NASCAR colorization

[rftckeeper]

I have recently set out on the journey to colorize my NASCAR DMD with a Pin2dmd evo board. 

 

 Learning the Pin2dmd editor has been pretty straight forward thanks to Martin knoppke’s basic tutorial. 

Even after watching the tutorial multiple times the process has been trial and error in some cases. Where I have made significant progress in under a week I am still having some trouble on some of the key frames. 

 

I’m not sure if there is any interest in my work seeing as there hasn’t been any attempts at colorizing this title. At least in any of my searches for that matter.

 

I am creating this post because where I know Google is my friend, apparently I am doing something wrong. My question is hopefully simple to knowledgeable people here in this forum. The scene in attract mode that displays the last score from previous game is proving difficult for me to colorize. I tried tying the Dmask to the commas but the replacement colors still do not trigger. I am having difficulty becasue it seems that every bit on this particular scene is dynamic content. 
 

I had the thought of putting one stationary dot in the scene to make one point not dynamic but I don’t know if that will work. The more I think about it the hashes for the scores seem to change making it impossible to trigger. 
 

If anyone here could point me in the correct direction I would greatly appreciate it. I will cross my fingers that it isn’t something crazy like making a frame for every instance of every different hash.

 

please and thank you.

[NetzZwerg]

I would suggest to draw a d-mask at the area where it will show "free play" or "credits x". Be aware that you will need one trigger per case (I mean the different digits of the credits and possible credit dot cases). Hope that helps...

[Pinballuser]

if you want to color each frame a different color than you have to cut individual frames.

you can cut a single High Score  frame and not include the 1,2,3 or 4 in your mask but they will all have the same color.

the grand champ generates a different hash, so you would end up with 2 high score frames.

 

 

another suggestion is that you come back to the attract mode scenes once you have the rest of your frames captures.

this is because you only get 25 mask for your entire project

if you use an excessive amount of masks on your attract mode frames, you will have less masks to work with.

 

I captured, cut and keyframed the attract mode sequence for you.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lcpb7a2ax9e6i62on12dq/NASCAR.zip?rlkey=2da7kkv9rd4cl8kc6app1b3dt&dl=0

 

 

take a look at mask 2,   I shaped it so that the mask could be used for the majority of the attract mode scenes.

if I had more scenes cut then I would be able to reshape the mask so that more scenes could use the same mask.

 

Mask 0,  used on the Insert coin was pulled from another project.   I shaped it for the other scenes and used it on the attract mode scene.

 

 

 

 

and you should capture and keyframe at least 80 to 90 % of your scenes before you start coloring any thing that will require an 

excessive amount of time to color.   You don't want to spend allot of time coloring frames then realizing you can't get it to trigger.

I currently have a project stalled because I can't get the colormask sequence mode to work.  I can get the scene to trigger

but it does not apply any coloring to the scene.

 

 

 

Edited October 1, 2023 by Pinballuser

[rftckeeper]

4 hours ago, NetzZwerg said:

I would suggest to draw a d-mask at the area where it will show "free play" or "credits x". Be aware that you will need one trigger per case (I mean the different digits of the credits and possible credit dot cases). Hope that helps...

Thank you very much for the response. Unfortunately the screen I’m having an issue with is all dynamic content. It’s the last game score so that’s all that is displayed on that individual frame. Ther is no credit, freeplay, or any non dynamic content. 
your comment did help though as I know now that I am doing it correctly for my “high score” and “grand champion” scenes.

[rftckeeper]

2 hours ago, Pinballuser said:

if you want to color each frame a different color than you have to cut individual frames.

you can cut a single High Score  frame and not include the 1,2,3 or 4 in your mask but they will all have the same color.

the grand champ generates a different hash, so you would end up with 2 high score frames.

thank you for the response. I’m not sure if I’m describing the scene correctly. Best I can describe it is after the stern nascar screen at startup a score that “twinkles” a last game score pops up. All entirely dynamic content. There’s nothing to tie a dmask to that I know. 

