load your car's model to zmodeler
  • Delete any and all faces that are NOT intended to be brakelights
  • Remap the remaining brakelight faces to some more emphasizing colors
  • To get some emphasized texture, copy the backlight's texture and work on it's gamma curve
  • Export the resulting model to highb.mod and copy this to lowb.mod

This is how we'll want to have it show up in the game


high1.mod, circle shows backlight faces
everything deleted but backlight faces. Unfortunatly, brakelight faces cannot be separated from backlights here
New brakelight, modeled by using backlights for blueprint.
Notice the more emphasized texture on the resulting brakelight
Modding NHeat - Glowing Brakediscs

Now brakelights are not the only parts on a racecar that light up on braking... brakediscs often do as well. And since NHeat's game engine will lighten up every face in highb/lowb.mod at braking, we could make use of this to add glowing brakediscs

  • Open up highb.mod
  • Add/model brakediscs to the brakelight's object
  • Move those brakediscs to where the car's tires are supposed to be
  • Map some reddish texture to those brakediscs
  • Export the model to highb.mod and copy this to lowb.mod
Basically, that's all... apart from having to find out where exactly would be the best place for positioning those brakediscs to make them really show up - as they won't move like the tires will. They are simply static objects, that show up at braking. Even on a standing car...

Be aware that all this only makes any sense at all when you can look through the rims of your mod's tires. If the rim is a nontransparent disc, no brakedisc will ever show up at all.

[ Brakelights ]