MIB2 High / Discover Pro toolbox!

[dvw.r]

@Cuzoe are you still playing with the images?
I was wondering if you - or someone else - knows how to change a default image to an ambient highlighted image?
I was looking at the mcf file, with the template but I can't figure it out. I compared numerous image data but I'm probably a little bit overwhelmed by the data.

Also, if you can get a hand on Photoshop, I could explain how I edit the images.
I can even share my files with you regarding the things I already changed.
As an example @attachement (I made it red for you, for my own it's more dark gray)

As a tip: if you edit the OPS image file (the car) just edit the large one. Then copy/paste, mirror and resize it for the smaller.
That way they look 100% the same.

dvw.r

 

[Cuzoe]

@dvw-r The technical answer is yes I am still playing with them, haha. But in reality I have not had much time and/or have spent it on other (equally unimportant) things. I have since edited learned to use GIMP (a little better) and have cleaned up the images I previously posted here. But maaaaaaaaannnnnn... your looks way better . My wife does have Photoshop on her computer, which is subscription based now I guess... so I could login and have access.

I did think about just editing one and then resizing it. I wasn't sure if the proportions were the same on all the images. I suppose the car proportions are always the same, just the white space in the various images may differ. Although now that I my grasp of layers has improved I realize I could just use the fuzzy selection tool, copy the edited image onto a new (top) layer of the non-edited image, scale it then save.

If you're willing to share some files that would be awesome though.


Now regarding your question about ambient lighting, what exactly are you hoping to do? Do you mean getting the ambient lighting to show on this image? I'll use folder 020307001 for example.

So you have 0203070001 > GenericCarAdjuster > AmbianceLight > Interior_LHD.png


Also in this folder are some Feature_LHD_x.ng files, feature 2 being door strips and 5 being footwells.




If you have a look at all in their full size you'll notice the "feature" pictures perfectly overlay the "interior" picture. And that's how the MIB shows ambient lighting, by overlaying these images.
You determine the feature images that will show via adaptation coding in the BCM. There are also adaptations to determine if a given feature is white only or multicolored (assuming your BCM supports this). If you set a given feature as multicolored the MIB can apply those colors (RGB) to the generic white features.

In another non-image folder lives the .GCA file (Generic Car Adjuster). This file contains the coordinates that tell the MIB where a given "feature" should be placed over the "interior" image.
This is described by the OP, and discussed in this thread a bit, but here are some links to OP's drive2 blog...
https://www.drive2.com/l/596309137281783715/
https://www.drive2.com/l/594912207758724717/
https://www.drive2.com/l/594910833369180584/

I dig into a good bit of the coding in my ambient lighting thread. Note the thread is about getting RGB lighting to work on a pre-facelift BCM (which the "internet" said was impossible). I found my pre-facelift BCM did support RGB lighting albeit in a limited fashion compared with a facelift BCM (which I eventually retrofitted). Anyway, the coding to get various ambient lighting (RGB or white) is the same pre-facelift/facelift. It's a long read (like most of my posts, haha) but I'm happy to help out.
https://www.golfmk7.com/forums/inde...ighting-hopes-dreams-pre-facelift-mk7.392316/

 

[dvw.r]

@Cuzoe Sorry man, there were some hectic days.
Yes Photoshop is connected to a Creative Cloud account, normally you can install it on 3 PC's if I'm not mistaken.
So normally you could install it with that account/license.

And yes, the proportions are the same. Just resize it 56,23% and flip it vertical.

And no not that. The thing u explained was the next thing I wanted to do. So still helpful !
Appreciated! I'll need it soon or later, hopefully soon. But time.. ugh...
And I don't mind long reads, as long as it's informative.

I was more talking about changing an image in the mcf. Like some images are getting an overlay with your ambient color.
As an example: the dots on your menu or the lines below the menu tiles. These are just white in the image folder but in your screen they are the same as your ambient color.
So there should be some data in the mcf file regarding which images to overlay and which don't (well that's a guess tbh). But I can't find that data.
So maybe somebody already found/knows this. I compared - and still am - numerous images/data but the only thing I find is headache.

I'll PM you my Photoshop file (.psd). But I also wrote a small step-by-step guide. Just for your effort for explaining everything as well.
I added the jpg as attachement. I have a doc/pdf but never trust a pdf from someone over the internet.

