Greebo, how do you make the weld lines?
My weld lines on the T-34 are built up from three layers. The first shown in the top left screenshot is a one pixel white line representing the centre lines of the welds. The second, top right, is the edges of the welds. Basically two black lines to either side of the centre line. The third, bottom left, is called weld roughness and is created from copies of the first two layers merged together. This is then reduced to zero brightness which effectively gives me three pixel wide black lines. These lines are then partially erased using a tool set bigger than the overall size of the skin, 100% opacity, 50% density and 100% hardness. The effect is to remove half of the black line pixels randomly. Once all three layers are reduced in opacity the welds look like the bottom right screenshot.
The reason I do it this way in three layers is it gives me more scope to play with the weld effect in the normal map. For this skin I wanted all the welds to stick up above the surface of the skin and be quite rough in texture. The Soviet tank factories didn't bother to clean up their welds except where this was needed for clearance so T-34s look quite crudely finished compared to Western tanks. So for the normal map I turned the weld outline layer white but made that layer less opaque than the centre line layer, effectively giving a domed profile to the weld. The roughness layer then gave it the unfinished appearance I was after.
The welds are also in the other lighting maps but the effect of these in GVs is much less important than the normal map, the opposite of aircraft skins really.
