Brushing Bodywork

I did this really quick so the look of my new front end looks a little wierd. This is more just to demonstrate the steps involved to create your own brushed kits. Be creative when doing your own bodywork. You can also look at real designs to get ideas of what you might want to create for your project. Be sure to keep in mind perspectives and proportions when creating new openings.

Step 1: Lets get started. Find you car, and outline any existing opennings with the poly lasso tool. This one was pretty easy because of the single, small opening.

Step 2: Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N). Select the Brush tool with a large head at 100% opacity and a soft edge. Find a color around the area you want to fill and brush over the old openings. Find the colors that are closest to the area you're filling and bring the opacity down. Brush in everything until it blends well with the car.

Step 3: Grab the poly lasso and start outlining a new opening for the center. Like I said, this is not a perfect example, but it will give you the feel of what's happening. Create a New Layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and Fill (Shift+F5) it with black.

- If at this point you don't really like your new shape, you can transform this to make it a better fit since it is it's own layer. ;)

Step 4: With the poly lasso create an outline to your new opening, keeping in mind the overall perspective and your vanishing points. Create a new layer (Ctrl+Shift+N) and Brush in this area. It's best to start with something light in the body color and work towards your darker shadows.

Step 5: Go through the same steps with the Poly Lasso tool to create any more parts that will make up the interior part of the new opening. This one I Brushed really bright to match the highlights on the bumper.

Step 6: Add as many new vents as you like, keeping mind the style of the car, and how the bodylines flow. I tried to keep mine simple for explanation purposes. On these 2 outer side vents I'll start by outlining with the Polly Lasso tool what I want one side at a time.

Step 7: Make a New Layer and fill this with black. Now since I want to make the side vent look moulded in with the center opening, I'll make another outline with the Polly Lasso for some shadow and fading, only worrying about the top and bottom edges.

Step 8: Create a New Layer. Send this new layer behind the previous layer by clicking Cntl + [, or just click on that layer in the layers menu and drag it down.. Use your Brush with a darker color selected from the car, and create the shadows you want.

Step 9: I took a shortcut and duplicated my last vent layer. Moved it over and flipped it horizontal. It took a small amount of transforming with the distort function to get the angle to look right for the new position.

Step 10: Repeat the process in step 8 to make you shadows on this side. Make sure that if your outline is overlapping another layer, the layer you’re working on is underneath it (ctrl [ ). I used several colors with the brush to get the highlights and shadows in this small space.

Step 11: Go to your very top layer on your layers menu, and pick the line tool (or the pen tool) from the tool menu. Find a light color with the eydropper (holding down the Alt key). Go around the edges with 1 px thick lines. You might have to choose different colors along the way to make them blend right. The goal is to make a believable highlight to add some dimension to your flat edges. In the end, I also merged all the line shape layers to one layer and use the eraser to help blend just a little more. If you use the pen tool for this, you can add anchor points along the way to get smoother radiuses. (Use the pen tool only if you are familiar with it's functions, otherwise stay with the line tool.)

Now you can add intercoolers, lights, grill mesh, license plates, or whatever else you want to add to complete the look you're trying to achieve. I brushed in a front lip and lowered it too.