Trading Paints Update Notes: September 5, 2016
Steve Luvender • September 5, 2016
We’ve just rolled out some new features and updates for Trading Paints!
We spent a lot of time improving the design, functionality, and overall experience of Paint Builder (and the rest of the Trading Paints web app) over the past several months, and we’re really excited about bringing all these new features to the iRacing community.
Here’s what’s new.
Website/General
Improved text appearance to use system fonts for better legibility, consistency, and faster load times.
Improved appearance and messaging of notifications dropdown menu.
Changed the Trading Paints logo and indicators throughout to SVG image format for better appearance and faster load times.
Fixed alignment of menus on small-screen devices.
Improved messaging of the notifications screen for better clarity.
Updated social media sharing capabilities — when sharing a Showroom link on major social media websites, an image of the vehicle should appear instead of the Trading Paints logo.
Added rel=noopener security to user-generated links in user profiles.
Fixed the color profile of Trading Paints EPS logos on the Brand page.
You will now receive a Trading Paints notification if you’ve had a popular paint (updates daily at midnight EDT).
Dashboard/My Files
Added a new tab for Pro members: Paint Builder Paints. This screen lists all of your Paint Builder projects for easier editing access.
Added more active filtering of selecting correct files when uploading a paint. Most browsers will show only TGA, PNG, and JPG files in the file select dialog when selecting a paint file to upload.
When assigning a Paint Builder project as your primary paint, the paint preview will be shown with a mask.
When choosing a popular Showroom paint from the “Find a Paint” window, you can now Favorite a paint without leaving the screen.
When choosing a popular Showroom paint from the “Find a Paint” window, 50 popular paints are now listed instead of 20 paints.
Showroom
Changed the “Following” screen to show the latest paints from those you’re following, rather than popular paints from those you’re following
Improved appearance of vehicle selection on the Showroom upload screen
Clicking the star on a paint from any Showroom screen will now Favorite the paint (previously it only opened the list of drivers who’ve favorited the paint).
Fixed a discrepancy between the number of drivers who are racing a paint shown and the actual number of drivers racing with a paint. This means most Showroom paints will see a reduction in number of drivers racing. We had not been accounting for drivers who raced a paint but then switched to another paint. (We hate to burst bubbles, but hey—egos get bruised in racing sometimes!)
After selecting to race a paint, the “My Paints” button inside the success message now links to that vehicle on the My Paints screen.
You will now receive a Trading Paints notification if someone replies to your comment.
Fixed an issue where users’ profile photos were not appearing in the “Number of drivers racing” list.
Fixed a horizontal scroll bar appearing on paint scheme pages.
Fixed an issue in the notifications list where a preview photo of a paint would not appear if the first photo was deleted.
Fixed Painters search filter that was not working correctly.
Downloader
Released an optional update, v1.4.0, which adds support for Sim Preview in Paint Builder, as well as other minor tweaks and fixes.
Paint Builder
Sim Preview: Preview your Paint Builder paint in progress in the iRacing sim! With Trading Paints downloader v1.4.0 or later running, as well as an iRacing session (or replay) with the appropriate vehicle type, the Sim Preview button will activate. Pressing the Sim Preview button will transfer and load your Paint Builder project to your car in iRacing. This should be an especially helpful feature for painters as it requires no saving or file management — you just press Sim Preview when painting and you’ll see how it looks in iRacing. NOTE: iRacing does not refresh paints if you are outside of your car. Ensure you are outside of your pit stall or in the car when pressing Sim Preview, or else your paint will not update.
Sharing: Share your Paint Builder project with another Trading Paints Pro member! In the Options menu, you’ll now see a “Share Project” option. From this new screen, you can manage who has access to open your Paint Builder project.
Zoom: You can now zoom in and out on your project, as well as manually set zoom percentage.
My Logos: The logos you’ve uploaded to Paint Builder projects are now saved into your library. This will save a lot of time when using the same logo on multiple portions of a car. You can delete logos from your library that are not actively being used on any Paint Builder projects.
You can now lock and unlock layers. Locking a layer prevents it from being edited or moved, until it is unlocked. Locked layers are indicated by a clickable lock icon in the layer list, and are also given a “not allowed” cursor when hovering over the object in the Paint Builder canvas.
Paint Builder projects are now assigned a unique editing URL, so navigating away from a project or reloading a page will allow you to resume your progress without navigating to find your project again.
You can now drag a PNG image file from your computer onto the Paint Builder canvas.
Added (well, re-added — this was a short-lived feature in the first version of Paint Builder that was lost on that fateful day) the ability to submit your Paint Builder project to the Showroom from Paint Builder.
The Create a New Paint menu has been redesigned to more easily choose a vehicle to paint.
Redesigned how logos are presented in the Insert Logo screen to give better respect to logo dimensions.
Redesigned how shapes are presented in the Insert Logo screen to give better respect to shape dimensions.
