How to make custom vehicle icons

How cool would these be?

Boba Fett's Slave I from the Star Wars films
One of the "Spinners" from Blade Runner
The Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro
A steampunk airship

Also how about?

A Vespa scooter
the Starship Enterprise
a Star Destroyer
or an X-Wing fighter

Could you provide a link or send file for my use?
Thanks

I second this motion!!! Yea Hah!

First of all let me say those cars are great. I have one request for you, I was wondering if you could create a Kyle Busch (M&Ms #18) race car

Dave

Kyle Busch :? Please!

Go Tony!!

aarrgghh,

if you can find time could you make a custom vehicle for me. here is a link to Kyle Busch's cars for this nascar season, if you get a chance could you make one of either the red, white, and blue summer fun #18 or the orange combos #18. i have tried for 3 days to download paint.net and my computer is rejecting it.

http://www.racestoreonline.com/kyle_busch_diecast.aspx

Junior! Junior! Junior! Junior! 88

Not sure where I can post this file, but I sure can send it to you ... need your email address.

looks like the site, ...this site:

http://www.alice-dsl.net/fahrzeuge/index.html

has gone dark any one have it for download? I am looking for a cross hairs or radar looking vehicle

You should look here! http://www.poi-factory.com/node/12267

Looking for a Hummer Vehicle icon for my wife. She asked me if I could find one and I have looked everywhere with no luck. Anybody out there have one (or know where I can find it).

part 2 of my instructable, for making vehicle icons using 3d modeling and animation programs:

http://www.instructables.com/id/animated_gps_batmobile_icon_...

i've been on an indefinite hiatus and don't know what the next vehicle will be or when it's coming out (sorry, dflory5, but busch is not on my list), but at least this tutorial is done.

I had been searching for a trailblazer for a couple days. no luck. this site has been great for finding some other cool cars but not what i wanted. so i began to play around with the srf files, using the conversion tool linked in this thread. it worked great, i pulled it into "the gimp" and was able to edit things either by the whole car or pixel by pixel. My first mod was just changing the colors on the SUV.srf file that garmin has on their page. i made it green, then the next day i modified it to have my roof racks, took the grey off the side, added headlights, and my taillights things of that nature. This was cool and all but it wasnt enough. I then began to play with seeing how many shots you actually need. i realized that i only see about 5 of the angles of the truck (in 3d mode, i dont use 2d) anyway. i then decided to get on top of a ladder and take 5 shots of the back of my truck, centered, then about 10 degrees to each side. I brought those into gimp as well, cut them out and pasted them over an existing srf file (erasing the trucks already in there). This seems to work like a charm. i now watch my truck driving down the road in the gps. I want to get up higher, perhaps on my roof or from a hotel 1-2nd floor to get a better angle, i cant see my hood in the shots i have because the ladder just wasnt high enough.

Also if anyone wants to help me, im certainly willing to share the modified suv files, that look like the trailblazer. i have a few colors now (at the request of members on trailvoy.com)

I have a small 1:64 scale trailblazer i need to paint to look like mine. then i might try the take 8000 picture thing but for now.... im happy with what i have

Also for those interested, here is a link to my post on trailvoy.com in regards to the same srf mods (with pictures) the original mods are in the first post, the more recent mod with the real truck is towards the bottom
http://forums.trailvoy.com/showthread.php?t=45387

Offspring,

Could you post your png file somewhere so we could take a look at it? I'm not sure I understand exatly how you pasted you images into the original png. Since you only use 5 images, I'm curious to see the spacing between the images you used. My guess is you pasted the rear image at the very center of the png and the other four, two on each side at equal disyances, but to actual see the file would be very helpful.

Thanks.

Richard

Offspring,

Could you post your png file somewhere so we could take a look at it? I'm not sure I understand exatly how you pasted you images into the original png. Since you only use 5 images, I'm curious to see the spacing between the images you used. My guess is you pasted the rear image at the very center of the png and the other four, two on each side at equal disyances, but to actual see the file would be very helpful.

Thanks.

Richard[/quote]

I used the 5 images like this, if you open that PNG, the left most picture is directly behind the truck, so i pasted one there, then the two to the right of it, i pasted there, they match pretty good to the same angle. then i scrolled to the entire opposite of the PNG file, images 35, 36 (or whatever). i then pasted my other two images over those. After that i erase both layers of all the other images in the png. Doing this means that if at any point the gps tries to use a side image of the truck or anything more than those 5 positions the truck dissappears. I suppose i could just copy paste one of the images across 30whatever times and it would not totally disappear. But it usually comes right back as the gps adjusts for the view where your again looking at the back of the truck. I have mine set to 3D and following the route, i think if you have it on facing north you might need the side shots, not sure. I have not bothered to changed the 2d files because i never use them.

So while your guess was wrong you kinda had the right idea.

Here is a shot of the png, while you cant see it all that clear, those 5 trucks(dots) are pasted in the left 3 trucks positions, then the right 2.

You can certainly do more. But 5 worked just fine for me.

http://tinylink.com/?Z1fBaXtxYJ

following this theory you could also just erase everything in the png file, and recreate the srf as a blank, if you for some reason didnt want an icon to follow on your screen.

