How can I see a paint I am creating on a car?

Currently, the only way to preview your paint on a car is to load the paint to your vehicle and open the iRacing sim. iRacing does not provide any 3D tools for previewing cars outside of the simulation software.

An easy way to preview your paint locally without uploading to Trading Paints is to name your work-in-progress paint file car_xxxxxx.tga (where xxxxxx is your iRacing Customer ID number), place the file in your Documents\iRacing\paint\whatever_vehicle folder, and open an iRacing testing session with the vehicle you’ve selected.

While painting, if you want to make changes to your paint, you can re-save the TGA file to your folder, then press Ctrl + R in the iRacing sim to re-load your car texture. Your car will flash white for a moment, then show your updates. (Note: When viewing a replay and refreshing your paint, move your replay to a point where your car is not in the pit lane. iRacing will not reload paints of cars in their pit stalls.)

Don’t forget to upload your finished paint to the My Paints section of Trading Paints so everyone else can see your car!