Tips..

[Larry]

I would like to learn how to be a better skiner. Main thing I need work on is weathering and making the paint look more "real". I use PhotoShop7 and CS2. I would like to ask some of the great skinners how they make thier skins look realistic, mainly Krusty, Fester, Kev, Kanttori, Airmess, Waffle, ect. As most of you know I work on LW most of the time by will skin other stuff from time to time. As I already said I need help on making the planes have more detail and weathering, everytime I try it, it makes my skin blury and look low res. Any advice would be apresheated.

[MotleyCH]

Here's a link for a PSP tutorial...there are others there. Just click tutorials.

One important thing for final conversion is a little program called "brighter". It converts a 24bit image into a 8 bit /256 color image.

http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/forum36-paintshop-pro/

[Larry]

I have "Bright". Iv read some of those tutorials. They are for IL2, I dont know if there are differences but I would like to hear from AH skinners.

[Larry]

Any of you?

[Stoney74]

First, I use GIMP.  

Second, I personally think a lot of folks in this game use blurs way too heavily with the result that chipping paint turns into a amorphous blob of white or grey on the skin.  Seems to me that most of the guys that are really good at weathering a skin use multiple layers and closely monitor the opacity settings and the materials files to ensure they all complement each other.  

IMHO, if you want some really good examples of how to weather skins, check out Kev's Spits for painted surfaces (which almost all LW aircraft have) or Fester and Greebo's bare metal.  Kev seems to have very good control of the material file to compliment the shading he puts over the paint to make them look matte and "older".  Fester and Greebo have some very subtle but effective layers that they put over their base colors to create the effects they have.  The paint chipping effects that Greebo uses on his painted P-47 skins are again, IMO, the best in the game.  These three guys put together represent 100% of the fighter skins I prefer in the game.

I don't know exactly what techniques they use off-hand, but by studying their previous work, you can at least get some ideas on how they do it.

[Greebo]

Did a quick search for "greebo weathering" and found  this thread and this thread that might help you out. I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

[Krusty]

I don't think I should be in that list of names, but thanks.

Only just saw this. Haven't checked forums since early Saturday.

Random thoughts:

If it looks like a repeating pattern, it is a repeating pattern, and you need to do something else. Meaning the stamp-like brush shapes are a dead givaway. Avoid them if you can.

Use a LOT of layers. If you've got a wing underside, and you're putting oil stains, gas stains, gunsmoke stains, paint chips, dirt streaks, and paint fading, put them ALL on their own layer. If the time comes when you want to change any one without affecting the others, you're porked.

Overdo it. No, seriously. What you see on the bitmap often is barely visible in-game. You can start by eyeballing it in the editing software, but then go in-game and zoom out a bit and objectively say to yourself "Does it look like there's anything on there?" -- often the answer for me is "no" -- so go in and up whatever you've done 20%-25%. Check again in-game. Often you've gone overboard (and sometimes you find you've hit it on the nail). If overboard, reduce to a mid-point, and keep rechecking/adjusting.

Break up the solid paint colors. You know about "cloud layers" but consider other things like light gradients (i.e. on the new c205 wings I did you can see this) and highlights on certain parts of the paint (on my p47s you can see this). Break the color up, be it with light, dark, gradiations between the two, whatever. Solid paint color looks like MS Paint.

Greebo's got a good tutorial there. If it's the one I think it is, then I've tried it also. I use a variation of the same idea, but more free-hand. I use it for wing scratches by the wing roots and areas that get scuffed up a lot. He uses them EVERYwhere (which is probably the better route to go!). I always have problems deciding on blending options for these layers, so I generally blend them over other layers to represent fading paint.

[Citabria]

heya truekill I will try to make a new tutorial on the techniques I use.


Chapter 1: rivets and panel lines

research and pics are important if you scratchbuild your rivets and panels. if your research is complete and full of detail and accuracy your skin will be too. quality in... quality out.

i only use simple effects on the layers like adjusting fill and opacity. somtimes i use linear burn for black lines and linear dodge for highlight lines but often i leave the layer set to normal and just adjust opacity and fill.

I like to make all rivets and panel lines by hand using the polygonal lasso tool for curved or multiple angled lines then I drop the box down and over 1 pixel after filling it with black and delete the rest to leave a nicely antialiased panel line or rivet line. for straight lines i will draw a black line with a pencil and rotate it as needed leaving it antialiased no matter what its direction is.

for rivets i just go back with a 2 or 3 pixel wide box and cut the spaces out.

I prefer everything to be antialiased in this manner if the lines are not perfectly at right angles because I do not like the look of the penciled jagged lines that are not smoothed out to acount for the resolution of the skin.

then i make copies of the black rivets and panels and offset them for maximum 3d effect from cockpit for upper wings and external viewing best look for rest of skin.

I tend to do this all by hand as I do not like effects of drop shadow etc because they seem to look a bit cartoony and bubbly when used extensively but I am a perfectionist. I even delete the white layers where they overlap the black layer and will individually adjust each part of the white layer for maximum correct 3d effect meaning if its a recessed panel line the white line is behind the black line from the most common view angles.

I am still evolving my rivet technnique sometimes i think predominantly white rivets with a blurred black rivet layer with a sunken look by placing the fainter blurred black rivet layer above and behind the unblurred white rivet layer from the most viewed angle is good for darker camo birds liek that of the luftwaffe. somtimes i make the rivets mostly black with light opacity or fill white rivet layer depending on the skin. its really trial and error for me with lots of error.


Chapter 2. colors. will post tomorrow have to go to sleep work early tomorrow. but colors are extremely important for realism in fact i think they are the hardest to get right on any skin as they vary from CRT to LCD and are effected greatly by the terrain behind them... will discuss this pandoras box more later