GP2 Forum

I want to make some more carsets of touring cars and sportscars, but I don't know how to create authentic looking front and rear ends so that an Audi looks like an Audi, a VW looks like a VW, etc, etc.

Does anybody know how to do this, and what programs I should use?

Well this is something I learned by trial and error and lots of practice. You just have to keep working at it, make sure you get some good photos first as reference and then basically draw what you see (shading, how the light falls on certain parts of the car etc). I just used standard MS Paint for doing templates, I find I like the simplicity of it and you can be very precise with individual pixels. Then when it comes to colouring them in and putting sponsor logos on them I use that and Paint.NET. It gets a little tedious at times but the end result should be worth it.

That's exactly what I do. I often begin with very rough contours and when the proportions are correct (which I test in the game), I start refining it. In general you need to test everything you paint in the game and that needs a lot of time and patience. But that's the only way you get shape and bitmap working together.

And I think, like Greyhead already mentionend, MSPaint is the best way to create the cars. It's always helpfull to cut out for example a piece with different blue-tones from another bitmap and copy it next to the part of the car you're working at. Then you can take the colours you need easily and create shadows etc..

It's hard to get the dimensions right, so when I tried this, I took some rather good reference photos and tried to paint the sturcture of headlights etc. over them. Then, of course, there's a large amount of trial and error with careditor and in-game tests to see if it fits.

What's difficult for me is that the side of the car is somewhat distorted, so if there are liveries like some early 90s DTM Mercedes with stripes going all along the side, it's very complex to try and get that lined up to look remotely like the original...

Still, it's great to have all this kind of experimental stuff in the game!