Bare Metal Effect Testing

[United]

I've been playing around with the bare metal look, and after an hour or so of fiddling, this is what I have come up with.



I've looked at Oboe's, nopoop's, and the Waffle sample for guide, but I can't seem to get the look Im shooting for.

Any of you bare-metal guys have any tips?

[thebest1]

i like it united ive been making some IL2 skins and been messing around with some Bare metal effects post ur email and ill tell ya what i do! and sent ya some pics of it and stuff!

[United]

You bet.  bnicely@gmail.com  I'm at a loss here!

[thebest1]

u got mail

[United]

Thanks best!  I'll take a close look at them when I check my mail here real quick.

I tried this for now.  A little different look to it.

[United]

Originally posted by thebest1
u got mail

Inbox is empty... any chance it got bounced?

[Sp4de]

Well.. What i did.. Was used a smudge tool and put blue and grey next to each other. Then i put my chalk brush to lighten. Then i did chalk brush to darken. -lighten middle and tips of wings- darken top and bottom of fuselage. I do opacity for ligthen about.. 35. and darken about 15 or so. I did alot of other preatty cool stuff too with smoke and weathering with the paint brush and the many others- like for example i did smoke chips close to engine inside the paint. It looks like it was used  No one really helped me with this. you really cant. You just have to experiment yourself. i was really frustrated for the longest time and then once i learned it. I had fun everytime i did it. Now all i want to to do is the effects! . You just have to find your speciality. like no poop and them do aluminum and i try to do smoke effect things.  This probley didnt Help but i did try. Good luck
-Spade

[oboe]

I'd try more contrast between the shades.     Make the lights lighter and the darks darker.

Was the Zero ever unpainted?

[United]

Thanks Oboe.  Im not doing anything historical, Im just testing out some stuff.  Once I get it the way I like, then I'll find some unpainted birds to do.

[nopoop]

It's so tough doing bare metal. I cheat, I won't do a bare metal skin on a skin that doesn't have reflective qualities. Even then the view out the cockpit doesn't reflect. But the skin gives you the opportunity to screenshot it at it's best.

Out of the cockpit, it's still blah. I went so far as to resize an IL-2 skin that looked really good and pasted it over a wing. Out the cockpit it looked like dog poop. It's a subtle thing, IL-2's colors were way too strong.

Main thing is to stay away from blue. I saw a small sample of a DROP DEAD gorgous 51 skin with blue in it to really bring out the "metal" and Pyro gave it thumbs down because of the blue.

So shades of grey and a "hint" of blue is as far as you can go.

"If" they ever get to the point where reflective properties are visable out of the cockpit and you have the ability to put reflective properties where YOU want them it's gonna rock.

Aluminum is tough, no way around it.

Good tutorial site United

[United]

Thank ya nopoop.

I fiddled a little bit more and came to this:


It doesnt have that great reflective property we all look for, but I guess thats because of no alpha layer.

Oh well, I guess experimentation is the best thing you can do!

[Dux]

I found that by "simulating" highlights towards the edges works pretty well, gives it a metal feel.

This is the Arado substitute skin from the old Okinawa map...


Varying the panel shades ever so slightly also helps sell the idea of metal panels.