Image of riveted sheet metal - check this out

[oboe]

I ntoiced this image on a website this morning over coffee, and was impressed by the glare/shadow interaction along the panel seam and row of rivet heads.   It seemed to me to illustrate perfectly the interplay of light/dark that skinners should be striving to replicate for authenticity in out skins.



But then I wondered - are any aircraft finished so roughly?  Wouldn't the panel seam be much smoother in an aircraft wing or fuselage?    Been too long since I've been to an airshow I guess!

What do you guys think?

[VonMessa]

I know that I am flush-riveting my wing skins.  You see the rivets, but you don't...  Hard to explain.   There will always be some puckering whether from countersinking the holes or from dimpling them before putting the flush rivets in.   As I am building a hi-wing a/c, I wont see the rivets that much, except from underneath.  The remainder of the plane is fabric covered tube.

I'm thinking that some (current) shots from inside a cockpit, making note of where the sun is and how the shadows play would be the best bet, plus you get to sit in a warbird  

Then one could play around in the skin-viewer and reproduce direction of the light source and see if the skin shadows look the same.

To be honest, with the new shadowing features in-game, a 3-D wireframe photo of how planes are modeled by HTC to see which parts actually "bulge" out (for lack of better words) to see which features of the a/c would create shadows due to their depth.

Or....

Perhaps, I'm just talking out of my arse...    

[Knite]

Hey Oboe,

I've always tried pretty hard to make sure the rivets (small and large) are noticable, but except for Florida Cracker, I try to keep it pretty muted. Seems pictures I've seen of real life aircraft, the seams and rivets are definitely spottable, but a lot more subtle and less... "rough" than the example panel you have linked. I think it's a good resource though, as it's kind of an "exaggerated" version of what we're trying to replicate and might help with detail and shadow.

[5PointOh]

Not that I'm anywhere close to being as good as skinners as you gentlemen, but here is my thoughts on rivets.

A: It definately depends on the plane.
Different planes=equal different rivets.  Some raise; some counter sunk; some flush filled and painted.

B: Depends on the color and distance you look at a plane. If you look at a plane from far away rivets on many are barely noticable, but that also depends on what color the plane is. 

I actually get very frustrated with the rivet portion of skinning.  and lately I have even considered leaving out the smaller rivets and only focusing on the larger style that are really visable from a distance. Like on the cowling of this Mustang.



Just out of curiosity, what editing programs are people using.

I use Photoshop CS2 and CS5.

[Dichotomy]

I'm curious what you guys use to make the rivets? I found a brush set the other day that has a ton of rivets, screw heads, etc..

[oboe]

Rivets are so small the only way you can make them look right is to use a 1 pixel dot - and I think my spacing for rows of rivets is 1 dot, 2 spaces, 1 dot, 2 spaces, etc.   I have one row of dark rivets and one row of light rivets offset diagonally to produce either a raised or flush effect depending on the direction of the offset, and the opacity setting of the rivets.   This topic is very well explained in the skinning tutorials I've seen.  Here's a link to Fester's:

http://www27.brinkster.com/tjlaven/ah/

Thanks for your comments guys.   Sometimes I wonder if the correct thing to do is exaggerate the details to make up for the game's inability to show everything in real life detail.  But I have to think it does depend on the aircraft, the distance you want your skin to look best at, and of course the skinner's own eye.

EDIT:  I use Photoshop 6.0.

As far as the image of rivets I posted and plane type - it seems to me it would look at home on a rugged airframe like the P-47 or a Grumman product, and out of place on a Spit, Mustang, or Lightning.  But that's just my perception - haven't seen closeups of Jugs or 'cats.   Also, might look correct on a bomber like the Mitchell or B-17?

[Dichotomy]

I'm never going to be a skinner.  Too many really good ones kind of have the market cornered but, occasionally, I might find something useful to someone at some point in time.

Here's some samples from the brush pack I was talking about.  I did them in 17 point but you can go smaller.  You just size it and tap where you want it to be.  I've got the .rar file around here somewhere if anybody's interested.

[Saxman]

This is one of many reasons I wish Aces High had normal and true specular maps (rather than just that more limited alpha file for glossiness). It would be a LOT easier to do subtle details like rivets and panel lines that way.

[Nr_RaVeN]

I'm curious what you guys use to make the rivets? I found a brush set the other day that has a ton of rivets, screw heads, etc..

I make mine from scratch using mostly 1pix.. along with many inverted and shifted layers.

[Knite]

pretty similar to oboe and RaVen... my rivets are typically a 1 pixel dot, or a 4 pixel dot if it's a large rivet. Though I tend to do some photoshop "sneakyness" to try and give it some sort of feeling of depth.

[5PointOh]

I use the pencil tool; 1px at 350% spacing. For the large rivets, I've been doing lately a 3px round brush with some bevel and embossing.  Results have been pretty good so far on some trial skins I'm working on. Now if I ever submit them, who knows.