How do ya'll maintain texturing of your cars/engines?

[Anthony]

LAST EDITED ON Jun-25-01 AT 12:22PM (EST)[p]I've been wrestling with this for some time. I've started simple - just editing the default boxcars and such. I've thrown whole new paint schemes on them, but I can't seem to keep the "ribbing" and/or roof contours once I've repainted... does that makes sense? For those who are repainting engines and such, how are you keeping the service hatches, the rivet lines, etc viewable? (It seems that when I "repaint" a car/engine, the surface becomes seemingly flat.) I'm not good at this whole graphics thing, so any help would be appreciated! Thanks!

-A

[RvA1]

Well now if your using a paint program that can handel layer's what you might want to do is to use the original texture as a guide and make all new hatches and panel lines in a new layer. You can then add you paint and marking on other layers, then save as a new file and compress the whole shoot'in match and your done.

Hope this helps,

Roger

[Xacto]

One trick is to use the various color options in a graphics program to alter the existing texture's pixels as opposed to painting over them. There are a number of options such as "colorize", "adjust Hue, Saturation, Lightness", "Highlight, Midtone, Shadow" that will change the color and value of an image without loosing the content of the image. One way to do a repaint would be to use the clone tool to remove any large logos and company names from a car (clone an area below the logo onto the logo to remove it), then edit the blank car side to change it's color and value as needed, then add the new logo by cutting it out from another image or adding text with a text tool.

These are all just suggestions and the technique will vary depending on the color you are changing and the complexity of the texture. Dark colors are harder because they contain less Hue for the modifications to work on and so on. Experiment with those color adjusting tools until you find a combination that will create the look you want.

Xacto

[Anthony]

Yup - it's all in the layers! I've tried using them previously to no avail, but you gave me a new way to think of it. Hopefully I'll have some Amtrak California Engines/Cars available soon (if they're any good. ;-)

-A