How to make custom vehicle icons

aarrgghh,

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

This is gonna be great driving around as the "Tumbler!" LOL! My 18 year old is going to fall out of the car when he sees this!

I think this thread is wonderful! I hope I can get my hubby to do my car next.

I have been looking around for a BMW Z3 Coupe icon and also the new 1 Series Coupe and Cabrio. Anyone find these yet?

There are Z3 BMW icons on the first page of this thread about 1/2 way down (listed with many other links).

aarrgghh, Thanks for Perfection5, the name says it all.

I played doing minor changes with other vehicles, so I know the effort required. Thanks again.

... paulatl's jpg is missing the 1966 batmobile

I didn't get it (yeah bad pun) that's why it's not there!

I'll include it if you make one and provide a link

http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-thats-missing...

I updated the file and sent it to Clint to repost to his web. I think I missed it because it is separate from your other files. I think next you should try doing the bat plane.

Paul

i have a 12" model of the "batwing" from batman forever that i've had for about 10 years. i took all the requisite photos, but when i got to the stage where i shrink the images down to 80x80, the thing virtually disappeared.

the best candidates for vehicle icons are very boxy in shape, and the batwing is anything but. in fact, the keaton, kilmer & clooney batmobiles are all too long & low to make very good icons. however, that could change if someone writes a converter for garmin's newer & larger srf format.

I wonder if a Star Wars Tie Fighter would come out then? That's got flat sides but the round center.

I have uploaded the updated JPG file to the server. You can get it here:

http://www.clintsworld.com/temp/nuvi_vehicles.jpg

Thanks to Paul for updating the file!!

i've already looked at a few tie models, but i've been busy, so i haven't done much more than look. none have set me on fire, though. not a lot of meat under those feathers. if i decide to go in that direction, i'll have to customize one. a more appropriate choice might be a star trek shuttlecraft/roundabout.

Very Slick!

Now to figure out the creation process...

http://www.ecarter.net/midwest/nuvi.htm

How would you go about makeing a face or cutting out a picture to use it as a Icon?

Your cars are mighty cool. That's all I really have to say.

How would you go about makeing a face or cutting out a picture to use it as a Icon?

Same way as mentioned earlier in this thread. Just take your face or anything else and cut and paste in place of the vehicle. You just need to change your srf to png, replace the pictures, clean up with photo shop then convert the png back to srf.

That sounds easier said then done for me...I'm completely confused about the replacing the vehicle icon with the whole face thing.........

If you go to aarrgghh's website he shows how to do it in steps.

I have my MINI Cooper S as an SRF file. How do I turn it into a little 3d avatar like yours? That would be very cool for so many forums I am on.

I'm not sure I follow what you are saying? Isn't your avatar already like that?

I fly a lot and use my nuvi while in the air. It would be neat to have an airplane!

in a nutshell, you need to create an image file in the png format. it has to be 2880x150 pixels in dimension.

there are 2 rows of images. the top row consists of 36 80x80 images of the object, each rotated 10 degrees clockwise from the one to its left. these are used for the perspective views. the bottom row consists of 36 70x70 images of the top of the object, each also rotated 10 degrees. these are for the overhead views.

now the images could all be identical -- that just means you won't notice any animation effect.

the tricky part is transparency -- without it the icon will display in a solid box. anything that isn't part of the object needs to be transparent. you'll need to use a graphics program that supports both transparency and layers -- any program that is except photoshop.

once your png is ready, you'll need to upload it to:

http://techmods.net/nuvi/

to convert it to the garmin srf format. then just copy it to the gps unit.

this isn't a simple process -- you'll need to experiment in order to get the results you want. you'll need to read the posts upthread for more details, as well as visit the links on them.

now include four star trek shuttlecraft:

http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/04/all-thats-missing...

where you can download:

original series galileo 7
next generation type 15 shuttle
next generation type 17 shuttle
next generation type 6 shuttle

Good Job on the shuttles. Now we have something for our plane rides

Now we just need the original Enterprise and Klingon Battlecruiser!

Where can I dowmnload you Perfection2 icon from? Are there any other ones or colors as well.

Perfection
http://www.l13.us/nuvisite/vehicles.html

Converting png and srf files to create your own
http://www.techmods.net/nuvi/

Mini Coopers
http://homepage.mac.com/WebObjects/FileSharing.woa/wa/defaul...

BMW Z3 and Z4
http://www.ecarter.net/midwest/nuvi.htm

Smart car and Lexus suv
http://techmods.net/nuvi/vehicles/

Garmin Garage
http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/bundles/allvehicles.html

VW Van-White, Red, Blue, Silver
http://odometer.org/misc/vanagon_gps_avatar.zip
http://www.fileden.com/files/2008/1/2/1675667/vanagon_blue_v... (just replace the blue wording with silver or red for other)

FJ Toyota
http://www.mediafire.com?0jxrwgrnxby

Honda Element
http://rapidshare.com/files/60108418/Element_Garmin.zip.html

Toyota 4Runner
http://www.toyota-4runner.org/attachment.php?s+a8dd25a883403...

