Hey all,

This may be a real noob question but it's killing me.....

When working on my skins I notice that some layers (the early ones) are becoming blury and pixelated. Would this be becuase I re-size the image too much?

It's very frustrating having to re-do layers

Any help would be greatly apprecited.

Thanks

V

Yes, don't resize the image until you've finished. If you resize it to test it, use the undo command afterwards. Why would you resize to test it anyway, cos the CMX veiwer can take ANY size of skin.

If you make stuff bigger it will get blurry

Quote from tristancliffe :

Yes, don't resize the image until you've finished. If you resize it to test it, use the undo command afterwards. Why would you resize to test it anyway, cos the CMX veiwer can take ANY size of skin.

I re-size the skin to 1280x1024 to skin it not realising that every time I make it 1024x1024 to view it I'm wrecking the whole thing.

Told you it was a noobie question

Thanks for your replies guys, much appreciated.

PS - Didn't realise the viewer could take any size images, that helps allot!

Doing that can help in getting the right proportions, but... resampling your skin design a few times does result in some bad quality.

You should just get used to the sides of the car being compressed/squeezed.

Basically all I do is draw out a perfect square in my program, see what it looks like on the car in the viewer (usually a long rectangle)... and then scale the square down by a certain percentage. I think it is typically by 60-65% downsizing for the width. So whenever I put a logo on the car, I scale it down and just put it all over.

Lots of people have different techniques, this is just mine.

There are some people that try it your way, but exactly how they get clear and crisp results, I don't know.

Thank you mate.

If I were to create the skin in 1280 x 1024 and only re-seze once back to 1024x1024 do you thinik I would loose much quality?

I will try your method on my next skin

I didn't mention also, that when putting the square on the car skin, and then seeing the results in the viewer, you would see a rectangle. But each time you test put a perfect square on the side and scale down to a certain percentage UNTIL the square on the car in the viewer looks like a square. (You can even measure the square with a ruler on a monitor). It won't be exactly precise because of your viewpoint probably, but roughly, you can get a perfect square on the skin at a certain scaling percentage. Just find that percentage per car and you should be fine.

Also the front and rear of the cars are usually not scaled down, they are normal size. Usually just the sides of the cars are squashed, and sometimes the top for some cars.

By doing it this way I find it better because like for example, the FO8 skin has many elements added onto the side (like wing skin, etc), and if you scaled the ENTIRE top & side, it would scale those wing skin areas to an incorrect width (because the wing skin is usually correct scale already).

I hadn't thought about the wings and other elements.

Thanks again Tweaker, you're a true gentleman

Honest opinion, it's better not to scale the entire car to 1280x1024, for although doing so appears to offer the correct aspect ratio, in actual fact different parts of the skin are stretched by different amounts to make the skin fit the model. For instance the ever popular FZR model distorts the texture quite a bit more at its flared rear arch than it does on it's bonnet [hood].

I would tell you that the best way to achieve the correct aspect ratio is to compress every decal in the horizontal plane, but not the vertical plane, and to check the skin in the CMX viewer frequently, which will tell you whether or not you've got it right.

As for a sharp crisp look, well the bigger the decal is to begin with, the better, since you just shrink it to the size you want it, giving the false impression that it's better quality than it actually is. Increasing the size of decals isn't a great idea, since unless they're vector graphics and you're using something like Illustrator, they will begin to pixelate. It is better to attempt to recreate a decal than it is to scale it to sveral times its orginal size. If using photoshop then applying the unsharp mask filter to individual decals can also help.