iRacing Paints - Spec Maps, Simplified

[@Laughlin62]

This video doesn't have enough love. Ive been monkeying with iracing spec maps since they were released.. but always using the two-part metallic and roughness method. This is much simpler, I love it. Cheers Chaz

[@mikemorgan8895]

You make it look a lot easier than anybody else doing tutorials on this

[@ChazDraycott]

Thank you Mike! I hope it helped bud.

[@mikemorgan8895]

@@ChazDraycott how are you able to shift between iracing and paint so quickly and having your car right where you left it? If I quit test it goes back to the pit

[@ChazDraycott]

@@mikemorgan8895 If you go into "My Content", click on the car you're painting, and at the top click "Car Model", you can view it there and paints update whenever you save the file.

[@crsgtube]

Thank you so much!! I finally got it..

[@neil_g78]

When looking at tutorials, these spec maps confused the hell out of me and when i saw this video i thought oh just another confusing vid lol...but this is THE BEST tutorial for spec maps.....keeping it simple and clear to understand.....great video!

[@jamesmarabello2314]

This is the first video or document I've seen that let me 'understand' spec maps. I've been painting cars since rFactor and use Photoshop a lot and still couldn't get my head around the concept. Well done Chaz.

[@ChazDraycott]

Thank you James! Really glad it helped mate!

[@rowdywallbanger4080]

Chaz, great video. The most important thing for me was the brief statement that tga files don’t read layers. I’ve been faffing on gimp with layers, erasing bits on one, to show the other through. From now on just one layer. Nice.

[@murf220]

Much easier to understand and do, cheers

[@Ben_LaBroca]

Fantastic tutorial - will definitely be trying my hand at this!

[@YotaakGFX]

Thanks, really helped me figure it out easily. edit: make sure you actually save the spec file as a 24bit, I accidently saved it as a 32bit and it was almost entirely black. Saving the main skin as a 32bit works fine though.

[@kd_316simracing]

Great stuff! Really excited to mess around and try this out!

[@MixedRealitySimRacing]

wow thank you, I did it wrong because I understood the text of the psd "blue unused" like it can be kept out. Because blue was never part of the mix in my tries, it was always way too matt. Also changing the rgb value mix of the brush instead of mixing three individual layers is a good tip which should make it quicker to try out different mixes.

[@mrboejangles9135]

255 is dull clear coat. 13 is max, 0 to 12 is no Clear Coat. The values are reversed for the blue layer. Found it in the iracing forums .Blue Channel is wrong

[@ChazDraycott]

Yeah unfortunately since the update this video has been made obsolete.

[@mrboejangles9135]

@@ChazDraycott thanks for the cred in the video details, great video though. it still holds up to the test of time and week 13

[@robertneale7326]

Thank you.. You have made that unbelievably easy.. Why did iRacing make it look soo bloody difficult...

[@ChazDraycott]

Glad to have helped mate. I think iRacing portrayed it in the way it was developed to work. This is just a simpler method.

[@albertjorda1072]

a perfect video, the only one that if I can recommend you, from my point of view do the actions with the Fs, for example f4 use to save to 55555.tga and may f4 5555-spec-. I don't know if I can explain myself. There is a lot of information in this video and I will have to assimilate little by little everything, by the way,

[@philsamways]

This was a massive help today, top work!

[@hellorickyshaw]

So simple, thank you!

[@brendanhobbart]

Superb. Thanks Chaz!

[@NSPorscheGT]

Chaz, seriously, this is a life safer .. Thx for the video, mate. Cheers

[@ChazDraycott]

No problem dude! My pleasure! I'm glad it's helped people!

[@superpv]

Great content Chaz! Nice!!

[@stevehobbs5651]

one word, "awesome"

[@AndyL420]

k im sorry, I am full tard on this. When you save the spec map , are you just saving the entire paint ( ie all the other layers that have nothing to do with spec map) and saving it under a seperate name?,or are you just saving the Spec map folder?. Also where are you then putting the Saved spec map? , in ur iracing folder? in trading paints? Nothing wrong with the video, very clearly explained how to alter the spec map. Im just completely new and have no idea where im saving this to.

[@ChazDraycott]

Hey man, no worries - I'll try and explain it well enough. It doesn't matter which layers are visible underneath when you save it, so long as the blues, pinks and purples of the spec map are visible over the top. This is a separate file to your car's livery (car_123456.tga). You save them in Documents > iRacing > paint, and then the necessary car's folder, so "bmwm4gt3" for example.

[@geezergaming7570]

@@ChazDraycott when and where would you save the mip file? I understand the targa file. But when uploading for trading paints. It needs to find the mip file for the spec

[@geezergaming7570]

Never mind. I watched it again and understand it changes itself to a mip file. Great video!!

[@spdesigns5656]

Are you doing this through Trading Paints or just through the iRacing UI?

[@ChazDraycott]

There's no use of Trading Paints in the video bud 😁 It's all done manually.

[@spdesigns5656]

@@ChazDraycott maybe that's why mine isn't working on TP, lmao. I've watched this video like 10 times and done everything as you have, but it doesn't work through TP for whatever reason.

[@ChazDraycott]

@@spdesigns5656 You have to upload it to Trading Paints as well bud. You can add a spec map to your liveries there. Just make sure you upload the .MIP file and not the .TGA. You might have to have the car loaded in the sim for it to generate the .MIP from the .TGA

[@spdesigns5656]

@@ChazDraycott aaah, see I didn't know it was supposed to be a MIP on TP, both my car and spec files are TGA.

