Creating a custom vinyl for a car in Crashday

For this tutorial, I will be skinning the "Ironhorze" and will use the car's path as an example in each step - Some cars require you to skin more than just the body and body2 images, so make sure you know which to skin by looking at what other decals have done. The graphics program I am using is Adobe Photoshop CS2. If you are using a different graphics program, you will need to find the similar commands I cover.
by random_monkey

Part 1 - Skinning

Navigate to the folder of the car you wish to skin. In my case, it is "crashday/trkdata/cars/ironhorze". First of all, I recommend you backup this folder incase anything breaks and you need to restore it to it's original state.

Ok, copy and paste the "body.tga" and "body2.tga"

Rename these files as "decalXa.tga" and "decalXa_2.tga", where X is the next number in the already existing sequence of vinyls. For example, as this is my second skin for the ironhorze, the highest existing decal is "decal4a.tga" (Yours may be "decal3a.tga"). Therefore, I shall rename my skin as "decal5a.tga" and "decal5a_2.tga".

You can rename them to what the hell you like. I just figured it would be easier like this.
Once you've done that, open the undamaged skin (decal5a.tga) in your paint program.
It should be fairly simple to work out which bits are which. For this tutorial I will create a purple arrow on the front of the car.

Colour the image as much as you want, bearing in mind that some parts are modpieces. (For example, I've had to skin the 2 different version of the scoop on the bonnet/hood) - I know that this is a really crap skin, and I haven't bothered to skin all the bumpers and such, this is all just for the sake of speed. I trust you will take more care in yours and will stick properly to the boundaries ;)

When you are happy with your skin, select to view the "Channels", and view the "Alpha 1" channel. In photoshop, this is usually available by a tab at the bottom-right of the screen, next to the layers.

Your skin will go all black (With a little white bit). Your skin is still available on the other channels, though. The point of the alpha layer is to tell crashday which parts of your vinyl you want it to make visible, and which parts of the car you want it to stay colour-changable. Because I've only coloured the arrow on the front of the bonnet, and the 2 scoops, my alpha layer will look like this:

Everything that is white is declared as visible in crashday. Everything black remains unvisible... To easily do this alpha layer, I used the magic wand on my image to select the purple bits... Depending on the complexity of your skins, you might want to do it on a new layer to allow the alpha layer to be done easier
When you are happy with this, save and close.

Next, comes the damaged skin. This is the "decal5a_2.tga" renamed earlier.
This part can get seriously complicated and messy. If your skin is a simple one, you might be in luck... For this skin, I've copied the purple parts from the "decal5.tga" and pasted them over this skin as a new layer:

I then changed the layer properties and opacity via the controls circled in the image below. This has allowed the skin below to show through while still retain the colour I want. Experiment with different combinations to see what works best for you. If none work, then you'll have to do it the hard way and mess about with filters, and pasting different images onto your skin ;)

OK! If you're happy with this part, then next is the alpha for this damaged skin. This alpha follows the same idea as the last one. Anything white shows through, but black is still colourable. There is a lot more white on this one though to give the idea that paint has chipped off. We will want to apply the same idea in reverse - we want a lot of white so that you can see some of the original skin, but black specks to give the impression that some of it has come off.
Believe it or not, but for this, I've used the photoshop 'leaf' brush on size 12. It's great for stuff like this because it spreads about as you 'paint'...

Anyway, in my alpha, I've covered the relevant parts with quite a bit of this leaf-white, but allowed some black gaps to show through:

When you're happy with this, save and close it.

Part 2 - Paperwork

Now that your skin is all done and saved, we need to tell crashday what it is called so that you can make it available in the shop.

The first step is to copy and paste an existing decal's ".tex" files. These tell crashday how you want your vinyl to look.

Because "Shiny, like the car" is the one used in the tex's of other decals, you should be safe to just copy/paste/rename existing decals. If you want something else, you will have to change the contents (I'm not sure on what to change it /to/ yet, so I can't add that in this tutorial).

Next, load "carinfo.cca" in notepad, and scroll down to "Tuning". Increase the number directly below this line, by 1. (For example, I changed mine from "23" to "24"):

Scroll a bit further down until you come to the existing decals in the tuning part. Copy an existing one, and then paste it at the end of the tuning section.

After pasting this, edit the bits I've highlighted in red. These bits should be unique to your skin only. The first one is the identifier we shall use to reference it in the shop list, the 2nd 2 are the filenames of the skins you've made. (Mine are "decal5a.tga" and "decal5a_2.tga") - It should be pretty easy to work out what you'll need to change here anyway.

When that is done, you may save and close the "carinfo.cca" file.

The last file you'll need to edit is "shop.lst". Open this in notepad, and scroll right down to the bottom where there should be a chunk for an existing decal, like the one below. Copy this chunk of text, and paste it at the end of the file.

As before, change the 3 things I have highlighted. The first is the ID you chose earlier in the "carinfo.cca" file. Mine was "dec_sports5". The 2nd is the name you wish to give the decal, that is used in the shop - The quotes should be included to keep with the style of the existing modparts. The third part is the price - as mine is a particularly crap skin, I have chose a mediocre 300.

Now you've done that, save and close the file, and you should be OK to check the skin out in game (You'll need to buy it in career mode to use it in game).

Here are a couple of shots of mine in the game:

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(I know the fronts look like different colours in the image above, but it's just 'cos they're in different garages)

If you ever release your skin, I suggest putting the "shop.lst" and "carinfo.cca" bits in your readme file so that the downloaders can paste it in themselves. This will avoid breaking everyone's games due to missing skins and such