Before we start, I'll use MadiBang Paint Pro as graphics software but i'm pretty sure you can find any tool I use on any other software that is not ms paint.exe LOL.
In this tutorial we will see the fallowing things:
PART 1 - Car detailing
1) Car windows texture
2) 3D effects and Panel gaps
3) Shading and lighting
PART 2 – Car paint job / livery and Carboxes
1) Color choiches
2) Decals and stickers
3) Carbox
with that being said, let's start:
PART 1 – Car detailing:
Before creating the paint job or livery of the car you must first create all the details of the car so that the graphics of the livery can be created in a way that is compatible with these details.
For example i don't want to make a nice livery with some sponsors stickers everywhere and then, after that, cover half of them with air intakes, panel gaps or other detailing related stuff, that's why it's always good to start with the detailing process, and then make the livery for the car.
If you miss something in the detailing process you can always try to add that later, but make sure to add everything that comes to your mind before starting making the livery texture.
1) Car windows texture:
In this section we will look at some tips to make car windows textures.
The first thing to do is to draw the edges of the windows, following the texture mapping will help a lot (you can hold LShift while using the brush to make straight lines).
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/O2fghjU.gif)
If your car has both left and right sides mapped in the same way, you can do this (and any other step after) only on half the car and then duplicate everything to the other side.
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/KtnXW6v.gif)
Now you can easily fill the inside with the paint bucket tool (if there are other layers active which cause troubles with paint bucket tool, make sure to change reference to "Layer" this will make the paint bucket tool ignore any other non selected layer).
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/nnCOImT.png)
At this point it is necessary to remove the excess parts (otherwise there would be no pillars), (you can hold LShift while using the Eraser to erase straight lines).
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/GmTEjwY.gif)
Last but not least, let add some lighting to these blank windows, to do this, select the "Airbrush" Brush and make it as large as the windows (more or less).
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/95j02dh.png)
Before painting make sure to check "Protect Apha" on the windows layer, This will prevent the brush from painting transparent pixels of that particular layer, which means that we are not going to paint outside the windows bounds
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/ICN3rMn.png)
Now you have to place the brush in such a way that it covers an entire facade of the windows, in addition, you must make sure that it is placed on the center of the mapping (in case of side windows it is not necessary).
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/zEDWXhx.png)
And now with just 1 click on each side (placing the brush in the correct way as shown before) you will get some nice lighting on the windows, (you can make the lighting of any color you like, i'm just using a classic white in this example).
![Image](https://media3.giphy.com/media/9QnpJErTQ7fwhTpQM2/giphy.gif)
Some stock cars have an additional detail on the side windows that you may consider adding to your car as well. (Examples from Adeon, Toyeca and Cougar):
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/fkZwpeW.png)
2) 3D effects and Panel gaps:
In this section we will look at some tips to give the car's details more depth. First we start with the 3D effects, here are some stock cars windows (Aquasonic and Panga TC) to show what I mean:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/IoafHqN.png)
For 3D effect i mean the border of the windows on those cars, as you can see they have depth, the same thing happens on other details like headlights or tailights (examples from Pest Control, Panga TC and P4 Super by MightyCucumber):
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/Pynn6sh.png)
Now we will apply this effect to the windows shown in the previous chapter, First of all you need to choose the layer you want to apply this effect to, in my case the windows layer. Then duplicate it then:
place it under the original layer
move it 1 pixel down and 1 pixel on the right
and make it completely white (check "Protect Apha" on the layer setting as seen on the previous chapter to change the color easly):
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/DGQsPH2.gif)
duplicate again the original layer, then:
place it between the original layer and the white layer
move it 1 pixel up and 1 pixel on the left
and make it completely black:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/J8mmj2v.png)
Now you can merge the black layer with the white layer and apply Gaussian Blur with a value of 1 or 2 (Gaussian Blur tool can be find on filters->GaussianBlur...):
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/EFThzl9.png)
Finally apply the Overlay Blanding Method to the layer we just made:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/9PLsWH2.gif)
Here is a before-after to see the difference between the windows with 3D effect and plain windows:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/JKoyG0u.gif)
There is another optional step that i personally like to do on some details because it helps making the final result even smoother. And it is to apply the Gaussian Blur with value 1 also the the original layer:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/umLAcC0.gif)
Fianlly as said earlyer this 3D effect trick can be applyed also for other kind of details, here is an example from Groove Studio to show the potential:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/Xu9kAbl.gif)
Now to the panel gaps. Panel gaps works in a similar way as the 3D effect but they have essentially the shape of a line and there is no "original layer" wich means that we are only using 2 layers, a light one and a dark one.
