Author Topic: P47D-25 527th "Rabbit" - progress post (Read 1638 times)

Krusty · « **on:** April 19, 2006, 12:00:09 AM »

I was posting too much in the "need help" post, so I realized I needed to make a post just for updates to this skin.

Picking up where I left off, in reply to Citabria:

Those panel lines were really messed up. I went back to the original and re-did them (in fact, spent most of today doing panel lines and rivets). Let me post some more recent images.

Let me know if you think this looks like metal or not. (I did this before I read your tip).

Hopefully the panel lines aren't so ugly now, as they're closer to their final opacity, and not so in-your-face.

MotleyCH · « **Reply #1 on:** April 19, 2006, 05:36:45 AM »

Very nice!

I found a webpage the other day that shows some tips to make it look ..shiny.

http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/articles.php?action=viewarticle&artid=13

Krusty · « **Reply #2 on:** April 19, 2006, 07:44:39 AM »

Got any others? That wasn't too helpful

MotleyCH · « **Reply #3 on:** April 19, 2006, 01:29:46 PM »

Really? I did something similair just to your screenshot..

B@tfinkV · « **Reply #4 on:** April 19, 2006, 03:43:01 PM »

seems to work well, but is it purely a stationary/screenshot effect?

MotleyCH · « **Reply #5 on:** April 19, 2006, 04:33:11 PM »

All I did was highlight with white like that webpage instructed. But also added blue and red at a very low opacity.

I haven't been able to try this on a skin at home..this computer at work doesn't take very good screenshots.

Krusty · « **Reply #6 on:** April 19, 2006, 06:39:17 PM »

The link in question took a simple grey primer color and simply dodged certain parts of it. The end result looked like crap. Sorry to the guy doing it, but it's true. I've seen several "BMF" skins in IL2 that look the same. It's just ugly. On the other hand, something that told me perhaps what areas would have what colors would be nice, and what kind of highlights I'd need, as well. Citabria gave me a couple of tips on this. I've yet to start re-working the metal, but I know I have to do something.

As-is, I think what I've got is better than that IL2 suggestion, and I put a lot more work into it too

There's no less than 3-4 gradients in each wing/fuselage/part, plus a special layer on top of that!

Dodged grey still looks just that, grey. Not metal. You have to trick folks into seeing metal, rather than "white".

Any and all tips to that end I'd love to have, as this is my first BMF plane.

EDIT: Also I realized I'm using the default materials. The default skin is painted, not metal, so that's probably throwing me off a bit too. I need to take the D40 materials and use that, I guess!

Krusty · « **Reply #7 on:** April 19, 2006, 09:13:51 PM »

Okay I played around with Citabria's suggestion, and I think it helped (at least a bit) but I still don't know if it's "done" done. Also used the D40's material.txt file instead of the paint-favoring default d25 file.

These files are large and NOT reduced, I didn't want to ruin any detail/color.

EDIT: Rabbit is a low-res place-holder until I can re-create it properly.

I need to re-install bright (reformatted not long ago, lost it) so please ignore the photoshop 8-bit conversion.

Krusty · « **Reply #8 on:** April 19, 2006, 09:20:46 PM »

Before and After quick reference:

MotleyCH · « **Reply #9 on:** April 19, 2006, 10:47:32 PM »

Do you have a *material* text file in the folder your working on?

material.txt

should read

0.302,0.302,0.302,Ambient
0.439,0.439,0.439,Diffuse
0.000,0.000,0.000,Emissive
0.945,0.894,0.812,Specular
23.330,Power

Krusty · « **Reply #10 on:** April 19, 2006, 10:54:52 PM »

Well the default 47D40 (a bare metal plane) has:

0.400,0.400,0.400,Ambient
0.600,0.600,0.600,Diffuse
0.000,0.000,0.000,Emissive
0.000,0.000,0.000,Specular
0.000,Power

Whereas the default 47D25 (a painted plane) has:

0.361,0.361,0.361,Ambient
0.400,0.400,0.400,Diffuse
0.000,0.000,0.000,Emissive
0.122,0.122,0.122,Specular
15.000,Power

I'm using the top at the moment. I might just steal the P38 materials file.

Nr_RaVeN · « **Reply #11 on:** April 20, 2006, 11:09:50 AM »

Its a bit to much blue. If you haven't yet, make 3 different highlight layers. a thin feather brush white, a med feather brush white, and a wide feather brush white. at 100% then adjust your highlight opps lyres around along with the blue lyres opps till you find the sweet spot. try and have the thin feather brush layer with more opps , then a bit less on the med layer then low low on the wide. ad some shading here and there and you will be gleaming. just play with those opps you will find it. what you don't want is to much blue. or too heavey a highlight. also put a texture filter into the mix.

I'm at work so I just did a quickie
example to show what I mean .

I exaggerated the effects "i.e." bluing, highlights, and shading so you could see what's going on adjustment of the Opps will get you were you need to be
GL
RaVe ~S~

Krusty · « **Reply #12 on:** April 20, 2006, 11:44:26 AM »

I can tell this process is going to take a long time

Ooookey-dokey. I will work on it some more.

Nr_RaVeN · « **Reply #13 on:** April 20, 2006, 12:57:49 PM »

lots of layers for metallic. there's more than one way to skin this cat you just need to fool around with the basics then elaborate on them.

you will be surprised how many different looks you come up with.
its hard to pick what's the best there are so many options to pick from the skies the limit.

Krusty · « **Reply #14 on:** April 20, 2006, 01:31:15 PM »

Better? (Showing last 2 images for comparison, new one is on the bottom).