• Open your image in Photoshop
• Duplicate ‘Layer 1’ (Ctrl + J) two times.
• Rename ‘Layer 1’ to ‘Original’ and hide the layer.
• Rename ‘Layer 1 copy’ to ‘Colored’
• Rename ‘Layer 1 copy 2’ to ‘Uncolored’ and hide the layer.
• First, highlight the only visible layer ‘Colored’.
  Then create a new ‘fill or adjustment layer > Hue/Saturation’ above the ‘Colored’ layer.
• Highlight the ‘Hue/Saturation’ layer.
  Make sure you highlighted the adjustment and not the layer mask.
• Edit the properties of the Hue/Saturation. Make sure to check the box ‘Colorize’
  It’s pretty straightforward and you can see the difference immediately.
  Play around with the settings.
  As you can see, the windows/lights/etc. are also discolored. We are going to fix that in the next steps.
• Unhide your ‘Uncolored’ layer. You car will be back original but don’t panic.
• Create a ‘Layer Mask’ on the ‘Uncolored’ layer.
• Highlight the layer mask. Not the layer, see prev. img, the white border around the mask.
• Do a Select All (Ctrl + A) and fill with black.
• Now with the mask still highlighted, select the brush tool (B).
  And make sure your foreground color is white.
• Select an appropriate size of brush and start brushing the windows and lights.
  You will see they will come back original, as intended.
  Don’t worry if you make a mistake, that’s why I work with masks.
  If you change your foregroundcolor to black, you can rehide it again with brushing.
  You can just switch your fore- and backgroundcolor (X).
• As a tip: you can draw outside the lines with white and finetune it again with black. Sometimes this is easier. Like this:
  and then use a black foreground color again on the mask to hide al the gray.
• If you’re done, export the image as .PNG
  If you want you, can save the psd for the future.
• As a tip: the smaller car is the same, so you can just open the smaller car image.
  Copy/paste the image you just saved (the bigger car).
  Resize 56,23% and Flip Vertical.

dvw.r

 

[Cuzoe]

Hmmm... so you're talking about images that are not ambient lighting then?
- The ambient lighting images are overlays, as discussed above

But for the things you're talking about (lets call them accents to make our lives simple-ish), what are you hoping to accomplish?

• I'm not sure there are images in the mcf associated with them.
• Accent color is dictated by the vehicle type in 5F - Infotainment coding (for example, GTI gets red, athough I think everything else gets blue)
  • Or if you have a facelift BCM and Gateway, and you have ambient lighting coded... the color is dictated by the color slider (and drive mode, if you set it that way)
• Now if you don't have facelift BCM and Gateway you can do some manual editing of Resources\skin1\ambienceColorMap.res as Chillout posted here
  • https://www.drive2.com/l/550087042839610039/
• Note that if you have facelift BCM and Gateway then the ambient lighting settings will take precedence over whatever is in ambienceColorMap.res, as it should I suppose.

 

[dvw.r]

@Cuzoe Yes, I was talking about the images, my bad.

Well, just fyi - I have a facelift model, BCM replaced for one with pin C29, full working RGB ambient lights.
Ambient lights installed (RGB): Door strips (F+R), pocket lights (F), center console, cig.lighter, footwell (F+R), dashboard/glovebox, roof, door sills
Still looking for a nice solution for the cup holders. Ruined 3 center consoles already for testing purposes.
Gateway arrived Monday, hopefully going to replace it this weekend. DCC slider
So now you know why I appreciated your previous post about the gca files.

So, what do I want to accomplish? Well, I'll try my best to explain myself.
If you look at those accents on your screen, they are ambient dependent.
If you look at the extracted images, they are just white.
So somewhere, somehow, the images are 'marked/signed' as let's call it ambient overlay.

A couple of examples (don't mind my bad photos and dirty screen):
img_52 is an accent image. img_53 isn't.

img_52 and img 53:

The same for the tiles:

img_2300 (just white):

If you look at the Drive Mode selection screen, there is also an accent color/overlay, but orange.

img_2256, also just a white colored image):

The orange overlay is also present on some other images. As an example in the OPS screen to disable/enable sound.
Also just a white image.

