HE-111 wear

[Dragon Tamer]

I'm working on a 111 skin that I've been requested to fast track. I have found a lone photo of the aircraft that I'm skinning though the quality is quite low. My big concern is how much paint wear should I add to the skin? I'm afraid of over doing it on such a short deadline. This is also the first skin where I will be working with the specular mapping so I'm trying to get everything right the first time.

Thanks for the help.

Edit: The skin is from KG 27 tail number 1G HK

[Krusty]

Well it helps to have some reference for us to comment on.

I assume you're doing the winter camo one?



The white is actually a whitewash, hastily applied over top of the underlying camo. The white would scuff off around the most used areas, around hatches, or wing walk areas (on fighters).

My only main concern is that this airframe was a much-later He 111H-16 model, and while it looked similar to ours it was definitely a later frame in power and payload capabilities.

There are plenty of winter camo He111s, though, and to answer your question, you can wear it in specific areas, you can add some grain and application variation to it, and if you want to simulate that some of the whitewash is coming off, due to moisture/snow/rain/airflow, you could show it fading in key areas...



Take a look here... Note the area behind the canopy where people might need to lean in to work on something, or where windows might open.... Note the tail as compared to the back of the fuselage. Note the hard masking tape used on the glass canopy on the nose (it wasn't worth masking off every frame most times).

Note that the paint was not smooth -- it was rough, like a matt paint. The exhaust and oil stains in the above picture are somewhat common because every nook and cranny in the rough surface of the paint would gather soot or oil and retain that stain for a long time. To clean it off would remove the whitewash, too, so you get bad engine stains on some of these winter camos.

Note also the wear by the top of the back stabilizers. Some of that could be exhaust, as the stains trailed backwards. Some of it could be underlying green showing through, as this was an area that could be worked on, or covered up, and might have more wear.

[No9Squadron]

Good observations on that photo, really useful to any modeller.

I really like the 1674 HCU skin, it's not a whitewash, but you feel the corrosion and sense of weathering. Some other B24 skins are way too shiny and perfect perhaps.

[Dragon Tamer]

Thanks for the feedback Krusty. While I appreciate your concern about whether or not the skins could be submitted, I have already emailed HTC asking if the two skins I'm working on were okay for our 111 model and HTC said they are. 

As for the paint wear, I knew that the 111 being an early war plane would cause it to have some significant paint wear. I actually dialed back on some of the paint wear around the service hatches along the wing but left some heavy wear around the engine. I also appreciate you pointing out the wear along the cockpit windows, that's something that I would have completely overlooked.

[Krusty]

Considering they had about 400 more horsepower, better defensive armaments, and better performance, payload, bigger bombloads externally, I don't see how HTC can in good faith put those skins on our BOB-era variant.

They're mum as to what version we have, but after some checking it appears we have an H-3 or H-4 going by top speeds. That would be like putting a skin for a 109G-14 onto a 109G-2. They're both 109Gs, but that's where the similarities stop.


P.S. Just for comparison the H-16 was [ed: changed to "about"] about 20mph faster than the H-3/4 we have here in Aces High. It was also a late 1942 design that served mostly in 1943 and later.