I have been playing LFS now for a few months and absolutly love the whole experience. Having won a few races and started getting my laptimes to an almost respectable level i want to personalise my own skin.
Have a look in the skins section of this forum for lots of info.
Go to MasterKinnerz - http://skinnerz.proboards26.com/ - and register. Then you can download the pro kits. These kits make skinning easy.
Oh and you'll need a graphics editing tool like photoshop. I use ArcSoft's PhotoStudio 5.5 which costs about £50 but there is a fully working downloadable demo here: http://www.arcsoft.com/en/products/photostudio/
All you need to do is create a jpeg (like the ones in ...\LFS\Data\Skins)
This makes it much quicker to look at the changes you have made to your skins.
Start by modifying one of the default skins. Get used to where they need to go. If you want others to see your skins on line you will need to up load them here:
It'll take time to get used to using something like photoshop. You may find that you 'do things the hard way' to start with until you've got used to all the tools available.
1) You have the MasterSkinnerz pro kits
2) You have a decent photo/graphic tool like Photoshop
3) You know how to use the graphics tool
4) You have creative talent.
I'm cool on 1 and 2, most of the way there on 3 but I really struggle on 4.
The pro-kits are not nesassary, you can do well with out them (I never use them myself :P). Just make the blank skin a different layer, make it transparent and then make some more layers and draw stuff. You could draw over the blank but then the lighting and the shadows of the car suffer. But remember to use the layers, and if possible vector layers because then you can change and adjust the colors and shapes as you like
But the great thing about the prokits is that each component of the car is in its own layer. So you click on rear wing and only the rear wing is displayed. This means it's obvious which bit of the skin jpeg you need to work on. Without this you have to keep drawing bits and checking they appear in the right place in the viewer.
Plus, they're free so why anyone wouldn't use them is beyond me.
Hehe
Maybe I don't like it because it ads so much extra layers and gray stuff and it gets messy when I add vector layers top of them. And I don't need the skinning info in most of the cars. I only use the kit with the helmet, and I've modified it to only have the wireframe and the black overlay, there I feel it handy
And why there is no skinning sticky on this section of the forums?
Sounds like you know more about it than me mate (I've heard of vectors but don't even know what they are ) but maybe you could just discard the layers you don't want or merge them. Mind you, then what's the point in having the pro kits
Nono, I meant that there should be a sticky about skinning here, maybe just links to other threads, I suppose this is the first place where new players come for help
The only advantage of the pro-kits, as I see it, are the black borders and the vireframe which shows what shows in the car.If you are not already experienced how things go it could be helpfull or if you want to make HD guality skins...and it gives the more professional look for the skin file even it would look the same without it :P
