Paint Guide

Discussion in 'General Discussion' started by 88mphTim, Feb 9, 2013.

  1. philmcqueen

    philmcqueen Registered

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    The same here, always it has been working fine
     
  2. D.Painter

    D.Painter Registered

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    "Passage from tutorial"
    I'm finding that this is not correct. Example; C6R_03altCRa dose not work! 12 characters in all "including extension". 11 characters in all dose work including extension, In the case here with the Corvette, it gives you only 2 characters to play with. The case above, C6R_03altCR works. If the above statement was true you could have C6R_03alt+10. This would be fine if it was so.

    Now to be sure about this, I did the update via the updater, Not a full new install. This has been known to have side affects before so are others finding what I've stated here and how did you update rF2 to the current build?
     
  3. tjc

    tjc Registered

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    I`m doing a Corvette skin atm, still working on it but I name it:

    C6R_00ALT.DDS

    That seems to work fine. I updated with the full build as I always do.

    IE - uninstalled b134 completely, rebooted and installed b146 as new.
     
  4. Kalanur

    Kalanur Registered

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    Is it possible to paint the wings of the Spark F2B? I guess an extra DDS would be needed but there is no template for it.
     
  5. Tosch

    Tosch Registered

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    The C6R_03 has already an alternative skin. That's why C6R_03alt don't work. Name it C6R_03alt1 and you should be fine. :cool:
     
  6. tjc

    tjc Registered

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    I never knew the Corvettes came with alternate skins :eek:

    Been so busy learning to skin myself lol :p
     
  7. Deadpedal

    Deadpedal Registered

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    You don't really need C6R_03 in the DDS skin file name at all. This should be the name of the sub-folder in which you place your skin files. The path, in the case of the Corvette which has 3 cars for which you can create alternate skins in the C6RGT2_Teams.MAS file, is one of the following:
    C:\...\rFactor2\UserData\player\Settings\ISI_Corvette_C6R_GT2\C6R_00\
    C:\...\rFactor2\UserData\player\Settings\ISI_Corvette_C6R_GT2\C6R_03\
    C:\...\rFactor2\UserData\player\Settings\ISI_Corvette_C6R_GT2\C6R_06\
    The skin name can be anything so long as it is 10 characters or less (not including the .DDS extension) and has "alt" somewhere in the name: alt*******.DDS, *******alt.DDS or a variation of *****alt**.DDS, in other words, 7 (valid) characters to play with in order to name your file.
     
  8. D.Painter

    D.Painter Registered

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    This isn't quite right Tosch. I have to date 4 extra liveries on the 03 car making 6 in all. There shouldn't be any limit to amount of liveries you can add to 1 veh file.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 19, 2013
  9. D.Painter

    D.Painter Registered

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    Thank you. I'll try this out. Was used to needing the extension first regardless. It seams I miss read that line as meaning you had 10 more characters "after" the extension was added to read like this C6R_03alt+ 10.
     
  10. KILL BILL

    KILL BILL Registered

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    Tell me please. Why in the game, the skins are not bright colors? system is used CMYK color? or just muted colors?
    I draw skin in photoshop, there she is bright, but the game pale
     
  11. John.Persson

    John.Persson Registered

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    Tried with diffrent daylight settings?
     
  12. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    @KILL BILL: How are you saving the dds file? Do you save it as DXT5 or DXT1? How reflective does your car look in game? Is it very highly reflective or not. If you saved it as DXT1 or if your skin is very highly reflective in game, the color looks washed out because of the reflections. Make sure you save as DXT5 and if you are already, try and lower the values in the alpha layer to make it darker. This should reduce the reflective value some making it more likely you will see color instead of reflection.

    Time of day you are on track also makes a difference. Try 8AM races or 6PM races to see the difference in how the car looks on track.
     
  13. KILL BILL

    KILL BILL Registered

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    Made with DXT5 ARGB 8 bpp
    Thank you, I understand :)
     
  14. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    You understand how to save the file, or how to adjust the alpha in order to reduce the reflections?
     
