Proper re-painting without kits?

PVP_playerPro

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Having just recently re-started my fictional rail line project, i quickly ran into one of the problems that plagued me in the past; not being able to effectively repaint stuff well. The bump map rip method (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_9qVRRnk6ks) works...okay-ish on some things, but for a majority of JR's stuff, especially the newer things, this is no longer workable for various reasons. Not to mention any other potential content that might not even come with that map

Of course i don't expect JR to dump kits for everything they have, so i'm curious if anybody would have some resources/tips so i can create some sort of kit(s) for myself. Hoping there is something better than having to sit down and redraw every small line all day :p

Example; splotch of paint shows the (flat, bad) paint job that i would end up with without having the dark lines a kit would come with. https://i.imgur.com/5Sob32P.png

Obviously anything i paint wont be released publicly, just need something to make my layout(s) feel less like a mess of railroads, and more like mine

Edit: Also i forgot there is more than just the dark lines, there's stuff like shadows, exhaust soot on the roof, etc that just aren't doable with that bump map method
 
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Example; splotch of paint shows the (flat, bad) paint job that i would end up with without having the dark lines a kit would come with. https://i.imgur.com/5Sob32P.png
You need to use a different technique - painting over the top of the image won't work. In this case, you should be using a magic select tool, to select areas that fall within an existing colour range, and then a recolour tool to change the shade of those selected regions. That is one way to preserve the existing detail. There are others, such as using layers, creating colour in defined areas in a new layer, and then using the appropriate layer merge function to merge the new layer onto the original while preserving detail. There are some examples here:
https://en.wikibooks.org/wiki/Trainz/Tutorial_for_Reskinnng_a_Locomotive_using_Paint.Net
 
If i have a 'blank" engine/car with those details in place, i already i know how to paint over them properly to retain those details. The issue is that tutorial is starting with a blank template, i'm starting with, at best, an engine that has lots of different colors on it. i find it impossible to properly match and then whiten them evenly enough to make for a proper canvas, like a reskin kit.
 
If i have a 'blank" engine/car with those details in place, i already i know how to paint over them properly to retain those details. The issue is that tutorial is starting with a blank template, i'm starting with, at best, an engine that has lots of different colors on it. i find it impossible to properly match and then whiten them evenly enough to make for a proper canvas, like a reskin kit.
There is no significant difference between the example used in the tutorial and any other image. If you are trying to bring areas of different colour to one colour (and there is no need for it to be white) while preserving the detail, then you simply need to use multiple area selection processes - one for each colour you need to match to. Some restoration of detail might be required where the detail cannot be distinguished - that's what the clone tool is for.
 
Guess ill just stick to redrawing all the lines then, since i have yet to find a way to properly color match and then "remove" paint with GIMPs tools, and google is useless
 
Guess ill just stick to redrawing all the lines then, since i have yet to find a way to properly color match and then "remove" paint with GIMPs tools, and google is useless

Don't use Gimp - it can't do this properly. Paint.Net has the tools you need. The advanced colour replacement tool allows you to select existing colours in the image using a range of values. You adjust the range to get an exact match to what you want to replace, and then choose your re-colour option. This works for the vast bulk of the image, but there might be some places where the colour and the detail are too similar to separate - those spots will need touching up with another tool, and the clone tool usually does the job very easily. Sometimes you have to do it in two steps - replace with something at very high contrast (such as white), touch up, and replace with final colour. Of course, effects like weathering are then laid over the top of that. By working with layers you can work on one section of the image at a time, without that work affecting any other section.
 
i still have yet to see this demonstrated at all. the color replace plugin does hardly anything at all, and using any oither method available with paintNET ends up with just the same sloppy result from gimp or PS
 
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