This was posted to the oletruck list. I thought it was an interesting
approach to custom painting.
Dave Camp
> I came up with a trick that worked so well (better than I could have
hoped),
> I just thought I'd better share it:
>
> Preamble: to make a long story short, the asymmetry of the wannabe rod was
> driving me nuts, and so I tore into the drivers side bodywork sooner than
> planned. Lot's of internal and external metalwork ensued, but I saved the
> drivers door. Got everything primered, and then yellow. Got the door
hung,
> and shot the last color coat. Then, a big challenge... how to get the
> flames the same as what I'd done earlier on the passenger side. Here's a
> neat solution I came up with:
>
> 1) Rolled the truck out into the driveway, and took several photos with my
> digital camera, noting distance from the truck, and approximate height off
> the ground. Rolled truck back into garage.
> 2) Previewed the photos by dropping the flash-card into my palm-PC.
Decided
> which one gave the best view of the flames and infared beamed the chosen
pic
> onto my laptop.
> 3) Opened the image in photoshop and flipped the image left-to-right so it
> looked like a drivers side photo.
> 4) Next, I digitally superimposed some "way-points" in bright red: door
> seams, the main horizontal body ridge, bottom of the door, and a big red
dot
> at the center of the front wheel.
> 5) I work with a bunch of marketing guys, who give remote presentations a
> lot... and have a few of those nice "In Focus" projectors for
presentations
> ;-) Borrowed one for the weekend, and placed it such that the lens was as
> close as possible to where the camera lens was (on the other side) when I
> shot the photos. Hooked it up to my laptop, and projected the display
onto
> the side of the truck.
> 6) Using my software, deleted the picture of the truck leaving only the
> way-points.
> 7) Skewed, rotated, scaled, etc., the image so that all of the way-points
> I'd created lined up when projected onto the truck.
> 8) Turned off the way-points, and turned the image layer back on, dimmed
the
> lights in the garage.
>
> The effect at this point was amazing- at first glance it really looked
like
> I'd already painted the truck. From here it was just a matter of putting
> down the first masking tape along the projected edges. Once that was
done,
> I turned off the projector, and worked just to make things look "right",
> with a final check against the projected image to make sure things were
> still real close.
>
> Without this trick, I expect masking the second side would be a lot harder
> than the first- in actuality it was much easier/faster, because I didn't
> have to "make it up", it was basically like painting by the numbers.
>
> A few pics of the work that followed:
> http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ds1.JPG
> http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ds2.JPG
> http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ds3.JPG
> Here's the image I ended up using for the projection work:
> http://home.earthlink.net/~rborder/truck/ps.JPG
>
> Pinstriping and clear-coat follow the last of those pics, the clear-coat
> gets the yellow matching what's on the rear fender. Had my share of woes
> actually- but that's a tale for another day.
>
> Ryan.
> oletrucks is devoted to Chevy and GM trucks built between 1941 and 1959
>
|
