MX Simulator

This tutorial will hopefully let you in on a little thing I came across while making our contest track. The whole idea is to fake depth, and add variety to the texture color, with shadingX2.
--Please note that this tutorial is short, and sweet. There is so much more that I could put in here, but I'm leaving you to experiment with it, and share some of your own findings.

Open up shadingX2.ppm in photoshop
Create a new layer and fill it with 50% black
Set your two colors to 50% black and 35% black
Render clouds
Now size down that layer to 25% of it's original size and tile it 16 times across your entire file
--You can make the clouds however large or small you want them, but the bigger they are the harder it is to notice it in game
--Sizing it down to 25% then tiling offers good results
Merge all the cloud layers, and set the blending mode to hard light
Adjust the opacity

--Perfect for defining moist and dry areas of the track without having different decals, and also allowing for smooth transitions
--Take a specific brush and also draw onto the clouds layer to get different added effects with the dirt color
--You can also highlight ruts very easily with shadingX2

Test it out in game to see the difference, but note that as soon as you adjust the shading it will overwrite this file, so back it up!
Lastly, get creative! Don't limit yourself to only the ideas I posed, play around with it and post your styles here for all to use!

-ddmx

so true!
the shadingx2 it's super cool and i played around with it alot while doing my contest track.
changing color could render the ground "colder" or "warmer", ideal for let's say cold weather, sunset, sunrise..all this kind of things.
good thing you posted it ddmx, much appreciation!

Ah Respect! Thank you.

I've got a question. Is the render clouds supposed to make tileable pattern?
'Cause it's not in my PS and it leaves horrible lines to the pic when I tile it.

Nvm, figured out the problem.

well shadow share your result to me, im confused about the tile thing...

o_O Well I don't remember it anymore. I think it was that the image size needs to be a power of 2 OR only 256x256 will work. My problem had something to do with the image size though.

idk if it says this on the 1st post because im running out of time to read so i wanted to know will this work on skins?

No, this is done in a file only pertaining to tracks. Normal maps do a type of this for skins.

Oh, ok thanks. I know this is off topic but nobody is helping me in the help/troubleshooting thread so im askin here, what tool am i supposed to use for shading? Im using Gimp and or photoshop.

Shading isn't as important as it was before, shadows still need to be used but highlights not as much. Theres a lot of different techniques, not just one tool to use. Can use the pen tool to make sure you get a detailed placement of where you want the shadow, then blur or however you want to do it. Polygonal lasso tool can work pretty good too. Just play around some and figure out what works best for you.