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Everyone has heard about the upcoming ability to produce and race your own custom paint with the IRacing sim. Well, here is a little insight on how it looks thus far. I am in no way a solid painter, but with just knowing the basics of photoshop and how easily IRacing has made it to import a scheme, I was able to produce a few options within no time.
IRacing will provide the initial templates. In the future, Im sure you will be able to find members created templates with more options and layers to work with. With what little time Ive spent with it, Ive noticed that IRacing template was much easier to use when lining up certain pieces of the car and making graphics seamless across the vehicle.
When using the template, IRacing gives you the option of personal sponsors and the color and graphics of the car itself. Your number although, will be the number you choose and design within IRacing's current paintshop. This may not please all members, but what it does do is cut part of the lengthy creative process out of making a scheme. Your sure to find a number font and color combination that will work with your overall design. Whats up to you is throwing down some paint and a few easy to place sponsors and your basicly done. Newly created members templates will again cut down on the length of the process.
Once you have your car designed how you wish, its time to plug it into the sim. At this time, this is a super simple step. Save your work in .tga format. You will then place it inside a specific folder in your My Documents/IRacing folder. Thats all there is to it. You start the sim, and hit the track and there is your new scheme.
Currently, IRacing will not provide an auto upload feature that will capture your other competitors schemes once you join a session. We have seen this in other sims, but there are some dangerous legal grey areas that IRacing chooses to steer clear of. What will need to be done by the community is a universal website that would serve as a gathering place for everyones schemes. Thats one reason why I wanted to post this information in the first place. With the option to paint your own car coming very soon and the absence of an auto upload feature, its going to be up to us to keep things as organized as possible. What would be preferred is a website with a file transfer system like we've seen in the past. If someone does choose to run a custom scheme but you are unable to acquire it, what you will see on your end is the scheme they have saved inside IRacing's current paintshop.
In addition to that idea, it might be clever to also produce a car viewer program, as currently the only way to check your work is to resave the scheme and plug the new file into the data and hit the track thus checking the replay. This process is the only time consuming part at the moment.
Anyhow, I hope you all enjoy knowing a little inside info on the upcoming custom paint feature. Below are some of the work Ive been able to produce in just a very short period of time. Go easy, Im no expert on the art. Just a huge fan.
The .tga image size is 1024X1024 and is about 3megs in file size currently
Here is a quick remake of a JRM Nationwide car for 2010, compared with an actual photo of the car.
Here is a fictional Amp Energy COT
And lastly a fictional Late Model scheme
You can see that all Ive done is produce a base scheme. Placed a few sponsors, and then the last step was to match an available number from inside IRacing's current paint shop. I remember that custom painting was a massive part of the sim racing community from past DK simulations. I hope that we see a resurgence of community creativeness like we have seen in years past. Have a good one. Jr