The scope of this tutorial is to illustrate basic painting techniques for use with Nascar Racing 3. I will also touch on advanced techniques such as layering, shading, and anti-aliasing.
While there are easier ways to perform some of the steps I'm outlining, I'll be adhering to a more strict regimen of identifiable steps that ANYBODY can perform, regardless of their familiarity with DOS, Windows, Nascar Racing 3, and their paint program(s) of choice.
Further, I am going to assume that you are using Paintshop Pro 5 as your external paint program because it is available in the form of a 30-day free trial and is generally available to anybody that has the ability to browse the web.
The sim will be referred to as NR3 from this point forward, and Paintshop Pro will be referred to as PSP.
Papyrus has provided us with a couple of critical components that make your painting job much simpler. These compnents include the following items:

• IMPORT.PCX This file can be found in the NR3 folder on your hard drive. It's used to help you position a newly painted car into a predefined format with an uncorrupted palette. Use of this file is an ESSENTIAL part of painting cars for NR3.
• CAR MASK.SEL This is a PSP selection file and is used to eliminate the parts of the painted area that do not conform to the expected paintable sections in the sim's paintshop. This is also an ESSENTIAL part of painting cars. If any section of the non-paintable area has ANY other color than olive green (as exported by the sim), you will recieve the now infamous "corrupted palette" error message when you attempt to import the car back into the sim.
• NASCAR3.PAL This is a palette file specifically for PSP, and needs to be applied to your finished paintjob in order to provide a satisfactory adjustment to the color palette used in NR3.
• TEMPLATE1.PCX This file is the Chevrolet painting template.
• TEMPLATE2.PCX This file is the Pontiac painting template.
• TEMPLATE3.PCX This file is the Ford painting template.

You may notice that the three templates all have the same "generic" front clip (upper/lower grills, and headlights). This is due to licensing issues between Papyrus and the three auto manufacturers. Rather than pay the outrageous licensing fees demanded by the auto makers, Papyrus decided to generisize the more readily identifiable portions of these templates. This means that it's up to you to find suitable replacements to make the cars appear more authentic in NR3. Fortunately, there are several alternative templates available with more appropriate grill/headlight sections available on the internet.
There is also a file called NAS2PAD.PCX available on the web which is essentially a screen capture of the paint palette as it exists in NR3's paintshop. This file will help you to pick colors that aren't too abhorant to NR3, and will result in less radical palette adjustments when you apply the palette adjusment file in PSP.

Before you can paint a car, you need to create and export a car to be painted. This is fairly simple process, and once you get used to it, it will require less than two minutes of your time.

1. Click "Driver Info" in the main menu. This will take you to a screen with two lists of cars. The one on the left are the cars that are NOT included in the list on the right. The list on the right are the cars included in the currently selected car list.
2. At the bottom of the screen, you'll see several selections. Click on "New Driver". A dialog box (of sorts) will be provided that allows you to enter a car file name and select the chassis type. For car name, enter up to eight characters for the filename. Chassis selection is fairly important, as the three chassis painting templates provided by Papyrus are all slightly different. For this reason, pick the chassis you plan on sticking with because more than just the grille area changes when you pick a different chassis.
3. When you're done with the dialog box, click "OK". The dialog box will go away, and the list of cars on the left side of the screen will be updated to include car #83 and will be labelled "The Player".
4. Do NOT exit the sim at this point. You've still got to export the car into a PCX file so you can edit the paintjob in an external paint program.
5. Select the newly created car from the list on the left (just click on it - it should turn yellow).
6. In the menu at the bottom edge of the screen, click on "Driver Info".
7. At the bottom edge of the screen, click on "Paint Shop". The screen will change yet again, revealing the actual template of the car.
8. On the bottom edge of the screen, click "Export". This will create a file called "Xzzzzzzz.PCX" in your Nascar Racing 3 directory. The "zzzzzzz" will be the first 7 letters of the file name you specified in Step 2.
9. You're finished with the sim for now, so go ahead and click on "Exit" until you're completely out of the sim and back at the Windows desktop.