So First draw a black line where you want your panel gap to be
then duplicate it, make it completely white and place it under the black line layer:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/LpV1l8m.png)
At this point if you apply the Overlay Blanding Method it will alredy start to work
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/LIKaafe.png)
but there is one major problem, even through the light part looks fine, the dark one looks too black, this can happen on some cases depending on the color of your car and can also happen while applying the 3D effects, so the fix that i'll show here works also for the 3D effects. What we need to do is to adjust the levels (Filter->Levels...):
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/1chmtDj.png)
In Output if you change the value on the right it will affect the amount of light, while the left one will affect the amount of dark which is what we need to change in our case, so just play with those value until you get the amount of light and dark you want:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/kIEsYh2.gif)
Last step is optional but i strongly recommend it. As it is now the panel gap is too thin and sharp (there are some cases were it is better this way), for this reason in most cases i like to apply Gaussian blur with value 1. To show the the difference here is the panel gap created in this guide alongside some gaps featured in Elyta:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/9aWnwfu.png)
3) Shading and lighting
In this section we will look at some tips to add shading and lighting to the car. First thing to note: if you car is black then the shading is not going to work unless you used a dark gray as car color, on the other hand if you car is white then the lighting is not going to be visible unless you used a light gray as car color. Another thing to note is that if you model alredy has a good vertex paint shading you may only consider shading some eventual other small details on the texture and leave the rest of the body as it is. Example this is Elyta's shading (i colored it in red to make it more visible because it is very minimal):
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/NlkFzGY.png)
As you can see it has only some shading on the numberplate, on the front hood and on the rear of the car to simulate the shadow of the spoiler. While the sides of the car, front and rear bumpers are completely unshaded, This is because Elyta is a remodel of Adeon and stock cars usually alredy have a pretty good vertex paint shading, here is how the sides and rear bumper of elyta looks like without texture:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/18yyCFZ.png)
Anyway if you want to create some more specific shading shape that are not possible with vertex paint the rest of this section's guide is for you.
For this section of the tutorial we are going to add some shading to this car's rear bumpers:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/ZHm16gH.png)
first thing to do is to draw black lines by following the mapping in the edges where we want to shade (as said before, you can hold LShift while using the brush to make straight lines).
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/wnhQhnP.png)
now you can apply Gaussian Blur, a value from 5 to 10 should be fine
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/dZOUszx.png)
we need to delete everything that goes outside the car, use the eraser and delete the shading while following the mapping:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/toXCcfm.gif)
Delete the rest by selecting it with the lasso tool
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/GEvbksu.gif)
Fianlly apply Gaussian blur again this time with a value of 1 or 2 and we are done, final result:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/cfV3LWa.gif)
Regarding the lighting, what i like to do is to place some white shapes in the zone were i want the car to be lighter:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/yVFH8yo.png)
then:
apply Gaussin Blur with a big value (i used 10)
and use the Overlay Bleding Method.
Finally, change the opacity if you feel like it is too shining:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/Umek05z.gif)
The lighting can also be done with another style (or both styles can be combined), by using white lines instead of white shapes and doing the same steps is possible to get something like this:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/69Sq5CR.png)
PART 2 – Car paint job / livery and Carboxes
In this second part of the tutorial I'll share all tips i know regargarding livery making and carbox making. Before starting you need to understand what kind of paintjob you want to make for your car, I like to differentiate them in 3 categories:
1 - Minimal Paintjobs: if your car has amazing details or is completly covered of details like for example Bertha Ballistics, or has a very distinctive shape then you may go for this kind of paintjob. Minimal Paintjobs consists of a really limited amount of decals or no decals at all. In most cases there are 0 sponsor stickers, Some examples of cars in this category (RG 1, RG 4, Genghis Kar, Devil (By Allan1), Model 21 (By Paperman), Pulsefire (By MightyCucumber), Warbird, Vulkan (By FZG), Bertha Ballistics, Stonemason (By RV_Pure and RV_Passion)).
2 - Balanced Paintjobs: those are pretty hard to achieve and consists in finding the good balance between stickers zones and empty zones on the car, and placing those stickers in the best way possible. Works for almost any kind of car. Some examples of cars in this category (SNW 35, Purp XL, Fulon X, Mambra (By MyghtyCucumber), Blast Board (By MyghtyCucumber), GFX 00, Iron-Z (By TrixedXD).