Added a “navigate away” prompt to help prevent accidentally navigating away from your current project.
Removed the ability for the backspace key to navigate away from an open Paint Builder project.
Removed the five-minute inactivity timeout.
Added an easy way to rotate a logo either 90 or 180 degrees from the right click menu when a logo is selected (useful for the other side of the car you’re painting).
Added an adjustable x and y position of paint elements. This provides more precise, scientific control of items on your paint.
Added nearly 1,500 base paint layers, which can be combined with other base paint layers.
Added commonly requested guides and painting layers for many cars, particularly oval cars. These mainly include roof cameras, rear cameras, spoilers, and side skirts.
Added nearly 200 country flags, selectable on the Insert Logo screen on the new “Flags” tab.
The initial Paint Builder screen now defaults to your list of existing projects unless you have no projects.
Adjusted how Car Parts layers are presented; some layers are now hidden by default. This is especially helpful on vehicles like the Super Late Model, where many options for light decals are now available.
You will now see a progress bar when uploading your own logos.
When uploading your own logo, the default layer name is now based off the file name of the selected image.
Fixed appearance and zoom on devices with higher pixel density (retina screens).
You can now close an open modal pop-up window using the Escape key.
If a right-click menu is open, the Escape key will now close the right-click menu.
You can now press “Enter” to confirm changes in an open modal pop-up window.
When editing text, the screen focuses to the text field for faster editing.
Changed appearance of the x, y position indicator.
Added more active filtering of selecting correct files when uploading a logo. Most browsers will show only PNG files in the file select dialog when selecting a logo file to upload.
Adjusted iconography throughout to be more helpful.
Adjusted the appearance of the selected item indicator. The indicator now has two dotted lines in contrasting colors, which helps improve visibility of the selected items.
Renamed “Designs” to “Shapes”, which is a more accurate description.
Added several new shapes. (Thanks to David Damboise for contributing.)
Adjusted consistency of appearance of layers in the layer list.
Adjusted the appearance of the font preview list in the Insert and Edit Text pop-up modal windows, which was breaking outside of the window.
Adjusted the appearance of all modal pop-up windows to allow scrolling where appropriate.
Replaced vehicle masks for oval cars where the colors of the masks were too dark to paint dark-colored cars.
Edit pop-ups now include the name of the selected layer you are editing.
Double clicking the name of the active project opens the Rename prompt.
Upon duplicating a layer, changed focus to the new layer.
Adjusted the appearance of the Paint Builder interface on various screen sizes to give the painting canvas better priority.
Adjusted language of some Paint Builder elements to avoid sponsor selection screens being blocked by in-browser ad-blocking software. (Note: As of January 2016, Trading Paints has no ads — you can safely whitelist tradingpaints.com.)
Moved painting guides and “meta” buttons to a bar fixed to the bottom of the screen for easier access while painting.
Fixed a bug where, on initial load of a new project, painting guides required two clicks to activate.
Fixed a bug where the background color of a paint was not being updated correctly when switching between projects.
Fixed a bug where the default vehicle mask appeared when switching between projects.
Fixed a bug where the New Paint button, when clicked from the Open screen, would not activate the New Paint screen.
Adjusted how application feedback messages are presented.
Added a feedback message when you successfully assign a Paint Builder project as your active paint (by clicking “Race this paint”).
Fixed an issue where the dotted selector line would not follow the selected item when the item was set to a very small size.
Fixed an issue where ordering of layers from Paint Builder were not transferring to the actual car consistently, resulting in car parts layers appearing over logos.
Fixed an issue where you could still see an Edit button on the My Paints screen for a deleted Paint Builder project when you had the project assigned as your active paint.
Paint Builder Keyboard Commands
Shift + +: Zoom in.
Shift + –: Zoom out.
Shift + 0: Set zoom to 100%.
Ctrl + Scroll: Zoom in/out.
K: Open Keyboard Shortcuts window
1: Toggle Car Mask on/off
2: Toggle Wireframe on/off
3: Toggle Sponsor Placement Blocks on/off
4: Toggle Number Placement Blocks on/off
5: Toggle Grid on/off
Arrow keys: Move the selected item up, down, left, or right on the canvas.
Shift + Arrow keys: Move the selected item up, down, left, or right on the canvas 10 pixels at a time.
Escape: Deselect the selected item.
Delete/Backspace: Delete the selected item.
Ctrl + Click / Alt + Click: Duplicate the selected item.
T: Open the Insert Text tool.
S: Open the Insert Shape tool.
L: Open the Insert Logo tool.
M: Open the My Logos window.
B: Open the Insert Base Paint tool.
As always, we truly appreciate all your support, feedback, and patience! We want to make Paint Builder the best, easiest, and most seamless way for everybody to design custom paints, and we’re very confident this update makes Paint Builder even better.