Quirkitized rFactor skinning tutorial

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rFactor skinning tutorial

For this guide, It will be based off the F3 mod created by lo^. Current verison in this tutorial is F3 MOD Version 2.0. Everything is pretty much the same for any other car, the only thing that will be different is the car template and possibly DDS saves. This tutorial will be long, but im trying to make it as easy as possible and cover almost all the basics. Tools Needed: rFactor (http://www.rfactor.net) rFactor F3 Mod Version 2.0 (http://forum.rscnet.org/showthread.php? t=239446) (by Lo) Adobe Photoshop (http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/main.html) Nvidia .DDS Plug-In (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html) F3 Template or Car Template (files/rfactor/rF3_1024.rar) This Tutorials Template (files/rfactor/firstcar.psd) (download this so you can open it with yours, will help you follow this tutorial even easier.) Step 1 - Create a skinning folder - Go to My Documents folder and create a folder called rFactor_skinning - Create sub-folders (like in my example) to your likings, help keeps things organized. - Open the rF3_1024.rar, extract the template to your skinning folder. I would put it in a folder called f3 template

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Step 2 - Opening the template - Open Photoshop - Open the F3 skin template (The white lines that are vertical and horizontal are because of photoshop, not the skin. To take those off, go to VIEW > Show Extras, uncheck it. Or hit CTRL+H)

(images/rf_tut2l.jpg) Lets go over some of the layers and tools well be using.

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Now that we got the organizing of folders down, the template open, and an idea of the tools well be using, lets go to page 2 and paint your skin.

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Quirkitized rFactor skinning tutorial Step 3 - Create a paint set

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First, lets create a SET called PAINT. In this set, we will put all our paintwork from the car. If you didnt see it before, view picutre below on how to create a new set. (please note you do not have to create sets, I just think its better to create sets to help keep things organized.)

It will then create a new SET. Double click on it, or right click > layer properties and rename it to PAINT. -Then highlight the PAINT LAYER and drop it into your PAINT SET. It should look like this below.

Then do the same thing for Carbon and Color layers. Put them in your paint set.

Step 4 - Paint the car Click on set forgeground color. And put the paint to #FF0000 (thats two Fs, and four ZEROs). Type this in the box at the bottom. Click OK.

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Select the PAINT BUCKET tool. Then with your blank PAINT LAYER selected, click anywhere on the template and the car should turn red.

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(images/rf_tut11l.jpg) At this point, lets make sure we save our template. Click File > Save As. Go to your My Documents folder, and open your rfactor_skinning folder. Save it in your my car templates folder. Save it as firstcar, make sure its saved as a Photoshop file (*.PSD, *.PDD). Its importent to save it in a different location then orginal file and naming it something else so you avoid overwriting the orginal, and keeps things more organized for when you make more skins.

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(images/rf_tut12l.jpg) Now that your car has a new coat of red paint, lets go to page 3 and do some custom painting to it.

You may, or may not like this paint job. Its not going to be a top-notch award winning paint job. But what it will do is teach you how to use a few tools and how to make a few custom lines. Once you learn how to utilize photoshop more, go crazy on your car painting whatever you want. Im just going over the basics. Step 5 - Painting the Rear Wing - Before we paint any parts, we need to make a layer for them. Well start off painting the rear wing. First, lets create a new layer called Top Rear Wing in your Paint Set.

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Now lets paint the Top Plane Rear Wing. Check and uncheck the Labels layer to view your car parts.

Select the Marquee Tool, then highlight the Top Plane Rear Wing. Start at top-left corner, and drag down to lower-right corner. Should look like below.

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Now to paint it, lets select the PAINT BUCKET tool and set the BACKGROUND color to white (code #FFFFFF). Use the little arrows to switch foreground color and background color.

Then just simply put the paint bucket over the Rear Wing and click, should turn white.

Step 6 - Painting the Front Wing Check or Uncheck the Labels layer to view where the front wing is. Its on the bottom of the template. - Select the Polygonal Lasso tool (right click to show lasso selections)

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To use this tool, simply click at one area on the wing where you want to start. Then carry the line to the next area, click again to keep it there. Basically what your doing is just out-lining the front wing, or *connecting the dots* so to speak. When you connect the last dot to the first dot the whole thing will be selected. The Front Wing should look like this once selected. TIP - Hit the backspace key to go back to your last click/dot so you can re-align your next outline. (Please take your time with this tool! It may take you a few trys to do this. Once you learn it, it will be easy. But its very helpfull tool to do custom paint jobs!)

