Weathering

[Greebo]

Skychimp has asked me to say a bit about weathering. This is how I do it, but you need to experiment to get a style that suits you.First, get hold of as many photos of your subject as possible and really look at the weathering patterns.

On my skins weathering layers go above the paintjob, but below the panel lines. There are other ways of doing it though. For the actual weathering I use airbrush, paintbrush and eraser tools.

I start by creating a few overall dirty layers in various shades of brown or grey. Using an airbrush tool set to 30 pixels and 1 or 2% density I spray over the whole painted surface, but concentrating on the bits that would get the dirtiest. This ends up looking too grainy, so it needs blurring using a gaussian blur or motion blurs in the direction of the airflow. Experiment with the blur size, a few pixels is usually all that's needed. Sometimes I use a narrow eraser tool stroked up and down the surfaces freehand, to simulate the effect of rainwater washing off the dirt. Once you have a few of these layers in different shades, adjust the layer opacities until you are happy with it.

Next I do some more concentrated dirt layers. The prop throws up dirt, as do the wheels. Perhaps there will be mud splats too. Find out how the airflow curves the exhaust stain around the wings.

Panel lines tend to attract dirt. For this I use a small airbrush tool, 10 pixels or so with a 40%ish density. I go over all the panel lines with this using a dark brown colour.

Dirt tends to hit the front edges of the aircraft and get smeared back. I use an airbrush tool to create the smears, concentrating at the leading edges. Then I use a low opacity eraser to fade each one from the rear.

Exhaust and gun streaks are done using a similar tool, but with low opacity and lots of strokes to build the effect up. I edit them with a low opacity eraser tool. Remember they should get fainter as they move back.

I may gaussian blur any of these layers, you can always undo it if it doesn't look right. Don't try to cram all this on one or two layers, you lose the flexibility to fade each effect's layer.

Paint gets chipped by debris thrown up by the prop and by aircrew and groundcrew walking and working on the plane. Think about which hatches get used most, engine and guns usually, so they will have the most chipping.

The chips are created in light grey using a freehand paintbrush tool, then faded round the edge with a low opacity eraser. Scratches are done the same way, but using a 1 pixel tool. They should be partially erased then the layer faded down. Scratches go around the panel fasteners and on the walkways mainly. You can cut and paste areas of them to save time.

Bullet holes get patched then covered with new paint. Create a layer above the other weathering layers then paint patched areas with the original underneath colour. The dirt layers below will have altered the base colour so the patch stands out. You can fade the layer down a bit if its too much.

Finally I use the freehand tool again to create liquid drips, usually in a red/brwon colour. These can be oil leaks from engine panel gaps or hydraulic leaks around the undercarriage or flaps. (Assuming your plane had hydraulics, the 190s were mostly electric). The freehand tool is set to 2-3 pixels and the drips are flowed around the skin as if it was sitting on the ground, i.e. angled back a bit on a taildragger. The drips are partially erased to make them look less like constant lines.

All of this takes time and a lot of experimentation, don't expect to knock off the weathering in a couple of days if you want it to look good.

[United]

Wow!  Thanks a ton for posting this Greebo.  Very, very, VERY helpful information!

[Kweassa]

Okay.. since Greebo's sharing his trade's secrets Let me add a few of my own. I usually weather stuff as Greebo does, so I'll just add in a few things to his excellent tips.


1. Weathering differs upon aircraft, and the state and quality of their maintenance. So, to do good weathering, it helps to know the history of the plane you are depicting.

 For example, the Fw190A-5 of III./JG2, was Egon Meyer's plane. Meyer was the commander of the unit and a very prominent Ace, and it is natural to assume that the maintenance done to his plane would be generally in better qualuty than the other pilots.

 So, the weathering would be slight, and the plane would generally look 'fresh' in those types of aircraft.




 However, the Fw190A-5 of the SKG10 I did used a bit heavier weathering. The Luftwaffe still had a good quality of paint than compared to the Japanese, and its maintenance status would be still not too bad.




 Notice the 'paint chipping' is heavier than Meyer's A-5, and is concentrated on the areas which would see most movement. Observe the 'line' of chipping following the canopy rails, since the 190 canopies would slide backwards to open. Also, the cowl areas would be constantly removed upon every maintenance inspection, so it requires a bit more chipping.

 However, the more important weathering aspect for this plane would not be in paint chipping, but depicting the ground conditions of the airfields they operated from. Eastern front fighters first began operations in well paved fields, but as the war progressed and the territorial conditions changed, it was not uncommon for these fighters to move to more inferior fields with bad landing strips - often dusty, muddy, and exposed to bad weather.

