Greyhead's thread

[DJS]

Hey Dan, how are things going on with your back and the carset?

Bump.

[Greyhead]

Slowly! Back's getting better but I haven't done any work on the carset for a couple of weeks. I've been developing a new way of painting the bitmaps for the past couple of days so at the moment I'm just playing around with that, hopefully it should make it a hell of a lot easier to work with the car shapes. If that works out then the rest of the carset shouldn't take long.
And thanks for asking!

[Greyhead]

Well the new way of painting the cars has worked out fine, it's not perfect but it's a bit more accurate and although it's more work to get a template together for a specific car, it's a million times easier to put the colour scheme and sponsors on it.
So now I'm getting back on with the carset. I haven't yet decided whether or not to re-do every car using the new method. I probably should but I just want to get it out of the way now...

[V12-Power]

I wouldn't re-do the cars, because first it coast a lot of time and second the "old" cars already look very good. I can't imagine the difference would be big enough to justify the effort.

[jakesanson]

I agree. We love your work, and can't wait to get our hands on it!!

[Greyhead]

Thanks for the kind words, motivation is increasing

[Greyhead]

Well the Mustangs are done, decided to re-do all the GT2 Porsches but leaving everything else as it is so I can get the set finished. Just about finished the new template for the Porsches, at the moment doing the templates is much more time consuming than before but it's just a case of getting used to my new method of painting the cars. Plus the time taken to do the liveries of each car is a lot less now, to do the two Mustangs took me about half an hour each!

Once the GT2 Porsches are done, I'll just be left with a single 911 GT1 Evo and the Marcos to do. You never know, I might actually get it finished this year...

[V12-Power]

These are great news! I actually am very keane on this carset, so it's good to know that it won't take that long anymore.

It would be perfect when you could post some screenshots of the Mustangs, the Panoz etc., because I can't any longer to see these cars!

And I would be also very interested in an example how you create the templates now. I can't really imagine how you make it now, but it sounds exiting.

[Greyhead]

And I would be also very interested in an example how you create the templates now. I can't really imagine how you make it now, but it sounds exiting.

It's not that exciting really. Basically I use the co-ordinates from the car shape editor to make a basic technical drawing of the car shape in 2D using Paint.NET. This gives me both a wireframe with all the points and edges of each surface, and also a silhouette "canvas" on which to draw the car.
Then I find a blueprint or technical drawing of the required real-life car and overlay this on the blank silhouette so I can trace the lines from this, then add the shading and stuff.
After this I can simply make a new layer with the colours and sponsors on it, all in normal proportion rather than having to edit it for the bitmap.
Once this is done, I use the wireframe to copy each surface and re-shape it to fit the normal GP2 bitmap.
It does take time but once I've got into it, it'll become much easier, and it allows me to put more detail in.

I'll post some screenshots this week of the cars, and also how I paint them now.

[Greyhead]

Here's a quick guide to how I do my cars now:

[Greyhead]

Part 2:

[Peze]

Great (and smart) way to do carsets

[V12-Power]

Fantastic, this brings it to a new level! I admire what you've created there, the idea is really clever.

[Greyhead]

Thanks!

In many ways it's a lot easier, because it allows you to draw the car how you actually want it to appear. How it appears in Paint.NET is essentially how it'll appear in the game (although obviously it won't be quite as smooth in GP2), and so you don't have to keep checking and re-checking how the car looks in the game.

However, the main problem I'm having is that the reshape plugin is pretty vague. If I reshape a given texture, it'll rarely give the same result twice because there's no grid or zoom or anything to use as a guide while you use the plugin.

That's just a minor niggle though. So far it all seems to work pretty well.

[jakesanson]

That LOOKS a lot easier than I imagine it would be.

How would I go about doing all that though?? The only reason I ask is that I have so many ideas for championships that I want to turn into carsets, but I never had anything this good to work with.

Any chance of a tutorial and some file templates, etc??