Vehicle Wrap Templates

[batman]

General question, Who do you use for your vehicle templates for vehicle wraps, who is the best and more precise out there. We have bee using digital design ware's digital auto library and our wraps are always off, some by a little some by a a lot. Any and all feedback is greatly appreciated.

 

[J Hill Designs]

From what I have gathered, it is a combo of templates, digital pic, and actual measurements to minimize error margin.

 

[grafixemporium]

Haven't found a template that was accurate yet... unless I made it. For most vehicles, we use digital pics. Just snap a pic of the side of the vehicle with the camera centered horizontally and vertically -- meaning you'll have to hold the camera about waist high in most situations. Take one reference measurement and then scale that photo up to actual size in Photoshop. We actually scale it up to 1/10th size at 1000ppi. PS handles the files a little better and you wind up with a print ready file that is 100ppi if you scale it up 1000% in your RIP.

For cars with crazy curves (like a Bug) or boats, jet skis, etc we make our own paper templates then slap them up on a wall and take a digital pic. Remember to draw something on your template that you can use to scale with. We typically mark off 12 inches. Take it into PS and scale your mark up to 12" (or 1.2" at 1000ppi) and you're good to go.

 

[cmaxdesigns]

We use Pro Vehicle Outlines for wraps. Sure they are a little bit off on measurements here and there but for the most part they are a great reference tool and work better then pictures. Pictures are definitely going to be off because the lens on any camera is curved and therefor skews pictures. We have tried the pictures way and wasted a lot of material in the process. I think jhilldesigns said it best, use the templates but take measurements of the vehicle itself for good measure. A dually, HHR, bugs and other complex curve cars are the ones that make it difficult to get right on a template because templates (just like pictures) are not 3 dimensional. So a template may show 2.4 feet from bottom of fender to top but the actual vertical coverage area is 3.2 feet. Hope this helps.

 

[DGDesigns]

Also, you can reduce/remove curvature of the vehicle by moving away from the vehicle around 50' and zoom in for your digital pictures. This was a definite issue with Badwraps templates.

 

[HeavyHitter]

Haven't found a template that was accurate yet... unless I made it. For most vehicles, we use digital pics. Just snap a pic of the side of the vehicle with the camera centered horizontally and vertically -- meaning you'll have to hold the camera about waist high in most situations. Take one reference measurement and then scale that photo up to actual size in Photoshop. We actually scale it up to 1/10th size at 1000ppi. PS handles the files a little better and you wind up with a print ready file that is 100ppi if you scale it up 1000% in your RIP.

For cars with crazy curves (like a Bug) or boats, jet skis, etc we make our own paper templates then slap them up on a wall and take a digital pic. Remember to draw something on your template that you can use to scale with. We typically mark off 12 inches. Take it into PS and scale your mark up to 12" (or 1.2" at 1000ppi) and you're good to go.

Agreed. In most cases I make all of my own templates. I trust my dims over a template. At least if it is wrong I can yell at myself.