Getting Started With Livery Editing

[MC Malicious Gravy]

First post here, so hello to everyone!

I've recently started making custom liveries for fun and I've figured out a lot of the common issues first timers with the templates have (transparent windows, etc.) and I've just about gotten the hang of it, but there's still a few things I'm trying to figure out, and any help would be greatly appreciated.

Mostly it's the amount of reflection I seem to be ending up with. Note, I'm using either GIMP or Paint.NET for editing. But compared to other cars in the game, my cars end up being much more shinier and reflective, which makes the colors come out not quite like I wanted, for example

The darker blue on this car is actually supposed to be black, but the high reflection makes it seem a very dark blue.

High reflection a little more obvious in this picture.

Problem is, I don't know which layer in the template affects this. Hopefully I can get some help on this. Thanks in advance!

 

[nickovey]

Looks like the liveries have been saved without an alpha channel, which the game then reads as full white which is fully maxed out reflections. The livery templates come with a generic "good enough" alpha built into them, so it should work just fine assuming they've been saved in the correct format (DXT5 dds). Maybe GIMP/paint.net don't support PSDs with alpha layers properly or something...

Otherwise you'll have to make a custom alpha layer for the livery texture too, using the same method as the glass but instead of black being transparent and white being opaque, black is matte and white is full chrome-ish levels of reflection. I've uploaded a PSD for the Sonic's livery alpha here just in case you need it, though as I said the livery PSDs do include a generic one http://www.sendspace.com/file/m4eliy

 

[Marco Bijl]

I am not sure how it works in GSC, but I know it is in the Alpha layers in rf2. The lighter the alpha is, the more reflection you get.
I am also not sure how GIMP works, as I use Photoshop, so I fear I can be off little help here.

 

[MC Malicious Gravy]

Thanks a lot! Unfortunately I can't figure out how to import a file into either GIMP or .Net so as to use your alpha, Nick.

However, I get the desired effect of controlling the reflection merely by adjusting the opacity of the entire flattened DDS file before saving!

Opening up the real-life drivers' liveries and seeing that the image is partially transparent all the way through should have hinted me to it, but I got it sorted out now! Thanks again guys!