Author Topic: TBM skins (Read 912 times)

Ike 2K# · « **on:** January 04, 2004, 09:48:25 PM »

Does anyone here know where i can get Fleet Air Arm's skin for TBM? If yes send it to...

Cableisallgoodbaby@comcast.net

thank you

Bullethead · « **Reply #1 on:** January 05, 2004, 12:15:36 AM »

I could probably make you one in a couple of weeks if you send me a pic of what you want it to look like.

Dux · « **Reply #2 on:** January 05, 2004, 08:37:56 AM »

I could easily modify one of my existing TBM skins over a day or two. All the details, panel lines, etc., are done, it's just a matter of dropping the right colors in under them.

Bullethead · « **Reply #3 on:** January 05, 2004, 07:21:45 PM »

Whoops, belay my last. The TBM skin unfortunately is one of those where HTC got lazy. The stock skin is blue overall so just has 1 texture for both the upper and lower surfaces of the horizontal stabilizer. Thus, there's no way to make a good new skin that has different colors on the top and bottom of the horizontal stab. If you make the bottom of the tailplane gray, the top will be also. OTOH, if you put camo on the upper surface, it'll be on the bottom as well. And will be the same on both sides of the tailplane.

What's more, there is only 1 top surface wing texture. This means that any camo pattern would be mirrored on both wings, instead of each wing having a different pattern. And while I don't know for sure, it's a safe bet that the fuselage uses the same texture on both sides, except in those areas of the stock skin where there are numbers that have to be transposed, such as on the rudder. That's how HTC did a lot of monochrome skins. So again, camo patterns wouldn't work on the fuselage.

Bottom line: you can't make an accurate skin for the TBM unless the horizontal tail has the same color on top and on bottom, and there is no assymetrical camo pattern on the fuselage or wings

I REALLY hope they fix this sort of problem in AH2. It's highly annoying not to be able to make a green/gray P38, for instance, because there's only 1 horizontal stabilizer texture. Or not be able to make a spit1 or hurri1 with with the half-black/half-white belly because there's only 1 lower wing texture

Dux · « **Reply #4 on:** January 05, 2004, 08:56:28 PM »

In HTC's defense... they weren't lazy; they were most efficiently using the resources they had available to them at that time period. Think how far video cards have come in the last 3 years... back then, every pixel cost much in terms of resources. That's why many polys have no skin at all... they're just colored polys, taking up much less memory than an equivalent texture.

I've heard an awful lot of people use the words "lazy", or "texture bugs"... be assured, they are neither. It's really quite ingenious how far they managed to make so few pixels go.

Be assured, with today's video capabilities, plus the fact that HTC is building in skinnability into AH2 from the beginning (it was an afterthought before, but a very welcome afterthought) the skin "issues" we have now will go away.

In the meantime, you can still capture the flavor of a particular scheme, even if it's not absolutely perfect. Sure, I'd love to have every panel exactly accurate, but hey...

Ike, I'll do one up for you.

Bullethead · « **Reply #5 on:** January 05, 2004, 10:58:29 PM »

Dux said:

Quote

I've heard an awful lot of people use the words "lazy", or "texture bugs"... be assured, they are neither. It's really quite ingenious how far they managed to make so few pixels go.

Well, when there are other planes of the same vintage that have full camo jobs, which entail separate textures for both upper wings, both horizontal stabs, and both sides of the fuselage, and separate undersides (although always mirrored), it's obvious they could have done the TBM the same way, but chose not to. But maybe calling this "lazy" isn't correct. Could be a trade-off. The way they did it gave them more pixels per part so more detail in the skin, but at the price of condemning the TMB to monochrome paintschemes.

Quote

Be assured, with today's video capabilities, plus the fact that HTC is building in skinnability into AH2 from the beginning (it was an afterthought before, but a very welcome afterthought) the skin "issues" we have now will go away.

Have you seen any of the AH2 skins in file form? I have this dread that they're just the AH1 skins expanded to 2x size and then narrow panel lines drawn on top at the higher res now available. The overall paint schemes seem the same for AH2 as in AH1 for the same planes.