Another option using this paste your own image in system is that you could use an icon or symbol of your own choosing, such as a persons face, or a superman symbol, a chevy emblem, whatever you want. just by pasting the same image over and over again. It would not shift angle but rather just "glide" along the map. Its kinda cool. I did that with a side shot of a Mitshubishi Outlander

Let me know if can offer any other assistance

If anyone can tell me how or offer to host these srf files, or add them to that list of vehicles i would share them

Hey Aarrgghh,
Just a thought, how bout a robot to round out the pedestrian feature? Not sure what would look good from the top, behind view. Black Hole robots (VINCENT/Maximilian)? Robby? Wall E?

Garmin has been getting many vehicles out there lately and I think they are releasing more this week. You need to catch up on the better ones

another idea i'll have to put on the burner

star wars landspeeders, new and pre-owned.

http://glad-you-asked.blogspot.com/2008/09/all-thats-missing...

Thanks so much!

I wish there were some Halloween themed car icons. A skull and cross bones or Michael Myers would be cool.

I second that... that would be cool to have a michael myers icon or Jason...Freddy...

This is a great Idea. Making my own vehicles is a little bit above my user level. I don't like ANY of the vehicles on the garmin site. They are all either way too big, or bad color combinations.

I like the blue triangle except for the fact that it is BLUE. It should be a color that isn't used on the maps, or rarely used. The blue triangle is bad when there are rivers, lakes or other water features. Plus, I like the idea of a few of the people in this thread who said they modified the triangle arrow so that the TIP of the arrow is their position. That sounds so much more accurate and intuitive.

If there was a place to upload and share these custom vehicles that would be a great addition to this already awesome site.

(I want, I want, I want...)

by reposting the addresses of the tutorials i wrote for making custom icons:

http://www.instructables.com/id/animated-gps-batmobile-icon/

http://www.instructables.com/id/animated_gps_batmobile_icon_...

Tried to get the idea of what Aarrgghh wrote in the above docs, and I'v made vehicle icon based on Suzuki Swift Sport. Still have problem with transparency esp in 'Nighttime' colormode

Can be d/l at http://sci.boedoet7.org/nuvi

At this point, this may be a totally insane request, but here goes. When I get to my destination, I want someone to jump out of that car and do a celebration dance. But hey, I'm blonde, the fact I get anywhere without a garmin some days is a mere miracle. Just ask the chihuahua. . . .

I must say that your icons are FANTASTIC! I have downloaded quite a few and will continue looking for more.I see that there are many requests. I have been an "EMERGENCY" fan since I was a little kid. Perhaps someone can come up with a "Squad 51" from the show. That would be great! Keep up the great work and thanks again.

Garmin site just came out with a skull hand and a few others for Halloween:

The Boo! Bundle

http://www8.garmin.com/vehicles/

Thanks for the awesome cars, love them!

Very nice! Where can I download the green truck that was shown on the jpg page? Also, has anyone seen a dark blue PT Cruiser?

I have a slantback Hummer H1 icon, you can grab it here:
http://rapidshare.com/files/163174308/Hummer_H1.srf

How did you create those vehicles? Can you post the procedure please ?
Thanks.

one of two methods:

a) the photographic way

http://www.instructables.com/id/animated-gps-batmobile-icon/

b) the 3d model way

http://www.instructables.com/id/animated_gps_batmobile_icon_...

Thanks... will look into it.

Hi, I would like a copy of your arrow. I am going on a trip and get tired of being a stop sign or light and feeling like I am out in the middle of the intersection! Thanks!

garyandrhoda@yahoo.com

I would very much like to get an arrow where the tip indicates the car location rather than the center. Is there a link where we can get your arrow?

Also, I find that with plenty of lakes and ponds around here, there is already a lot of blue on my little map, it would be nice to have a selection of non-blue arrow colors, and even nicer if the leading tip was highlighted in a brighter or contrasting color.

And to push my luck, a few questions for someone who has worked with creating custon car icons:

what do you do to change the "center" point?

I don't see from any of the information in this thread how the Christmas "Blinky" icon can blink. Any insight on how this icon changes color while driving?

Car icons are put together from multiple side views, so the car can be seen from any angle. Yet the only time I ever see the front of the car is in the selection process when it is rotating. Once in the 3d view I'm always looking at the rear of the car, and in track-up or north-up modes I always look at it from the top. Except in the selection process I never actually see neat things like the front of the Batmobile. Am I missing something, or are most of the 3d views just wasted?

Is there a way to modify the blue arrow in such a way that it would just show the arrow and not the white border around it? White border only shows in North Up or Track Up mode.
I like Track up mode myself. It would be great if i could change the color of the arrow.
Thanks.

Couple of "simple" vehicles:

Two are copies of Garmin's own triangle ones, but with the tip centered at the exact location. One of them with a color coded right side.

