Ju88 under construction - any requests?

[crowbaby]

Nothing reminds you how fast computers are still moving so much as working on a skin that was originally done in 256x256 pixels. Bless the poor sod who had to rush the original mapping , the Ju88A-4 is an absolute pig - with tearing, stretching, assymmetry, overlap and repeats, not to mention huge wasted empty spaces. It's great to compare it to the aircraft that have been reworked, you can really see how far AH has come over the years, but it's still a pig.

I've figured most of it out now and i'll probably upload a layered template somewhere once i'm done, but I thought i'd offer to have a go at any requests people have, just to try and make the effort worthwhile. I'm particularly thinking of scenarios or AVA, but happy to do squads (if there are any who fly Luftwaffe bombers), or just somebody's fave. I've got a lot of reference material and can just crack on with it, but i can also send previews and take some direction.

For the moment, as well as a KG51 factory generic skin, I'm thinking of having a pop at some of these:

KG3 on the Eastern Front with white distemper camoflage, coloured spinners should be okay, theatre band will be a bit funny.


KG77 based on Sicily running anti-shipping missions, will skin 3Z+DH with ship kill markings on the tail, but can't find decent photo online to link to


LG1 in North Africa with sand camoflage, would like to do one other than the much photographed L1+AA, but at least the A will repeat symmetrically on the lower wing.

[Krusty]

I, too, have wanted to do a few of them. Limited time and bad quality default mapping have dissuaded me. Don't get me wrong I've done my share of those older mappings (as well as did some on the old 109E which was a pain to learn on before it was updated).


P.S. There already is a template floating around on the 'Net somewhere. Might save you a bit of time.

[crowbaby]

Hey, thanks for mentioning the template, i'll try and track it down. I'm pretty much done on mine now, but it would be interesting to see another.

I probably rushed it a bit, haven't got the aerial upright mapped properly, and had to make some odd comprimises on the wings - the lower one repeats left and right, but it's offset by about a foot! Still, I want to get on with the actual paintjob, that's the fun bit after all and, like you say, everything takes precious time.

[Krusty]

Used to be on the defunct ah-skins webpage. That has since faded (DNS was not renewed). So it's a matter of seeing who copied the file elsewhere, or saved it locally. I actually do recall looking at it more than once so I might have it archived on my backup 1TB. I just have to go digging. I'll take a look-see later for you. Outside of that I suggest a google search.

It might have been by Greebo. It was somebody that already has some in-game and his are the most technically proficient currently in-game (no offense to Raptor's skin, which I also like). Try to IM or e-mail him if you cannot locate the template online, and ask if it was his and if he still has it.

[crowbaby]

Had a google but couldn't find it.

It's kind of you to offer to look for it but don't worry about digging it out, i'm kind of at the stage where it would probably only overload me anyway. Should be able to post some pics tomorrow, got too many embarrassing panel line errors to display at the moment!

[crowbaby]

feel like i'm spamming now, but well, i'm off to bed so thought i'd post progress so far:



still playing with the balance of panel lines, rivets,etc. can't get them right until last thing really.
the markings are what i'm starting on now, so they're funny sizes and too saturated.
the little bit of weathering was just to get a sense of how it'll work, same with the touch of exhaust on the starboard wing.
just noticed the landing light is stretched, meant to fix that.

umm, basically i'm trying to say - i know it's got issues, but any feedback gratefully received.

[Krusty]

Good start... Few comments and questions...

Looking at the real thing the exhausts will mostly be on the undersides. Not so much on top. They are placed low on the wing and will belch out below.

Also, what's the drawn-on wire snaking along the spine? I don't recall seeing that on any real Ju88s in photos.

I would check to see how many of those stencils were actually used. Seems to be an awful lot of gas triangles. I think your red oil fill triangles are too far forward (there's another round panel line just aft of them, I think they should be aft of that, nearly lined up with the yellow inboard fuel triangles). From general experience the Luftwaffe overpainted their stencils in the field during repaints, repairs, and so forth. Once overpainted they were not reapplied (with few exceptions -- vital warnings and fuel types). Things like wing walk areas disappeared on 109Es for example. If possible, get some photos of a similar plane, from a similar time, same unit, something that would be representative of what you're trying to do, and see how it's marked. That will give you an idea of what it should have.

The Fuel triangles look like they say "E 87" -- surely that means "B 87"?

The triangle by the cockpit isn't an explosive bolts warning. That rear canopy blew off in emergencies (you see a number of crashes without that entire aft canopy).

[crowbaby]

Hi Krusty, thanks for the comments and taking the time to look at this. I have checked a lot of photos on this one, and am fairly confident in most of my decisions. to explain:

Some of the exhaust seems to have been twisted up over the wing by the props, this pic is fairly typical and shows the smoke staining to the port side of each engine:


The line from the cockpit to the raft hatch is pretty visible on new aircraft, then it sags, then disappears entirely on ones that have been in theatre for a while, (particularly on the Eastern front). The one on this picture is about what I'm aiming for, will be dialing down the visibility a bit, like the rivets and panel lines, it's one of those things that has to be done last.


