I'm going to use Boogey.bin as the basis for my SDRVOD truck model. SDRVOD is a pretty silly name, so I'm going to give the truck a snappy new title: "VANdal". I'll put the paint job together first.
MTM2 uses .RAW files for texturing models. These are 256-colour image files that store their colour palette in a seperate .PAL file, so when you open a .RAW in a paint program (I use Paint Shop Pro), it appears in black and white until you load the .PAL.
MTM2 doesn't use .PAL files as the palette, but a different format with the extension .ACT. You will need a program such as MDMRE's Palette Master that can convert .ACT to .PAL and back again for painting trucks. See this page for a full explanation.
Boogey Van, like all the other MTM2 stock trucks, uses two 256x256 .RAW files for texturing: Boogey1.raw and Boogey2.raw. I used MDMRE's Palette Master to convert these files' companion .ACT palettes (Boogey1.act and Boogey2.act) to .PALs so that they could be read by Paint Shop Pro.
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I opened these files, increased the colour depth to 16 million colours (so that I can import new colours and use all the fancy image effects on them) and painted them. When I was done I reduced the colour depth back down to 256 colours, saved the images as Vandal1.raw and Vandal2.raw, and saved their respective palettes.
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Note that working with the stock texture files is a bit of a double-edged sword - everything's laid out for you and mapped to the model, but often parts of the textures are squashed up like you wouldn't believe, which can make painting difficult!
I then run MDMRE's Palette Master again and use it to convert VANdal1.pal and VANdal2.pal into .ACTs. Now I've done the paint, I need a model to apply them to. I'll copy Boogey.bin...
...and rename it VANdal.bin. Then I use MDMRE's Bin Texture Replacer and use it to replace the textures Boogey1.raw and Boogey2.raw on VANdal.bin with VANdal1.raw and VANdal2.raw. Now let's open it in BINedit and see what it looks like.
Idz purdy innit? Err, one thing that is a bit sad is that the text on the front isn't fitting on there properly. It's easily fixed though - I'll just remap it. I press Spacebar to cycle through the faces, seeing the pink-tinted cursor appear on the faces of the model.
I press F to tag a face, then hit Spacebar again to move to the next face, and keep going until all the faces I want to remap are tagged.
I'll save this face group - it's unlikely that I'll need it again, but it's good practice to store face groups so that they can be easily recalled whenever required. By clicking the Groups menu and selecting Store Face Group... I am presented with the following window:
I'll save this face group as "front". Now I will remap the front of the truck. From the Groups menu I select Map Face Group to Texture.... From the window that appears, I choose the texture that I want to map to:
Using the mouse, I resize and reshape the mesh to fit the bit of texture I want it mapped to, making sure that this time all the writing will fit on there.
That looks much better.
I'll save this model as VANdal.bin. Now it's time to add some accessories to it.