Cheers for the kind words guys. I hope you have fun with them ! I've never used a guide for skinning rfactor2. In fact, i've never attempted to skin a car before this, but i have made quite a lot of mods for other games, so it was pretty straightforward for me with knowledge picked up over the years. I'll tell you what FONismo and tjc, as a couple of guys have asked the same question, then i will make a guide on how i do my skins. You can then use this as a reference to create your own. I will put it all into a .pdf file that anyone can download and use, the only caveat is that i will not do it for a few days as i need a serious break from looking at photoshop. I will attempt to do one for the weekend, so you can all practice next weekend . . . . . . . . . . and i may may mark you on your efforts, lol. But in all seriousness, it will be done in Photoshop CS5, as that's what i use. If you have a copy of Photoshop, then you will need the free Nvidia dds plugin tools: http://www.softpedia.com/get/System/File-Management/DDS-Utilities.shtml ( i would have linked to the Nvidia site, but their dloads are down at moment ) I'm pretty sure you can also use GIMP which is a freeware editing suite : GIMP : http://www.gimp.org/ You will also need ( Don't know if this is latest version ) GIMP .dds plugin : http://registry.gimp.org/node/70 Old versions of Paint Shop Pro should work up to version 9 too, but i have severe problems like random crashes with PSP8 on a x64 bit W7. So get a copy of the editor you want to use, and we will go from there
That would be great mate cheers and yes i already have CS5. Obviously i want to be doing real life skins as oppossed to fantasy though but i presume it all works the same?
Mate i just found this below. Could you take a butchers and tell me if everything in there is relevant for skinning with rF2? May save you some time ftp://80.79.115.174/upload/henri200/Muu/how_to_skin.pdf
Hi FONismo, i just had a quick look through, and although i do go about some things differently ( like doing logo's for example, I would never put them onto a car until i'd made them into transparent vectors first and i also despise using the paintbucket tool ). the guide itself is great. Tell you what, try using the guide and if you encounter any problems, just post in here and i will try my best to help you out. ok? If anyone finds the guide above too complicated then let me know, and i will see what i can do. It can seem daunting at first, and YOU WILL get wound up, but once you have done a few you will be laughing. If you all make new skins, means i can hopefully get on with making my two tracks. GOOD LUCK !
Nice find Nismo, I`ll be having a bit of look through to see what I can work out. Thanks 4L0M for the offer to help etc too as I don`t know about Nismo but I`m sure I`ll have some questions lol
Ah I always love seeing other's people methods. I've been doing skins for years; since Indycar Racing I! My first public release was for Grand Prix 2. It's incredible how much my own methods have changed... even in the last year or so. Always something new to learn from someone else. Have you thought at all about doing any skins for the historics? I'm slowly working on a little F2 skin pack. Once I got it all sorted which files I needed to modify to change the wheel colours (and other random textures, like the interiors) on a per-car basis, it's gone fairly smoothly. [EDIT] I didn't read the words in that tutorial PDF that was posted, but I did note a large use of selection tools and the paint bucket for making shapes. I highly recommend you do not do that. Get used to using the pen tool in Photoshop. It will make your life much, much, much easier. It will allow you to scale the shapes without quality loss and allow you to align elements across body panels much easier that working with pixel data (which a paint fill inside a selection is). I don't know if it was noted in the PDF or not, but also never scale up an image. This will always result in loss of quality and it will be noticeable on your skin. Use vector logos whenever possible, as these can be scaled/rotated/warped/otherwise manipulated without blurring or quality loss.
Wow! Impressive Ryno917... you know your stuff mate. That`s you and 4L0M that have said using the paintbucket tool is a bad idea... good to hear what you guys think on this subject. Please say if there`s any other advice or info you can share with us.
