New cars for TM2! Based on Fatal Racing/Whiplash

[Trackmaniack]

It may not be a bug--I had the issue the first time I was making skins for TM2, too...did you use DXT5 compression? And did you make mipmaps?

[wraith36]

Thx for the skin Trackmaniack
Any chance you could change the silver to white.

That would look great.
And thx shin looks real nice.

[Trackmaniack]

Thx for the skin Trackmaniack
Any chance you could change the silver to white.

That would look great.
And thx shin looks real nice.

Heh, it -is- supposed to be white... I just can't figure out how to not make everything super-reflective...it's like the shiny is set to 100 all the time. I'm looking into it--and will update the skins when I figure out how. I'm probably going to update the skins over time anyway, as I'm a never-satisfied perfectionist...

[DJ_Twilight]

Sorry this is slightly off topic...

I have been a long time player of TM and in the past I have created skins in racing games (Im talking years ago on NASCAR racing in the 90's!) I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of a skin creating tutorial? Or at least what software I need to get hold of, as I have no real idea of where to start!

Any help/direction would be gratfully received.

[Trackmaniack]

Sorry this is slightly off topic...

I have been a long time player of TM and in the past I have created skins in racing games (Im talking years ago on NASCAR racing in the 90's!) I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of a skin creating tutorial? Or at least what software I need to get hold of, as I have no real idea of where to start!

Any help/direction would be gratfully received.

Get GIMP (It's like the free photoshop) and then take a look at the tutorials on mania-creative.com. They're still mostly for Trackmania 1, but the general principle remains the same. And I can't stress the necessity just to experiment and learn on your own. That's almost a greater teacher than people hand-holding you through it. However, anyone in the community with skinning skills would gladly help you through a rough spot should you need it. So, if you -do- need any help, don't hesitate to PM me or anyone else Recently discovered by myself, Trackmania-carpark.com's forums are filled with helpful tuts on how to do this, that, or the other thing in regards to painting your car.

[DJ_Twilight]

Nice one thanks, I recently started using photoshop at work and already picked up quite a few skills on there, have always loved messing around with graphic design, so will prob have a bash on there. Just spotted Maupis .PSD template on a another thread, and it looks to me like hes done all the hard work and provided us with a blank canvas to work on.

This is why I love Trackmania, guys like you and Maupi seem to so willing to help others out. Hopefully I will be able to make the time to be a bigger part of the Canyon community that I was with the previous TM games

And I love the thought of tearing around the canyon in a car of my own design too! lol

[Trackmaniack]

that's the best part--smoking the doors off someone in your own creation

[Ls777]

Thx for the skin Trackmaniack
Any chance you could change the silver to white.

That would look great.
And thx shin looks real nice.

Heh, it -is- supposed to be white... I just can't figure out how to not make everything super-reflective...it's like the shiny is set to 100 all the time. I'm looking into it--and will update the skins when I figure out how. I'm probably going to update the skins over time anyway, as I'm a never-satisfied perfectionist...

Its the alpha channel. Make the alpha channel a dark grey

[Trackmaniack]

Thx for the skin Trackmaniack
Any chance you could change the silver to white.

That would look great.
And thx shin looks real nice.

Heh, it -is- supposed to be white... I just can't figure out how to not make everything super-reflective...it's like the shiny is set to 100 all the time. I'm looking into it--and will update the skins when I figure out how. I'm probably going to update the skins over time anyway, as I'm a never-satisfied perfectionist...

Its the alpha channel. Make the alpha channel a dark grey

Err, can you elaborate a little on what you mean by that? Sorry for sounding stupid...but I'm still new to this whole skinning thing and can use the help.

[Ls777]

Heh, it -is- supposed to be white... I just can't figure out how to not make everything super-reflective...it's like the shiny is set to 100 all the time. I'm looking into it--and will update the skins when I figure out how. I'm probably going to update the skins over time anyway, as I'm a never-satisfied perfectionist...

Its the alpha channel. Make the alpha channel a dark grey

Err, can you elaborate a little on what you mean by that? Sorry for sounding stupid...but I'm still new to this whole skinning thing and can use the help.

Well I cant give you program specific help, as I use photoshop and not gimp, but basically, most images have 3 or 4 channels: red, green, blue, and the alpha channel. The alpha channel usually controls transparency, however, for the car skins they control the specularity (the amount of shininess, with white being full shine and black being no shine at all) http://docs.gimp.org/en/gimp-channel-dialog.html
I suggest you steal the alpha channel from the psd template that is in another thread

Finally, when saving your file, realize that there are different types of dds. You want to save it as the format that supports interpolated alpha, I believe that is DXT5