My sincere hope is that AH2 skins have separate textures for every part and surface of the plane. This would allow us to make green B17s, green P38s, FAA and pre-1944 TBMs, etc, plus 1940 spit1s and hurri1s with the black/white bellies, etc. And if this happens, great.

But more than that, there ARE texture bugs and if these ain't corrected, our new AH2 skins will still have major problems. On many planes today, textures are misaligned, use different scaling factors for different parts of the plane, or both. These add greatly to the difficulty of making a skin look good and in some cases make it not worth the effort. For example, have you tried putting fore-and-aft stripes on the horizontal stab of a P47?

More than any other new feature, the next thing I want to see in AH2 is the ability to make new skins for the planes in the game now. I want to see what we're up against re: these old texture bugs.

In the meantime, you can still capture the flavor of a particular scheme, even if it's not absolutely perfect. Sure, I'd love to have every panel exactly accurate, but hey...

Ike, I'll do one up for you. [/B][/QUOTE

Dux · « **Reply #6 on:** January 05, 2004, 11:17:20 PM »

Like I said... general-public-reskinning was never on HTC's mind until relatively recently. The skins worked perfectly to achieve a singular instance of a particular airframe. I don't wish to argue semantics with you... believe me, I've been just as frustrated attempting to reskin certain planes... but I think calling them "bugs" is misleading and detracts from HTC's deserved credit.

Anyway... I agree with some of your other concerns. I know that many (myself included) have requested fully-reskinnable textures for AH2. Considering that HTC said that they're going to have galleries of user-submitted skins for online use, I can only imagine that they're keeping us in mind.

Ike... How does this look to you (yes, I know it's not 100% accurate)...

Dux · « **Reply #7 on:** January 05, 2004, 11:36:35 PM »

Hey Bullethead... this thread would interest you. In between all the questions and wild interpretations, Pyro himself gives some very useful info.

Check it out.

AH2 Plane Skins Thread

Never mind... just noticed your contribution on the 2nd page.

Bullethead · « **Reply #8 on:** January 06, 2004, 06:04:57 PM »

Yup, I've read and reread that thread many times

. But the longer we go without that feature in an AH2 beta, the more nervous I become about it showing up at all, let alone it solving all the prob--er, "annoyances"

we've encountered with AH1 skins.

Seems to me that HTC would benefit from releasing the skin feature right now and let us get into the skinning business immediately. Just add new planes without any skin more than a mere outline on the .bmp file so we know where to put which texture, and let the community do the rest. Meanwhile, HTC could put all its efforts into stuff we can't help them with. I mean, in other games where player skins are allowed, NOBODY uses the stock skins. So why should HTC spend time doing stock skins?

No offense to HTC's artists, but there are plenty of other game objects that need skins, such as the transitions between different types of terrain tile

Everybody would benefit: AH2's other features would get done quicker, us skinners would get to play with the new skin system, and the other players would get choices in what their rides look like right away.

BTW, very nice FAA TBM. Just fly low so nobody can see the bottom, right?

Ike 2K# · « **Reply #9 on:** January 06, 2004, 06:08:01 PM »

How do you make nice "skins" like that? The secret must revealed:)

Bullethead · « **Reply #10 on:** January 06, 2004, 06:31:44 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Ike 2K#
How do you make nice "skins" like that? The secret must revealed:)

SEARCH THE FORUM

. But to make it easy on you, I posted a general outline in another thread here earlier this week, so you should still see it on the page of this forum's recent threads.

Dux · « **Reply #11 on:** January 06, 2004, 06:40:29 PM »

Quote

Originally posted by Bullethead
... Just fly low so nobody can see the bottom, right?

Exactly... if the enemy gets close enough to see a grey/green stab underside, they deserve to get shot down.

Ike... what BH said... there are many many articles scattered throughout this forum, too many to bother retyping it all over again. Also... if you've never done any work at all in a bitmap editor, take it slow... learn the bitmap editor first before you frustrate yourself with an actual skin project.

If the TBM looks good to you, I'll send it along.
That'll be $19.95 USD.