No I didn't make a template, I'm waiting to hear from HTC on my submitted skins before I do something like that, otherwise it would propagate any errors I had to anyone who used my template. If I get a thumbs up from HTC I'll make a template and put it up at ah-skins, though I understand panel lines and rivets are something of a rite of passage among skinners. But my first skin was based on Greebo's excellent F6F template (weathering and all!) so I'll share mine too based on Greebo's good example.
Do you use Photoshop? Panel lines and rivets used to be the biggest pain for me, but since I discovered the PS's SHIFT-click that draws straight lines from point to point, they aren't bad at all. For rivets I just use an automatic spacing of 300 to make them look right. PS is doing the work!
My panel line templates generally come from my Osprey book collection, but this Russian site also has tons of them:
http://www.airwar.ru/other/drawe.html Also, I just usually draw one vetical line and one horizontal line, then cut and paste to duplicate them, get them positioned properly, then compress everything to one layer and erase what I don't need. Then I hand draw in the angled lines. Use ZOOM liberally.
One other tip, before you do any painting, be sure to create a skin with a base color and panel lines only. Then go into the game and check the location of the panel lines at the control surface (ailerons, elevators, rudder, flaps) hinges and edges and make sure they line up properly. I had to redo my P-47D11 skins because I didn't do that.
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