 Like Greebo explained, there is a certain 'logic' to how these dusty, muddy trails are left behind. Air is sucked by the props and pushed backwards alongside the fuselage. Undern Eastern Front conditions, the 'dust' would be generally reddish/brown soil. It leaves a marked trail of reddish brown alongside the under parts of the side fuselage, as can be noticed in the pic.



2. The way paints chip off, also has its own logic. On surfaces without any obstructions, the paint will chip off in any shape or size. However, when there are obstructions to the surface such as rivets or panel lines, the paints will start to chip off from one corner, and then follow the path of the obstructive surfaces.



 Chipping usually starts at (A) where two panel lines are intersectioned. It progresses towards (B) and (C), but rarely towards the front end of the plane. Usually the chipping progesses towards the rear of the plane.

 As the chipping progresses towards (B) it will become thinner and smaller, until it comes to (B) and meets a line of rivets. And then, the chipping will diverge, one line following the panel line, and the other line following the rivet line.

 The worse the quality of paint, the heavier this tendency becomes - this tendency is especially noticieable in Japaneses planes.



3. Some 'obvious' features have a tendency which may be represented due to popular misconceptions. For instance, the exhaust smoke from the guns.

 Many people portray the gun smoke trails too heavily. I use to do that too. It wasn't until sometime that people showed me a pic of how gun smoke trail was left in real planes, that I noticed there were certain mistakes.

 Smoke trails starting from the barrel of the gun, which leaves a mark on the wings, is usually thin and defined. They are not spreaded out or thick. It is usually a thin line of smoke trail which doesn't fan out.

 Where this smoke trail really 'fans out' and spreads, is the shell ejection port. Here, the smoke trail fans out towards the rear of the plane.


 ..

 Let me see if I can think up any more to be shared.

[SkyChimp]

Woot lol thinks for posting

[Octavius]

I took Greebo's and Nopoop's weathering advice on my last two submits back in the early part of the year.  

One thing I'll add (if it hasnt been mentioned), is to take into account the rivet patterns.  Some have said the rivets are way to bold or way too light... to highlight the rivets without drawing too much attention, I would recommend doing the following:

-Duplicate the rivet layers
-Alter the color to a light grey for darker painted areas.  or Alter the color to a brownish/grey for lighter painted areas.  Whatever looks best is your decision.
-Blur the **** out of the duplicate rivet layers.
-Turn the opacity down.  

That'll give a very slight rivet highlight.  In my Kate, I think the weathering was a tad too strong and that highlight turned into a grid pattern.  It... works.



As for the chips and scratches, it takes forever at 1-2 pixel light grey.  But it's worth it. Find a good area that should be weathered or chipped, and go to town.  It takes me a looong time to do all the individual scratches and chips.  Copy and duplicate areas of weathering and paste them in another area.  Rotate, mirror, or flip the weathering so it doesn't look too obvious it was duplicated to another area.  Much of the wing areas are only a few chips - if you look closely, you can pick out the chipped areas that I copied from place to place on the 112 Sqn P40E.  The whole wingroot area was copied several times, rotated, and thrown on top of one another.   It gave a cool, lazy-inspired effect.

[United]

Oct, I do the same thing as you with the duplicate rivet layer.  I like it a whole lot, and it makes it so the rivets don't stand out too much, but you know they are there.  I think Greebo did it on one or two of his A-20s as well?

[SkyChimp]

Bump:D

[SkyChimp]

Originally posted by SkyChimp
Woot lol thinks for posting

\

Ment thank :

[SkyChimp]

[SkyChimp]

[United]

Greebo, I know you've told me a thousand times, but which texture effect do you use from the effects menu?  Is it Effects/Texture/Texture/Granite?

[Razer]

you guys want weathering, check this out.  The artsit that painted this blows my mind ever time he does something.  I know its another game but you should shoot for something like this.

[Greebo]

I haven't used that method for a while now. But it was Effects/Texture effects/Texture, then no11 in the drop down box. This is for PSP 7 BTW, might be different number in a later version.

What I do now for dirt washes is use a very low density (1-3%) airbrush. I spray this over the airframe concentrating on the leading edges and around the wheels and walkways etc. This looks very grainy, so to soften it I use a gaussian blur of 1 or 2 pixels or a motion blur of 5-10 pixels in the airflow direction. I usually do 2 or 3 layers of these washes in different colours (greys and browns usually) then fade the layers different amounts to get the random looking effect I'm after.