Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

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eXL'Mo0seY
Posts: 81
Joined: Mon Dec 13, 2010 11:56 pm
Team: PPG Racing
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Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by eXL'Mo0seY »

Image

Hello everybody, my names Daniel and i've been working on a few tutorial's lately to boost the quality of track's being released. The tutorial's i will be making will be in steps. Essentially what im doing, is writing them all out in steps, which then are co-ordinate with images. Using this method allows for Direct Imformation, yet providing the detail for the ultimate n00bsters. Hopefully this tutorial cover's everything and no mistakes.

THE REFERENCE IMAGES ARE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PAGE

Tools Needed
- Adobe Photoshop (cs2,cs3,cs4,cs5)
- Mx Simulator (Full Version)
- Common Knowledge

Upcoming Tutorial's
- How to modify the shadingx2.ppm file to add extra details
- How to make rut's in Adobe Photoshop
- How to smooth jump sides in Adobe Photoshop
- How to add Statues (objects), Billboards (2d image), Decals (Ground texture)
- How to create and import different roost and traction types
- How to use your terrain you've made for your track
- How to modify the terrain.hf to suit your track

(a) Well the first step in making a path for your track is to open up Adobe Photoshop and go File>New, now a popup window will arise and the settings you must have are as following; 1025 x 1025 pixels, 16 bit Grayscale then hit ok.

(b) The next step is to fill your background with any shade of grey. To do this you click on the paint bucket looking tool on the toolbar on the lefthand side, and then going down to the bottom where there are two colours (usually black and white, if not hit "d"). Now click in the colour and move the circle around and the slider's until you find a nice dark grey you would like as your base for your track. Now hit ok and just click on your background and it should fill with the grey you chose. If it doesn't do anything, be sure that the paint bucket tool is selected and try again. Your background should now be a grey and ready to continue on.

(c) Now to continue on with this tutorial, you must create a new layer. If your not familuar with photoshop and don't know how to do this go to Layer>New Layer or CTRL+SHFT+N. Now that we've created the first layer, we need to decide what type of track you've got in mind, (supercross, motocross, supermoto, enduro). For this demonstration i'm going to be doing a Supercross for the pure fact of time. I will also be using google to help find me a basic layout to do this quickly. For you i would recommend to make one up. Now for the next step, right click the image and copy paste it into your photoshop document, the shortcut in Photoshop for this is CTRL+V.

(d) Once you've pasted the image in it's time to create a new layer CTRL+SHFT+N. Now select the pen tool and basically draw a line straight down the centre of your track, and make it connect up at the end, making sure the turns are all the same, and smooth turns ect.

(e) Now that you've created a "spline" as such for your track make sure you select a hard round brush the same width you would like your track path to be (you can always change this later). Once you've set your brush up to the right size ect, go back to the pen tool and right click your path your path you created before and click stroke, now make sure the rollout is on "Brush" and "Simulate Pressure" is not enabled, then hit ok. You should now have a track path as such but it's missing one thing, the start straight.

(f) To create the start straight basically just draw the shape of it out with the pen tool right click>fill then make sure the colour solid black and click ok, now you've got the basic track layout.

Reference Images

Step A
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Step B
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Step C
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Step D
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Step E
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Step F
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This method of creating a track path/layout is honestly one of the best ways, im sure there's 1001 ways to make it, but personally i feel like this is the best way to create one. Now here are the images with are co-ordinated with the steps to help the n00bsters find the button's ect.

Once you make this, you can also use it as a track map, a preview picture and even the terrain layout, so i hope i've helped some people.

eXL'Mo0seY
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attacker5
Posts: 2226
Joined: Tue Aug 18, 2009 8:53 pm
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Re: Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by attacker5 »

Sweet tutorial man, gave me some good ideas, i think one reason for my kick on the lips was the fact that i have always used 8 bit greyscale. lol. :D
BrutalMX
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Re: Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by BrutalMX »

IVe made my layout...but when i look at in in the mxsim editor, theres big cliffs where there track is. I dont understand...
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yzmxer608
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Re: Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by yzmxer608 »

It's just a layout you use when you make tracks in photoshop (or you can use it in game if you lower the opacity a lot).
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checkerz
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Re: Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by checkerz »

when creating nationals it's best to create both track boundaries separate from eachother. Last I saw, no national has identical width all the way around.
wheels1758
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Re: Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by wheels1758 »

checkerz wrote:when creating nationals it's best to create both track boundaries separate from eachother. Last I saw, no national has identical width all the way around.
Chex, how often do you create the whole track path at the beginning? Seems it would be better to work on little sections at a time so you can get each one to ride nicely. I can never judge how big(radius) to make the corners on national tracks :/
checkerz
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Re: Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by checkerz »

What I usually would do would be to create the whole track path, and all of it a bit wider than intended. Go run some laps on it, and find where I wanted to pinch it down to tighten up the corners, force braKing points, ect. and then cut that part away using the polygon lasso tool, still leaving a slight bit extra width (you always lose a few feet smoothing edges). As you've seen wheels, I'll start with a layout, but it's just an idea of where to go, I'll bend add or take out sections as needed to create good pacing for a track. Fast sections should be broken up with slower ones, all the rhythm sections shouldn't be back to back and then a bunch of whoops after and then a bunch of triples, should be intermixed for SX or nationals.
bcalvert665
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Re: Creating a track path in Adobe Photoshop

Post by bcalvert665 »

thanks man this helped heaps
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