I've spent some time trying this tonight.

I took the basic twizy image, magic wand selected the paint colour part of the vehicle, then cut and paste that as a new layer. I then converted the paint colour layer to grayscale.

Next, using the colorise filter, applied to the grayscale paint layer, I tried colouring it with a colour wheel. It worked beautifully. I could generate all the possible colours, and the paint highlights and shadows looked really good.

I'll now see if I can do this programatically in iOS. If I can, we can dramatically reduce the amount of artwork required for each vehicle. Just a couple of base image layers and a 4-byte ARGB code for each standard vehicle (plus a colour wheel for users to choose their own custom colour).

Proof of concept - some colour suggestions for Renault:

Base grayscale layer:

 +  = 

Colorised:


Regards, Mark.

On 25 Jan, 2013, at 8:13 PM, Mark Webb-Johnson <mark@webb-johnson.net> wrote:

We've had this request a few times, and it would be great to do.

I've been wondering if there is a generic way to do this, but not being in any way proficient with photoshop, I'm not sure if it is possible. Can we somehow have a base layer of the solid bits of the car, then an overlay layer colour mask. Then, somehow apply a colour slider to the colour mask layer to generate the different colour variations of the car? That way, we would only need 1 image for each car (ok, two images: a base layer and a colour layer), but could generate any colour we want in the App itself (including custom colours) just with a colour-wheel (as well as provide stock colour choices). Rather than the current approach of just an image filename, this would become a base vehicle type and RGB colour selection. Any photoshop experts know how to do this?

That wouldn't solve the problem of custom car artwork, which we would still have to allow for, but would (a) dramatically reduce the number of images for each car required, and (b) allow for custom colour variations.

Regards, Mark.

On 25 Jan, 2013, at 6:33 PM, Nikki Gordon-Bloomfield <nikki@littlecollie.com> wrote:

A feature which would be nice is for owners to add their own JPG image for his or her own car. Could be a nice personalisation touch...

Sent from my iPhone

On 25 Jan 2013, at 10:13, Nikolay Shishkov <nshishkov@yahoo.com> wrote:

Thanks - I was wondering why the car images were so sharp... now I know.


From: Mark Webb-Johnson <mark@webb-johnson.net>
To: OVMS Developers <ovmsdev@lists.teslaclub.hk>
Sent: Friday, January 25, 2013 10:48 AM
Subject: Re: [Ovmsdev] Android App

Nikolay,

Here are the contents:

8.0K AndroidManifest.xml
116K META-INF
1.3M classes.dex
 13M res
100K resources.arsc

The App is 1.3MB, and the resources 13MB.

Of that, 11MB are the graphics for the cars.

I am working on a framework where we don't have to deliver those with the Apps (iOS and Android), but downloaded them from the web after installation. That will also allow us to upload new car graphics without having to change the apps.

Regards, Mark.

On 25 Jan, 2013, at 5:41 PM, Nikolay Shishkov <nshishkov@yahoo.com> wrote:

Is there any good reason why the app size is 12MB?