[@BunkerMonkeyUK]

Yeap! Best one out there. Thank you Chaz!

[@thewelsho]

Are these values and concepts the same? It worked a treat last time however, this time, its a mess. My white that I have set to R:255 G:0 B:255 are coming out solid, matt black. In fact the entire car is matt, with zero highlights even though I have set two colours to different levels of matt. Its the new iR-04 Car. Weird :(

[@ChazDraycott]

Don't use the whole "black and white" thing that iRacing put in. Just duplicate each part of your design and put them into a layer folder of your own, and do as the video describes 😊👍🏼

[@thewelsho]

@@ChazDraycott Thanks for the reply Chaz, but I defo think they have changed it. I removed all the default folders, Alpha stuff etc., and left the Spec Map folder empty. I then turned it on, exported the Spec Map Targa, applied it to the car and it turned everything to solid matt and parts of the car totally black. That's with nothing in the Spec Map folder, AT ALL! Very Very Strange!

[@bunkermonkey_uk]

This might need an update after the changes during the last build ago which adjusted some values?

[@ChazDraycott]

Nope, using this method, it still works in the same manner as I always apply full clear coat in these tutorials ✌🏼

[@bunkermonkey_uk]

@@ChazDraycott No worries! It was just a thought as your video appeared at random this afternoon :D

[@NitroVipers3]

chrome doesnt work with images at all does it? It just makes them very dark. Or am I missing something?

[@ChazDraycott]

It makes the specific area very dark, and it's hard to see the colour in the reflection unless there's direct sunlight on it, but it does "work" as such.

[@NitroVipers3]

I made a cool car but I cant make it shinier

[@ChazDraycott]

@@NitroVipers3 If you follow the instructions exactly bud, it should work. The process hasn't changed since the video was released.

[@ChazDraycott]

Apologies, I believe I may have misunderstood your original comment. You mention images - are you using a picture/image as part of your design? In which case, a chrome effect would still work - the spec map isn't affected by the design of the car - but it doesn't have a very good end result.

[@NitroVipers3]

@@ChazDraycott Hmm I posted a pic of the car here but it didnt work, I was going to show you before and after, my whole car is wrapped like it would in real life.

[@TomzV2]

so weird one, i save the car_123456 as a tga to correct car folder, livery shows on the car in the paint section in the UI, i then load into a test session and car is in default livery- i go to check the file car_123456 and its deleted itself? i used to run a livery from TP and have removed this from the car aswell.

[@ChazDraycott]

It sounds like there's a match of conditions there, like this. - You have Trading Paints running, with it set to "update my own paints" or "clean up files etc." - You do not have a livery for that car uploaded to Trading Paints, so it is deleting anything you put onto the car manually as it doesn't match what's on their database i.e nothing.

[@TomzV2]

@@ChazDraycott I got it to work i think - thanks very much for the helpful video

[@roberthayward2805]

I am not the sharpest tool in the shed and have watched a lot of spec map tutorials including this one and I find them all go to fast for novices like me. Like when you use the 3 colours I didn't get to see what tool you used to make the 3 squares. I have never been able to follow the tutorials because as I say the go to fast and you can't see what tools they click on. I get the feeling I will never be able to do them.

[@ChazDraycott]

Sorry Robert I didn't see your comment until now. Apologies if I went over it too quickly. KZbin does have the option to slow down playback and you can even skip between frames when the video is paused using "," and "." I believe. To get the colour selector up, just double-click the higher of the coloured squares in the bottom left of the tool bar. Hopefully this will help.

[@mrboejangles9135]

I'll make it even simpler, instead of having to lock the pixles, just use the color overlay in each layer and type the values in.

[@Racer-X-090]

Great Video! 🤘

[@thebackwardstrapper]

LOL I got more confused than i did from iracing explanation.

[@ChazDraycott]

Sorry it didn't work out.

[@KTapio22]

Chaz needs to learn to save via actions. Pro tip

[@ChazDraycott]

I do that for screenshots that I edit in bulk, but for the amount of liveries I edit, I need to make sure I have titles and locations correct so just prefer to do it manually.

[@KTapio22]

@@ChazDraycott Fair enough

[@brentonedwards]

Bro hasn't heard of Black 3.0

[@warplotus]

and we save the file to where?? do we leave the "turn off before exporting tga" off? you skipped a few key portions as others have. which make this a worthless attempt by the viewer... and yes... my car is blue and pink...

[@ChazDraycott]

If you pause the video for a sec, you'll see the path where you need to save them. Documents > iRacing > paint > whatevercaryourepainting Also, you only need to turn off the "Turn Off" group if it contains anything you don't want on your car. This doesn't have any effect to the file unless you've included parts of your spec map in that group. Hope this helps 👍🏼

[@Myler709x]

Same here. I’m saving it where I save all my paints, when I upload to trading paint my car is shown exactly how it’s saved as all blue and pink. Not sure what I’m doing wrong here.

[@thewelsho]

How can someone take something SO complicated and make it SOOOOO simple! You should banned! Off with your head I say, how dare you! :D

[@albertino4631]

You are a great man, after a lot of hours spent to do nothing that work, with your video I took five min to do a nice spec livery. It would be nice and apreciable if you can text here some combination of textures with the numbers for each texture: b xxx g xxx r xxx nice Chrome for example. I hope you’ll do it. Thank you so much and wait for some tips ❤