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Hints and Tips in making liveries
Quick Tips
1. Its important not to change the size of the template or car. Also do not move the car within the template. This
is so that the image will load into the game and be aligned to the game image.
2. The original template is in gif, a format that only allows a limited number of colours. To be able to use more colours
you need to change the format of the picture to bmp and then convert back again to gif to upload to the game. Read further
on to see how to do this.
Outline Template
Its a good idea first to make an outline template for the car. This is just the black lines of the car that you can paste
onto your livery when you have completed it. This allows you to overrun with any logos and lines outside of the car and over
windows, wheels etc, you can then place this template over the top and it will clean up giving you the finished design.
1. Open the original template and then 'Save As' a 24bmp format picture called something like 'OUTLINEtemplate'
2. Use the fill tool and choose a basic red or green colour and fill the background of the picture (around the outside
of the car)
3. Use the fill tool and colour the yellow parts of the car the basic white.
4. Now save the outline template and open the original yellow template to start designing a new livery.
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| What your Outline template should look like |
Using the Outline Template
Once you have finished putting anything else on your design you can use the outline template to finish it off. Do this before
you convert the image back to gif.
1. Save the livery you have just done (still in 24bmp format) and then open the outline template you made earlier.
2. Click on the copy/paste tool and right click on the image and select 'select all' and then right click again on
the image and select 'copy'.
3. Now open up the template you have just designed. (if it asks you if you to want make any changes to the outline
template, select no).
4. Make sure 'Draw Opaque' is unticked by going to 'image' on the menu bar and looking at the last item on the list.
If there is a tick next to 'draw opaque' then select it to untick it.
5. Make sure the copy/paste tool is still selected and right click on the image and select paste, then click anywhere
on the tool bar on the left to make sure the template is in place.
6. Any over hangs or wiped out windows, wheels etc should all be replaced and you should have a lined up 'perfect'
looking car with coloured background. (if it's gone white you haven't got 'draw opaque' unticked, see no.4) Use the fill tool
and the white colour on the background to finish.
7. If its all done you can now go to 'save' in the menu bar and then convert the image to gif. (see below for how to).
If the templates do not match up you may of moved the outline template before it was placed, selecting undo can let you replace
the outline template. If the image is still out of place then you have moved the original template. You can get round this
by 'copying' the designed template and pasting it on the outline template and then align it up before placing.
Converting to bmp format and back again
1. Open the original template and then 'Save As' and call it a new name so that you keep the original for next time.
Also make sure you select 24 bmp as the file type.
2. then design and create your new livery.
3. When you have finished, save the file back into a gif format. If you have Photoshop or Gimp then use this to convert
back as they do it a whole lot better than Paint. In fact its a good reason to download Gimp itself. If you have to use Paint,
then you can make it slightly better by saving your finished design first as a 256 colour bitmap, then save this image as
a gif format. It will still come out as a fairly rough picture, the good news is that the uploaded design on BAtracer doesn't
show this up.
Using Logos
Logos are easy enough to find. There are some sites like brandsoftheworld.com that have a few logos on. A good place to search is google images just by simply searching for '*the brand* logos'. The best
logos are ones in gif or bmp. jpeg works but takes more 'pixel painting' when you resize or rotate it.
To 'rotate' a logo with paint, Go to Image>Sketch/skew in the menu bar and then in the lower half of the newly opened window
in the box marked skew put in the same values in both boxes. To raise the right hand side of the logo/text (in effect turning
anti-clockwise) place a '-' in the horizontal box before the figure (so it looks like Horizontal -?? Vertical ??. For the
other way (clockwise) place the '-' in the vertical box, (so it looks Horizontal ??, Vertical -??)25 gives you an almost 45
degree angle, lowering the figure gives you less of an angle.
Design and Layouts
Its a good idea to have some sort of layout in mind. The small images in the game mean that small logos on your template will
not really be visable, however some small logos can give it more realism. Having a main logo as a focus is a good start and
can determine the colour scheme. The best way to get a realistic livery is to look at real race cars and see where they place
the main logos and the smaller ones etc. Also if you pick a company logo, have a look at their own website to see what colour
schemes they use.
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