[B3.1 Stadium] Painter Problems

[chaos2]

Getting a new Trackmania I always start by making a new Skin.
I was pleased to see the high quality of the skin model. No more pixelised logos

But i encountered several problems:

First, the blinding reflections from the car making it nearly impossible to look at it without twitching:


Second, Stickers and Stencils put on a surface also appear on the surface(s) beneath

That makes it hard to Paint several Areas.
By the way, having different paintable areas like in TrackMania Nations ESWC and the following titles was a detail making the games extraordinary. It was already a pity loosing Options from Nations ESWC to Nations Forever

And lastly a "real" bug:
Around the cockpit, the skin model doesn't seems to be fitted the right way on the car model.



In my opinion the Painter is a crucial detail, as it distinguishes TrackMania from other Games where some default skins are the only options to express oneself. And it makes it pretty easy showing individuality playing online, to have a car one can be proud of to see on the podium.

[zarexz]

If you really want to be proud of your skin you should consider making it outside the painter.

Pros:
-Higher resolution of the skin files 2048x2048 (or even higher) instead of 1024x1024.
-Better control over alpha channels (make chrome for example)
-Put any shape and sticker you like on your car. Not the premade ones by Nadeo.

Cons:
-I can only think of the fiddle it sometimes can be with the junctions of different panels.

[chaos2]

Yeah, I already thought of that, I already tried it in TMNF. It worked but in a complete different way.
It's hard for me to imagine, how the car will look afterwards. Besides I don't have any idea how to affect the shine in GIMP.

But i think the original Painter is a good working concept. The TMN ESWC Painter was the best so far, in my opinion.
Together with a higher resolution this would be the way to go.

Lately I collected every Stencil and sticker from every Trackmania, therefor I have enough of those.

[zarexz]

It's hard for me to imagine, how the car will look afterwards. Besides I don't have any idea how to affect the shine in GIMP.

The current setup of Maniaplanet nolonger requires to restart the whole thing after you've made changes to your skin. Exit the painter main menu (where the car rotates) before you make changes, go back to windows using either the windows key or alt+enter or ctrl+esc. Make changes to your skin, save and copy to the right zip file. Go back to TM, enter the painter main menu, select your car, press ctrl+a to stop the car from rotating, use mouse and hold right button to move arround the car.

Making use of alpha in GIMP is nicely explained on Maniapark here http://www.maniapark.com/forum/viewtopi ... 14&t=16692

[chaos2]

Wow, thank you, that's very helpful!
I'm totally going to try it.