So my thoughts were, there must be something in the hex-data (mcf file) that marks an image to be non-overlay/ambient overlay/orange overlay.
Why do I want to find the data in the first place? Well I hate the orange on the drive mode selection screen.
I want to change it to ambient dependent instead of the orange.

I hope that I explained it good/understandable enough.

Thank you man for your effort and patience.

dvw.r

 

[Cuzoe]

Gotcha... my dumps do not have that many images... not sure why that's the case. But it's probably why I wasn't sure what images you were talking about, haha. I've only got up to img_977.png in skin_0.

Are these images in skin_1? I'll have to check the colors under my driving modes. Not sure what they are honestly, though I would assume they match my ambient colors. You should be sorted once you get the facelift gateway installed I think.

As for the center console, this is what I'm doing. And I had to retrofit Electronic Parking Brake to do it... not recommended, haha.
https://www.drive2.ru/l/594167288630902422/

Spoiler: Rant about people keeping secrets.

Edit: and yes about people keeping secrets about what they do to their car, f*** that, generally speaking. I can understand a little bit if you were doing something innovative and selling it as a service, assuming it's something you figured out on your own. But oftentimes it's people selling the freely shares work of others which is trash obviously. And in other cases it's just people being dicks.

Sometime ago, over a year maybe two, there was a guy that posted a picture of his golf with RGB interior lighting. People, including myself asked about it and he's basic response was... It's difficult, I can do it in my shop, but also I'm not offering to do it, and also know I cannot provide any information about how it was done. Now of course there was already RGB interior lighting on cars that are not the golf so it isn't like there was no information out there, it just wasn't really out there in the golf community.

But I'm like hey, you just want to post pics and show off put that s*** on Instagram, maybe Facebook. No need to come to the forums where people go to look for and share information.

Hell I'm very much guilty of posting about things that I don't even have working yet, some of which may never work . I'm looking hard at my pre-facelift RGB ambient lighting experiment/thread. Granted I did get that working despite, in an admittedly limited fashion. But the whole of our community said it wasn't possible. I saw a couple adaptations in my BCM along with C 29 so I started a thread and got to work.

 

[dvw.r]

Well i have skin0 folder with almost 2k images. It looks like skin0 holds only the basic renders.
skin1 has 2.7k images (more or less). Most of my changes were done in the skin1 folder, except for those 3d models.
For example the driving mode button images are in skin1 for me, did this as a test.

At the moment I'm redesigning the whole skin, driving mode selection (not aligned but well, it gives me an idea):

Are your driving mode images also in skin 1 or?

dvw.r

 

[Cuzoe]

Are your driving mode images also in skin 1 or?

dvw.r

I have to assume they are in skin 1, I haven't even extracted it , but I will tonight, time (aka the 1 year old) permitting.
That makes sense, as skin 0 would be a bunch of "default" stuff while skin 1, 2, etc would be the factory "custom" themes, if you will.

 

[dvw.r]

Well at this moment I still didn't find a way to add ambient accents to other images.
Above my pay grade I guess.. So hopefully Chillout will chime in with his big brains.

@Cuzoe did you manage to use Photoshop this weekend?
I edited 60 images this weekend and imho it's makes a big difference.
Making the infotainment more 2023 and less web 2.0 era.

As for the center console, your way is kinda how I like it, but not 100%.
But it did give me an idea, so work in progress.

GW still not replaced and gca files still not done.
I need some extra hours in a day.

dvw.r

 

[dvw.r]

@Cuzoe Today I finally found the time to edit the GCA files and imageidmap.
But now I noticed that my door handles don't have any lights on the screen (feature 4).

I checked my previous pictures and they were never there.
I already checked with Photoshop and feature 4 is for the door handles.

Do you have any idea? Maybe I made a coding mistake.
Now I can control the brightness of those lights with the brightness control of my cockpit/AID (cluster in car settings menu instead of background lightning).

I also saw a post from @Chillout that he noted feature 4 as speakers, but that isn't right after I checked it. Maybe it's different per model, idk.
He was also not able to display feature 4 (post from drive2).
I was also thinking that feature 4 is controlled by the 'front zone', (see edit) but not sure if you need a coding change or something to control the AID's and door handle's brightness trough the the background lightning menu option instead of the cluster menu option.

