B-24J 7th AF/11th BG/ 431st BS "Wabbit Twansit"

[United]

Hello all!  Its been a LONG time since I've played AH, or even really looked at it (last version I played was 2.03. Yikes!).

Anyways, I decided to try my hand at skinning again after several years of absence.

This bird is near and dear to my heart as it, as well as my other "Chute the Works" skin, was crewed by my grandfather.






*From b24bestweb.com*

You can clearly see its been a while since I did any skinning.  I'm pretty disappointed with the stretching that takes place (especially on the engine cowls) and it blurs some of the skin in some pretty important places.  However its no excuse for my poor skinning abilities...

The anti-glare panel and the leading edges of the wings shouldn't be there, but unfortunately they are not removable.  The nose art is pretty blurry as well, but no matter what I do I can't sharpen it up without losing the integrity of it.  If you see anything else wrong or that looks out of place, please let me know.  Any and all criticism is welcome.

*Edit: And I completely forgot to do simulated shadowing and similar things (such as on the bomb bay doors, etc)


*On another note, how do you get the skin to work in game?  I have no clue how this is done...

[Plazus]

I am not a skinner, but I will try my best to help you. First off, are you using the HiRes texture package at all? Judging by the screenshots you are providing us, it appears that the skin isnt showing all of the details that you would normally see on HiRes. But then again, you might not have the minor details on the skin yet. By minor details, Im indicating weathering, wear/tear, scratches/dents, oil streaks, etc. Also, is your AH game and skin viewer updated to the current version?

You might want to adjust the specularity of the texture files, as that might help you with getting your skin the way you want it.

I also notice a slight variation to your nose art compared to the one shown in the real photo. The "fire and stars" that are trailing out the bomb looks incorrect. I think the real photo shows red and orange (perhaps yellow) streaks. I think the stars would likely be white, along with the "Wabbit Twansit" text too.

I would personally go with a darker olive drab, as this seems a tad too light to me. Keep the olive drab paint on separate layers from the weathering and details. You might want to review your panel lines as well, as they seem a bit pixelated instead of the smooth, straight lines that are normally seen on today's skins. Same with the rivets. It kind of looks like you put rivets all over the airframe rather than bordering the panel lines. I cant really tell you if the rivets are correct, because I have no books/sources to compare to.

You might also want to speak with Greebo, Krusty, or a few other skinners on some tips with the bare metal underside. The current bare metal you have looks too "gray" as if it were painted.

I hope this helps! The skin looks great overall, it just needs some adjustments to make it look more "current" to today's skins that we see now.

 

[B4Buster]

that looks like the AH1 B-24

[Krusty]

AH1 never had a B-24.

Well, there are a few comments I could make.

First, if you find there is horrible stretching around the cowlings, for example, try to limit the detailing you put there. It looks like you tried to put some streaking around the cowlings but it looks wrong because of the stretching. Work around the problem areas.

Second, look at the default skin layout better. The de-icing boots are on it somewhere. [Edit: at least, they SHOULD be!] They may be separate. When you find them you can split them half grey, half olive drab, and with a bit of tweaking you can get it working right. I had a similar issue with the old Hurr1 skin layout (yellow ID stripes on leading edges) and I got it working in the end.

Third, you have this very speckled look to the overall appearance. It doesn't look overly smooth or clear. What program did you use to save it as 8-bit (256 color)? I would suggest Bright. It works as a plugin for Photoshop (and possibly other programs) but barring that comes in a DOS-based batch file setup as well. It will take a RGB full color file and produce a 8-bit file. It may help the quality of the end-product immensely.

Fourth, if you check out the skinning tutorial link in my sig, it will describe how to get the skin to show up offline. If you want to submit it to HTC, there's a description in there as well of how I do it.

Fifth, it's lacking some weathering, exhaust stains, oil drips, smears, shadows (as you mentioned) and aside from the speckles in the green on the bitmap, doesn't really have much in the way of breaking up the solid colors.

Once you get it in-game you could also post some more screenshots (more angles, top, bottom, other side, etc).

Hope that helps!

[United]

Thanks for the comments guys; everything is appreciated.

Turns out I didn't download the 1024 res pack, so there goes everything...  Rookie mistake.

Since that's the case, I plan on redoing the entire thing with the full texture size this time.  Hopefully that'll allow for a lot more detail.

Plazus:  The colors of the nose art are actually correct.  I thought the same thing, but I was able to do some digging and found out that it was blue and white rather than other colors; similar to this nose art:


I'll take another look at the olive drab.  I found a pretty decent chart of standard colors used by the USAAF in WWII, so I'll fiddle around with them a bit.  There was another color that was a bit more brown that I believe is what you are thinking so I'll give it a shot.  The underside of the plane actually is painted gray so I think that (well, at least the color) is correct.

Krusty:  Thanks for the heads up with Bright.  I've been using Paint Shop Pro and it really kills a lot of the detail when it converts to 256 colors.  I've got Photoshop CS4 but I've never really used it much, so I may try to do the next skin with it and see what I can do.

The de-icing boots as well as the anti-glare panel are in the bitmap, however they are either hard coded on the plane or there is some other file I haven't found because even if I take those items out, they are still visible on the plane.  I've done this in the screenshots for the anti-glare panel.  Where it is in the bitmap file is covered in the same green that the upper portion of the plane has, yet the screenshot shows what is visible.

Thanks for all the help guys.  I'll have a new (and full resolution *facepalm*) version hopefully in a few weeks.

[Plazus]

Wish the best of luck, United. The historical photo and the color photo of the nose art does not match. The text is in different locations and font, along with the fire trails. The colors, however, may be exactly as is. Also, the posture of Bugs Bunny and Porky Pig are different as well. I would most definitely go with the nose art shown in the historical photo, as I have no way of determining if the colored one is authentic.

 

[Krusty]

That color piece is not historically authentic. It's curved. The parts of the B-24 it resides on are much larger and flatter. It's a modern recreation. I've seen other parts pretending to be historic, but the colors are all wrong, and it's a modern recreation done for profit. You can't use those as references. Go with the black and white photos for general appearance, and if you have no other sources I guess you can use the modern color one, but keep in mind that it may be wrong.