Released Released New Material Editor! (Car Paints)

Christopher Elliott

Christopher Elliott

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Released New Material Editor! (Car Paints)

Full guide can be found here:
How to paint a car with the new material system

From the January Roadmap
To get the best possible results when designing your own livery, we decided to create a guide on painting your own car, to accompany the new templates and material system. We tried to make this a guide for beginners and advanced painters, covering all aspects. The first version of this guide can be found on our documentation site. Please take a look and let us know what you think, and what we can still improve! We will be adding new materials over time, so do please leave feedback. Do make sure you post your creations, we will be featuring a paint every fortnight – so get creative!

Please leave your comments, feedback, and bug reports here. Thanks!
 
I just had a 5 mn play last night before going to bed: it seems it is not that complicated, the tutorial is well detailed and give a clear step by step. Thank you, it was worth the wait!

But i feel like a quick overview would be needed, like a summary of what will be needed: for the moment you're a bit lost at the start and wonder where you're going! :D

If I understood properly, we'll now need to produce 2 images instead of one:
- a dds with your paint and decals, pretty close to the one we where doing, except no shading and a different alpha channel (and sorry but I didn't really understand: we need to indicate only the carbon you want to use in this alpha, right?)
- then a second dds where you would indicate the different materials you want, each of them getting a specific color: glossy paint, matte, chrome, vinyl for decals, etc.
To do this, there is an editor (that you need to open in a web browser for the moment, I guess it will be integrated in the ui if we ever get it...) where you select the different materials and apply them to your different parts.

My recap feels a bit long already! But something like this with just picts of the 2 flats and the corresponding car, and a pict of the editor would be great imho;
 
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another question is - what happens with already exisitng skins. from my point of view nothing should happen when the template itseld isnt changed. so i can still use my "old" skins but without the enhanced material system or am i wrong?
when i want to use the new gimmicks i have to adept the exisiting psd file with the respective layers described in the tutorial.
thx
 
When you eventually change all cars to this method of painting you're going to wipe out 100's of hours of skins I've made.
Now my skins aren't that good but they motivate me to drive the cars. What you are in the process of doing here is a real game changer for me personally.
Most of this new method of painting goes way over my head which is putting me off trying to paint cars and your game.
I really don't see much difference in the skins for the new GT3's over the old GT3's.
In VR the paint jobs all look pretty much the same quality.

I shall not be purchasing future content until I see where this is going. ATM it seems like I've been wasting my time for the past few years.
 
GrimDad said:
When you eventually change all cars to this method of painting you're going to wipe out 100's of hours of skins I've made.
Now my skins aren't that good but they motivate me to drive the cars. What you are in the process of doing here is a real game changer for me personally.
Most of this new method of painting goes way over my head which is putting me off trying to paint cars and your game.
I really don't see much difference in the skins for the new GT3's over the old GT3's.
In VR the paint jobs all look pretty much the same quality.

I shall not be purchasing future content until I see where this is going. ATM it seems like I've been wasting my time for the past few years.
Click to expand...
Your old skins should work. This just allows us to have chrome and carbon effects.
 
I doubt it but we shall see. I already had carbon look on the cars.
Real race cars only look nice at the start of the season, by the end of it they're battered up with body parts that don't even match colour wise.
 
I don't believe either this will break any old skins.....I'd go as far to say that you can probably still skin cars the old way and they'll still look good.
But I understand your frustration.....An already complex game is getting more complex instead of noob friendly.
 
I tried to skin a Porsche GT3 the old way and it doesn't work. Error window appears and all the choices are pure white. (alt.dds + my skin)
 
Looks pretty straight forward and not that difficult if you have experience with stuff like splat maps. Requires a few more steps than the usual way of painting skins, but the results allready show that it is worth it. :)
 
GrimDad said:
I tried to skin a Porsche GT3 the old way and it doesn't work. Error window appears and all the choices are pure white. (alt.dds + my skin)
Click to expand...
It does't change anything as this new system only requires an additional DDS file. Use the official showroom and if you see a white car click "reload".
 
Looking forward to do some skins. Unfortunately my gfx card died and I don't think I can't decent 60 fps at rain with my onboard graphic.
So I guess I have to wait until I have decided what card to buy.
Thank you for your hard work guys.
 
I took a few minutes to look at the system. I am looking forward to trying this out on the future cars I will be painting. I do have a couple thoughts.

1. This one is more of an observation - It'll be interesting to know how the colors "mix" with each other. Things with the Lacquer colors. The way that certain selections will overwrite or mix with the colors on the .dds. It is going to take a while to get my head around

2. Suggestion - If you happen to accidentally select an effect, there isn't a way to clear it back to default with out deleting the entire .json and starting over. That may be a pain if you are on your 6th and final material. You can't just put it back to "Select" Once it is set to something, it has to be something. Is there a way to do it that I am missing or what is the default for the first time you open up the skin from the website?

3. Suggestion - With the Tuning menu being the Official way to preview editing skins, Is it possible to add additional camera controls to be able to pan and to be able zoom in further? I know I have done some complicated skins in the past that needed some lines to be near pixel perfect. The current camera in the showroom may not be able to get the perspective correct or get close enough to be able to confirm things as needed.

4. Possible bug - Is it possible to have 2 different chrome effects? In playing around, I selected and did two different chrome effects, but to my eyes, it appeared as one. The latest edited one being the one applied.

I don't know if I'll be able to get to it, but it will be interesting to see if some one is able to get the Black Swan Racing Porsche painted and using this new system and to know what settings are selected to be able to make it happen. If there is a car that would take full advantage of this new system, it would be that one
 
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