1. Start PSP.
2. Load the desired template provided by Papyrus. For this example, we'll be painting a Chevorlet, so select TEMPLATE1.PCX.
   Notice that the template features a (ugh) green base color. For now, we'll go ahead and keep this color. While you're here, also zoom in a little on the image, and notice that various shades of green are used in the paintjob. Most of you will say "That's neat, but doesn't the sim do it's own higlighting through specular adjustments to the cars as they move?". Well, okay, most of you won't ask it exactly that way. No matter, the answer is yes, but NR3 still needs a little help to allow it to display convincing highlighting, and that's where these templates come in.
3. In the menu, click File | Save as.... A file dialog box will be displayed. Browse to your NR3 directory, and select the file you created earlier. Click the OK button and confirm that you want to overwrite the existing file.
   What you've done is you have replaced the original #83 tye-dyed Papy shill paintjob with a plain green car.
4. Double-click the "Selection" tool button (looks like a box formed with a dotted line). A dialog box will be displayed. In the field labeled "Right", enter a value of 363. In the field labeled "Bottom", enter a value of 234. Finally, click the OK button.
   You will notice that a selection marquee (an animated dashed line) has been placed around the entire olive green section of the image.
5. Press CTRL-C to copy the selction, and then CTRL-V to paste the copied selection into a new window. You should now have the original image in a window, and the newly created image in a second window. Since you no longer really need the original image window, you may either minimize it or close it.
6. In the PSP menu, select "Colors | Increase Color Depth | 16 million colors (24-bit)". This allows you to use a handy feature while painting called "anti-aliasing".
   Anti-aliasing allows the paint program to blend colors for you when you add text, draw lines, or paste in images, and is quite possibly one of the most important aspects of painting in NR3. Now we're ready to try some stuff. If you've already done the stuff in the following step, skip to the next step.
7. Select a foreground color that provides a good contrast against green - for now, try yellow.
   Next, click the text tool button (it has a capital "A" on it). Then, position the cusor over the driver's door area of the template image, and left click the mouse. A dialog box will be displayed allowing you to select a font, a font size, and enter some text to be placed on the image.
   For our example, let's use the "Impact" font, in 36 point, and we'll also make it bold. In the text entry area, type in the number 25, and click the OK button.
   The image will now have a yellow "25" surrounded by the selection marquee. Use the mouse to center the number horizontally between the weheel wells, and vertically between the top and bottom of the green body panel.
   When you're happy with the position, right click the mouse. The animated marquee line will go away, and the number will be anchored to the image. Zoom in on the number, so you can see the shading performed by PSP. Pretty nifty, eh?
   Now, press CTRL-Z. This will undo the de-selection of the text (the animated marquee line will return). Pressing CTRL-Z once again will move the text back to the spot where it originally appeared on the screen. What I'm trying to illustrate hjere is that PSP features a multiple un-do facility that will allow you to back-track through several operations. Again, pretty nifty, eh? Go ahead and put the number back on the car.
   Now, select the line tool button, and position the mouse cursor in the middle of the front wheel well area (in the olive green section of the image) on the passenger side of the car. Click and hold down the left mouse button and draw the mouse cursor to an area just behind the rear bumper section of the rear quarterpanel.
   At this point, we're done playing with the actuial painting tools, because I want to go over how to adjust the image so that NR3 won't choke and puke when you try to re-import it.
8. In the PSP menu, click "Colors | Load palette...". A dialog box will be displayed allowing you to select a .PAL palette file to apply to the image. Find the PAL file provided by Papyrus in the NR3 directory and double-click it. (I moved the NR3 PAL file to the PSP Palettes folder for easier access.)
   This action causes PSP to adjust colors to their nearest matching color in the palette that you just loaded. Notice that the numbers appear a little (but not much) more jaggy. This is okay because the NR3 palette supports only 147 colors. You will also notice that the olive green area turned into dark gray. Again, this is okay, because we're not done yet.
9. In the PSP menu, click "Selections | Load from file...". A dialog box will be displayed allowing you to pick a .SEL selection file. Find the SEL file provided by papyrus (again, in the NR3 folder), and double click it. The dialog box will go away, and the image will have all of the body panels outlined with the animated marquee line.
10. Press CTRL-C to copy the outlined body panels. No visible changes will occur as a result of this action.
11. Open the IMPORT.PCX file - again, you can find it in the NR3 folder. Once the image is loaded, zoom it once so you can get a better look at it. Notice that the body panel areas are all a light gray.
12. Make sure you currently have the IMPORT.PCX image selected, and press CTRL-E to paste the copied body panels into the currently selected image. The copied body panels will appear in the image window, and the cursur will be a four-way arrow.
13. Move the copied image so that the bodypanels completely cover the gray areas. When they are PERFECTLY aligned, click the left mouse button. If the image moved as you clicked it, use CTRL Z to delete the pasted image, and then CTRL-E to re-paste it. Once it's been positioned and anchored in the right spot, right click the mouse to delete the maruee line.
    Notice that the line that use to show up in the wheel wells is gone. This is because we effectively cut it out of the image by using the selction tool to only copy the parts we actually wanted.
14. In the PSP menu, click "File | Save as..." (DO NOT CLICK "SAVE"!). A dialog box will be displayed allowing you to save the image as a afile on the hard drive. Find your original PCX file in the NR3 folder, and double-click it. Confirm that you want to overwrite the old file.