  15. Deadpedal

    Deadpedal Registered

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    Actually what Tosch said is quite right, D.Painter. If you look inside the C6RGT2_Teams.MAS using MAS2.exe, you will see an alternate skin named C6R_03alt.DDS. When you click the tuning button, having selected the Corvette C6.R GT2 #03, you will see two variants available, C6R_03 and C6R_03alt. If you name one of your skins the exact same name, the spinner won't show your skin, just an extra identical skin of the ISI C6R_03alt skin. All Tosch meant was that that particular file name shouldn't be reused in your C6R_03 skins folder. Once you add another character (1) to the file name as he demonstrated, you have a different file name.

    You are correct though in your statement also as there is (virtually) no limit to the number of file names you can generate for any VEH and place in each skin folder. The number of permutations of 26 alpha characters, ten whole numbers and a variety of valid symbols in 7 places of the alt.DDS files for the three C6R cars, although mathematically limited, is for all intents and purposes, limitless. Even if you were to use the base file name of C6R_03alt*.DDS, redundant though that would be considering the skins have to be in a folder named C6R_03, this allows for 36 name variations just using one of 10 whole numbers or 26 alpha characters. Get rid of the underscore to free up one more character (i.e., C6R03alt**.DDS) and this allows for 100 file name variations with whole numbers alone (00 to 99). Using two character alpha-alpha or alpha-numerics gives you 1196 more permutations. Altering the location of the ** characters within the file names (i.e., **C6R03alt.DDS) produces another 1296 variations; C6R03**alt.DDS another 1296, etc.

    Server admins may need to do some coordination among players to ensure no skin name duplication for online play but descriptive coding of alt skin names with 7 optional characters should be fairly easy.
     
  16. Hectari

    Hectari Registered

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    Editing the alpha channel:

    The alpha channel is actually really easy to edit and should be done when everything else is final.

    (For Photoshop)
    With the alpha channel you should work from the bottom layers up, common sense really but some will do them in the wrong order, if you make a mistake and want a fresh alpha channel and you can't undo what you did, just open the template or another psd, go to the alpha channel and ctrl+a to select it, ctrl+c to copy it and then back in the alpha channel you want to replace just hit ctrl+shift+v to paste it.

    Getting layers into alpha channel:

    Right click the layer thumbnail, click on select pixels, then go to alpha channel and paint over the area -simple and quick. (Even quicker, just hold Ctrl and click the layer thumbnail to show the layer as a selection which shows in the alpha channel, if you hold Ctrl + Shift you can click multiple layers to show selection at the same time for super fast alpha channel painting)

    Or you can manually select the pixels on a layer with whatever selection tool you like, ctrl+c to copy selection, then ctrl+shift+v to paste in place over on the alpha channel, then paint it black or white or any shade in between.

    Or select the whole canvas when on a layer with ctrl+a, ctrl+c to copy then paste in place again and paint, it will only let you paint on the pixels that were in the layer you selected - same for all methods.

    To select the pixels from multiple layers at the same time, merge all the layers you want, select pixels with one of the methods above, ctrl+c to copy pixels, at this point you can back up the merge if you want to keep the layers separate, then ctrl+shift+v to paste in place on the alpha channel.

    If you've gone over any of the parts etc. in the alpha channel, you can paint these back in by the methods above yourself as you get to the top layers, or if you want them to be as they were before, just go to the parts layer in a psd that has the standard alpha channel, select the pixels of the parts layer and go to the alpha channel to view/paste the selections in there as before, but copy the selections this time(ctrl+c) in the alpha channel then go to the alpha channel of your skin and paste them in.

    Using gradients in the alpha channel can work really well for certain elements of a skin to make them jump out and give extra depth/shading with reflections.

    If you can add any tips of your own or better ways of doing things, please do! :cool:
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Feb 20, 2013
  17. 1959nikos

    1959nikos Registered

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    Great thread here, thank you all.
     
  18. D.Painter

    D.Painter Registered

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    I sure didn't need schooling in file structure or naming. What was meant and what was said are obviously different. From how I read that post it was under the assumption because the 03 car already had a alt skin it couldn't be used again. My correction was that it could and I had 4 extra including the default and 1 alt. I didn't need to open the Mas to work that out.

    This is good information though very much over complicated. Your first answer in which I thanked you for was well and truly all the explanation needed. So thank you for that post.
     
  19. KILL BILL

    KILL BILL Registered

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    I understood your advice, what different times of day, affects the color of the skin :)
    And I will play with the alpha channel. I only third day as mastered photoshop ;)
     
  20. Gearjammer

    Gearjammer Registered

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    Well, can't wait to see what you put together :)
     

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