How to make grass in the air + general grass mixing tips

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This guide will help you blockmix grass in the air. This is pretty basic blockmixing, and it's in fact exactly the same procedure as when you make water in the air (but I will add some grass-specific tips and tricks).

This guide presumes you already know how to use ChallengeEdit (CE), or other CE-based blockmixing programs (like TS). If you don't, google some guides or read the water mixing article I linked above.

To make grass, we need to transform blocks. The first thing you have to do is to add transformable blocks (a block that does not exist yet in your track) to your track. The blocks don't have to be placed the exact same place you want the grass to appear, as you can move them afterward. It is of course faster and easier to place them the exact same place if it's possible for you.


Every image except the CE image can be shown in a big version by clicking the image.

I want to add four grass blocks in the air, so I have placed four transformable blocks where I want the grass. I have chosen the block "StadiumHolePillar" simply because the block hasn't been used in my map yet. Save the track and go to CE.



  1. The first thing you have to do is to select the primary block. The primary block is the first block you placed of its kind. The primary block is marked with a "-P" as you can see in the screenshot. When you change the primary block's name, all the other blocks of the same kind will also be changed.
  2. When you have selected the first block (the first StadiumHolePillar in my case), you have to press the "unlock" button. This allows you to change the block type of all StadiumHolePillars. Press OK.
  3. Step three is to select the block "StadiumGrass" from the block list. Do not use StadiumGrassClip.
  4. Press "Save block modifications to memory". You will now see that all the blocks of the type you chose, have changed name to "StadiumGrass".


You can now move the grass blocks around if necessary. Save the map. You should now have grass in your track.



Double-mixing
For some reason, mixed grass and/or water will sometimes just disappear from your track after you transform it, but it will still be in the block list in CE. To make the grass/water visible again, simply repeat the process so you have two grass/water blocks on every block. Your grass/water should now be visible again. Sometimes grass/water will disappear from CE as well, if this is the case you have to re-do everything.

Tips and tricks
The back button
Never use it. The back button has an habit to magically unmix stuff. Variation 16 mixes will be lost, grass will disappear and Trackmania will often crash. Never use it. Use the delete button or hide the blocks with CE if they are undeletable.

Fill gaps
Have you ever had a hole into "infinity" on your track? This is caused by many things, and a grass block is the cleanest way to fix this. This will even make cool and new tricks.

Here you see what happens when you mix various blocks to Z=1. Holes.



And here is what happens when you fix it. Pretty nice? All you have to do is place grass blocks in the gaps with Z=0 (you might have to double mix).





Make entire floors
Ever wanted to make a multi-level map? Well now you can. Just add grass blocks to the entire stadium and you have a new floor. You can even start your track on a higher level and then work your way down. This will make some pretty cool mixes too. You can place high blocks underneath the grass and only parts of the blocks will go through the grass. This is limited to Z=0 on the normal grass, but now you can use even higher blocks and other types of blocks. Experiment.



It works above the stadium
Yes, you can blockmix grass blocks above the stadium, but not outside the X or Y coordinates. With creativity you can make some really unique tracks with this method (I have an upcoming map myself with this trick).



Grass is invisible from beneath
This is cool. Why? Well, you can make traps and you can make bugs. Be creative.

7 comments:

Tecfan said...

If you have a question, the answer might have been posted in the comments on the forum: http://www.trackmania-rpg.com/264-how-to-make-grass-in-the-air-general-grass-mixing-tips.html

-|MfG|-Big Al™ said...

Nice tut Tec!

Kryw said...

sometimes the grass can disapear, so I prefer add a Pillar or Double Dirt :)

__Tornado__ said...

Ok, this is really interesting for me. I´m working with the grass levels and really can do three levels with only grass in them, leaving only one spot to travel between the levels.
This is a general idea about my procedure, I hope this will be interesting for you (sorry for my bad english):

1. I did a template with StadiumControlRoadGlass and StadiumControlLightBase mixing in three levels (Z=8, Z=16, Z=24)using only TMunlimiter.
2. I add some blocks in the Z=1 level as an example (for knowing how it going to work).
3. I add water in the ground level to fill the all level and prevent the infinite holes that are going to appear when I use CE in the next step.
4. I use CE to change the levels 8, 16 and 24 and made the grass appear.
5. For some reason, when I edit with unlimiter again, a infinite hole appear in location X=16 and Y=28. That did my track crash sometimes, and made the all work dissapear.
6. After a lot of work, I could fix the problem using two blocks of StadiumCircuitBase: I only add them with the Editor and use CE to put the two blocks in the very same location (X=16, Z=1, and Y=28).
7. Finally, I fix some minor problems to do the validation process.

I´m very happy with the results. It probes, for me, that a project about ground levels can works. Thanks a lot for your advices and tips.

I think that will be nice that we continue with this kind of "challenges".

Tecfan said...

It will be interesting to see your track Tornado.

__Tornado__ said...

It´s very cool that you are interesting on it too Tecfan. The track is in this adress:

http://tmnforever.tm-exchange.com/main.aspx?action=trackshow&id=4501557#auto

Be careful because when you try to edit it with the Trackmania Editor, the grass can disappear forever. I did new tests and think that this problem is caused because the grass in Z=0 is under other grass blocks (dont care if you mixed it twice). Probably the water in ground is most stable (I didnt have errors with it). But....who knows?....Is great that we work and have fun together with it. See you soon new friend :)

joel said...

it don't work becousen when i click on the -P it said can not open fail:documents/trackmania/profiles/blocks stadium.lst

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