Just a word of warning incase you did'nt know, but there very well maybe changes to the way Skins are handled within the game in a future update (hopefully before or in time for the Gold release). This could render (pun not intended!) your work null and void once an update comes out, so whilst its fun and that to mess around with skins and packs now dont get too used to the way it currently works or you'll be left screaming! Good luck with your Pack anyway
There's a lot of little things I do, but none of them are necessary or even preferred by many. Skinning itself is not an explicit act; it's all just understanding what the different tools of the program are and thinking about how to use them to create the skin you want. As always, there's a million different ways to skin a cat. - I steer clear of raster graphics (pixels) whenever I can. - I leave all my text as type layers so they are easy to edit down the line if I want to. I leave all my vector shape layers, for the same reason. If I need to rasterize a layer for whatever reason, I always keep a vector copy of it hidden just in case. - I use a lot of layer masks (mostly to hide shapes/effects from certain parts of the templates, without having to actually cut them permanently, or to hide later effects from getting on other parts of the car like outer glows and the like). - If I have a vector version of a logo, I always bring it into Photoshop as a vector smart object. This allows you to move/rotate/etc without quality loss, and still maintains all the colours as per the original vector document. If you need to change the colour of something, you can double-click on it and open it up in Illustrator to make your changes. Once you do that, it will update in Photoshop in the exact same size/position you had it, and still in absolutely full quality. (This is VERY useful for doing the alpha channels, if you want varying levels of glossiness on your logos) I made up a quick and dirty .GIF image to illustrate the use for this while working on a pCARS skin, if you want to see it let me know. Just shows why I use the mask to hide things from getting on certain parts of the car. - The best thing to do is have a plan of what you want to do. This is easy if you're replicating a real skin, but if you're making your own design you need to have at least some idea of what the outcome will be. As with any creative process, there is no tool that will do it for you - you need to use the tools at your disposal to create what you want. I haven't don't any intensive skinning for rF2 (just some basic historic skins that are not ready for posting yet), but I could look through some of my other files and see if I have anything recent that is complex enough to illustrate some of my methods and upload the PSD file somewhere. I've only finished one skin for pCARS so far, but I don't think that one is too complex but I don't remember exactly. Sorry to hijack your thread 4L0M! I'd still like to see your methods, too! Maybe we could start a 'skin workshop' type of thread for this kind of discussion. A sort of resource centre for those looking to get into it. Yep, this is one concern of mine but this is at least an excercise in getting used to the rF2 file structure. I didn't do much with rF1 (but I did do some!) because I never really could get into that title very much, but I do have a lot of experience with SCGT which is quite similar. While I know skin handling will change, I don't think it should affect my pack too much, as pretty much everything is duplicate from the original cars in a separate pack (as per 4L0M's advice in another thread). Once I have the cars all done I'll be cutting back on the file counts; any files shared by multiple cars will no longer have duplicates within the pack, etc. It should work separate from the Historics cars, in theory, regardless of what changes are made to them. In theory. lol
The packaging of the skins may change, but unless ISI actually change the physical 3d model shape, then skins made now should be fine.
This sounds great guys if you can do something between you both. The classic F1 and Brabham are what i wanted skin personally
Yes! This "skin workshop" sounds like a fantastic idea Tuttle as I know Nismo wants to try skinning, as I do myself so it would very handy to be able to get advice from experienced skinners and help and info for us newbies too. One thing that`s going to go against me is time... looks like I`m going to have to cut down on my driving time to try and learn to skin cars but I`ll do that if I have to. (Unless I win the lottery ofcourse lol ) Anyway, as I`ve said this would be great imo so I hope it can be started up.
Time is also a big issue of mine, so it may be a bit before something meaningful can come from me, but there's some potential. I don't know what 4L0M's schedule is like, but maybe something can come up in the coming weeks.
Just chiming in to say Thank You 4LOM! I'm brand new to rfactor (did not have rf1) and really enjoying, albeit I have a lot to learn. But I do want to take the time to say thank you for giving away your time to add to the "toy chest".
Cheers lopsided. Started to make a tutorial guide, got a load of screens of photoshop to sort through for it. I did look at historical skins, but ISI ones are pretty much spot on, and i was watching a documentary the other day and i think Stirling Moss said that in those days, the only sponsorship you ever saw at races were the manufacturers of the mechanics overalls. So with that in mind i banged these together at work, my vibe was kind of a 2012 Pop Art homage to the 1960's. Classic cars of yester years at a 2012 vintage race meet type thing . . . If that makes any sense . . . lol
