P-38J "Little Edris" Lt Berkeley E Hollister, 479thFG 434thFS

[oboe]

P-38J 42-68029 L2-V “Little Edris”. Lt. Berkeley E Hollister, 434th Fighter Squadron. Crew Chief was S/Sgt Tom O’Grady of Brenham, TX who was chief on all L2-V aircraft in the 434th. This particular one was lost on 15 July 1944 when Lt. Flamm D Harper became an evader.

[Nefarious]

Great looking skin, but the nose art seems a tad blurry compared to other details on the aircraft. <S> 

[Devil 505]

Excellent job, Oboe

I agree with Nef on the nose art looking blurry. Also the script looks pink, is this intentional?

[oboe]

Thanks - its the game doing that blurring.  In the Photoshop work file, its pretty crisp (for being so small). I think the game engine has a little trouble with such detailed art at the pixel level, and seems to want to blend the red letters with the white drop shadow, and stretch the red tops of the letters up by a pixel.  I've tried separate layers for text and background, tried PS's drop Shadow function - it always looks a little blurry in the game.   I just moved the position of the art on the skin a little and reduced the opacity so the blurry edges aren't as noticeable.  But if any one has a better way to deal with this Im all ears.

[Devil 505]

Yeah, I had a similar thing happen with a Japanese schemed 110 I made.

The game engine tries to average out the red tones with the brown/olive tones on the edges for some reason.



In my case, because the photo reference did not confirm that the marking actually had a red outline, I simply deleted the red portion.



Not perfect, but better.

[lyric1]

 

[Hajo]

Good work Oboe!

[oboe]

Great example of the problem.  Glad its not me or my machine or Photoshop.   Deleting the red isn't an option for me though.

[Devil 505]

Try altering the position of the script by a pixel or 2 and see if it helps. Position does play a factor, believe it or not. I've occasionally been able to remedy this effect by shifting the placement of a graphic. It did not work on the 110, though.

[oboe]

I did, and it did help somewhat.  Also reduced the opacity so the fainter pixels causing the blurryness fade out more.  Best i could do; its in second screen shot nose detail above.

[Vraciu]

The nose on the P-38 shape is a nightmare.  It's a no-win situation in many cases.

[lyric1]

[Greebo]

Great looking skin Oboe.

AH's skin texture compression is a pain sometimes but I guess its a necessary evil given the number of skins in the game. How certain is it that the nose art text was red and white anyway? Is that referenced from someone who saw the real plane or is it just based off one or more artists' interpretations? If its the latter they all tend to copy what's been done before so you could just change the colour to blue or something.

[oboe]

Thank you, Greebo and Lyric - great find!   You're amazing!  The only resource I had for the skin was the cover art of the 479th FG group history book by Fairfield.

Looking closely at the B&W photos of the nose art, I'm not sure how the lettering could be dark red as the book cover art depicts.    I suppose it could be light blue or maybe insignia yellow?  But that is complete conjecture.    The letters of the word "LITTLE" are about 1 px wide (a little blur is incurred when rotating to the proper diagonal angle) so I don't think I can create the tiny gap between the letters and the drop background...     

[Vraciu]

Redraw the nose art as it's own image.   Make this large.    Rotate the large image THEN resize it and paste into your skin on the nose art or insignia layer.