1. Exit PSP. We're done painting for nowe, and there's no need to keep the program open (but it won't hurt if you want to leave it running).
2. Start NR3, and at the main menu, select "Driver Info".
3. Find your new #83 car in the list on the left, and click it.
4. In the menu at the bottom of the screen, click "Driver Info". You should now see your blank green car. If you don't, look about halfway up the screen on the left side. You'll see two scrolling arrows that allow you to display each car in the car folder. Scroll through all the cars until you find the plain green one.
5. In the menu at the bottom of the screen, click "Paintshop". You should see the familiar flattened car template.
6. In the menu at the bottom of the screen, click "Import". A dialog box will be displayed asking if you want to import team colors. Answer by clicking "NO".
   The template will change to display the car that you painted in PSP. everything should look normal (or as normal as the NR3 palette lets it look). With this basis of knowledge, you should be able to develope other techniques for producing dazzling and much sought-after paintjobs for NR3.

• Paint in logical steps, and save your image under different file names after each major step. This will allow you to start fresh at any given point in the process if you decide your car looks like crap.
• The more familiar you become with PSP, the easier you will be able to incorporate more advanced techniques, and the result will be some rather fantastic paintjobs.

Todays modern stockcars are often referred to as 200 mph billboards. This is your chance to make your mark on the sim racing community, and I'm writing this to give you a visual reference to locations and painting styles. I'll start off by giving you a picture of a NR3 car template. Notice that I have indicated several key points on the picture.

Before I get started, I'd like to point out the symetry issue. The car's passenger side is (for all intents and purposes) a mirror image of the driver's side. This is typical of almost every real-life Winston Cup car ever seen.

(A) This is the quarterpanel area and is reserved for the primary sponsor decal(s). The primary sponsor is the company that ponied up significant cash for the team, and therefore they usually are awarded the most prized pieces of real estate on a Winston Cup car. Usually, this area is limited to just the name of the sponsor, but that depends on the sponsor and their coporate logo.
(B) The hood is the other prime piece of real estate earned by the primary sponsor. After spending $7-10 MILLION dollars on a race team, you should expect and reciebve the best and biggest parts of the car to spread your name on.
(C) As delivered by Papyrus, the front clip has to conform to licensing issues, and that means that all the cars look the same from the front. It's your job to deliniate the brands. There are several websites that have alternative grills, so go get 'em.
(D) Don't forget the front air damn area. It gets contigency decals, and the car number is usually found there as well.
(E) Before each race, NASCAR officials hand out a plastic baggy containing all of the contingency decals that all of the cars must run. They are also given an illustration indicating where each decal is to be placed. In addition to these decals, each team may or may not have additional decals that need to be placed, and they are added to the mix. After all the decals have been placed, there are manuy times when you can't even make out the paintscheme in front of the car number due to the sheer number of decals. Both sides of the car get the identical treatment.
(F) Car numbers are the fastest way to identify a car on the track. NASCAR says that car numbers (on the side of the car) must be centered between the A- and B-pillars on the car. A number is also situated on the roof so that it can be read from the driver side of the car.
(G) The decklid is usually reserved for secondary or tertiary sponsors that didn't write very big checks to the team.
(H) The rear panel is used by either the primary sponsor or the secondary sponsor, again depending on how much money was paid by each. Nascar also states that the car number must be placed on the right (passenger) side of the back panel.
(I) In real life, the back bumper usually doesn't have anything on it, except rookie stripes. In the worlds of sim racing, it's a convenient spot to make whatever statement you might deem necessary. Well, there you have it. A typical Winston Cup car uses two or three contrasting (and complimentary) colors and sponsors can be any company from Adobe to Zerex. With a little bit of talent, anyone can paint a fairly nice car for use in NR3.

The following items are for those of you who have not yet upgraded to PSP5 or 6.