The other is a circle with a little triangle inside indicating the direction of travel - My favorite!

http://sites.google.com/site/lschwabe/Home/srf

I can't recall the author of the yellow circle one, so if someone knows it, please let me know. Is it Aconite, Aarrgghh, or PaulATL maybe?

while the preview graphic on garmin's site does blink, the actual icon downloaded to the unit does not. but garmin could have easily made it blink, by using the same animation as the preview. for some reason they chose not to.

the same miracle that allows the icon to "spin" also allows it to "blink" or do just about anything else you could imagine: traditional sequential frame-by-frame animation techniques. you may have noticed other icons that do more than just spin, such as the many scooter icons that walk, shovel, snowboard, etc.

there's really no restriction on what you can make the icon do. if the action can be depicted using frame-based animation (and it's hard to imagine an action that can't), the icon can do it.

i believe someone here got to see the front of their vehicle by mounting the gps on their rear windshield. then all you need are eyes in the back of your head.

That is not correct, at least not for all nuvi units. It does blink on my 250 (newer hardware platform), in both 2d and 3d modes.

If you're implying that different angle views are used, that's not what's hapening, as the bulb is pointing in the exact same direction but blinks. If you're just talking about frame animation, sure, I expect completely that this is what is happening. But all discussion that I have seen for making custom car icons talks about making a png file with 36 top views (one and only one for each 10 degrees of rotation) and 36 side views (ditto), and then converting that to internal Garmin format, but I had not seen any explanation of how to do frame animation in a vehicle (other than when it rotates). So I'm asking if anyone knows how that is done.

then i guess garmin's abandonment of the 350 is now complete. the bulb does not blink on my unit, but only rotates.

if the bulb is able to blink when stationary, as well as rotate, then i suspect garmin has upgraded its srf format. i got an error trying to process it through srf2png, so this may be likely. another clue is the fact that the file size of the blinky srf is 3x the size of older files.

i can only speculate, but i'd guess that the new format adds 2 more rows to the png image array, for a grand total of 4 rows of 36 images each ... one new row for the 36 "lit bulb" images in perspective view, and another new row of 36 "lit" overhead images.

Just Curious !!! how long does it take to create a simple 2 dimentional arrow like icon ???? and can it be created using software like Photoshop CS ?

Thanks

I believe the question above refers to vehicles, not icons, as there is a big difference:

Vehicles are used to indicate the GPS position on the map. These are NOT trivial to create, take a lot of work and need the special conversion done between png and srf format. Even a simple change (eg. color, or position) take quite a bit of time. Process is very well explained by the Aarrgghh's links above. Be thankful for any vehicle downloaded for the all the work that is behind.

icons are used to indicate the position of POIs on the map. These are very simple and straight forward, all that is required is for them to be a recommeded 24x24 pixels, 8 bit color and pure magenta color is used for transparency.

I use an excellent free graphics program for the above - Paint.net.

Thanks for cleaning up my question. I did mean Vehicle.

Thanks.

It would depend on fluency with the programs used, but just think that at a bare minimum you have to create 72 images (36 for the 2D, and 36 for the 3D view), and each of these images has to be rotated by 10 degrees, and edges need to be cleaned up for artifacts. Then each test cycle means switching the nuvi from data storage to download the vehicle, and then rebooting to see it working, which is not the most convenient.

So, in short you are probably talking days for the average person, and many hours for an expert designer.

Any program that can edit png type files should work, but see earlier in this thread that people experienced issues with Photoshop with artifacts and transparency in the saved png files. I've used the free Paint.net, and it seems to work fine, well, except for some artifacts.

I was just trying to create simple triangle without any border for Track Up mode. I didn't know that you have to create 3D part also. Seems too complicated ...but will attempt to create one.
Thanks again.
da_libran

sorry for duplicate posts.

Well, if you really don't want a 3D icon, (I stick with 2D mode myself, 3D is eye candy but pretty useless) you should be able to just leave that "blank", or better yet, make some small and simple icon like an X or a dot and duplicate it 36 times. But you likely will have to allow for the space, both to make the png converter happy and to have the final vehicle file accepted by the GPS.

Well, I have found a 3D version of my car for Google Sketchup and have modified it to look almost exactly like my car (step 1 complete, yay!). Now I have been playing around with the sketchup program, exporting 2d images of the 18 shots needed. I was just using the orbit tool to manually rotate the image, but this is not nearly precise enough. Is there a way to rotate it by a perfect 10 degrees? Also having problems with getting the correct size needed. The only other step I have attempted so far is to load each shot into Gimp in layers and watch the animation. Which is where I noticed the not so precise angles. Any help at all would be appreciated!!

There is a free tool that I like very much called irfanview available at www.irfanview.net. It's a fantastic viewer and a nice but somewhat minimal editor, but it does have the ability to rotate an arbitrary amount and will certainly accept 10 degrees as a rotation.

I'll make two tips when doing this kind of work:
1) Use a larger image, rotate it, and then reduce it to the final size desired. Should give better results than shrinking and then rotating. 2) Start with an image at zero degrees, rotate it by 10 degrees, then shrink it. To get the next image, rotate the original by 20 degrees, don't keep rotating the same image by 10 degrees over and over again. This should give you a cleaner final product.