[EDIT 11/10/2015] Kate Upton - making of
New WIP, nothing original, it’s rather an experiment.
I wanted to see if I was able to get to the layer limit.
I also practiced color portrait and tried to see the minimum details I can put without loosing them when resizing.
Resize can add nasty artifacts.
Still far away from tom, but I’m rather happy with this 4 days job; if the layout leaves space I’ll try to add details.
1550 layers:
If you have any tips to make it better, you’re welcome.
Once I’ve made up my mind on which car to paint, I’ll probably share the vinyl so you’ll be able to play with it.
[EDIT 13/10/2015] Kate Upton design
Design is uploaded, you can also fetch the vinyl group for kate and the base shapes to build it.
I don’t have any tips to help you, or anyone, paint better.
However, I do share your resizing problem…I think?
I guess the answer is to choose your image so it will fit on the car without too drastic a resize. I can’t give you an exact number, but experiment with what you have by trying various levels of reduction till you start to loose detail.
I’m probably teaching Grand Ma how to suck eggs here, but hey, you asked…or did you?
Thanks for the feedback.
Someone asked for a tuto:
here’s step 1:
here’s step 2:
Ok?
Seriously, I’ll try to give you some of my recipes (i’ll update this post) but I suck at explaining things. Maybe i’ll breakdown the layers so you’ll be able to see how it’s done; the breast was a real nigthmare to do. I’ll upload kate so you’ll be able to zoom in and see some shapes.
Many painters have done some great tuto (tom did some really cool ones about hair), but here’s my advices:
you really have to think what’s behind and what’s front before painting… so you’ll have to look a long time at your source material before painting it (start by painting somethig you like, it really helps the process).
Don’t be afraid to start over or fix
Don’t expect the end result to come after 1 hour of painting; when dealing with portraits use mutliple pass to do the shading, too much darkness or highlight is hard to fix
always try the vinyl on the car and on the track; you’ll be surprised to seem some flaws magically disapear and some nasty effects can appear
if you suck at color, use your favorite image editing tool, hue is generally in degrees but not in forza, you have to /360 to get forza scale; color will seem a bit off on the paint canvas but it will be ok on track.
I usually start with a grid approach to get the proportion right.
I paint basic shapes with mid tones and proceed to shadow and highlights ; I generally use a few shapes but don’t do this, sometimes you can really get some cool effects with unusual shapes. Give a shot at the soft gradiant, it’s cool on faces.
As for the resizing, it seems that any visible details should fit the paint canvas (remember the time we had to paint on cars direclty?); every thing under will either:
get lost
result in a really cool unexpected effect
result in a pixel mess
Surprisingly, we all have the same tools but different ways to paint, just by looking at some forza stuff you’ll be able to tell who did what; that’s something really cool about this game.
The first part of your tutorial made me LOL! Cheers for taking the time to put some good tips out there though - it’s appreciated. Like you, I spend a fair bit of time in planning and also use a grid system and prototyping. My biggest challenge has been in achieving a quality smooth shading. You’ve inspired me to stick with it though and I think that something clicked last night on a vinyl I’m creating as part of a Halloween Bash livery. Under wraps at the moment as it still needs a fair bit of work but making good progress - it just takes me so long!
P.S. Am I going mad or has the ability to toggle the colour of the background canvas in the vinyl editor been lost in FM6 - sure it was there in FH2 from memory. Guess you could have a large white rectangle in layer 1 and set the opacity to a level which still allows you to see the grid but it is mildly frustrating (especially if working in greyscale!)
I don’t recall the ability to change the background colour - however I have a tip for you (hopefully this is helpful).
When working with a grid - make your own and save it as a vinyl group.
I always toggle the in game grid to off as soon as I get in to the vinyl editor.
Load up my grid & just start painting behind my self made grid. This means I can put a large square of any colour I like behind my image as needed, also I can change the colour of my grid - black grid on a black and white image can be awkward. Also I can scale my grid with whatever I’m painting.
I have a similar grid made up on the photo editor I use, so when I zoom in on a detailed area my grid on there zooms as well.
Does that make sense - can’t 100% say that’s how Lamerz works but it was how it was suggested to me back in the day when I first experimented in using a grid.
That’s correct, can’t remember if it was on FM3 or FM4 but you could change the background.
Most of the time I use the ingame grid, but I can also use a custom one like D explained.
I set small dots on the source material, I end up with something like a “join the dots”
For smooth shading I use the soft gradient with low opacity so I don’t get a spot in the middle; I overlay many of them.
It’s best if hard edges use the correct color instead of having to shade them.
If you can’t figure out where you need to put shadows, reducing the color palette on your source image can help.
Overlays of “hard gradiant” with contrasted colors can give some cool effects like shiny silk material.