Edit:
After some thoughts I think they should be controlled by the 'door zone' and not the 'front zone'.
Because on my original dataset, feature 4 is available, but not the 'front zone'. So tbh, idk it anymore atm.
I'll try some coding changes and will report back.

dvw.r

 

[Cuzoe]

If those are the factory lights then they are not LIN bus controlled. They are wired to the door control modules and probably tied to the interior lighting brightness (switches, buttons, etc) and not the ambient lighting.

That being said, looking at my pictures my car doesn't show that light. I would have to check my MIB image dump when I'm at home.
** Ignore "red" color selection at the top, that was before reftofit of facelift BCM, I now have the color slider at the bottom. ***

I have installed lin connected RGB lights in that position, which change with door "sun" but that's not factory operation/install. I hadn't really noticed this but I will add it my list of things that need some time, haha.

If you want to post an ad-map of 09 maybe I can spot something semi-quickly.

 

[dvw.r]

Yes, they are the factory lights wired to the door control module.
But the other door handles are also wired to the door control module.
Talking about these handles. And they show up and are controllable.

And the OEM Ambient strip were also connected to the door control module.

On the other hand, those light are also coded differently.
The door handle is coded as a different light in the door module.
For the handle in the picture above, you need to check 'Ambient lightning' in the long coding, no separate option.
For the door handle light (that doesn't show up) u need to check the following bit: 'inside_door_handle' light/Interior door handle illumination'

At this point I don't get it.. Why they put feature 4 in my original GCA of it doesn't do anything.
I'm going to do some further testing/coding, maybe the AID is also controllable trough this screen, maybe not, we will see.

dvw.r

 

[Cuzoe]

In order to have AID controllable via the screen you would need to change it's "reference" away from 58d (I think). I don't know how possible that is since the dash is not technically ambient lighting. For NAR cars we have a little roller/potentiometer beside the light switch that controls instrument/button panel brightness. There is a BCM channel that determines whether instrument/dash/button lighting is controlled via the pot or via lighting menu in the infotainment...
https://golfmk7.com/forums/index.ph...ior-ambient-light-dimming.381530/post-7933788

Ahhh yes, correct you are about there being separate coding for the two door handle lights. In my car both of these all of the door lights are LIN connected (both door handles, strip, and pocket). My car had no ambient lighting of any type from factory so I don't know what all that coding looks like in standard configuration.

Might be worth locating factory reference maps/scans in the forum over on Ross-Tech for a car that came with that... unless you have your factory scans/maps.

 

[dvw.r]

Well, yesterday I coded for like two hours and looked trough different default admaps incl.mine.
Was still not able to show feature 4, that f***** still didn't appear. So, I gave up and did it in another way.

I edited my imagemapid.res, I changed the map of feature 4. I went to my car id, searched for the lhd feature 4 mapping, and I added 00 31 in front of 00 34, so it's feature 14.
Also increment the length with 1. For example, the length 61 -> length 62
Image id map can stay the same (use the same image id for the previous defined feature 4 as for the changed feature 14).

Then I edited my 0.gca file and just changed point 4/4 to point 14/14.

I also connected the light to the speakerlight output on the doorcontroller, so for me the brightness is now also controlled with the door ambient brightness instead of my cluster brightness.
This is not necessary for you because it's connected to LIN and controlled by door ambient because LIN group is already defined.

If you just don't use imagemapid anymore, you can just rename your feature img. For example: Feature_LHD_4.png -> Feature_LHD_14.png.
And edit your gca file (just change point 4/4 to 14/14).

My misses doens't understand it...
"Why do you put so much time and effort in just a little light to show up on a screen you barely look at?" .. well...

dvw.r

 

[dvw.r]

@Cuzoe Did you manage to use the Porsche or Bentley mapstyles?
I'm not using the sdcard, I edited the files directly. Audi and VW are working for me. Porsche and Bentley not.
At this moment I have the Audi maps and the Porsche carsor. But I like the Porsche POI images.
I also tried to edit the images.ccf and replace all the images, but then my navigation doesn't start..
So.. I'm stuck for now and my car battery is low on voltage.

dvw.r