editing skins, trying to learn

[John Low]

Hi guys, was wondering if someone could point me towards ' a complete idiots guide to editing skins ' Have a skin I want to use for the League rallies and want to change a couple of things. I know if I asked or begged I could probably get someone to do it for me but I'd like to try and do some of it at least myself.

While i want to change a number of things I am happy to to start small and do the names on the side windows. My main issue with that so far seems to be when I am filling in the names on the rgb part of the external transparent dds I can never ever get the colours of the windows just right, it always seems darker and plain than the area surrounding it. I think I might be missing something reasonably simple but am not sure and want to do this right.

I get the bit about filling in the old name on the alpha channel but after that I am lost. Please be gentle, I am a noob at this and am trying to learn.

I have photoshop and the plugin required.

Cheers

 

[Damien Jones]

You'll need to put the new name onto the alpha channel as well as on the RGB channel.
- type your new name into the RGB layer, resize, reposition until it looks right
- Ctrl-click on the thumbnail for the layer (layers window); this will select all the non-transparent portions
- swap over to the alpha channel and fill the selection with pure white
This will make that section of the window opaque

 

[Rick Bamford]

LOL, I THINK I understand. What about editing the body of the car?

 

[Senad Subasic]

Open the external.dds file, take a brush and paint away

 

[Łukasz Demolin]

About editing the windows - if you use GIMP to open/save dds files (it's blistering fast, really trumps over other solutions I've seen. 1 second instead of at least around 'teen-twenty) the transparency on windows is done via color opacity (eg. window transparent in 50% is painted gray with 50 percent opacity.

I find it easier to edit/save .psds for further editing using this method I found just recently. Just a side note

 

[Rick Bamford]

Open the external.dds file, take a brush and paint away

lol, it doesn't seam QUITE that easy to me. but i'll give it a try Senad

 

[John Low]

Thanks guys, i am happy i have a handle on the window thing now so bodywork is next. Have a template and am going to play Expect questions
Cheers

 

[Damien Jones]

Open the external.dds file, take a brush and paint away

Or even better: download a template from Rallyesim and get creative!

 

[John Low]

Or even better: download a template from Rallyesim and get creative!

I have been looking at the template thing lately and couldn't agree more with Damien, I found for example on my N12 skin if I tried painting some areas of the dds file I just seemed to get the one bright colour over the whole thing, no shading at all where there was shading. It turns out the shading is built into a layer of the psd file before it gets saved as a dds file. When I used the template, the shading built into the template, automatically changed the colour to suit, different shades of the same gold colour. Is a lot of work starting from scratch but practice makes perfect or somewhere close to it

Cheers

 

[Damien Jones]

Yeah, the shading makes all the difference. Not all the templates I've come across use it (like the Impreza 05 I'm using for Rick's skin) but most seem to. I use Inkscape to create the decals for the car and then put it all together in Photoshop.