Skins

Graham Bridgett · Feb 17, 2012

Basically I just wanted to know how you make skins for RBR?

TTupsi · Feb 23, 2013

Can you tell us what exactly are you doing and which program you are using? If I had to guess, you are having problems saving the skin in proper format.

Senad Subasic · Feb 23, 2013

Tapio Rinneaho said:
Can you tell us what exactly are you doing and which program you are using? If I had to guess, you are having problems saving the skin in proper format.

Yes, see here: http://www.racedepartment.com/forum/threads/skins.65042/

function9 · Mar 1, 2013

Hello,
I had a question regarding different car surfaces. Is it possible to specify, say the bonnet, to have a flat/matte finish? Here's what I'm talking about @3:25:

Notice the bonnet and roof look like a flat finish, while the rest of the car is glossy. Thanks for any help.

Michael Nelson · Mar 1, 2013

function9 Yep, pretty easily done. The more transparent an area in the external.dds is, the less "glossy" it is.

So in your example you'd want to edit the alpha channel and make the bonnet and roof more transparent than the rest of the body.

I use GIMP, not sure how to do it in Photoshop, but I'm sure there's plenty of tutorials for editing alpha channel out there.

function9 · Mar 2, 2013

Sweet. I'm still quite new to editing skins, so I didn't realize that. So far I've just edited a couple existing skins slightly. I'm using GIMP as well. Thank you so much for the info.

function9 · Mar 2, 2013

Hey, thanks again for the tip. I found editing the alpha channel got me most of the way there. To get what I really wanted I had to delete/erase the shader layer (working from the 207 template file) for that particular body part. Saved me a lot of hair pulling. Cheers.

function9 · Mar 8, 2013

Taking a bit longer than I thought, I hate working with text/fonts! LOL, didn't realize there was really so much. But I'm almost there. Now I just have to learn how to do mirrored/metallic sufaces for the ST logo.
http://www.rudymichelini.com/index....ciocco&catid=13:foto-stagione-2011&Itemid=263

I did need some help again. I've been searching for the past 2 days and can't figure out what it is exactly.

The decal/crest right below their names, would anyone happen to recognize it? Please, I'm certainly not asking for anyone to search, but I know there's a lot of rally/motorsports fans here and that someone might recognize it. That's unfortunately the best photo I have of it and it's been on the car for the 2011 Rally del Carnevale and the 2011 Rally del Ciocco. I can't find anything other than the standard plates for those events. Thank you so much!

TTupsi · Mar 30, 2013

Could the logo be of the drivers local club?

Roy Magnes · Mar 30, 2013

I know some clubs use this kind of sticker to everyone who has passed the pre-race techical inspection, could that be it?

function9 · Mar 31, 2013

Thanks for the recommendations about the clubs, hadn't looked at those yet. No worries though, what I learned from working on another skin is that I'll eventually come across it when I'm looking for something else haha. Had that happen a few times.

I did have another question about .dds files in general. What are the best settings in GIMP for saving dds files? Here's what I've been using so far:

The problem I have is I'm getting a lot of artifacts around graphics, for example:

From the start, I redid just about every logo with paths. I don't fill/stroke anything until I have the path at the size and position I want it. I thought that would give me the best quality. But looking around at other skins, I don't see this, so I assume it's on my end.

Rally 1000 Miglia

Thanks again for the replies guys!

Daniel Monteiro · Mar 31, 2013

I have that same problem with the quality loss, will be happy to know what the solution for that is!

Gundars · Mar 31, 2013

One solution might be resolition(image size),I have the same problem with small things in skins,so I resize template from 2048*2048 pixels to 4096*4096 pixels and everything looks much better,the only problem - file size increases from 5.33 MB to 16.3 MB.

function9 · Apr 1, 2013

Interesting. I was recently looking at the 2012 207 evo and noticed it was at 4096x4096. I always assumed the resolution was hard coded for each car, didn't know you could change it like that. I might give that a shot, no more small, illegible text!

function9 · Apr 2, 2013

Going with the higher res did clean it up a bit, though there's still some artifacts.

Michael Nelson · Apr 2, 2013

Two ideas:
1) Try a 1 pixel stroke around the areas where artifacting occurs and set it to a colour in between the two colours. The compressor might be goofing up sharp contrast, and this could maybe help.
2) Save it as an uncompressed DDS file, and then use a different compressor. The external links in this wiki article links to a few: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S3_Texture_Compression

I don't know what compressor the dds plugin for GIMP uses.

function9 · Apr 2, 2013

So far, the best I could get was with the higher res and instead of just 1px stroke around the o.m.c. I tried a 2px stroke after what Michael posted. I know it isn't what you meant regarding the stroke, but I don't think I was able to find a suitable "middle" color. I would be happy if this will be as bad as it gets.

I'd say all the artifacts that are present are around areas that are outlined and set on the orange background. The "srl" and "electrical plants" have it too, but this logo was by far the worst.

I'll still mess with it, I haven't tried an external compressor yet, though from the little reading I've done so far I hear good things about nVidia's. But being command line only and looking at all the parameters made my head hurt, haha. Really do appreciate all the help, thank you!

function9 · Apr 15, 2013

Finished the graphics of it. What makes me really happy is I started messing around with the shader ini file (even though I didn't have a clue what I was doing lol) and I finally managed to get the look of what I've been wanting. Was just trying to get rid of some of the gloss, didn't think I'd get what I originally been trying for. I think I'm finally done with this one now.