Phineus wrote:
filling-in and shading. If I use layers, I can paint away and put in lights and the like without too much difficulty, but the actual filling-in runs into those lines. I'm not being dense or anything, but for the sake of explanation and clarity, what's the ideal time to paint over those lines? As for how, I assume you just select outside the wire frame and invert the selection and fill? Another possibility, I guess would be to do the same thing, then promote to layer - that would allow you to see the wireframe over top of the base paint, and it could then be deleted afterward (I think I'm answering my own questions as I work things through). Anyway... the real puzzler, for me, is the shading and even the body lines. I look at D2S' Falcon, or even something as basic as Rep Fan's <a href="http://mtm2.com/~trucks/P2004/thepizzageekbyrepfan.jpg">pizza geek</a> and everything just seems to be in the right place and in the right proportions. Is this an artistic thing or is there some sort of formula that prescribes measurements and amounts? After all, this is a basic coat of paint. And yet, I've had problems with it. Even recently. If you use too many colors, the odds are high the truck won't look right in the game. So, like, what's the secret?
Well. With mine I selected a colour out of PSP's palette box, just moused over until the 'current colour' shown looked right for the body colour, in this case a strong red. Save that somewhere (draw a spot on the background of a texture or save into the picker boxes like RF) and collect some lighter and darker shades based off that colour - you can keep mousing in the palette, or do it more analytically with an RGB adjust. They have to be close from one shade to the next, but make them distinct enough so that you can tell one from the next (as displayed on your monitor) without needing to check the RGB values. Otherwise much eyestrain will ensue.
The first colour I pick is intended to be the midtone colour I will use on the truck, although sometimes I will decide one of my other shades makes a 'better' colour. I dunno how many different shades I'd use all up... two or three in each direction is probably enough for the body paint, but I pick a lot of additional lighter and darker colours for detailing ridges, joins and highlights.
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For example, that Falcon uses only three different shades of red for the main part of the body. There's a bright red for the hood, roof and upper parts of the sides, a darker red for the lower parts of the sides, and a shade that goes in between. There's a whole bunch of other colours for the highlights and shadows, but in general I'd pick three or four main colours that are fairly close together for the base paint. You can use more if you want to make the blending smoother, but remember you have to keep track of them all - I prefer to just pick a (rather arbirtrary) line along the side where I think the tone would change if a light were shining from directly above, and say 'everything above will be this colour and everything below will be this slightly different colour'. Then I tend to find a much darker colour for lines and joins and stuff, and build up a small selection of colours around it (which might go all the way to bridging the gap back to my base colours). The highlighting I probably tend to build up by getting successively lighter shades of the base colour up to the constrast that I want, and pick out the edges that catch the light. Use brighter colours for smaller, sharper highlights to make them stand out. The highlighting is probably overkill, but it depends whether you want to emphasise (or give the impression of) raised details on the model.
As I said, I built my model with an accent on following the natural lines of the vehicle, so the wireframe of the face structure basically laid out the pattern for me. I just filled in gaps with my three base colours, so where the middle colour fits between the upper and lower mostly just follows a line formed of the faces going around the model. And the rubber strip along the sides, and the ridges and even the door lines, are all following lines I formed in the faces. In your case you haven't got a full wireframe like that, but the faces define the shape of the model (obviously) so it still has surfaces you can identify as upper (lighter), and side/lower (darker). For me a good start would be to fill in the hood and other upper surfaces with a lighter colour, and do the sides in one or two slightly darker colour(s), then flare up the wheel arches and the like. How many colours you use and and how dark you go depends on how much curvature you want to show on the side, by comparison the falcon is fairly rounded while RF's pizza geek has straighter lines and is more slab-sided. Also check the patterning used on the stockers to create depth on the sides.
All that said, if I'm doing a complex paint job I usually prefer to just leave the shading on the base paint layer - I don't shade the painted design on top. It makes a demanding job less difficult, and is usually better for clarity anyway, and it seems to be what the stock paint does as well which is good a reason as any other.
