Metal Skin B-29 ready for submission

[HornetUK]

Well I have listen to what you all have to say but I think I will go the way I have made it thanks all for your comments

[ACE]

Your squad isn't who decides if it is used in game or not.  No offence or anything.

[HornetUK]

Well that it rather obvious Of course aces high make the decision but it is upto me what I submit and my own interpretation, it really what my personal taste isn't it.

[Zoney]

Well that it rather obvious Of course aces high make the decision but it is upto me what I submit and my own interpretation, it really what my personal taste isn't it.

Sir, good luck.  I know nothing about making skins.  I know a little bit about people.

If you are actually preparing a skin for use in the game, you might want to listen and heed the advice of those who have been doing it for years.

Yes, it is your decision, but your "personal chice" may preclude the final skin for use.

It seems you have started with a goal of a skin that you will see flying while you and your squad enjoy it's use and then you seem to have taken artistic criticism to be personal and now you are going to do it the way you want to do it no matter if is "correct" or not.

[Dragon Tamer]

Sir, good luck.  I know nothing about making skins.  I know a little bit about people.

If you are actually preparing a skin for use in the game, you might want to listen and heed the advice of those who have been doing it for years.

Yes, it is your decision, but your "personal chice" may preclude the final skin for use.

It seems you have started with a goal of a skin that you will see flying while you and your squad enjoy it's use and then you seem to have taken artistic criticism to be personal and now you are going to do it the way you want to do it no matter if is "correct" or not.

This

[Chalenge]

I do not think any of the B29s are realistically skinned. The base is too bright and the highlights too expansive. The rivet lines are usually too large, oversized, and poorly placed. I don't know if the techniques used to create the models are anything like production animation, but it seems like the skins are 'baked' on low res work. In production animation there is usually a higher resolution model with denser details, so that the details don't have to be painted on. Since you do not have that luxury you need to take extra care to get the colors spot on to begin with, or it will really stray from the expected values during color reduction.

Hornet, flat aluminum usually has a color value of around 145 in each RGB channel. I have not played much with skins or I might suggest how to fix the reflectivity as well. I did some playing around with skins here and when I asked about the color reduction method everyone sort of indicated that they do what they do because that's what we have. So, basically everyone draws on the knowledge of the others around them. Best to just take the criticism as it is, because helpful suggestions don't come up very often that I've seen. Everyone loves to be negative instead.

[Greebo]

When I first started skinning I skinned in double resolution and then resized the bmp, but it didn't really add anything to the skin and it made panel lines and rivets look a blurry mess, so now I just skin in the native resolution. I'd guess we would need something like 10,000 by 10,000 pixel sized skins to get anything that would come close to passing for real.

Hornet don't get too discouraged by the criticism we need more skinners in here and the negativity can be a bit off putting. The basic skin looks really good. To me the second lot of screenshots you posted looks a lot more realistic, but in the end it is your skin so just go with what you feel happy with. One suggestion I would make is to use the spec map to make the painted areas of the skin and possibly the exhaust stained areas on the wings look a lot less glossy than the metal areas. The contrast between a bright highlight running along the fuselage that then becomes a lot duller as it runs over the painted bits is a powerful effect that really adds to the illusion of it being bare metal. It looks like you may have done that to an extent but maybe ramp the effect up a bit more.

[Chalenge]

When I first started skinning I skinned in double resolution and then resized the bmp, but it didn't really add anything to the skin and it made panel lines and rivets look a blurry mess, so now I just skin in the native resolution. I'd guess we would need something like 10,000 by 10,000 pixel sized skins to get anything that would come close to passing for real.

Just to be clear, what I mentioned is the model being more detailed, rather than the skins. Animation houses use low res models during the render process, but with the unwrapped skin from a very highly detailed model of the same object (UV_unwrap if you will). That results in a model that appears to have more detail built in, but that renders at greatly enhanced speed. Then, if they need close up views they go to the detailed model, but in a game you don't have to do that, ever.

Painting textures the way you are (custom brushes, and so on) is great up to a point, but very high resolution photos will always improve appearances over paint. The only thing is you have to be very careful on color reductions. This is the argument I ran into the last time I brought the subject up, and I was told it won't work. Yet, I know it works, since I have already seen it work.

[HornetUK]

Chalenge : yes I can agree with that but on the other hand I have not seen any aircraft in there that I would truly describe as metallic. Also agree with the hi def images well i have been using them have 100 and am getting as close as i can under the texture we have in this game. I think we would need instead of 2048 to make it double or even three times more to get the correct level of detail

This is my very first skin It has taken me 3 months to get this help apart from a little help with bumpmat and materials files and one or two words about the bumpmat control file I have worked this out all myself. This is version 2.5 which really adds up to an evolution of 3 skins as for this skin I am about 70% happy with it. It is not the finished article as in it is the last version I will ever submit it is one I can get in the game with my squad and work on with them.

Greebo : Thanks for your kind words and you help with the info I needed in the past. Don't worry I am not put off at all. She is my creation and like everything new people start doing it takes time to learn and create what could be considered perfection.  I just hope that Aces High will take in into the game and then I will know I can proceed with it development. 

Having said that all my brother who own a company that producer of software that creates special effects for films and the such. oh you know the same sort of thing that the company call "industrial light and magic" did in star wars. he said to me considering the Sim you are using it not half bad, not perfect but not half bad. so I take great heart that.

I guess what anyone says beauty is in the eye of the beholder. So I like where she is now and she will look totally different in the next update if I get it in the game. We will have to see on that Greebo