RD Race07 skinpack

Björn

Ävver et Hätz bliev he in Kölle
The RaceDepartment skinpack
As discussed during the previous week(s), we're unifying the Mini/WTCC skinpacks into a new RaceDepartment skinpack. At the same time, we're extending the pack to include all other classes run during RD club events, so you can spraypaint your Radicals, GTs, everythings!

All skins by drivers who have signed up for a RD club event during the last three months as well as pending uploads have been migrated and are already available in the pack.

As usual, the pack is available as a 7zip file via the RD download resources and, in order to keep things tidy, now contains a slightly modified folder structure (see below).
Updates, if there are any, will be issued every Sunday - given the current club event structure, this allows short-term skin development targeted at vehicles used at the next week's events right after they are announced :)


Guidelines & Informations
(a.k.a. "I don't wanna call this rules, we're still casually racing ;))
  • updates will be published every Sunday evening(GMT-ish time), please make sure skins are submitted by then to see them included.
  • since we're drastically increasing the amount of permitted car models, your skins will be removed from the pack after 60 days of not signing up for club events - of course, you are free to re-submit your skins once you restart racing.
  • please stick to the default skin sizes - oversized skins have been causing problems in the past (for example, for WTCC skins, body/windows/internal dds files should be less or equal to 1366/683/513 KB)
  • each car can only be present once per driver - another upload of the same car will replace your current skin
  • one skinned car per class (WTCC/GT Club/Retros etc.) is what's desired - should you find yourself to be switching cars often enough to justify it, however, you may enter multiple skins per class - please mention this accordingly in your upload.
  • the skin pack features a root folder which should be placed in Race07's user files (for Win7/8, entering "%USERPROFILE%\Documents\SimBin\RACE 07\CustomSkins" in Windows Explorer should get you there). Inside this folder, there are user-based folders which might, in turn, contain car-based folders - but I'll take care of that ;)
Add your skin
Getting your skin added is easy - just zip/rar/7zip it, upload it somewhere (dropbox, mega, the choice is yours) and link it in this topic. If everything's fine, it will be added to the next update.
You don't have a skin yet? Whoops! Well, basically, there are three ways to overcome this dilemma:

  1. Get your Paintbrushes out and skin your dream car! Basic skinning is actually quite easy and very well covered in this RD guide. Software-wise, the guide (rightfully) covers GIMP and Paint.Net, a worthwhile addition might be Inkscape in case you work with or need scalable graphics.
    The guide mentioned above only covers body and windows skinning, so here are the formats which other files should be saved as:
    Body/Driver/Ext_Driver/Numberplate = DDS file, DXT1 with Mipmaps (6, if adjustable)
    Windows/Helmet = DDS file, DXT5 with Mipmaps (6, if adjustable)
    InteriorWindow = DDS file, DXT5 without Mipmaps
    Menuflag (menu) = 32Bit TGA file, 60x45px
    IngameFlag (result screen)= 32Bit TGA file, 40x20px
    The base files needed can be found in RD's download section: Base Game | STCC | Retro | Additional.
    WTCC 87/06/07, Mini, Caterhams, F3000, FBMW, Radicals + Nameplates/Driver/Helmet templates
    STCC2, Camaro Cup Gen5, Retro Volvos (240, 850)
    Retro Cool, Retro Max
    Camaro Cup Gen4, GT Club, GT Pro, GT Sport, Muscle Cup, Formula Master, Formula RR, WTCC Extreme, Seat Leon TDI, Lada 110s, additional STCC1 cars (Peugeot 308, BMS Incognito, Audi A4)
  2. Use Simplivery to create basic skins for a few cars.
  3. Don't have the time or patience to do it on your own? Well, some of us really like this stuff and might be willing to create a car or two for you - just post into this topic and ask for help :)
    (Do you like designing cars and want to be contacted for skinrequests directly? Shoot me a PM and we'll get your name in here!)
  4. Found the skin of your dreams on some site or the RD download section? We might get it included as well, however, please contact the author and make sure he's alright with this!
Status
Currently, there are no skins waiting to be included - the pack's up to date!
 
