45 Squadron Mosquito

[Greebo]

Thanks to Lyric1 for his invaluable help researching this skin.

45 Squadron RAF began its war in mid-1940 in the North and East African campaigns. Here they flew their Blenheim bombers against the Italians, Germans and Vichy French. In 1942 they were transferred to the CBI theater to fight the Japanese. Here they converted first to Vultee Vengeance dive bombers and then in 1944 to De Havilland Mosquitoes.

Most of their Mosquitoes in 1944 appear to have simply had dark earth paint applied over the medium sea grey upper areas of their factory standard scheme of dark green and medium sea grey. However this aircraft HP 884 had a complete repaint with a non-standard disruptive camouflage scheme and a much lower than mid-point break to the underside colour which was possibly azure blue. As it became apparent the tropical climate was having an adverse effect on the aircraft's structural integrity in early 1945 all Mosquitoes in theater were repainted silver to reflect more of the sun's energy and so reduce internal heat build up.

[Arlo]

Nicely done. 

[lyric1]

 

[Devil 505]

Great job, but those colors look so out of place on a Mossie.

[Greebo]

Great job, but those colors look so out of place on a Mossie.

That's kind of the appeal of it really. I've already skinned all the other variations of colour scheme there are for the Mossie VI.

[Nefarious]

Looking good Greebo. <S>

[Squire]

Very nice.

[Vraciu]

Nice job, Greebo.   Really really nice.

 


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(At the risk of hijacking your thread, I need to pick your brain.  I am assuming this airplane is painted "flat" or "semi-flat" based on the subtle sheen on the fuselage.  Would this also apply to OD American airplanes like the P-51B?   If so, what do your spec maps and diffuse/specular/ambient settings look like?   I think this is what I want to shoot for on Ding Hao! but maybe I am wrong.)

[Greebo]

I'm still learning about and tinkering with these settings on my skins. However this is what I currently use:

Painted surfaces grey shades:

Specular = 35
Environmental = 17
Power = 30

Bare metal colour/grey shades:

Bare metal RGB colour: 150/150/155
Specular = 125
Environmental = 77
Power = 83

The specular, environmental and power figures represent the approximate combined shades, including any weathering effects placed above the base layers.

[Vraciu]

I'm still learning about and tinkering with these settings on my skins. However this is what I currently use:

Painted surfaces grey shades:

Specular = 35
Environmental = 17
Power = 30

Bare metal colour/grey shades:

Bare metal RGB colour: 150/150/155
Specular = 125
Environmental = 77
Power = 83

The specular, environmental and power figures represent the approximate combined shades, including any weathering effects placed above the base layers.

Thanks.  That Mossie looks amazing.   

[oboe]

I'm still learning about and tinkering with these settings on my skins. However this is what I currently use:

Painted surfaces grey shades:

Specular = 35
Environmental = 17
Power = 30

Bare metal colour/grey shades:

Bare metal RGB colour: 150/150/155
Specular = 125
Environmental = 77
Power = 83

The specular, environmental and power figures represent the approximate combined shades, including any weathering effects placed above the base layers.

These are specs for an AH2 skin, correct?   The numbers listed are from the material.txt file?

[Greebo]

No, the numbers represent the approximate shade of grey I use in the AH III S, E and P files. These are all greyscale files, so when I say 35 I mean 35/35/35.

[Devil 505]

No, the numbers represent the approximate shade of grey I use in the AH III S, E and P files. These are all greyscale files, so when I say 35 I mean 35/35/35.

So how do the Environmental and Power values fit into this? I thought these settings only were for the pre-specular map skins (or for those who have the updates turned off)

[Greebo]

I wrote this AH III skins tutorial in the beta forum explaining the new system. Its already slightly out of date though. I said you can submit either a bump map or normal map but actually you have to use a normal map.

Essentially though white on an environmental map will give you a chrome-like effect where the skin reflects the environment around it perfectly, black won't reflect anything. White on the power map gives a very sharp reflection, black a very diffuse one. I find these maps end up looking much like the specular map, but are generally darker. This is because shiny surfaces tend to have both sharper reflections and also reflect the environment more than matt ones.

In AH II power and environmental effects were controlled with text files, in AH III it is done on a per pixel basis rather than globally.

[Devil 505]

Gotcha.