My first try at reskinning

[ATSF3814]

Are you going to upload this so we can all enjoy this beauty?

Buzz

I just sent it to Hawk.

[BNSF650]

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7? Or 9?

[ATSF3814]

Adobe Photoshop Elements 7? Or 9?

Adobe Photoshop Elements 9.



I'm a little on the fence on whether or not I want to push ahead with this one. What do you guys think?

[PapaXpress]

Do you have a picture of the prototype? The only Southern boxes that I over here used a different font, and the center of the O was green.

[BNSF650]

Ok what else do i need to reskin boxcars?

[PapaXpress]

You will get a variety of response to that question. I myself use the NVidia DDS plugin (free), and RWTools (donationware). There are several thread about this topic. You could search of some of my threads on my adventures on using PSE (and older version than ATSF used), and my switch over to CS3 (full photoshop). MadMike uses gimp, and there are thread about his experiences as well (I have commented in them so you could search of threads I have responded to).

It almost sounds like someone should compile all these threads into a wiki page. If I wasn't already beating my head against a wall I would probably do it.

[ATSF3814]

These are what I use:

Michael's template for the boxcar
Photoshop for the repainting
RSBinTool for importing the texture into Railworks
RW_Tools for editing the bin files

And these are the basic steps I follow:

1. Repaint the car in Photoshop
2. Save the repaint in DDS format with DXT3 compression and mipmaps
3. Add a grayscale mask over the DDS image so it doesn't wind up looking like it was painted with nail polish
4. Import the new texture using RSBinTool
5. Edit the bin file in RW_Tools so it references my new repaint folder and not the default folder

And that works fine. Here are a couple of other links you might find helpful:

http://railworksamerica.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=9&t=1202
http://www.trainsim.com/vbts/showthread.php?299836-How-To-Reskin

And on the subject of the Southern boxcar Papa, here is the picture I was working off of:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_OLc2TjnHOgQ/TO5oqMyd72I/AAAAAAACIt4/UWgjBXycKFA/s1600/SOUTHERN+RAILWAY+Boxcar%252C+Southern+Railway+Serves+The+South+Railroad+Train+Boxcar+Macon+GA..JPG

Looking more closely at it, I think I can see that the middle of the O was painted in green. But it's pretty well faded now.

[PapaXpress]

OK, I see the problem now. The text is getting stretched. Not sure if you can do this in PSE but in CS3 I can reduce or stretch the characters in a Text layer in many ways, but in this case (as I did with my SP boxes) I reduced their width by 10%.

[BNSF650]

Ok now where do i get all the logos and stuff for the Cars at?

[PapaXpress]

I had to make my own (that's half the fun of it).

MadMike seems to have some gift (or magic) to make all of his, they are near perfect.

[BNSF650]

lol So how long does it take to do a reskin? Im just trying to see if i can have time to start back up again

[PapaXpress]

Depends...

This was my first foray into reskinning, so there was a learning curve I had to concur. Once I had my "decals" done to my satifcation I can now repaint a wagon in a few hours, as long as I have a good prototype photo to work from... but then I sleep on it and find more to tweak the next night, and the next. One of my biggest problems is drawing the line in the sand and saying "Its good enough for the rivet counters"

[MadMike1024]

I had to make my own (that's half the fun of it).

MadMike seems to have some gift (or magic) to make all of his, they are near perfect.

Magic tool called google... Select images, enter "railroad name logos", press [SEARCH]