Creating Vehicles for Accelerate

All of the editor tools are embedded in-game.

To access the vehicle editor, go to the Main Menu of Tower Unite. Near the bottom, there is a Workshop Editor option. From there, click on Player Model/Item Creation.

We assume in this guide that you have prior knowledge with 3D modeling.

Prerequisites

Vehicles is the same as Creating Items for Tower Unite, so you'll want to understand that guide on how to get your vehicle model imported.

Vehicles do not need to be animated or rigged.

Step 1. Create

Before you import your vehicle into Tower, you'll need to prepare the model a bit.

• Remove any wheels from the vehicle model. Wheels are provided in Tower. You'll be able to offset the wheels in the metadata. We plan to have different wheel models in the future.
• Scale / rotate the kart to fit the example kart provided below.

Assuming you have your vehicle ready to go, you just need to export it to a format Tower Unite accepts.

The model must be exported to a compatible filetype: .FBX, .OBJ, .SMD or recommended .DAE

Textures

For textures, store the files in the same folder as your model file. The game will search for them when importing and assign them based on the naming format.

The supported material maps and their associated names are as follows:

Diffuse maps: <Material Slot Name>_Diffuse.<file type>
Normal maps: <Material Slot Name>_Normal.<file type>
Height maps: <Material Slot Name>_Height.<file type>

So if you had a material called "Bench" for your model, and you used .pngs, your textures would look like:

Bench_Diffuse.png
Bench_Normal.png
Bench_Height.png

The importer will inform you if your texture files are missing. It is not required to have a Normal or Height texture, but the model importer will warn you if they are missing.

Step 2. Importing into Tower Unite

Once you have exported the vehicle model in an accepted format, it's finally time to open up Tower Unite and load the Workshop Editor!

To access the vehicle editor, go to the Main Menu of Tower Unite. Near the bottom, there is a Workshop Editor option. From there, click on Player Model/Item Creation.

Once in the editor:

• Select the My Imports tab.
• Select Vehicle from the dropdown.
• Click Import.
• Select the model you wish to import.
• That's it!

Your model will be converted into our format (.model). If it fails for any reason, the editor will tell you why in the Compiler Info. You can also see the entire import process there and troubleshoot any issues that come up.

Step 3. Adjusting & Vehicle Types

There are five vehicle types available: Normal, Bike, Scooter, ATV, and Skateboard. Changing the vehicle type is only for visuals and does not impact gameplay.

Vehicle Type will affect the number of wheels and how the driver rides:

• Normal vehicles have 4 wheels, and the driver will sit with their arms outstretched, reaching for the steering wheel.
• Bikes have 2 wheels, and the driver will sit leaning forwards.
• Scooters also have 2 wheels, but the driver will sit back like the 'Normal' type.
• ATVs have 4 wheels, but the driver will lean over the vehicle like they were riding a 'Bike' type vehicle.
• Skate vehicles have 4 wheels and the driver will not sit, but stand on the vehicle.

You can alter offsets for vehicles, adjusting player offset, front and back tire offsets, exhaust offset, and headlights. For Bike & Scooter vehicles, you can adjust the handlebar position and legs. You can also hide wheels or enable hover mode, which gives your vehicle hovering animations.

Once you are done editing the metadata, just hit Save Metadata.

Step 4. Publishing

To publish your vehicle, select the My Imports tab, select the Type dropdown and make sure that Vehicle is selected.

Once you have done this, you will see a list of all of your imported models.

Find the vehicle that you wish to upload, and click on its name. On the right, click on the big blue Upload button. From there, you will see the upload panel.

Fill out the necessary information, tag your vehicle type, and follow our rules.

Once you have filled out all the information, simply click Upload, and the editor will upload to Steam Workshop.

If you want to make your vehicle immediately public, click the Publish & Make Public check box then hit upload, otherwise leave that unchecked and you can make it public from the published Workshop page.

You can update your vehicle's title, description and images on the published Workshop page. Unfortunately, you cannot update your tags or thumbnail without doing an update to your vehicle.

Upload Errors

If your vehicle failed to upload to the Steam Workshop, it will give you an error message:

• Nothing: Sometimes this just happens. Try uploading once or twice again, before investigating further.
• Title / Description: Large bodies of text in the title or description field may prevent the upload. Keep it short or empty and you can update it freely afterwards.
• Maintenance / Downtime: Sometimes Steam Workshop is taken offline and will be unable to accept uploads. If this is the case, try again in 15 minutes or so.
• Bans: If you have recently had an item removed from the Workshop, you may be limited by a temporary Workshop ban, even if it wasn't a Tower Unite item.

Updating

To update an existing workshop vehicle, while in the item editor, click the My Uploads tab.

From there, you will see a list of your uploaded workshop addons. If you do not see any uploaded Workshop addons, check if you are properly connected to Steam or click Get My Uploads.

Find the item you want to update, and click on its name. An update dialog will open up, and will automatically populate with existing information for the vehicle for you.

From here, you can update the title, the image, tags, and the file.

To update the model, click on Select File To Update and select the file from the list that pops up.

Once you are done with your changes, click Update, and the editor will send the changes to Steam Workshop.

You may have to restart Tower Unite to see the update.

Example