FEEDBACK WANTED: Paint Space

Forza Motorsport Legacy Motorsport FM7 Discussion
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Hello all,

We’re looking for feedback from our community around the current paint space in Forza Motorsport 7. When we say paint space, we mean the areas where you apply paint and decals to your car. Let us know what you like, as well as what you might like to see changed in the future. Any and all feedback is welcomed.

Guidelines:
• Be as specific and constructive as possible with your feedback
• Respect all player’s feedback
• If you don’t like something about the current design, please tell us why

Thanks!

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  • windows, headlights, side mirrors, and grills should be paint-able.
  • some cars have stock wings which aren’t paint-able, and the forza wing is also not paint-able. All wings should be paint-able.
  • some cars have weird panels that overlay with another panel in the paint booth (such as the shoulder arches on the #66 Ford GTLM), which causes vinyls to show up on both of them. This needs to be corrected.
  • Vinyls stretch and become distorted on wheel arches, and other curved spaces, on many cars. This needs to be fixed.
  • Changing the base color of a car overrides the colors on the side mirrors and wing. This shouldn’t happen.

That’s all I can think of off the top of my head, but I know that there are tons of cars with weird space glitches that make them difficult to paint.

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All of that.

We also nee the ability to make the vinyl in the same color choices that we have in paint. (Metallic/Carbon/Matte/ECT)

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If we’re not gonna have license plates a la Forza Horizon, at least let us paint over the license plate bracket. Many cars don’t allow you to paint on the areas where a license plate would be applied.

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The way to go would be being able to add a empty license plate and then having a extra slot in the editor to paint over the rear/front/both plates separately. Maybe 2 or 3 sizes (US, Euro, AU) or at least the ones from Horizon, and that would blow many minds. Problem is, this lives between the upgrade shop and the livery editor, but I think it deserves a shot, since painting on a surface is not always an option (for example, in the front grill of modern Audis, it’s all grill and nothing can be done to add a plate there)

About my ideas…I already wrote down quite a comprehensive list at Reddit so I don’t want to “spam” both places with the same stuff.

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Honestly that’s way more involved than what I was asking for :stuck_out_tongue:

Example: the 1988 VW Scirocco has a plastic license plate bracket on the rear. I have several license plate vinyls I’ve made to use in that spot, but the game won’t let me place any vinyls there! Meanwhile, the 1987 Pontiac Trans Am I can easily place a vinyl in the exact spot on the bumper that the license plate should be. That’s all I’m asking for, the ability to paint on all surfaces, including carbon fiber and plastic areas that historically have not been paintable.

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I’m not a painter myself but it would be nice if you could apply different finishes to vynils, matt/semi gloss/gloss/chrome etc. I agree with cervy’s suggestions and would like to add, paint able brake calipers, and multiple colour options for multi price rims, spoke/lip etc.

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  1. Why are left and right sides of the car slightly off from center on the grid compared to each other? It doesn’t make any sense for the left and right to be off by anywhere from 1.5-3.0 in typically the Y direction.

  2. Please let us be able to paint carbon.

  3. Would it be possible to merge the Fonts (1-11) into simply a selectable option that then opens the Xbox keyboard and just lets you type whatever you want instead of having to have a separate vinyl for every letter? Also, any chance we could get more fonts as well?

  4. Suggest a “Snap to Width/Length of Car” feature. For example, if you know the X coordinate for the front edge of the right side of the car and the X coordinate for the rear edge, you should just be able to auto snap things like stripes to the full length of the car to save time.

  5. Give the ability to brighten (or permanently brighten) the decal application world.

  6. Regarding the Sharing/Locked Vinyls system: Can we make it so that any locked vinyls results in the inability to Share the design as your own, but still preserve some sort of “Friend” system? Every man on a team for group events shouldn’t have to go paint the car themselves if you’re using others’ work. However, credit could simply be redirected to the appropriate party but allow users to share to friends/teammates/clubmates (under the Xbox system).

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I put this on another post about a month ago so I figured i’d Try and help you out even though it’s not exactly what you are asking for. Hope it helps a little.

To make it easier for you so you don’t have to resize each letter individually, what I do is:

  1. Go to vinyl editor instead of on the car editor.
  2. Place the first letter and then stamp this same letter as many times as there are letters in word
    (ex. For unlimited- uuuuuuuuu
  3. Then go to each letter and choose change vinyl shape and pick the right letter.
    4.next highlight all letters, so they move with the forward most letter, and change spacing for each letter. When finished a letter unhighlight and go to next one.
  4. Finally place on car and adjust entire word to size.

This may sound confusing but it is way faster and easier then choosing and shaping each letter. Now this doesn’t change the fact that each letter is separate. But it does make for a fast way of making words.