Last edited:
@Björn Golda

Sorry, to hijack your thread, but I thought it would be best to keep the questions and such in one place.

So, I decided to try learn to skin myself, so I downloaded Gimp and that Paint.net installer thingy. (4.0.3)

Installed Gimp, no issues there at all. But when I try to install the Paint thingy, it tells me, it requires W7 SP1 or newer. Which I have. And I can't for my life figure out why it doesn't work.

After using Google, it seems, a few more has this issue, while others don't.
Any ideas?
 
"Unfortunately", I'm on Win8 on both my home and work machine, so I can't try much of what I found..

Anyway, there seem to be (rare) issues of Windows Update preventing the installation of SP1, so first I'd make sure it's really installed - the information should be available in Windows' control panel's "System" information.
If it's not installed, you can either check the KB article linked above and follow those steps.. or just install it manually via this link.

If all fails (read: if you really are on SP1 already :D), you could still use an older version of Paint.Net, available over here. Up until a few months ago, this was the newest version, so it's not that dusty and should be fine for skinning :)
 
Ohh dear God, that was alot of info to go through :coffee:
To be fair thou, I'm really bad at updating my OS, since I don't like Windows doing things behind my back.
A few experiences from the past has taught me that. :poop:
But I will go through the info, update stuff as/if necessary, and let you know how it goes.

Thank you for your help Björn! :inlove:
 
I tried the Gimp method. Got the pattern made and installed on the car and then it would not save the DDS file with the options shown in the tutorial and, after about 5 extra minutes of re-reading things and staring at the screen in disbelief, I gave up.

I'll leave it up to the experts in future and hope for an expansion of the capabilities of CooperColours! :thumbsup:
 
I tried the Gimp method. Got the pattern made and installed on the car and then it would not save the DDS file with the options shown in the tutorial and, after about 5 extra minutes of re-reading things and staring at the screen in disbelief, I gave up.
I export from GIMP to PNG, then use Paint.NET to convert the PNG to DDS.

meerkat.jpg
 
I'm just gonna copy-paste my reply to Daniel since others seem to run into GIMP trouble, as well - marking core statements as such ;)

Phew.. well.. to be honest, I don't like GIMP, never did - however, it seems like you'll always have to use the "Export as..." method to save a PSD file - saving the file in Gimp's own (I assume) XCF format won't hurt, though, as long as you'll continue to work with GIMP.

Not too sure about the DDS error - might be the DDS plugin acting up. You could work around that by saving the file as a PSD, then loading it up in Paint.NET and exporting it to DDS in there.

If I was asked to sum up my experience in and recommendations in skinning using free software in one sentence, I'd probably say "Don't use GIMP, it's a usability mess - go for Paint.NET" ;)
To be fair, however, you will lose some options using Paint.NET, most importantly working with vector paths and mask layers. But there's always a way around that :)

The third one is completely and utterly my opinion only, though - your experience might (but doesn't seem to :D) vary.
 
I tried the Gimp method. Got the pattern made and installed on the car and then it would not save the DDS file with the options shown in the tutorial and, after about 5 extra minutes of re-reading things and staring at the screen in disbelief, I gave up.

The problem is that GIMP changed the interface since the tutorial was written.
Merge the visible layers, select "Export as..", and the .dds format.
Now if your option-box doesn't show the DXT1 option, check the third drop-down.
If it says "save as volume" change it to "Selected layer", and then the DXT1 option becomes available.
Just don't do what I did, and forget to un-merge the layers before saving the project....*sigh*

GIMP is extremely powerful for a freeware program, but I'll freely admit that the interface is a little.....Well, it's something. :laugh:

Anyway, here's mine.
(First attempt, so will the people in the back please stop throwing popcorn?
Ingrates......
) :D

Mini_zps1875a3a5.jpg

https://www.mediafire.com/?bll40l9tc1rjzjd

Cheers,
Lars
 

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