Cockpit view

Hello fellow mudrunners,

Does anyone know of a good tutorial for adding a cockpit to a mesh? In the official modding guide it mentions:

"For cockpit view to work properly, you also need to create a mesh called “_cockpit” in your truck mesh file."

I haven't managed to figure out how to do this, the guide doesn't elaborate on how to do it, and many other modders have managed to get the cockpit to work, but I can't seem to get to grips with it. I've checked other trucks' mesh files that a cockpit works correctly and their mesh files don't contain a “_cockpit” line anywhere, so not sure how that is working.

The truck I have has the cockpit view, but it appears to not work properly due to the water not rendering correctly when in the cab, also the interior windows don't work.

Any help would be much appreciated.

@Kingpinn
_cockpit mesh and interior mesh not quite the same thing in this case...
Having a mesh for the interior (seats, dash, steering wheel, etc) will show up provided you have your interior camera configured properly. The mesh named _cockpit does something different that @DrGoNzO1489 tried explaining to me once...

last edited by Mexican_420

@mexican_420 Thanks for the reply.

The interior camera works fine in the sense that the drivers arms are there and the camera moves correctly when looking looking around and behind etc. I'm really not fussed about the steering wheel moving, but am looking to learn how to make the interior camera work correctly in terms of proper rendering of the visual effects i.e. the water LOD and interior glass. I'm a bit lost tbh which is evident from me not having a clue how to sort this out. lol. In the past I've made models for ST and got them in game but not MR and I'm kinda out of my depth here as I'm more of a coder than a moddler. From what I have found, there isn't any tutorials that I have managed to locate for MR for making trucks etc.

Maybe the Dev's could put one together? The current mod guide is too vague and really needs a proper update.

@Kingpinn
While I recall those being some of the things @DrGoNzO1489 mentioned, I'm afraid I was a bit lost there as well, sorry...

@mexican_420 Ok, cool, thanks again for your replies.

I believe there is no _cockpit mesh needed but I'm not sure.
The steeringwheel can turn without that cockpit mesh and everything else works just fine as well with my new mod. I can also see mud and water on the windshield.
So I don't know how it works and why that cockpit mesh is needed, just saying that it works for me without the mesh.

@wrangmog
IIRC the _cockpit mesh provides a "dry cabin" of sorts, so you don't get water inside the cab, etc.

@kingpinn, There is a sample vehicle, kraz255.max, in the Samples/3dsmax2012_vehicle folder inside the editor folder that is setup with the cockpit mesh as well as steering arm and wheel that should help you out.

It's also setup using 'Layers' so if you can't see something, check out the layers panel to see what's hidden, if any.

last edited by Tattoo

@mexican_420 aha, in my opinion thats not really realistic, so on my mods I keep it like I had, I think

Thank you for all of your replies fellas

@wrangmog The trucks I have modded don't have the _cockpit in the mesh either, but the cockpit stays dry and mud free, and as mentioned above, the issue is that the water isn't rendering correctly and the draw distance of the water is messed up.

@Tattoo awesome, thanks for the tip dude. I'll take a look.

@tattoo
Thank you for pointing out the samples in the editor folder never paid attention to that 😑