[Stephen Carr]

Morning All, 

How are people doing their skins?
Do you need one per car or is it a generic skin that's just fitted to a model?
is it fairly easy to do or do you need a degree in computer aided design to do one?
Thanks

[Alexey Schevchenko]

Morning All, 

How are people doing their skins?
Do you need one per car or is it a generic skin that's just fitted to a model?
is it fairly easy to do or do you need a degree in computer aided design to do one?
Thanks

A simple skin is easy to make.
Looks Michael Martin  tutorial: https://www.simracingsystem.com/showthread.php?tid=5433

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Jkyxd1s1Vg&t=161s  and also simply video tutorial (photoshop)

[Jari Penttinen]

In addition to Michael Martin's guide I used James Tumilty's video on making skins in GIMP as a starting point: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WhzJduTcvek
It's a long video, but it covers a lot of basic stuff in GIMP. I had zero previous experience in making skins or using GIMP, so I would say they're both very beginner-friendly.

[Martin Smith]

Morning All, 

How are people doing their skins?
Do you need one per car or is it a generic skin that's just fitted to a model?
is it fairly easy to do or do you need a degree in computer aided design to do one?
Thanks

It can be as simple or as complicated as you want, depending on how fancy you want it to look.

The simplest ones are basic PNG pictures that are renamed to DDS format (skin.dds, carskin.dds, skin_00.dds, ... - it depends on the car).

Here's an example;
   

Make sure the PNG is square, and the size is a multiple of 4 (4x4, 8x8, 12x12...)

The most common sizes are 1024x1024 for reasonable quality in video streams, 2048x2048 for reasonable photographic quality, and 4096x4096 for sharper photographic quality with fine details.

Then put it in your skin folder as per the SRS guidelines, and this is what it would look like:
   

It has no decals or shading, but at least it's personalized. If you want to go to the next step then take the skin file AC provides and create a pattern that fits the wireframe for the car you want. Yes, each car has its own wireframe so at this point you're into making a skin for each car. Otherwise you could just keep reusing the same PNG image like above, and you'll only have to change its filename to work for whatever the car needs.