• If you're using a version of Paintshop Pro older than version 5, you car may import in two colors. The problem is that you saved the file as something other than a "Type 5" file (PSP5 does this by default it seems). To remedy the situation, when you're in the "Save as..." dialog box, click the "Options" button and select the correct file type. Many thanks to Jim Love and Sean Beyer for this tip!

I had only two things on my wish list for PSP6 - a way to outline text, and a working skew tool. Both wishes came true, and I'm here to tell you how to do it. For the purposes of example, we'll assume you're adding a car number to the image.

1. Prepare your car image for editing up to the point just after you have increased your color depth to 16 million colors.
2. Click on the Text tool in the tool bar.
3. Position the cursor where you want the text and left click the mouse. A dialog box will be displayed allowing you to enter the text and specify font face, type size, and all that other font stuff.
   New in PSP6 - On the right side of the dialog box, click the "Vector" radio button, and make sure the anti-alias option is checked too. Type the text you want, and click the OK button. The text will appear on the image.
4. Position it where you want it, and then zoom in on the image so that the pixels are about 1/8-inch square. After zooming, the number should be pretty much dominate the screen.
5. In the toolbar on the left side of the screen, select the Vector tool (at the very bottom of the toolbar).
   Notice around your text there is a solid line with square boxes at each corner and in the m iddle of each of the for sides of the box. I call these little boxes pull tabs, but Jasc may use something more accurate.
6. Position the cursor over the pull tab in the middle of the top line, and press and hold down the SHIFT key and left click the mouse on the pull tab. You should now see a little parallelogram icon near the pull tab.
7. Drag the mouse as far as you desire to skew the text, and then let go of the mouse and the SHIFT key.

You now have skewed text. You can skew in any of four directions.
Now for outlining the car number. I'm assuming that you don't currently have the number selected. If you're still working off the instructions above, and you still have the number selected after skewing, skip the first two steps below.

1. Select the Vector tool.
2. Left-click the mouse on the text. You will again see the pull tab square around the object.
3. Right click the mouse on the text. A pop-up menu will be displayed.
4. From the pop-up menu, select Convert Text To Curves. A second pop-up menu will be displayed. Select As Single Shape from this menu. When you do this, the text may change it's appearance a little, but that's nothing to be concerned about.
5. Right click the mouse on text again. That first pop-up menu will be displayed again.
6. From the pop-up menu, select Properties.... A dialog box will be displayed.
7. For "style", select "Stroked and Filled" from the drop-down list.
   Notice that the bottom half of the dialog box is split into two sections - one for "Line" and one for "Fill".
8. In the "Line" section, left-click the mouse in the box labeled "Color". The cursor will turn into an eye-dropper.
9. Pick the desired color. You can pick a color from either the color wheel Jasc provides, or from an image that is currently displayed on the screen. This will be the color your text is outlined in.
10. In the "Fill" section, left-click the mouse in the box labeled "Color".
11. Pick the desired color. Again, you can pick a color from either the color wheel Jasc provides, or from an image that is currently displayed on the screen. This will be the color your text is filled with.
12. Click the OK button.

Your text should now be outlined. All that remains is to make sure the text is positioned in the right place, and then merge your layers.

1. Open up the t_playe.pcx you exported from n3 in psp (paint shop pro). Use the selection to click on the ugly brown background around the car
2. Click on invert under the selection menu. At this point change over the image to 16 million colors in psp. (increase color depth in colors menu) Click on copy.
3. Then open up a new image in photoshop, make the background black or any color your not going to use in the paint job itself, and paste it, also click on preserve transparency. That way the area where you not supposed to paint will not be painted, you have to copy and paste it back into psp when done in photoshop.
4. Edit the car any way you like.
5. Then again use the selection tool, with tolerance set to 1 and anti-aliased UN-checked. Select the area around your paintjob, select invert.
6. Copy and then go back to psp and open up the import.pcx file (n3 folder) go to increase color depth under colors menu and increase it to 16 million colors.
7. Then go to selections, load from disk, and select car_mask.sel (n3 folder)
8. Go to edit, paste, and choose paste into selection. If the colors are jumbled you forgot to increase color depth to 16 million colors.
9. Go to colors menu and choose load pallete from disk and select car_colors.pal (n3 folder). Now your car will match n3's color pallete. it will look different but almost always is close enough.
10. Save the image as t_playe.pcx and then import in in n3's paint shop.