GRAND PRIX 2 ARTICLE OF THE MONTH February 1998 Each month I will try and provide you with the best of either technical or "how to" articles that can be found or stolen (just kidding) from the web. This months article is provided to us by Pat Painter. A Frenchman with an eye for creating the best cars available for this game. A link to his site is provided on the bottom of the page. Painting Cars with PSP 4.14 by Pat Painter Introduction
All the topics in this page are for *.bmp files.
The original cars files from GP2 are stored in a subdirectory named \Gamejams. The used format file is *.jam; to paint or modify a car , you will first need to convert these files to bmp. I suggest you to use GP2edit v 1.70.
To start painting your first car, you must first save one of the imported car as "bmp".
In GP2edit just click on the button "save car" under car view. After this is done, you can open in PSP your first car.
The 3 basics steps
To be able to use all the tools from PSP4.12 with an GP2 car you must follow exactly these steps:
Step 1:
When you open an car file (best an original GP2 car ) the FIRST to do is to SAVE the Color Palette.
To do this, click: " Color " , " Save Palette " , type a file name: "GP2.pal" or what you want, and " Save ". It is important to use an non altered file to have the reel original Palette from GP2. You can look at this palette by using " Color " , " Edit Palette ". You can so see the colors from GP2. From the 256 possible colors, only about 196 are in use. Keep in mind that you must use this colors and NO other's.
After you have save the palette ...Step 2:
You must increase the color number to 16 million. ("Color " , " Increase "....) All the tools from PSP are now accessible , make some tests; gradient fill, shade ..ect.Step 3:
This is the MOST important after step 1; before saving the picture you must convert it to the GP2 Palette or you will have an error when converting the file to jam or at least a very bad looking car. To do this, don't decrease colors to 256, but use :
" Color " " Load palette " and load the palette saved in Step 1. ( don't modify color order in the options of this box !)
You could here first decrease color number to 256 colors with "optimized " method and then load Color Palette; in some case the result could be better, but in most of cases there is no visible difference. I really never use this.The result is often not as good as you hoped, because of the limit of GP2 Palette, but you must accept this , there is no way to modify the game palette. (In the last version 1.6 of GP2Edit from Steven Young, it's now possible to patch the game with a modified palette , my carset use this modified palette for some cars, but take care it's possible that these files doesn't work with the normal "jam converter".)
These 3 steps are the basis, now to have good results, you must try all the tools, you must all time have in mind this famous palette and even when you are under 16 million colors , start painting with colors that are similar to colors from palette or your splendid gradient from blue to red will be bad at final.
Writing Text on Cars
To have a less pixilated text in Paint Shop Pro you must use the 16 millions color mode and use the anti alias from the text box. Some fonts give better results than others, but i can't say use this one rather than an other, i have a big collection of fonts and i try to use the more realistic on each car. In addition to this basic technique you will sometime have to sharpen or soften some text , because text will stay a little problem with little characters. If the available size or space of characters doesn't match your desires, a good technique is to write the text on a new image with same background color as future location, then select this text with rectangle selecting tool and paste into the area you want. This is very easy to use on rear wing, you can select the wing with rectangle or magic wand.
Pasting a Logo or Text
On many Real F1 sites, you can find a sponsors page, these pages are very good sources for the logos on racing cars. These files mostly are gifs and are to big to be paste directly on a car. If you only reduce size and try to paste such a logo on your 256 colors car , you will generally have a completely disfigured area instead of a logo.
To use pasting technique for this logos you must use 16 Million color mode on both car and logo. If logo is small, you must then look carefully at this picture, to see how PSP has increase color number, make a big zoom on it and remove all the undesired pixels. The best tool for this is " replace color tool " so you can chose exactly the color you want to replace. In some case you can use the " filling tool " by placing color tolerance to the appropriate value ( begin for example with value of 20 if you want to "clean" a white part ); use " Undo tool " if result does match what you expected and try again.
When the logo has a "good look" , good contrast and color similar to GP2 Palette, Select exactly the area you want top paste, click on " Copy ", then click on you car. You must now select on your car the area where you want to paste the logo. In most of case you must select this area with rectangle selecting tool, take care to select an area with approx. the same proportions (H & W) as original logo or you will have unacceptable distortions.
When this is done, go to Menu " Edit " , " Paste " " Paste into Selection ". In some case you can use the same technique as for simple text, by using " Magic wand " to select an area.
If you don't find a particular logo, you will have to paint it yourself.
To do this open a new image with same background color as car area where you want to paste the logo . If logo is simple ( 2 or 3 colors) and not to big ( on car ) use a size approx. 2 or 3 time larger than area on car. Paint the logo with paint tool as good you can... don't be afraid by pixilated aspect of your logo.., then select your masterpiece and go to menu " Image ", " effects ", " Normal filter " and choose smooth.
You can also use smooth tool to adjust the result.
Now you can paste this to car. For some difficult subject like the West logo, a good technique is to paint first a big one,( The first one i make, before we could find good photos on the web, was as big as the whole GP2 car) and then to select this big picture with rectangle selecting tool and with "copy " and " paste " pasting the picture in the area you have select on the car.
In most of case PSP auto size reduction with this technique is as good as if you had paint in exact size.
Remember this only really works right , in 16 million color mode.( it's possible in 256 color mode in a car , but result is only acceptable if size variation is not important) When you are familiar with this technique, you can try some more exotic transformations by using ellipse or circle selecting tools on both source and destination area. Result will depend of your creativity...:-).
Shading or lightening Colors
To shade a color, i don't use the gradient fill , but " Special effect " , " Cutout " . To do this you must first select the area you want to shade , then " Special effect ", " Cutout ", set the shade color to black, Opacity between 50-100 ( you must try), blur to 3-6, Vertical and Horizontal depends of what you have selected. To have a symmetrical effect , use this an second time Without changing your selection and with negatives values in Vertical and/or Horizontal.
For this tool also keep in mind the famous Palette or you will be disappointed.
Palettes tricks
In basic steps, i said it's not possible to change palette, this is not completely right, if you want, you can use for a car the "Cockpit palette" ( from svga.pcx file) or the modified Palette from Steven Youngs GP2Edit V1.70 . With these palettes you can use some of the "reserved" colors like the green and orange. These colors are located at the bottom of palette. Because shading of these colors doesn't seem to work properly in game, this should be reserved to small area or logos.(The NRG logo on my Tyrrell is made with that green.)
With GP2Edit special palette, the colors from new green range can be used as all others colors.
If for some reason you need to have a less shading black part on your car, you can also replace the black color with the background color (first color in upper left corner of palette).
This is what the end result should be. ©1998 Pat Painter
