Everyone has a starting point. A place that sparked their interest.
For me it was editing cars in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Hot Pursuit 2 (NFS:HP and NFS:HP2 respectively).
It started simple enough. Just editing the textures of a car or two, but it quickly escalated into trying to create my own meshes and import cars from other games. Unfortunately I did not have the presence of mind to save screen grabs of my work in progress let alone the files I was working on, so my records are scarce.
Here was my first ever re-skin of a car:
A simple enough. I did make a version 2.0:
This was a small step in a big pond. All of my knowledge in this area was taken from searching the NFSCars.net forums for tutorials. Moding extra/ custom cars was a rather large thing back in the early 00's. There was information to be had, and I searched as much as our 56k modem would allow. The free tools of the trade at the time were two 3d editors known as Oedit and ZModeler.
My grandest achievement that I actually had working (mostly) was importing the car texture and mesh from EA's F1:2001 to NFS:HP2. It was a rather long process and I never did get it working 100% right, but I did get the mesh and the textures to load/ run in game. The wheels never spun correctly, but just porting the mesh over was a feat in itself.
Here was my first attempt:
As you can see, the mesh is there, but the textures were all wrong. Most were simply backwards, but some (as evidenced by the wheels) were simply out of place. What followed was a rigorous trial and error period of repainting the textures and moving the splines on the texture map to fit.
Version 2.0:
And there it is in all it's glory. I believe I even went on to further edit the textures but I am not able to find any screen grabs. If memory serves I instead was focused on improving my Photoshop skills (as the splotchyness of the above image attests).
So that's my beginnings. What sparked the journey to become a Graphic Designer.
