Okay - a brief overview. I am reading / read 3D game programming all in one utilizing the Torgue Game Engine. Learned alot.

I like to work in Blitz3D while I am learning about scripting. Everything I do is self Taught with the books I buy, Trial and error and keeping what is good.

I have created several 3D Models, Mostly vehicles, Did some animations things are looking good.

What books are available to build upon what I am learning in Torgue? What I want to know next is how to attach weapons / change the weapons on my vehilces at run-time. Also looking for information on how to blow apart my models ( Explode them when destroyed )

I have Textured my models, ( Still improving on my art skills ) So I am also looking for graphics information on how to ad a decal to my Texture at rune-time without having to make new Textures (Skins) to cover all of the decal options I want.

I have seen this done in games like need for speed where the user can paint and decal a vehicle while they are playing. This is the kind of books I am looking for.

Can anyone point me in the right direction with titles ?

First off, you will never find a game programming book that will specifically cover "making things explode." The purpose of the books is to teach you the general concepts of programming interactive media, not spoon-feed answers to it's readers. Making things explode is something that howto authors expect the reader to figure out on their own using the general concepts discussed in the book. For example, if a book discusses rigid body physics you can use that general info to make an explosion by instantiating smaller models of the vehicle's parts (body, wheels, engine, what have you) and apply an initial velocity to each part based on the car's last speed. Add a few particles and some spiffy sound effects and whammo! You have a car exploding.

So I am also looking for graphics information on how to ad a decal to my Texture at rune-time without having to make new Textures

Even though this seems a simple enough task, depending on how you want to do this you will need quite a bit of math. First, using a completely transparent "overtexture," you will have to use some fancy formulas to correspond where the mouse/pointer/whatever is over your model to the UV coordinates on the texture. If you want to have part-by-part coloring options (color the door, hood, et cetera), you could have a simple checklist of each part and corresponding color (and simply change the hue of certain parts of the texture). For decals, you will need to find the UV coordinates as stated above and apply the decal in real-time. A little complicated, to be sure, but easy enough for an intermediate programmer to be able to work out. Then, there's directly painting the cars. Not only will you have to calculate the UV coordinate relations with the model, but also skew the paint zone depending on the angle of the camera. If the user sees a circular brush icon, but are looking at the car at a forty-five degree angle, just drawing a circle at the coordinates would produce undesireable results: To fit the brush shape, the new shape would have to be an ellipse!

. . . I guess all I'm really trying to say here is that you can't expect books to address your needs specifically: Just use trial and error to make your own solution that's tailored to your own needs.

As far as exploding my 3D objects... I did sort of figuired that out Late last night. Today I am going to try my theory. Here is what I am going to do.

I am going into my 3D modeling program and attach additional joints to parts of my model. Then I am going to animate those parts through the use of the animation sequence and set them as the explosion sequence. May not be the best way, but it is my theeory.

MisterFuzzy ( I am not trying to be condensending in the following statement just acknowleging your advice ) I already realized that mapping to the UV co-ordinates would have to be done, My problem, Is that I have not figuired how to first Identify a Particular UV Co-ordinate. Maybe I am simple overlooking the obvious. Maybe the coding I could write if I knew what I was attempting to do. I visualize this as something along the lines of a " PAINT-BY-NUMBERS" sort of thing. But where would I start ?

Do I start by Loading my Texture in a 2D layout, Map my mouse cordinates, click and drag my decals. But then I would be saving a new texture for that model.

Or would it be by adding a attachment node in the 3D modeling program. That is what I want to do. And there is where I am stuck. I don't know enough about 3D to accomplish this.