3 - "All In" Paintjobs: Every single space of the car is covered with a sticker, with a shape or with a pattern. Works well if you car doesn't have a lot of texture detail or has a lot of empty spaces. But you need to be careful or your car may risk to become a bounch of random decals used 100 billion times alredy. Some examples (AMW, Pest Control, Aquasonic, Volken Turbo, RV Loco, Vitesse, EXE TC, Foxy (By TrixedXD), Arion (By TrixedXD), Blacksun JGT (By BloodBTF)).
1) Color choiches
I'm not going to explain color theory but in this section I wanted to give some quick tips:
- First of all there are some websites that can help you finding colors that work well together like paletton.com and coolors.co so go check them out if you are not sure how to chose your colors.
- White, black and any other shade of gray are neutral colors and works well with any other color. So if you chosed a main color for the car and can't chose a second color, you can just pick one of those neutral color and it will be fine.
- The perfect amount of colors to use is Usually 2 or 3, more colors are hard to handle together.
- Always avoid the color on the far right edge of the color table Those colors are too saturated and are always going to look bad and cause problem with you shading and lighting layers (if they use blanding methods) and any other layer that use blanding methods for example panel gaps and 3D effects shown before will not be visible anymore. So stay away from those colors they are really bad.
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/0vctOPO.png)
2) Decals and stickers
In this section I want to share some tips on how to chose decals for the cars. First thing to notice is that most car have 1 main decal that is like the logo of the car and gives a lot of characterization to the car. For example if I think of Adeon the first thing that comes to my mind is this:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/UIvDBtU.png)
This is Main adeon logo, and almost any car has 1, other examples from AMW, Toyeca, Mouse, NY 54, Cougar
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/Ao2LsSA.png)
here hare other examples from custom cars (Shinobi (By MightyCucumber), Touga (By MightyCucumber), Zure, Alterego (By TrixedXD), Megalodon XL (By Norfair), Superior)
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/BJjqDgl.png)
So the first thing I usually like to do is to come up with a main decal that represents the car, this decal is defferent from any other decal because it is usually more stylized and is unique because it is strongly related to that car in particular, for this reason can be hard to come up with something that is both original, good-loocking and fitting for the car. As said before not all cars have one so you can skip it, however it really gives a lot to the car originality and characterization so only skip it if you feel it is not needed. Avoid using boring decals like "Donnie" or "ZEF" as Main decals.
Now that we are done with the main decal here are some tips regarding other minor decals:
- Don't flood the livery by only including commonly used decals like this:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/KzdGXJQ.png)
this looks bad, is super boring and as 0 inspiration. Those decals are not supposed to be used in this way, the correct way of doing it is by creating some original declas and using them in combination with some of those common decals, remember you can also edit those commonly used decals you don't have to always keep them as they are, try changng color, adding outlines or combinging them to make new one, be creative!
Here are some examples of stock decals used in combination with original ones:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/PiAHgVb.png)
You can obiovsly eveng go hardcore and use 0 stock decals by making a full set of original decals.
- Alway try to add outlines to your decals, it usually makes texts look better:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/bRIyaeO.gif)
to do it just duplicate the sticker, move the new layer under the original layer, make it completely black and move it 1 px down and 1 px on the right.
3) Carbox
In this last section of the guide I'm not really going to explain how to make carboxes because for that there is already a guide written by Skarma here: https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/revolt_ ... t2209.html
What i want to do instead is sharing some tips that can help getting better stock-alike carboxes, so if you don't care about how stock-alike carboxes should look like just ignore this section.
- Stock carboxes are 85x85 and not 128x128 but if you really like those proportions always also include 128x128 or 256x256 or any other bigger resolution anyway because most people don't like low res carboxes.
- In case of lateral Text on the carbox, it should always be written from top to bottom and not in reverse.
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/BGVWnR5.png)
- The car should take as much space as possible on the box while at the same time it shouldn't overlap the first text on the box (the 100% opaque one)
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/UcBSMm1.png)
However in most cases the car's antenna is going to waste you a lot of space on the box and will cause you getting an end result with small car on the box just to fit the antenna. To avoid this and make sure that the car takes as much space of the carbox as possible, always lower the antenna after taking the screenshot:
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/gBKrNAl.gif)
Here is an example of wasted space by the antenna and how it is filled when it is fixed (car used for the example is Eclaire By Kipy)
![Image](https://i.imgur.com/ZIs2m7e.png)
- Pick a color related to the car to write the text on the box, I usually just pick a color from the paintjob with the color-picker and use it for the text, but even colors that are not in the car can work if they work well with the color you used for the car.
And this concludes my tutorial, hope you find something good in here xD. Also sorry if my english was bad I did the best.
If you have other tips and tricks for car texturing that you would like to share feel free to do here, I would like to learn more and maybe this topic can be even more useful for other readers. Thanks! Have fun making cars!