Aces High Bulletin Board

General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: oboe on September 29, 2010, 02:14:03 PM

Title: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: oboe on September 29, 2010, 02:14:03 PM
This is a still from an IL2 movie I ran across on YouTube.   YOW!

(http://i225.photobucket.com/albums/dd148/tjlaven/IL-2-A6M5s.jpg)

Anybody familiar with how skins are managed in IL-2?   Are skins submitted somewhere and reveiwed before being put into game, or are they completely decentralized?
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: USRanger on September 29, 2010, 04:01:41 PM
In IL-2, you can make/use any skin that you want.  I like AH much better, but I love that aspect of IL-2.  Squad skins!
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: oboe on September 29, 2010, 04:48:32 PM
Now I'm very anxious for the update to AH's Zeros.   I'd like to see if I can reproduce that in AH!
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: JOACH1M on September 29, 2010, 04:52:35 PM
I like il2 graphics not so much flight modeling, il2 you can basically
Make your own skin
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: oboe on September 29, 2010, 05:58:40 PM
In IL-2, you can make/use any skin that you want.  I like AH much better, but I love that aspect of IL-2.  Squad skins!

So the other players don't see you as the skin you've chosen?   
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: Treize69 on September 29, 2010, 07:03:43 PM
So the other players don't see you as the skin you've chosen?   

They do if they have that skin in their database. Both have to have the skin downloaded to view it properly.
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: Krusty on September 29, 2010, 07:16:15 PM
IL2 skins are of dubious quality most times... Many are outright fabrications. They have no higher a resolution than AH skins.

The difference in those screenshots is only lighting. Nothing else.
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: USRanger on September 29, 2010, 08:27:08 PM
IL-2 skins are 1024x1024 .bmps, just like AH.  When you enter a server & someone in your view is using a custom skin, that skin enters into your Skins folder & you now have it.

I'm a big fan of Kristorf & a few others' work:
http://forums.ubi.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/45410763/m/2951011348
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: Krusty on September 29, 2010, 08:31:50 PM
If you ignore the lighting, the clouds, the bright or dark contrast, the shadows, etc... Ingore the pretty screenshots and you just look at the bitmaps themselves... AH skins are just as good. We have some talented skinners. You pull up a bunch of our spitfire skins and they'll look very similar to that (again, looking at the bitmaps, the pixels, rather than the pretty pictures)
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: cactuskooler on September 29, 2010, 08:50:18 PM
Are Il-2 skins 8-bit as well?
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: USRanger on September 29, 2010, 09:53:15 PM
Yep. The .bmp is just set up a lil different:

(http://img638.imageshack.us/img638/6056/77532959.jpg) (http://img638.imageshack.us/i/77532959.jpg/)

When you get a new skin, you get the .bmp, not a .res file.

If you ignore the lighting, the clouds, the bright or dark contrast, the shadows, etc... Ingore the pretty screenshots and you just look at the bitmaps themselves... AH skins are just as good. We have some talented skinners. You pull up a bunch of our spitfire skins and they'll look very similar to that (again, looking at the bitmaps, the pixels, rather than the pretty pictures)

I gotta agree & disagree.    AH has an awesome skinning community & the models are superb, yet I don't have a problem with complimenting those other guys' skins, even if they do do it for the wrong game. ;)  I disagree that it's the lighting, ect.  I have the skins/.bmps and gotta say that guys like Kristorf, Magnus & R_Target are world class skinners.  I'm not trying to ankle hump or anything, just giving credit where credit is do.  I say the same things about you guys to them.
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: Krusty on September 29, 2010, 10:59:16 PM
We agree there.

Although, I do find it funny that they "paint on" the lights and shadows on the example you chose there. Not all do that. I find it funny because the lighting is generally where IL2 is better than AH! You'd think they'd leave it up to the in-game rendering!

 :lol
Title: Re: IL-2 skin quality
Post by: USRanger on September 29, 2010, 11:12:41 PM
Just grabbed a random one out of my Skins folder. :D  Your trained eye notices things like that that wouldn't even occur to moi'.