I now have an idea just how much effort goes into a good skin.
I made my panel template in the normal manner by making a new layer over the default skin and tracing the lines pixel by pixel. I wasn't quite satisfied with some of the lines (after 3 different attempts), so I set out to make identification layers that would show what each piece of the image was on the finished aircraft and how it was oriented. My goal from there was to set out a grid so that I could measure everything by pixels.
My freehand attempts to mark locations and edges were failing miserably, so I decided to brute force it. I turned off everything except the one part I was working on, and overlayed 5 distinct colored 1 pixel wide lines alternating across the entire area. My plan was to isolate each piece, count pixels and be able to explicitly define any point I wanted. The colors were red, yellow, green, dark blue, light blue.
The result was some kind of bizzaro psychedelic hippy Stuka. Although the 256 color bitmap looks well defined and clean by itself, the colors have been blended together on the aircraft. Even the blend is not uniform, as the distance between mostly red lines is not constant even on mostly flat locations. I added in a light grey outline on the edges and started trying to work it in until I found an edge, but the blending masks identification of the edges that I DO know where they are, so finding the confusing ones is kicking my butt.
Furthermore, it seems that this color leech effect is applied to adjacent parts as well, as the color of my spinner seemed to have splashed onto the prop blade.
I may have picked the worst one to start with, being the LH front fuselage of the Stuka since it includes part of the front top and the canopy (to include a strip below the canopy on the RH side) but this is one I need my reference points for. If picture hangar was working I would post a picture of what I am talking about, but I'm confident that the experts already know exactly my dilemma.
So, I am looking for a more effective trick to defining the equivalent aircraft position on the skin image. Do I need to continue to use brute force until I find them?
