Carbon
Fiber
Carbon Fiber (CF) components have become very popular in motor
racing engineering over the last twenty years or so. More recently
we find CF parts available for road cars and see the use of
CF in show cars and more an more every day.
Before
I get into the tricks of using CF in LFS skinning, I must point
out a very important fact: Too much CF
will ruin your skin (don't kid yourself, it's true),
and if too many of your skins contain obvious CF they may lose
their appeal as individual artworks/ liveries. So the first
thing to learn about using CF textures in LFS skinning is to
not overdo it. Additionally; CF textures
increase file size. Lots of CF = huge file, be wary.
First let's examine the areas where Carbon Fibre textures would
normally be found on a race car in real life. We are only concerned
with external parts here. CF is light and strong, great for
weight reduction. In the first instance, its purpose is practical.
Not cosmetic.
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Wings and spoilers may be made from
CF, or even just parts of wings and spoilers. Struts that support
the wing usually would not be made of CF.
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Vents and intakes. Keep it neat
and trim. Make it look like the CF really belongs there. If
unsure, don't use CF on your vents etc.
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Panels: doors and bonnets (hoods)
may be CF. Any panel in reality may be CF but not often will
you see large exanses of unpainted (let's call it "exposed")
CF. The one acception is the bonnet (hood). It is not uncommon
to see exposed CF on bonnets often with decals or artwork painted
on top with the CF texture showing through. It can look awesome
or shitty, depending on your approach to the design. Despite
your initial glee at desinging your first CF bonnet, you need
to be careful not to release the skin until you have had time
to truly get used to your design. It is very easy to make a
crappy CF bonnet. Remarkably easy.
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Mirrors and mirror stems: These
are great to skin in a CF texture in LFS. Why? They don't stand
out as gaudy CF overkill, they are subtle details that rarely
look out of place if done correctly. CF is very cool if it is
not immedialtely apparent. Small CF components are rarely an
assault on the senses and won't dominate your skin. You can
still do it all wrong of course, but small is often a good way
to start.
Ok,
now we know to be careful of large expanses of exposed CF texture.
If you make an exposed CF bonnet, do an amazing job on some
overlaying artwork. Take your time. The bonnet is prime skinning
real estate and if it looks like someone just ate too many decals
and threw up on your CF hood then you probably shouldn't use
a CF texture there at all. Any artwork on any bonnet is taking
up prime real estate, make the bonnet very plain or else make
it very very good!
Do your best. Take a break and come back later for a fresh look.
Improve your work further. Do your best again.
Textures
The "weave" of the CF texture plays an important role
in how your CF will appear on your skin. Using a texture where
the weave is too bold or thick won't look like real CF. In real
life CF comes in varied constructions, different patterns or
thickness of woven fibers create various textures. But a texture
that looks too bold or large will just look like it is pasted-on,
and not real. I recommend using as fine a texture as possible
while still being able to see it as CF on track at a moderate
distance. You don't want it so fine that it only looks like
CF if you are an inch away from it. You don't want it so bold
that it looks like vinyl wallpaper from the seventies.
Some
examples of CF textures:
Several
CF textures are popular with skinners, choose one that suits
your needs. Some files are provided at the end of this tutorial
to get you started but feel free to experiment until you get
what you like.
The
physical size in pixels of your
texture may be important too. At least there is a practical
size to consider before you start. You may be familiar with
the skin stretching in LFS (actually all 3D games are effected
by this though this is not the place to explain why) and our
CF texture will be prone to that same stretching effect so we
need to compensate before we use the texture. Assuming you make
skins at 1024 x 1024 pixels; using the basic formula to combat
stretching you would ideally have a CF texture that is 1280
x 1024 pixels in size. If you make skins at 2048 x 2048
the formula doubles to become 2560 x 2048.
With your CF texture being pre-stretched you can apply your
artwork and then squish it back to its proper size, therefore
preventing stretching of your texture when used in-game. This
may seem a trivial consideration but just try both ways and
I believe you will agree that pre-stretching CF is the way to
go.
The
alignment or direction of the "weave"
pattern in your texture also needs to be considered. It's ok
to ignore this part if you wish but for a more perfect result
you should consider it. Imagine you want to make a two CF mirrors.