2 hours ago, Pinballuser said:

another suggestion is that you come back to the attract mode scenes once you have the rest of your frames captures.

this is because you only get 25 mask for your entire project

if you use an excessive amount of masks on your attract mode frames, you will have less masks to work with.

I appreciate that input. I know that there is a limit on the dmasks. I have done my best to utilize 3 so far. I’m hoping they will be enough to do a lot of what I have left to colorize. I have colorized some pretty big animations so far(probably started running before I learned to walk but they are done)

2 hours ago, Pinballuser said:

I captured, cut and keyframed the attract mode sequence for you.

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/lcpb7a2ax9e6i62on12dq/NASCAR.zip?rlkey=2da7kkv9rd4cl8kc6app1b3dt&dl=0

 

 

take a look at mask 2,   I shaped it so that the mask could be used for the majority of the attract mode scenes.

if I had more scenes cut then I would be able to reshape the mask so that more scenes could use the same mask.

 

Mask 0,  used on the Insert coin was pulled from another project.   I shaped it for the other scenes and used it on the attract mode scene.

 

 

thank you for the template. I will certainly look at it and utilize it the best that I can. I have not done the insert coin scene yet as I have it set to freeplay atm. I appreciate your having done other colorizations so any input or help would be received with open arms.

2 hours ago, Pinballuser said:

 

 

and you should capture and keyframe at least 80 to 90 % of your scenes before you start coloring any thing that will require an 

excessive amount of time to color.   You don't want to spend allot of time coloring frames then realizing you can't get it to trigger.

I currently have a project stalled because I can't get the colormask sequence mode to work.  I can get the scene to trigger

but it does not apply any coloring to the scene.

 

 

 

I certainly will take the advice for if I set out on future colorizations but as for this project I did all of the attract modes scenes already as I thought they were low hanging fruit as compared to the more involved scenes. The only scene that is giving me trouble is this last game score without any non dynamic content. It seems like there’s a different hash for every different score that could be displayed. 
im not sure if it helps but one of my scenes I had the same issue. Kind of. It would trigger but the colors were all screwed up. I ended up changing the mode to color mask loop. It works but from time to time I get color bleeding. I may key frame every individual scene of the animation individually because it is controlled by the bumpers and I believe the re-triggering is causing some overlay.

I’m sorry I’m “new” here. I have been around for a while but I haven’t been very active. I hope that I can somehow give back to this wonderful hobby if by only supplying a “decent” colorization of this what I feel under appreciated pinball table.

as I said I welcome any help or advice with open arms.

[Pinballuser]

47 minutes ago, rftckeeper said:

I’m not sure if I’m describing the scene correctly. Best I can describe it is after the stern nascar screen at startup a score that “twinkles” a last game score pops up. All entirely dynamic content. There’s nothing to tie a dmask to that I know. 

 

you are talking about the  Score that is displayed when its game over

 

my attrack mode capture shows a "00"  

in this case you need to capture

00

XXX --> 100 to 999

X,000 --> 1 to 9 thousand

XX,000--> 10 to 99 thousand

XXX,000---> 100 to 999 thousand

X,000,000---> 1 to 9 million

XX,000,000---> 10 to 99 million

XXX,000,000 --> 100 to 999 million

X,0000,0000,000 --> 1 billion

XX,0000,0000,000 --> 10 to 99 billion

 

and use a mask where it only covers the last ZER0

I would only capture the most common possible combinations

X million

XX million

XXX million

X Billion

XX Billion

 

but this comes back to what I said about the number of masks.

you can use 2-3 masks to trigger this scene or wait till you have more scenes this way you can 

shape the mask so that it can be used for multiple scenes.

[rftckeeper]

Perfect answer. Thank you. I do feel that is the missing piece I wasn’t grasping. I am going to try this asap.