Perfection, Hand, Pencil, Cue stick, misc pointers
http://www.l13.us/nuvisite/vehicles.html

Flordia Gators icon
http://www.fatmailman.com/nuvi/GatorHead.srf

Cross Hairs
http://www.gpspassion.com/upload/xhairs.zip

Silver Scion
http://www.mediafire.com/?eiey9bjgf2k

Compass
http://www.gpspassion.com/upload/comprose.zip

White Truck
http://totalfarker.googlepages.com/WhiteTruck.srf

Black Volkswagen Golf
http://home.planet.nl/~knol0401/vwgolf3.srf

Star Trek Shuttles
http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/04/all-thats-missing...

Batmobiles (40's,50's Tumbler)
and Mach 5 (Speed Racer)
http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/02/aarrgghhz-carz.ht...

TV Batmoblie
http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-thats-missing...

Beatles Yellow Submarine
http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/02/all-thats-missing...

These are much nicer than Garmin's files!

Any chance you could do a BMW Z3 Coupe, glass roof, black, with black interior and the BBS two piece silver wheels? There is a Schuco model of it as well.

Your Mach 5 is fantastic!

So Here's a Q for Z3bum. Why do you not have a Z3 for your avatar? You even ask for one above when there are two black convertable Z3's listed ??

but as far as requests go, i'm sorry but i'm going to have to echo ecarter.net:

http://www.ecarter.net/midwest/nuvi.htm

my interest is obviously for unusual vehicles, especially imaginary ones out of pop culture, so don't expect any "aarrgghh" brand icons for vehicles you could actually buy in real life.

for you bruce-wayne-types ($$$) out there, you can actually buy one of these in real life:

http://www.chickslovethecar.com/mISCbUyBatmobile.aspx

and on a related note, it still blows my mind that george barris, designer of the tv batmobile, bought the lincoln futura it was based on directly from ford for only $1.

http://www.1966batmobile.com/

Any way to put this on the first page of the topic so it will always be up to date?

LOL.
I have a MINI Cooper S and a Z3 Coupe (think Z3 that looks like a little station wagon...)

When I asked about the Avatar, I didn't yet know how to extract the images, but since have figured that out, as you can see. I don't have a Z3 Avatar because I have a Z3 Coupe, and all the srf files are of Z3 Roadsters...

But thanks!

I think it would be better to reverse the pages so the current page is the first one so we do not have to keep scrolling through all the posts to get to the most recent one.

i.e. unless I'm doing it wrong; when someone posts to this thread, I have to open up the thread, croll to the end of the first page, then click the last page (#3 right now) then scroll to the end of that page to see the current post.

Any way to reverse the posts? Even when I make a post, it returns to the first page of the thread.

Maybe Miss POI has an idea for that?

If you use the unread post feature on the site it should take you right to the last message that has been unread in a thread;)

We are kind of stuck with the format that Drupal provides;)

Miss POI

I created a new thread called "List of Custom Vehicles" http://www.poi-factory.com/node/12267 and linked the two threads together so if anyone wants to discuss anything, hopefully they will do it in the "How to make custom vehicle icons' thread rather than the other one.

Paul

aarrgghh, it looks like you made the bat pages

http://www.66batman.com/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1203793026...

Hi guys;
I still dont know how can I solve the masking problem when I convert back from PNG to SRF.
Any advise would be very wellcome.
L

That Original 1966 Batmobile page is way cool! Great photos. I can't believe he created it in only 3 weeks!! http://www.1966batmobile.com/

Glad the builder kept ownership. Studios have a bad record of neglecting their props once the shows are cancelled.

you need to make sure the icon is on a transparent layer and you need to put an empty transparent layer on top of that before you save it as a png.

this of course requires a paint program that supports transparency and layers, like paint.net (pc) or seashore (mac) but not photoshop.

incidently, i use photoshop to create the png, but then open it in paint.net, to add the empty layer and resave.

I had to just let you know that those are just awesome. Thanks for sharing them with us all.

^^^I AGREE!!!!! Thanks!

Nicely done. I look forward to your additions. thanks..

Does any one have a pickup truck pulling a fifth wheel RV?

PS: Love your site!

What a great post, and great site! I just got my nuvi 350 today and have learned a ton here. And now I have the coolest batmobile vehicle.

Thanks!

How hard would it be to change the color of a stock pick-up truck. I'm looking for one in Burgandy.

Thanks for any info!

today's new vehicle: a star wars tie fighter

http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/04/force-missing-all...