Today I’d like to share with you all my workflow for (re)creating logos in Forza games. This is a method that a few veteran players may already know of but for those that don’t here’s a short guide.
If you’re playing Forza Horizon 3 on Windows 10 this guide may change. I play on Xbox One so I’ll be writing from that perspective. My screenshots are from that game but the editor is the same in Forza Motorsport 7 so these tips will still apply.
What is Glass2K and why do I need it?
Glass2K is a small application that allows you to change the transparency of your windows on any Windows PC.
We will be using this to create an overlapping screen so that we can work directly on top of a reference image.
There are many places to find images of logos that you want to replicate. Google is the obvious choice but you can also look up logo repositories like Brands of the World.
You will want an image that is reasonably high resolution, ideally around 700px tall at the very least. This will allow your Forza version to be more accurate when it comes to the smaller details.
Once you have your image ready, save it to the Desktop and open it.
On your Forza game, go to where you create a new Vinyl Group. In Forza Horizon 3 the menu path is [Autoshow] >[Garage] > [Designs and Paints] > [Create Vinyl Group].
Press {RS} until you have a dark background with no gridlines.
On your PC, start up Glass2K if you haven’t already.
On your PC go to your Xbox app and {Right Click} anywhere on the screen.
You should now see a box with a list of percentages. Choose somewhere between 50% and 80%, this will make your Xbox app window transparent, allowing you to see the logo from [Step 1] behind it (See first image below).
Still on the Xbox app, select [Game Streaming] and stream your Xbox One to your PC. Be sure to select the highest quality setting if you haven’t already.
If your screen now looks like the second image below, you’re ready to make your logo.
There are no shortcuts for this, you’ll need to use the various in-game Vinyl Shapes to make your logo. Every Forza painter has a different set of core shapes that they use to make everything, and you’ll find your preferences the more you work with the tool.
During this step you should only use whites, blacks and grays for the various elements of the logo. We’re focusing on shapes right now and not colour.
Using your reference image, try and get your ingame version as close to the real logo as possible. This will take varying amounts of time depending on the complexity of the logo and the experience of the painter. For reference, I’ve been a Forza painter for about 6 years, and a logo like this would take me about an hour to complete.
Once you’ve gotten the logo to a level of accuracy you’re happy with, you can stop streaming from your PC and send your screen back to your Xbox One.
Question for you sir…Can this be done on any old PC, like say an old laptop thats trying to die? Or does it need to be powerful enough to run games? Because I’ll give you 3 guesses which one I (might) have access to…
EDIT:
Read through the rest of the thread and found out your question has already been answered!
Also PJ, this is an amazing tip and I will be sure to use it in the future!
This is great, PJ! It took a little while to get everything set up (I’ve never streamed to my PC/laptop before). But once I did, I was able to knock out a logo in about 30 minutes. Just need to clean it up a little bit back on the console and it’ll be good to go
The short answer is that it can be done on any device whose Xbox app allows you to stream your console gameplay without any stuttering.
For reference my home Desktop is an Acer I bought off the shelf of an Argos in 2010; hasn’t been upgraded, hasn’t died on me yet, and it does the job just fine.
I’ll never be able to play a decent game on this (it struggles to run Photoshop when I work on big files) but I have an Xbox for that anyway
That’s the best way to go about it. Normally my logos are fine but having a bigger screen to touch them up on can help sometimes.
I have my X1 hooked up to my 27" computer monitor- I find that works great for the paint booth because I’m practically right up to it while I’m working. Can really catch those mismatched lines a lot easier.
For those of us using PC, the only thing you need to change is that the screen you’re going to make transparent is Forza.
Just open up the image you want to make, then position it on the screen. Open up FM7 or FH3 (whichever you like better) and use ctrl + shift + 1-0 until you see the image underneath well enough.
This way of using transparent windows is not one I use. Ever since the dawn of Forza vinyl editors, I’ve used a completely different method.
I google to find a high def image of the logo I want to make, then measure it on the screen with a tape measure. At the same time (I have two monitors - one for the Xbox, and one for my PC) I use the Forza vinyl editor where I add the shapes in the same sizes as what I just measured, or make rectangles for odd shapes that I know will need to fit inside that rectangle.
For really complex logos/design elements, I use a coordinate/grid method, where I draw lines (using Photoshop) in the source image to get coordinates for key points in the image. Then I create a box in the vinyl editor with those same coordinates, which I mark with the star shape. Once I have enough stars, it’s more or less a connect-the-dots (stars) task to create the replica.
This is quite a time-consuming method, but it’s the one I’ve done from the start and feel comfortable with.
See, I’ve always done my replica logo work via the grid system as well because I always felt that trying to trace things would be a bit difficult. Reason being that when you’re tracing, you can’t go and zoom in on the logo to see what you’re doing in the finer spots, because then your logo is zoomed in but not your trace photo. The method OP describes though seems interesting. It doesn’t mean that you can use your laptop controls on the editor though, correct? We’ll see if anyone responds before I get the chance to try myself. If I could scale things with computer controls and things it would go much quicker, but it seems that I’ll just be using a controller and seeing everything on my computer.
to the op, that’s a real high tech way of doing things to guarantee accuracy.
back in the days of FM2 I had the 360 hooked up to a fairly big monitor, sort of like a pc setup way so my face was like 2 inches from the screen the whole time & using tracing paper taped to screen lol
Sweedish: it’s all about whatever feels right for you, no “wrong” way to go about this.
I’ve done the tracing paper method before, but I’m sure as hell not doing that on a big 4K TV, that’s thing’s too expensive for tape to go on top of which is why I prefer the digital method
