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  Title: Live for Speed S2
User's Article Rating: 5.76
Number of views: 16859
Users's Comments / Reviews: 17
Developer: LFS
Publisher: LFS
Simulated Series: Various
Demo: Yes [130 MB]
Article Author: Martin de Witte
Date posted: 09-01-2003
Pages: 1 / 1
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Total: 152 Screenshots

 

Car Skinning Tutorial

So you want to make/edit your own Live for Speed skin, huh? here's a little tutorial for all you guys who wants to give their Live for Speed 0.1 car a personal touch.

Ok, first of all we need to allocate the file you want to edit. If you want to give the XF GTI a paintjob you need FWDtex1.raw and if you want to edit the XR GT or XR GT Turbo (b) you need the ttest.raw (c). Down here there's a screenshot of the drive: /Live for Speed/data/pic/*.* (a) directory where you can see those three files.



Try to open this with Photoshop or Paintshop Pro, I use Photoshop 7 so from now on everything you see is Photoshop but I guess everything is the same in Paintshop. As soon as you want to open a .raw file the graphic program will ask what dimensions the graphic is... Default it will take 512x512 pixels but if you want to make a more detailed skin you can choose to 1024x1024 but keep in mind you need to set the graphic settings in LfS to 1024 (options > misc > max texture size) to see it correctly. Also the file will be much bigger to download. Leave all other settings as default. Left you see the Photoshop dialogwindow and at the right the Paintshop window.


Left you see the Photoshop dialogwindow and at the right the Paintshop window.


Now you see the image of a car, down here I took the skin for the XR at the left and the GTi at the right. You can practically do anything, change colors, add elements or add text.



The only part you should work in is the middle car section and the backlights. Graphical elements you should be aware of:
  • The carshape at the top isn't used so keep it white since it's not used at all.
  • The licenseplate between the lights is filled up by the ingame rendered plate so don't care painting this as well.
  • The hood and roof of the car is colored by streched pixels from pixels near (a)
  • There's no front wheel drawn but keep in mind, ingame there is! (b)
  • Windows are painted black ingame so forget fancy colors or transparency, you won't see a thing. (c)


For XF GTi almost the same story although the layout is different, have a look yourself down here. As you can see there's only one backlight (a), do whatever you want to do with it but remember LfS puts a darklayer over it so alot of details are lost. (b) there's no windowshape in the XF but remember not to put any colors in there. A part of the interior is also in this document, if you like you can edit it right here as well.



When you want to save just merge all your layers (if you use any) and save the file with all settings as displayed, don't worry, it will work.
This is just an example of everything what's possible in version 0.1 and let's hope we can modify LfS in the future even more! Files you can have a look at are in the Life for Speed/data/pic/ map with following names:
  • ads5.raw
  • ads7_dirty.raw
  • FWDGTI_interA.raw
  • RWDGT_interA2.raw

Finally some things you have to keep in mind:
  • The model of LfS only allows you to paint one site of the car, the other side will be painted mirrored (see picture 3 below). The programmers promised this will be solved in release 1 so don't complain about this but use your imagination :)
  • Only YOU can see the skin, not people you drive againt on the internet or LAN.
  • All cars will be painted the same, so also your (CPU or human) opponents get the skin althought it's used with overlay effect (see picture 4 below) so all kind of variations appear.
  • You need Adobe Photoshop (5, 6 or 7 will do) or Jasc Paint Shop Pro to edit any texture.
  • Make a backup of files you're editting, or you need to download the complete LfS package again if you screw up.

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Author: 09-01-2003
Very Detailed and to the point,and Simple to understand.
Author: 22-01-2003
Good article!
Author: 08-02-2003
Very Good stuff
Author: 14-02-2003
you can also change the shapes of the headlights, breaking lights and all that, i did it in mine (GTi) and looks really nice :)
Author: 26-03-2003
Briljant job m8 :)
Author: 04-04-2003
very nice man! i found it easy to go through and make my own skins :D
Author: 07-04-2003
i already know some before i see tutorial but thanks for helping
Author: 28-07-2003
Superb! I wish every tutorial on the web would be that easy to understand.
Author: 09-09-2003
Why is there no explanation of how to paint the hood and the top ?! This tutorial is kinda worthless without that.
Author: 01-10-2003
*Out-of-date article!* Take a look at the current LFS ver. Everything has been corrected. This article should be too.
Author: 26-02-2004
I used this a long time ago on the demo ver. Is the article completely obsolete or is skinning in general still done in the same way?
Author: 22-08-2004
I can't find the ttest.raw file :(
Author: 28-08-2005
but how i can draw hoods?
Author: 25-01-2006
Great article but outdated.
Author: 16-06-2006
Thats all that!! all you do is open the skin you want in the skins folder then edit it and save it: EG:xfg_(anything)
Author: 26-11-2007
WTF is with this tutorial?! it is nothing like this in S1 or S2! you edit the CAR_DEFALT file in photoshop or something. then put it in the skins folder.
Author: 04-07-2008
hallo

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