Once you have the front wing selected, simply select the Paint Bucket tool again, click on the selected Front Wing and click. Once filled, click back on the Polygonal Lasso tool, right click and select Deselect. The wing should now not be selected.

Step 7 - Paint Front Nose - Create a new layer called Front Nose in your Paint Set - Select the Polygonal Lasso Tool Try and outline the same thing I did here. As you can see, I zoomed in 300% to make the path selection. Zooming in will make it easier.

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(images/rf_tut23l.jpg) Now fill it with the Paint Bucket tool, and white color just like the Front and Rear Wings. After you fill it, Right Click on Front Nose layer and select Duplicate Layer.

Go back to your Front Nose, and hit CTRL+T (or Edit > Free Transform). Right click and select Flip Vertical. It will then look like below.

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Now hit ENTER, and drag it to the top of the nose so you can try and align it exactly like the bottom one. Might want to zoom in 200-300%. Should look like this when finished.

(images/rf_tut27l.jpg) Your just a few steps away from racing with your new skin. Before we go further, SAVE IT!!! Now, lets move onto page 4 and put some sponsorship decals on it. div align=center>

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Step 8 - Adding your car # Lets start out by created a new set for your template called Decals. Close your Paint set first. Once you created your Decals set, place it above your Paint set. If you forgot how to, view this picture

Now, lets put a #1 on your rear wing, the sides. Take a look at the picture to understand where and how we are going to do this. - Create 2 new layers called #1 r wng lft and #1 r wing right - Select the Type tool (T key). Put it on Impact, Size 48. (top of photoshop) - Put a #1 on the 2 rear-wing sides (view picture for reference). Just click on the area and type 1, then hit enter on the numpad. Or hit CTRL+Enter. - Then select the Move Tool (V Key) - While you have one of your #1 layers selected, press CTRL+T to activate free-transform. Right click on it, and Rotate 90 degrees Clock-Wise (90 CW) - Press enter to apply the free-transform.

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(images/rf_tut29l.jpg) Now lets put a #1 on the front nose as well. Use the same thing as above, but rotate this one 90 degrees counter-clock wise. Position where needed with the Move Tool (V key)

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Now all the #1 placements should look like this. Youll probably notice I put the #1 on the nose up too high. Just move it down a little bit, were the two graphics join together. Also, go ahead and put a #1 on your Front Wing sides if youd like, I didnt do it for this car for time saving reasons.

Step 9: Apply sponsorship decals Please download the following decals, as these are the ones well be using on this car. Save them in your rFactor_skinning/decal/ folder. *** Note: I have already re-sized these decals so everything should fit into place. Youll still need to make some adjustments, well go over it. *** You can obviously use different logos if you want, but for the sake of following this tutorial, please use these. This of course is not going to be a *real* car, so where just placing logos

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for your learning experience. No specific theme for this car, once you learn thisgo crazy with a real themed car. RIGHT CLICK > Save As Kumho side graphic (files/rfactor/kumho2.gif) Sparco side graphic (files/rfactor/sparco.gif) Kumho front wing graphic (files/rfactor/kumho1.gif) Lets start off by putting the Kumho side graphic on the side of the car - Open up the Kumo2.gif - Select the Magic Wand tool (W key) - Right click on the kumho2.gif graphic and SELECT ALL example:

Now that you have it selected, youll see the whole image outlined with the lines moving. Now hit CTRL+C to copy the image (or Edit > Copy), go to your skin template, and hit CTRL+V (or Edit > Paste)to paste it on there. It will create a new layer in your Decal set, rename this layer to kumho1. Your skin template should look something like this now:

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Now take your Magic Wand tool, and click on the white area of the Kumho logo. It should now look something like this (this is zoomed in 300% to show detail).

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Now select the eraser tool and erase all the white, just move the eraser all over the logo It will erase the unselected areas.

