444th BG, 678th BS Inchcliffe Ca$tle

[Dragon Tamer]

I finnaly finished this skin!

It's the 444th BG, 678th BS the plane's tail number is 44-61543 known as Inchcliffe Ca$tle.  It was a night bombing squadrant that had a fairly low success rate but they did manage to hit their target from time to time.  The underside of the plane was painted black to lower the reflections of japanesse search lights.

I tried several times to get the skin to work in the game but with no luck so I just gave in and used skin viewer.  Hope you don't mind.

[Dragon Tamer]

What? No comments?

[Krusty]

Sometimes it takes a while to see these things.

I like the overall markings and the choice, but I think it's too sterile. The black is too solid. The metal looks too much like the default.


Also, I think the grey rivets and panels over the black undersides are too prominent. They should be blended more, less ovbious, to make them really be a part of the paint rather than on top of the paint.

If you could tweak it, maybe "weather" it (such a broad generic term, I know) a bit I think it would be better.

[Dragon Tamer]

Thank you for your honesty Krusty,

I did try to weather the black underside of the plane, but obviously I was too subtle.  I tried to keep the weathering to a minimum because if they were night bombing then it would have been important to keep the black belly as pristeen as possible to avoid detection.  I will go back and see if I can age it a little more.  I did "chip" the paint a bit on the leading edge of the wing but it's kind of hard to see, do you think I should do more to it?  As a side note, I did add a little bit more dirt to the top and bottom side of the plane.

I'm not quite sure what you mean buy the grey rivets on the black under side... are you talking about the access hatches or the whole bottom of the plane?  So you think I should just darken the rivets a bit more then sot they are less obvious?

I was trying to make the top look like it had just rolled off the assembly line (I was actually trying to get it to look like Motley CH's 457BG/ 749BS B-17 skin but wasn't quite able to acheive the look).  So then you're saying that I should make the top look more different than the default skin.

There was a bit of nose art that I left out because I wasn't able to make out what it said, do you think that I should just take a stab and guess what it says?  Here is a link to the sight where I got most of the info for my skin,  I'll also post a specific picture:
http://www.444thbg.org/678thsquadron.htm

[JOACH1M]

I like the skin, like krusty said some weathering would make it "pop" more to me. 

[oboe]

Congrats on finishing such a your skin!   She looks brand new!   Very striking skin color scheme, too, but she needs some more grime and dirt I think.

Also, its always tough to do a mixed bare metal/flat painted skin because you only get the one specularity value in the material.txt file that is applied to the whole skin.  Since the default B-29 is natural metal, you're getting shiny metal specularity applied to the whole skin, which makes the flat black underside look like thinly applied gloss paint.

Have you tried reducing the specularity somewhat?    You could try using the material.txt file from the default P-47D-11 and see if that makes a noticeable difference, better or worse.  I can't say which will be better but I ran into same situation on the black and silver P-38L Itsy Bitsy II.

[Dragon Tamer]

I did have some dirt and grime on both halfs of the plane but the second look from the forum members made me realise that it wasn't quite dark enough.  So I went back and darkened it on the top of the plane but I was dumb and added the dirt and grime right to the main layer so it will take a little longer to redo the colors.  I made the weathering on the black pannels a little more obvious.  For some reason I can only add weathering to the pannel lines, I just can't get it to look right if I add it to the center of the pannels.  Any advice on how to do it?