How to edit patterns
If you are looking to edit lighting patterns on a Non-ELS vehicle created by someone else, you will need a basic understanding of how Non-ELS works, and the limitations on editing patterns without having access to edit the model itself.
Start by reading the What is Non-ELS tutorial linked below, and then come back here.
Editing patterns
All you need to do to edit patterns is open the carcols.meta file and change the sequencers on the sirens you want to modify. The challenge is that you need to know which emissive meshes are parented to which sirens in order to effectively create a new pattern.
There are a few tricks you can use to help you figure out which emissive meshes are parented to which sirens.
1. Open the model in OpenIV
By opening the model in OpenIV and viewing the vertices, you can see sirens/dummies represented by single verticies. Sometimes it can be hard to identify sirens using this method, but in some cases it can be very helpful.
Another thing to look for in OpenIV is if any sirens are part of an extra. If they are, you can get a good idea of which modules the siren affects by testing what modules the extra affects.
2. Single out sirens
Once you have tried to gather any info you can from OpenIV, you can move on to single out sirens in-game. One-by-one set the sequencer on each siren to be
a solid pattern (4294967295) then look in game to identify the emissive meshes affected.
Make sure to note this down somewhere for later!
3. Create your new pattern
Once you have figured out which emissive meshes are affected by which sirens, you can create your new pattern.
Depending on how many sirens the creator of the vehicle model used, you will have less or more freedom to create your own patterns. For example, if all of the lights are parented to only 2 sirens, you will be heavily restricted.
Siren Tool can be very helpful at this step, as you can use it to properly lay out your sirens according to the emissive meshes you identified earlier.
Check out Siren Tool below!