After you fill it, click back on your Magic Wand, right click on the graphic and hit Deselect so its no longer selected (lines arent all over it.) Now lets put it where it needs to be - Select the Move Tool (V key) - Put it into the same position as the picture below - Right click on the layer and select Duplicate Layer (just like putting the #1 on) - When it duplicates the layer, just simply hold down the left mouse button on the logo, and drag it to the same spot (just like putting the #1s on.). It should look like this when your finished.

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Step 4: Adding sparco logo. Now lets put the Sparco logo in - Open up the Sparco logo - Do the same thing you did for the Kumho logo, select your Magic Wand Right click on picture > Select all > CTRL+C to copy, then go to your skin template and press CTRL+V to paste. - Rename the layer to sparco - Now with the sparco logo, theres acouple selections where going to have to make to make sure the whole thing blends in. Zoom in about 300-400%, get your magic wand tool out and click on the sparco logo (white area.) You will see it is all select, except the white area in the letters P, A, and O. - With the logo still selected with the tool, hold down the SHIFT KEY and select the area in the P, A, and O. Now everything will be selected that needs to be painted. - Select the eraser, and erase everything selected. Just run your eraser all over the logo. With magic wand

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With Magic Wand and SHIFT held down, click on the P A and O areas, to select them

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Then use your eraser tool and erase it all.

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Now select the Magic Wand, right click and select Deselect. Get the Move Tool (V key) and lets put the logo into place. Once you put one logo into place, remember to duplicate the layer, then put that one in place.

Now lets put the Kumho Front Wing decal on. Open it up. Select your Magic Wand tool, right click on the logo > Select All. CTRL+C to copy, then CTRL+V paste it onto your car template. Rename the layer to Kumho front. Place it on the front wing, deplicate the layer and place the other decal on opposite side. Now make two more copys of the larger Kumho 1 http://www.quirkitized.com/wp/?page_id=4 5/4/2010

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graphic you put on the side, and put those on the front wing as well. You should end up with something like this

***SAVE YOUR SKIN BEFORE WE PROCCEED TO SAVE IT INGAME. Please make sure you save it right now in your my documents skinning folder!**** Thats it for the decals. Your car is painted, and has decals. Lets save it to the game and race with it! Finally!

Final Step - Saving your skin to the game Now all we need to do is save this skin to your game and play with it. - You need to have the Nvidia .DDS plug-in installed (http://developer.nvidia.com/object/photoshop_dds_plugins.html) (photoshop needs to be closed to install it) With your skin template open: Hide the WIREFRAME layer Hide the LABEL layer

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Your skin template should now look *plain* without lines everywhere or labels. Something like this:

Now click LAYER > FLATTEN IMAGE. Your template will now have NO layers. It should be flat. If you get asked to Discard Hidden Layers, select Yes.

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Now click FILE > SAVE AS - Go to this location: C:Program FilesrFactorGameDataVehiclesF3EuroASM - Save your file as .DDS - Select the F301.dds file (it will rename your template to that F301.dds)

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It will ask you if you want to overwrite the file, click OK. Then this image will pop up, more than likly it will show exactly this, just make sure its DXT5 ARGB, 2D Texture, Generate MIP Maps. Click Save. It will take a few seconds to write it to .dds format. Some people use different DXT saves for various reasons or different cars, games, etc. Just use DXT5 for now.

Your skin is now saved to the game. But, please do not load the game up yet. Only a couple things left. ****READ************ IMPORTANT **************

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Now go back to your skin template and click EDIT > Step Backward. This will give you all your layers back. Do this and save it just incase you didnt save it before. Make sure you do not save it while the image is flattened and you exit photoshop, all your work is gone by a accident. *********************************************** Go to C:Program FilesrFactorGameDataVehiclesF3ASM and open the F301.TXT file, change the Painters name Lo Sirmika Tomi Nick TonyTone Hitman Hawkeye to your name. Close it, Save it. Load up your game, select team ASM and it will be the second driver. View the picture below for reference:

(images/rf_tut50l.jpg) YOUR DONE!!!!!!! Go race with it or make a new car now that youve learned how to!!! Quirkitized. All Rights Reserved. WordPress Theme designed by Chris Wallace

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