Skinning Tutorial

[Jarrod Crossley]

So you want to start skinning for Arca well here is the in the outs and the how to's.

First you'll need the templates and car viewer these can be found Here,
and you'll need the dds plugin for Photoshop available here

Now load up your template and sit back in horror. No its not as bad as it looks honest.
First things first is to resize the template from 2048x2048 to 4096x4096. We do this so any curves, Lines or Decals look nice and smooth within the game.


One this is done its time to change the base colour to change the base color highlight the base layer and hit the "Layer Styles" button and select "Color overlay".

Once youv'e have set your base color.
its time to start on your design. Work each part of your design on seperate layers if at all possable, the reason for this will come clearer later.

By now you should be quite happy with your design and this is where most people hit save. But don't not yet you've
not finished.

You need to play with the alpha channel (This is where keeping your design on seperate layers comes in useful)


Now we have the aplaha channel selected we can start altering some aspects of our design.
*Because of how the Arca engine uses the alpha channel (Black is dull and White is bright and shades of Grey in between).

Once your happy you need to highlight all your layers and select flatten and allow to "Disgard all hidden layers".

To save: Goto file/Save As and select dds.

In the Dss plugin menu select DXT5, Use Generate MIP maps and all and hit save.

Now to import your skin to Arca:

1 Find the car folder defualt is "C:\Program Files\ARCA Remax\GameData\Vehicles\ARCA"

2 Choose which manufacturer you want to ues "Camry,Charger,Fusion,GrandPrix and MonteCarlo"

3 Find a number you want lets use the 11 Monte Carlo Default is "C:\Program Files\ARCA Remax\GameData\Vehicles\ARCA\MonteCarlo\11"

4 Now open Up the 11 folder and You will find a folder in the 11 folder called 11Skins Default is "C:\Program Files\ARCA Remax\GameData\Vehicles\ARCA\MonteCarlo\11\11Skins "

5 Paste your.dds file in here Name something like 11 Noorg.dds exit

6 Start ARCR Sim Racing go to the Showroom look for the 11 car then scroll the paint schemes till you see your file name.

[Lastlap]

Originally Posted by Surveillance141

This shows how to create a your own team from and existing team folder, from A to Z...
You will need the DivX codecs they are free and found here.
http://www.divx.com/

http://www.realracin.net/arca_car_tut_2.rar

Taken from RSC.

[ncnascar]

Help. I cannot figure out how to get the shading on the Alpha1 layer to be lighter. I created the skin in dds format but in the viewer, the car is grey. Any help is appreciated.

[Jarrod Crossley]

If you are using photoshop. display the alpha channel and use the color palette to chose differant shades of grey.

Balck to dark grey the duller (Matt) the paint light grey to white the brighter (Metalic) the paint.

[Krister Larsson]

You start by resizing the image to get better resolution but I can't see it being resized back to original size. Not needed?

[Jarrod Crossley]

Once you have finished off your design and your happy re-sized the image back to it original size this way all line are smooth and you dont get any jagged edges.

[ncnascar]

Still no luck. Here is my tga if you can figure out why I can't see my car in the game nor the viewer. Thanks for the help. ncnascar.com - Re:Help Painting ARCA Cars - NCNASCAR.com Forum

[Jarrod Crossley]

You need to save the image as .JPG for the Viewer and DSS for the game.

[itgl72]

For those of you confused by reading too much into things like me, please make note of my discovery and the day and a half it took me to spot it. I was having issues SAVING this DDS file correctly. Only got HALF the file to show up.

Im my defense I WAS reading the directions in the tutorial. But I found the issue below in the documentation that confused the matter.

The line in the tutorial was "Use Generate MIP maps and all" It should have just said use "Generate MIP maps" and select "ALL" because on the second line in the box it says "Use Existing MIP Maps". I saw the bold text starting with the word USE plus the fact the second line IS SELECTED in the screenshot and it confused me somehow.

Maybe my issue will be of assistance to someone else that reads this tutorial having the same issue.

[Jarrod Crossley]

Yes my bad on that! I was in a rush to nbang out the tutorial, becuase I was getting unindated with (How do you do it).

[Zoltán Kubassy]

I've installed the nvidia photoshop plugin but in the save as menü, I can't choose dds format. Why?? I tryed with photoshop 9 cs2 and cs3 too.

[Brett Bagstad]

Originally Posted by Zoltán Kubassy

I've installed the nvidia photoshop plugin but in the save as menü, I can't choose dds format. Why?? I tryed with photoshop 9 cs2 and cs3 too.

I had the same problem could never figure it out so i downloaded a converter that takes a jpeg file and converts it to dds. So you just save the carfile as JPG and use this converter to make it a dds

DDS Converter