Hi!

I am fairly new to skinning and some people have lots of curved lines and different colours on one body part. How is this possible? I cannot find a tool to draw curved lines and recolour areas behind the lines. Can anyone help please?



Thans in Advance!

You can use layers and the path tool.

Use layers to have different colours / designs on top of a specific body part, i.e. roof.

Use the part tool to create these the designs (lines, curves...) to separate the colours.

A small GIMP tutorial for the path tool: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Bezier_Selections/
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Drawing_Shapes/

For a bit info about layers: have a quick look through the following thread: http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 2451&highlight=layers

Hope it helped!

Quote from Silverracer :

You can use layers and the path tool.

Use layers to have different colours / designs on top of a specific body part, i.e. roof.

Use the part tool to create these the designs (lines, curves...) to separate the colours.

A small GIMP tutorial for the path tool: http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Bezier_Selections/
http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Drawing_Shapes/

For a bit info about layers: have a quick look through the following thread: http://www.lfsforum.net/showth ... 2451&highlight=layers


Hope it helped!

I don't really understand those. How do you make two colours on curves like this skin:
http://i131.photobucket.com/al ... ThunderheadOne/frer33.jpg
I create a path like the tutorials say but i cannot make the curve and all it comes up with is a line with no colour and it does nothing whatsoever.
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?7939998mhhj99h8
Sorry i am a really new to skinning and do not have much idea of technical 'stuff'
Also what is the part tool. You mean the path tool again?
And how can i rescale logos? When i click on the logo it just says rescale layer
Thanks for the help!

You select Path tool.
Position the edges on the skin. Then you start clicking on the lines and pulling them so they start to bend.
Once you're happy with the way the curves look, you click on "Path to Selection" button in the toolbar.
Once you have it selected and are on a proper layer, fill the selection, either with bucket fill or Ctrl+,
If you want a 2 tone curve, you have to deselect some areas that you do not want to change, create a new layer(or do it on the same, although, better to create a new one) and fill that new selection with another color. Deselection can be done by pressing down Ctrl key and using one of the selection tools(don't know if it works with path tho). If you want a line(curved or not) that has a white border all around, you first fill white and then can use Selection shrink from the menus to shring the selection by X pixels and once shrunk just fill the new selection with another color.
It's basically just practice and patience.

Yes, earlier I meant the path tool. Sorry about the confusion.

First lets get the basics covered. Then you can move on to using the path tool to create specific designs. I haven't mastered the path tool yet, but I'll cover how I create coloured areas.

I use layers upon layers. This makes it easier for me to alter colours/logos/designs if I wanted to make any changes later in the skinning process.

If you're not using master skinnerz pro kits, I suggest that you use them to help you when making skins.

Now lets say you need to create a tri-colour design on the roof of your FZR.

Lets say you want the base colour of the roof to be blue as in the other FZR you linked.

Select the roof layer from the layers toolbox. Select the blue and colour the roof.

Say you want to create a yellow circle on top of the roof. Now create a new layer (short cut CTRL+Shift+N) on top of the existing roof layer. You'll see this new layer on the layer toolbox; if its not shown directly on top of the roof layer click and drag till it is. Rename this layer as "roof - yellow", so that you'll be able to find the layer easier (later on).

Now, to create the yellow circle select the eclipse selection tool - and create a circular shape on the "roof - yellow" layer corresponding to the FZR roof. Now as the circular shape is shown select the yellow colour and use either the "bucket fill tool" or "paint brush tool" to colour in the selected area.

You can use either the same tool, rectangle select tool or the free select tool to create another shape and then colour it. If you didn't create another layer for this colour, you'll be directly colouring on top of the yellow circle. If you wanted to change the design/colour later - it'll get messy since both are on the same layer; so its wiser to use another layer to draw the shape and colour it.

The purpose of doing that was to show how you can colour in a close-selected area. Lets say you wanted to colour the front bit of the FZR orange, forward of the curve you created with the path tool. You can use the "free select tool" to create a free shape around a specific area and then create a close-area to colour it in.

You can use the eclipse select tool to create curvy - shapes (attached image 3). As I said, I've not used the path tool - and I created the curves for my XRT skin using the eclipse select tool.

If you want to create a shape and then colour outside of it, simply to go select > invert. This'll allow you to colour outside the selected bit...

---

As for the question of rescaling logos; make sure you paste the logos on a separate layer. If you want a logo to appear on the roof, simply create a new layer - rename it logos and paste it to the skin-area corresponding to the roof.

Now if you need to rescale the logo, or just move it around a bit, use one of the selection tools mentioned above (eclipse, rectangular or free select) to select around the logo and then cut - paste it; this enables you to move it around. Once you paste it (and as long as you can see that it's selected), you can simply right click and then layer>scale. This'll scale just the selected bit. When you're playing around with it and is happy with the scale/position right click > layer > anchor (short cut: CTRL + H) to anchor the layer to the "logos" layer.