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Must have features:

  1. Ability to use different layer materials (gloss, metallic, chrome, matte, satin etc…)

  2. Ability to paint grilles, chrome parts and black plastic parts

  3. Ability to “erase” with a layer.

Thank you

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With Forza now on Windows 10, i think it would be a great feature to export a cars paint template to give the end user the ability to use Photoshop to create their cars paint, and allow them to import it back into the game. As well as allowing people to import custom made decals into the game. I have never personally been able to work with forzas paint tools, so the option to ultilise an external program would allow me to get involved with painting.

Alternatively, you could make it so a graphics tablet and/or a mouse can be used in the paint shop within forza directly. Which would give the end user far greater control than with the thumbsticks.

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Thanks for reaching out SOY, copying my Reddit reply here incase any other painters want to add their thoughts to it:

The biggest issue I have with the livery editor is how long it takes to create accurate logos.

Painting cars is fun, making the logos is not. A good car can be designed in 2 hours. Creating the logos for said car takes up to an hour per logo, not fun when you have to do 20 of them.

There are 2 ways to potentially make this easier:

:arrow_forward: Allow .svg images to be imported. Take a look at Gran Turismo Sport for reference.

:arrow_forward: Allow players to “gift” or share “unlocked” versions of Vinyl Groups. When sharing an item in this way, place a clear warning before confirmation. Something along the lines of “If you share an unlocked version of this item, other players can edit, re-share and upload this as if it were their own. Are you sure you want to continue?”

Gifting allows players to pool together their talents; a strong fantasy painter may not have the precision or graphic design experience of a skilled race painter, but together they can produce impressive work. This was possible in Forza Motorsport 4 however gifting was unregulated back then; I believe that by giving the players a clear warning that gifted content can be re-edited/shared will be enough of a protection for those that do not want their work used by others, while still allowing for “open sourcing” and collaboration.

Everything else in the editor I can live with.

There are some quality of life improvements that I’ve listed below but none of them are critical to my enjoyment of the editor itself.

:arrow_forward: Ability to categorise saved Vinyl Groups into folders.

:arrow_forward: Ability to view saved Vinyl Groups in a grid layout. (Gran Turismo Sport)

:arrow_forward: Ability to paint cars in a plain studio with neutral lighting and/or an outdoor paintkng space (Gran Turismo Sport)

:arrow_forward: Ability to create and paint windshield banners.

:arrow_forward: Ability to paint on side/rear windows.

:arrow_forward: Ability to paint on top of carbon fibre surfaces, Forza aero etc.

:arrow_forward: Additional typefaces/fonts, such as DIN Pro, Futura Bold and Gotham.

:arrow_forward: Ability to paint sidewalls of tyres.

:arrow_forward: Ability to set individual layer groups to gloss/matte/metallic finishes. (Driveclub)

From my old notes here, along with about 100 other (non-Painting) suggestions: https://forums.forza.net/turn10_postsm529798_Forza-Motorsport-7-Features-Wish-Lists.aspx#post_529798

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  1. Natural lighting in the paint booth.
  2. Put the metalflake back in the metalflake paint, non manufacturer metallic paints look dull.
  3. A metallic paint option.
  4. Decal material type. Cars like the 908, RS17 and 919 have bare matte carbon, gloss/metallic and chrome in their paint schemes and its always been a shame that we cant paint cars the ways the devs do.
  5. Windscreen, rear side windows and back window decals. All race liveries have sunstrips and many have numbers on the windscreen and side rear windows along with driver names.
  6. The ability to save or use other OEM paints sort of like Gran Turismo 6 and Sport.
  7. Tyre decals, tyre manufacturers, white walls and red lines, so you don’t have to upgrade or stick with stock tyres to get the look you want and to make cars feel more authentic.
  8. I think it would be beneficial to re map the prototypes (908, 919) and single seaters (Lotus 77, Renault RS17) as many of them have weird unpaintable areas, areas that duplicate and aeres that don’t stich up well.
  9. The ability to paint the different areas of the wheels (lip can be different from the rest of the rim) and aero (paintable dive planes and mainplane/flap(s) can be painted separately to endplates.
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  • different painting locations: plain white room, dark sphere, live on a racetrack to see different kinds of lighting
  • possibility to mirror groups in each axis on their own
  • folders for your own layer groups
  • “my designs” filtered for the current car, no need to see all saved designs for the current car I paint
  • painting brake calipers
  • painting on windows (to add your name, number etc)

Some features of a competing game I would like to see in Forza:

  • choosing tire stickers
  • changing between yellow and white headlights
  • window banners! Don’t let them disappear when we want to paint our own!
  • the “other” category, where you can change the colour of chrome surroundings for side windows etc

Maybe it could be also nice to be able to paint your own license plate that gets sticked on the cars. A custom suit or helmet design would be awesome as well.

