GeneRally Tutorials

How to use Windows Paint to edit a track profile?

This tutorial does not teach to use the track editor. It's assumed that you already know how to make tracks and tells how to use Paint with the track editor.

I didn't manage to change the menu language in my XP Home Edition, so the language in the images is Finnish. I hope it doesn't disturb too much.

In my opinion, the best way to create tracks is to draw the profile in the track editor and then modify it (or fix the ugly parts, draw straight lines etc.) in Paint. This tutorial only shows how to edit the bitmap.

1: Create a track in the track editor and export the image

Launch the track editor and draw the profile. If you want to draw the profile in Paint, draw some points of the surface types you want to use on the track. Drawing these points will help you to find the right colors when using Paint.

When you're done, press the "Export Land" button in the editor window. The "Import Land" button is used later to import the image having been edited. After pressing "Export Land" a saving window will appear. Choose a location and filename to save and press "Save".

Image 1. The track editor.

2: Selecting colors in Paint

Open the exported bitmap in Paint. Now that you have drawn those surface material points, it's easy to use the pipet tool to select the color you want.

Image 2. Use the pipet tool to get a color of a surface material.

3: Copy-paste function

You can insert cool images (tm) from another image files with Paint's copy-paste function. However, several colors look different in Paint than what they will finally look in the game.

Image 3. Paste from other images.

4: Saving the bitmap

When you save the bitmap file, be sure that you have chosen 16-color BMP in the file format menu. It's also necessary that the size of the image is 512*512 pixels. This isn't a problem if you haven't changed the size. The size can be chosen by pressing ctrl-E, which will show you an image properties window (hope that shortcut key is the same with all language versions).

Image 4. When saving the image, the format must be 16-color BMP.

5: Importing the image back to the track editor

Now that you have a track profile image, you can import it back to the track editor by pressing the "Import Land" button in the track editor (see Image 1).