The wing walk is pretty poorly attested in photos, as you say, mostly worn off or painted over. Still, I wanted to start from a 'factory fresh' template, so i've done my best to track down photos, here are a couple of partials with text or the dotted line:



The fuel and oil markings are all over the place on Luftwaffe aircraft, with a lot of different patterns. I'm still playing around with a few possibilities, all of which are on here simultaneously, so yeah, it's a bit of a mess as you've pointed out. Not come across 'B 87' but the 'E 87' is based on the image below? Though I will probably go to the more typical rounded triangle '87' marking without the 'E' just to save resolution.


not going to get back on this for a day or so, then hope to finish the first skin.

[Krusty]

Interesting that it says E87 there. Maybe that's something other than fuel?

They had B and C fuel types mostly, and the B was 87 octane.


Unless they came up with some odd E type gas? I've never heard of it, but that doesn't mean it didn't exist

[crowbaby]

It's true the typical bomber fuel was 'B4' but the markings on aircraft tend to be in octane rather than fuel code, i think the 'E' is just for ethanol? I don't think 'B87' would have made sense, as a mix of the code and the octane, though i wouldn't put it past them. I'm certainly not an expert on the subject!

You do see fighters marked up with 'C3' but i think this may have been because a '100' marking would have been too vague? i have seen a few 109s with a yellow triangle 100 marking, but i can imagine a switch to fuel code rather than octane for the sake of clarity. Or perhaps it's just the usual military randomness from unit to unit? there's bound to be some experten out there who has written a monograph on the subject.

[crowbaby]

just had an hour to work on this and spent half of it trying to make the exhaust look convincing. Normally i hate to fake anything more 3D than a rivet, but given that the Ju88 has fewer polygons than a cereal box, i figured what the hell. Trying to get this sort of thing to look convincing from any angle. It's always going to be a bit of a kludge.

[lyric1]

Is this your first skin? It is a very good first try if it is.

Here is a couple of shots I have that may help you on exhausts.

[crowbaby]

Hi Lyric, thanks for the pics. I'm actually pretty good for references, the problem is more reconciling them with the old mapping on this model, also trying to get a balance between the real scale/shape of details and what they need to be to show up convincingly.

It's not my first skin, but it is many years since i've done any, so i'm really glad to hear it's looking okay 

i did play round with the exhaust some more, i've really been jumping around on this, terrible workflow, but then i've got the odd hour here, half-hour there and i just tend to work on whetever i think i can get done. I've skinned the inside of the nacelle as a compromise (it repeats inside and out, right and left) so i've left off engine monitoring instruments (not sure how often these were fitted anyway). I've not included the outboard hot air vents (can't see them on the D model in your first pic, but they're just under the wing on the abandoned aircraft the yanks kludged together in '43). The finished exhaust is below, not perfect but i had to move on:


been working up the markings since, unfortunately some of them are on stretched areas of the map, which tends to make some pixels jump a bit, annoying when they get right outside their shapes, like on the H above or the oil marking below. Never really found a satisfactory solution to that.


but still have a couple of decisions to make about panel lines underneath, might be easiest if they just get covered up by dirt, etc. It's annoying, cos with two separate 1042 maps it should be a beautiful aircraft, but there are just so many problem areas!

[crowbaby]

been quite a learning experience working at high resolution, trying to strike a balance between cartoon panel lines on the one hand and an overworked muddy mess at the other extreme. think i'm nearly finished though:



Had trouble with compressing the colour range down to 8 bit. Even using Bright there is banding in some areas. I think this will be less of an issue on a skin with fewer markings, this has blue, yellow and red, would be possible to completely drop one of those colours.


still, i did my best to prioritise the view from the cockpit. there's quite a lot of pixels to play with. When these old aircraft are re-modeled it would be great to have these areas mapped at twice the resolution of other areas. A straight 200% blow up of the UV mapping would be easy enough for skinners to deal with and would really help to increase immersion.



still some ugly areas underneath, wasn't sure what to do with these, the way the mapping works i may have to leave the nacelles virtually clean of smoke and even then some panel lines can't meet up. There's no ideal distance to view this skin from, with areas of high resolution right next patches where a single pixel is stretched across the map. (oops - just noticed i need to dial down the shading on the gondola)


Overall i'm pleased with how it looks, though i've learned enough from the process to know that it could be a lot better! I could also be a lot more organised in my workflow - i got a bit impatient with this, wanting to work up the details before i'd really got the panel lines right. Might make things quicker as well, this probably took about 16 hours work from scratch, though i will be able to produce some more skins from the template in a few hours each.

[lyric1]

Sweet.