---

As xfirestorm said, its pretty much practise and patience. The stuff I wrote about might sound complicated, but it'll easy when you get the hang of it.

Quote from Silverracer :

Yes, earlier I meant the path tool. Sorry about the confusion.

First lets get the basics covered. Then you can move on to using the path tool to create specific designs. I haven't mastered the path tool yet, but I'll cover how I create coloured areas.

I use layers upon layers. This makes it easier for me to alter colours/logos/designs if I wanted to make any changes later in the skinning process.

If you're not using master skinnerz pro kits, I suggest that you use them to help you when making skins.

Now lets say you need to create a tri-colour design on the roof of your FZR.

Lets say you want the base colour of the roof to be blue as in the other FZR you linked.

Select the roof layer from the layers toolbox. Select the blue and colour the roof.

Say you want to create a yellow circle on top of the roof. Now create a new layer (short cut CTRL+Shift+N) on top of the existing roof layer. You'll see this new layer on the layer toolbox; if its not shown directly on top of the roof layer click and drag till it is. Rename this layer as "roof - yellow", so that you'll be able to find the layer easier (later on).

Now, to create the yellow circle select the eclipse selection tool - and create a circular shape on the "roof - yellow" layer corresponding to the FZR roof. Now as the circular shape is shown select the yellow colour and use either the "bucket fill tool" or "paint brush tool" to colour in the selected area.

You can use either the same tool, rectangle select tool or the free select tool to create another shape and then colour it. If you didn't create another layer for this colour, you'll be directly colouring on top of the yellow circle. If you wanted to change the design/colour later - it'll get messy since both are on the same layer; so its wiser to use another layer to draw the shape and colour it.

The purpose of doing that was to show how you can colour in a close-selected area. Lets say you wanted to colour the front bit of the FZR orange, forward of the curve you created with the path tool. You can use the "free select tool" to create a free shape around a specific area and then create a close-area to colour it in.

You can use the eclipse select tool to create curvy - shapes (attached image 3). As I said, I've not used the path tool - and I created the curves for my XRT skin using the eclipse select tool.

If you want to create a shape and then colour outside of it, simply to go select > invert. This'll allow you to colour outside the selected bit...

---

As for the question of rescaling logos; make sure you paste the logos on a separate layer. If you want a logo to appear on the roof, simply create a new layer - rename it logos and paste it to the skin-area corresponding to the roof.

Now if you need to rescale the logo, or just move it around a bit, use one of the selection tools mentioned above (eclipse, rectangular or free select) to select around the logo and then cut - paste it; this enables you to move it around. Once you paste it (and as long as you can see that it's selected), you can simply right click and then layer>scale. This'll scale just the selected bit. When you're playing around with it and is happy with the scale/position right click > layer > anchor (short cut: CTRL + H) to anchor the layer to the "logos" layer.

---

As xfirestorm said, its pretty much practise and patience. The stuff I wrote about might sound complicated, but it'll easy when you get the hang of it.

Quote from xfirestorm :

You select Path tool.
Position the edges on the skin. Then you start clicking on the lines and pulling them so they start to bend.
Once you're happy with the way the curves look, you click on "Path to Selection" button in the toolbar.
Once you have it selected and are on a proper layer, fill the selection, either with bucket fill or Ctrl+,
If you want a 2 tone curve, you have to deselect some areas that you do not want to change, create a new layer(or do it on the same, although, better to create a new one) and fill that new selection with another color. Deselection can be done by pressing down Ctrl key and using one of the selection tools(don't know if it works with path tho). If you want a line(curved or not) that has a white border all around, you first fill white and then can use Selection shrink from the menus to shring the selection by X pixels and once shrunk just fill the new selection with another color.
It's basically just practice and patience.

Thanks for the really quick responses guys! They will help a lot! Again thanks a lot for spending your time!

One thing though. My curve made with elipses looks not very smooth...
http://www.mediafire.com/i/?8291cuofcbbgk8z

Hi again, this is how I do my curves with my limited knowledge on GIMP

All you've gotta do is use the brush (or fill bucket)/eclipse select tool. Resize and move the eclipse-shape until the joint are smooth(-ish)... When you got to point like in Pic 3; go to select > invert to paint out side the selected area. Again select > invert when you want to colour in the selected area...

IMO, if your using this way, use layers for each colour; and when you save your WIP make sure you save it as .xcf (I think its .xcf, the default GIMP format to save the layers...)

If you have any questions just drop me a PM or post here.

If any "master skinners" are stopping by here, please guide us amateurs on how to do complex curves

Use a larger template. The larger, the better it will look.
And keep in mind the stretching of everything on the car. FZ5/R is one of the biggest "strechers" or skins I think.

It's really hard to explain how the path tool works, first you click of a rectangle shape, and then you start pulling those lines so long until you like the shape of it. It's just trial and error. To practice maybe forget about the skin, try just making an S i.e. with the path tool. And maybe start with just one line, so you wont be able to fill it, but just stroke the path with the brush tool, to get the idea on how it works.