Question for you skinners

[Serenity]

How do you go about making your panel lines and rivets? Ive always used a combonation of tracing the default and using some other reference to ensure accuracy. But I find on birds like the Spit V where the default BMP is 512 x 512 and you cannot discern any lines its millions of times more difficult to create the panels, even using an outside reference.

[Greebo]

The default Spit V bmp is 1024 x 1024. Have you downloaded and installed the new the high res skin pack since the last update?

[Serenity]

The default Spit V bmp is 1024 x 1024. Have you downloaded and installed the new the high res skin pack since the last update?

Yep. It keeps coming out 512 x 512 though.

How do you do YOUR panels Greebo? Trace? Or draw from scratch with a reference?

[BoSoxFan]

Most of the time I have a few references. If the default ones and my references match up I just trace but if they don't I start from scratch. For me the best part of making a skin is doing the panel lines, rivets, fasteners, etc. I love doing that and kinda get burned out when it comes to actually painting the bird. I made myself a template for one of the old planes I think from the start it was 128x128. It took me almost a week to just get the panel lines right. Best time Iv ever had making a template.


BTW mine comes out 1024. I got tiered of saving the default skin and cluttering up my skins folder so I just saved all the exterior BMPs to a flash drive so I have them on hand any time I want.

[Greebo]

Nowadays I am usually doing the default art for the skin, so I have no choice but to start from scratch. I start by drawing those lines that are fixed by the skin, undercarriage doors, flaps etc. then I fill in all the others.

There's a tutorial on how I do panel lines here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,233951.0.html

The best source I've found for panel line and rivet data is this Russian site:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://www.airwar.ru/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.airwar.ru/index.html%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

[Serenity]

Nowadays I am usually doing the default art for the skin, so I have no choice but to start from scratch. I start by drawing those lines that are fixed by the skin, undercarriage doors, flaps etc. then I fill in all the others.

There's a tutorial on how I do panel lines here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,233951.0.html

The best source I've found for panel line and rivet data is this Russian site:
http://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=ru&u=http://www.airwar.ru/&sa=X&oi=translate&resnum=1&ct=result&prev=/search%3Fq%3Dhttp://www.airwar.ru/index.html%26hl%3Den%26sa%3DG

Yep! Thats the site I use most of the time! Thank you sir!