You apply the texture to the mirror area of the skin and away
you go right? If you view the car head-on you will notice that
the direction of the weave on both mirrors is identical. It
would be a more balanced approach to invert the texture (flip)
on one side. The stripes of the weave on each mirror are now
opposite, which looks much more symmetrical. Small detail: makes
a difference. For a spoiler you may want the same effect. By
using two halves of CF texture and flipping one in the opposite
direction than the first you can make a symmetrical CF pattern
on the spoiler. This makes an even bigger impact than does the
mirror symmetry. The technique doesn't work so great on rear
wings (I prefer to skin the entire rear wing with CF pattern
running just one direction) but on the front wings of the forumula
cars it is the best way to do it and worth the extra effort.
To
recap on textures:
- Choose an appropriate and realistic-looking
CF texture for your skins.
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Use a large file that allows you to skin
any part of the car in CF.
-
Use a pre-stretched CF texture for best
results.
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Consider making the pattern symmetrical
in some places where it makes a noticable improvement to the
balance of the skin.
Making
CF Components For Your Skins
Lets move on to the actual work, cutting out a piece of CF for
use on your skin. You may find the Master
Skinnerz Pro Kits useful at this stage, but they are not
mandatory.
Let's
make a Carbon Fiber wing for the XRT. There are easier methods
but this way shows you how to make precise and detailed parts
that can be used on all skins of that type with great accuracy.
If you want to make a CF wing you just need to cut out a piece
of CF that is the right size to cover the wing area on your
skin. Most good software will include a mask or marquee tool
which you can use to outline the section you wish to cut away
from the CF texture. This can be done "freehand",
or you can use the wing layer from our skin kit to make a mask
or marquee, this makes life easier.
Beginning
with a large CF image (2560 X 2048), I first resize the image
to 2048 x 2048, now my CF is not going to be stretched in-game
and will retain the look I want with minimal distortion.
Next I drop the XRT wing layer on top of the CF image and use
it to create a mask. A dotted line (marquee) appears.
Now
that I have applied the mask I can delete the wing layer, it
isn't needed any more for this task.
By right-clicking inside the masked area I can copy (ctrl+C
also works in my software) and then paste as a new layer or
directly onto my skin. That's all there is to applying a CF
texture to the wing.
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This
is how it looks on the skin. Of course you could just
place a rectangular piece of CF texture over the wing
and save a lot of time, but the technique I have demonstrated
shows how to make precise CF parts and will be useful
for detailed work.
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The
final result. Repeat the process for the underside if
you want the texture to appear there also. Matching the
direction of the CF weave is not really important for
an XR rear wing.
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**I have used Corel Photopaint in
these examples. Other software like Adobe
Photoshop or Paint Shop Pro
(now owned by Corel) may differ but both have a mask feature.
In Photoshop I believe they call it a "marquee"
instead of "mask" but
the function is the same. The magic wand tool popular in many
software titles is a type of masking tool as well.
Note that in my example I have only skinned the upper side of
the wing, if making a skin I would texture both sides, but there
is no strict rules, use your imagination.
Making
A CF Bonnet (hood)
Making a CF bonnet is a little more challenging than a wing,
because your bonnet must be very accurate. The wing we made
earlier has no adjacent skin area touching it so you are able
to make the mask larger then the wing and it won't matter. But
the bonnet is an island surrounded by areas that will
show up on the skin, you need to be careful to "stay inside
the lines" or else your CF texture will spill over on to
the bodywork and will not look like a bonnet at all. In some
of our skin kits an accurate bonnet has been included for your
convenience. Cars that have the bonnet mapped in two sections
are difficult to apply CF textures to. It is almost impossible
to match up the CF weave of the two bonnet sections. Personally
I avoid using CF on those cars, it is difficult to draw attention
away from the seam between the two sections.
As with the XRT wing, you can use the bonnet layer from the
skin kit to create your mask (some MSz kits already include
a pre-made CF bonnet, others don't). If you want to make it
from scratch then perhaps use the wireframe layer from the kit
to maintain accuracy. Remember, the lower resolution you use
for your skin, the less accurate your bonnet will be. I would
not recommend going below 1024 x 1024 pixels (skin size) if
you wish to add a bonnet to your skin.
As mentioned earlier, a plain CF bonnet can look rather drab.
Apply some artwork and/or decals on top of the CF bonnet. Try
to be creative and compliment the rest of the skin. It is easy
to make a CF bonnet look totally out of place. Don't just throw
decals all over it, use your creative skills to prevent your
skin looking like just another five-minute job.
Downloads:
THIS TUTORIAL WILL BE EXPANDED AT SOME TIME IN THE FUTURE
**If
you do not yet know about skin stretching please read the stretching
tutorial located in this section.
Using
Carbon Fiber Textures