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What he said - - - “my designs” filtered for the current car, no need to see all saved designs for the current car I paint
OR - At least move the current car designs to the left end of the paint list so that we don’t have to scroll through
OR - EVEN Better - The ability to SORT designs by vehicle - wiht the current vehicle the default designs open location

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Hi Soy,

May not be in scope but one thing that would make me more inclined to paint in FM7 would be if the files were somehow backwards compatible with earlier games.

We can paint an image in fh2 or fm5 and be able to import that to later games but not the other way around. If I could paint in FM7 and have that layer group available in FM6 or earlier that would be a nice feature.

The other major failing is paint related but not directly in the booth - the sharefront or whatever you want to call it just doesn’t appear to be fit for purpose.

It has several problems.

You share paints, which magically unshared themselves. Yet are still available for download to other players.

There’s no real way of unsharing paints as far as I can tell. So if you or a person who downloads the paint notices a problem you just end up with two files floating around.

The process of understanding what’s popular is unwieldy.

On some previous forza’s you could get in a car and press one button to see available paints for that car.

When you auction a car it seems to randomly create a new paint file, even when the auction fails.

We can’t auction a car with no buyout anymore - give us back some of the freedom of previous titles.

Transparency - apparently some painters with a # downloads can have more freedom on the prices in the AH. What’s that all about? So the first person to paint & upload a dlc car matte black or carbon fibre can set their prices but someone who spends hours painting & has a smaller number of downloads because they took the time to paint the car later on can’t.

I’m approaching rant levels lol. Sorry but I don’t really think there’s many problems with the actual paint booth but how painting is handled after complete seems to have taken a step back in the XB1 era

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I do like the idea of .eps/.svg importing. Text based logos are my thing, but shared layer groups get so few downloads, it’s hardly worth it, may as well let people upload their own. At this point, the paintbooth subforum is almost dead. Something radical needs to change, as I loved the activity back in the FM2 days.

Oh, and for tidying layer groups up during creation, a merge to single layer option would be nice, as well as an eraser. Maybe the option to delete everything below a selected layer or layer group. It would certainly make the creation of ‘hollow’ logos much easier.

Also, can we get a new basic shape. We need a hollow circle that is less chunky, much less chunky, and a semi-circle and quarter to match.

Lighting needs serious work. In its current state, colours are hard to get right, and it’s all too dark.

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My biggest gripe with the current paint editor and one of the reasons I use it WAY less than before, is the way save files are handled. I have absolutely lost track of my WIPs, can’t find old liveries, can’t keep track of what I already imported, can’t find ones I downloaded because the “My Designs” place is utterly cluttered with cars I only repainted from one manufacturer colour to another.

→ Please let us categorize paints/designs, or at the very least give as an option to “only save to car, NOT in My Designs”

Others have mentioned a “natural light source” in the paint booth. It doesn’t matter how natural it is, or where it is. There will always be a problem when painting certain areas.

→ Moveable light source in the paint booth. (If possible, adjustable brightness/filter)

Additionally, I feel the camera angles are sometimes too restrictive, when painting certain hard to see/reach areas.

→ More camera freedom, no locked movement depending on the side you’re viewing.

Vinyl groups built in in the editor look fantastic on a flat surface, but usually get distorted A LOT, especially on fenders and bumpers.

→ Layer GROUPS need to be adjustable in height and width, independent from each other, to compensate.

There’s nothing more disappointing than looking forward to painting a certain car in a livery, then finally getting to it and realizing half the vehicle is unpaintable, due to carbon fibre, or chromed parts.

→ Vehicle parts should accept vinyls regardless of material / Material of surface can be defaulted to paintable version.

Thanks for taking feedback! Very good idea, and appreciated a lot. If possible, please give a nudge to the guys who are responsible for the tuning/modifications on cars. That whole department could use a shake-up as well.

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I’ve always wanted to be able to use a shape/layer to cutout the layers beneath it. Like, say, your car is painted brushed aluminum. Then you put a square black vinyl on it. Then you put a five pointed star in the middle of that black square and set it as a cutout - now you have a black square with a brushed aluminum five pointed star in the middle. Kinda reminiscent of playing around with layers and alpha channel transparency in Photoshop (well, back in the day, so to speak - it’s been several years since I was into Photoshop).

And lettering tools would be nice. Manually laying down each letter as an individual vinyl and eyeballing the kerning is tedious.

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^^^This! I’ve been saying about this for years. I mean you can always outline a shape but that takes to long. Especially if it’s a logo you want to cut out.

As far as lettering goes, check out my post a few posts up. That should help but I agree it would be easier to type a whole word like need for speed does.

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