Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: 5PointOh on March 12, 2011, 03:05:32 PM
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Skyscrapper A Sq 9 497BG SN 42-24599.
(http://pc-mod-squad.com/B29/Photos/Skyscrapper%20A%20Sq%209%20497BG%20SN%2042-24599.jpg)
(http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z235/nathanyoung1980/Untitled-2-2.jpg)
Not sure if HTC will accept it since I was unable to locate a picture of the tail of the aircraft. I followed other 29s from that squadron tail markings. I chose not to do the front gear dust cover as I couldn't really make out what it was.
History on "Sky Scrapper"
Completed 29 missions;
On November 27, 1944, At 0005 Hours two G4M bombers attacked Saipan, destroying Z Square 1, serial number 42-24659, a Boeing B-29-40-BW Superfortress of the 877th Squadron, 499th Bomb Group, 73rd Bomb Wing. At 1210 Hours, seventeen A6M Zero fighters from Iwo Jima also attacked Saipan. They caught B-29s that were still loaded with bombs and fuel on ground after they aborted the 73rd's mission to Tokyo. All Japanese were shot down by anti-aircraft artillery or fighters, but they destroyed A Square 9 "Skyscrapper," serial number 42-24599, a Boeing B-29-40-BW Superfortress, 869th Squadron, 497th Bomb Group; T Square 10, serial number 42-63428, a Bell-Atlanta B-29-15-BA Superfortress, 873rd Squadron, 498th Bomb Group; and V Square 42 "Hell's Bells," serial number 42-63438, a Bell-Atlanta B-29-15-BA Superfortress, 879th Squadron, 499th Bomb Group
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2 more...BBS was getting angry...
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:D I have been looking for info on this one my self. No luck either.
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It was so unusual, I couldn't resist.
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Bring the nose art out a little bit more. Just looks too "faded". Otherwise it looks great!
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Bring the nose art out a little bit more. Just looks too "faded". Otherwise it looks great!
The black & whites are faded though on the nose art? I think he may have it right.
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spam
spam spam
spam spam spam
spam spam spam spam
did you see what i did there?
i used one word and coppied it and added the same word behind it to create somthing exactly the same as the word above it that could be characterized as slightly different.
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The materials files on bare metal planes screw with the color quality. You will have to make the image so that the end result looks right, NOT so that the bitmap you test in-game looks right in the editing software.
You'll have to really bring it out on the default materials.txt settings to get the right in-game needs.
And no, looking at the B&W it doesn't look very faded. It looks solid and clearly defined.
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spam
spam spam
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did you see what i did there?
i used one word and coppied it and added the same word behind it to create somthing exactly the same as the word above it that could be characterized as slightly different.
Excellent help there Fester...it means the world to me. I guess you start all over for every skin that have simular color scheme?
(http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z235/nathanyoung1980/skin1_1.jpg)
(http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z235/nathanyoung1980/default_1.jpg)
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Perhaps the fading on the "mouth" is heavy. To me the first couple of letters in each of the words look very worn and faded.
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Excellent help there Fester...it means the world to me. I guess you start all over for every skin that have simular color scheme?
(http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z235/nathanyoung1980/skin1_1.jpg)
(http://i191.photobucket.com/albums/z235/nathanyoung1980/default_1.jpg)
oh snap
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you can compare a skin that was done from scratch fully researched from standing in front of a real b25c to whatever it is you posted above and think its the same thing but its not.
and just keep in mind that HTC got tired of letting sub par skins in as placeholders so you might actually want to put some effort into just one skin that isn't a turd instead of 10 versions of one turd with a different nose art decal.
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Again thanks for the awesome feedback. Well the oh master, tell me were to improve, verse making snide remarks from the comfort of your home. If you don't like my skins that fine. But if can't seem to put some useful feedback in, go somewhere else and get the hand out of you arse.
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its a big grey blob
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Is that all you have?
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its pretty self explanatory.
your good at posting pics of my skins pick a bare metal one to illustrate what i mean.
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Or you could try some insightful critism.
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having trouble finding one? here let me help
yes i did the default b17 skin too but no one knows that because you dont get credit for default skins in the drop down menu
tell me is it a grey blob?
(http://www.netaces.org/skins/b17g/default.jpg)
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Well, thats nice, but, how many B-29s have a lot of coloring or wear to them?
(http://www.korean-war.com/images/KWAircraft/US/USAF/b29.jpg)
(http://military.discovery.com/technology/vehicles/bombers/images/b29-625x450.jpg)
(http://www.flightsim.com/fs2004/cent2/22882.jpg)
Although its slightly difficult to see in the pictures of the skin, there are many panels that have different coloring to them.
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a big grey blob with different colored panels?
hmm your right im wasting my time here.
good luck with that.
clearly you have no idea what im talking about and im not going to spell it out for you.
but don't feel oppressed.
when somthing is amazing I will jump up and down and say its amazing and people know this especially when its somthing amazing that has slipped through the cracks and not gotten in game.
on the flip side, when somthing is a grey blob i will call it a grey blob.
your giving me excuses for being blind to what is even in the pictures you just posted.
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Look Fester, I'd like to become a better skinner. Give some real insight here.
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part 2
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As harsh as he may seem, Fester actually is trying to present the idea that you don't just put a flat color for BMF. He said he won't spell it out, but allow me to try.
BMF is one of the hardest "looks" to pull off. My first attempts were quite bland. I think I got better with my more recent ones, though.
Let's look at your examples here:
(http://www.korean-war.com/images/KWAircraft/US/USAF/b29.jpg)
(http://military.discovery.com/technology/vehicles/bombers/images/b29-625x450.jpg)
(http://www.flightsim.com/fs2004/cent2/22882.jpg)
Look at them. They have a wide range of colors, highlights, shadows, all on a single frame. It's these "effects" that you need to try and capture in your BMF pattern. Look at some of the P-51s and P-47s for example. Some folks really have this down. Others not so much.
The end result can either look like a solid color paint bucket fill, or it can look like dynamic light off of a metal surface.
I hesitate to severely criticize other people's work, so I'll just classify the metal only (and not the overall skin).
Just using the P-47s as an example... Here's a paint-bucket-fill consistency skin:
(http://www.netaces.org/skins/p47n/skin3.jpg)
Very blah. Markings may be nice, but the skin's BMF leaves little for the eyeballs.
Here's another one, with better BMF:
(http://www.netaces.org/skins/p47d40/skin11.jpg)
You see how it doesn't look like a 2D bitmap? It has extra depth. It's not just the rivets and panels. It's not just the weathering smears... It's the actual effort you put into painting the BMF itself.
Now for my own personal examples:
My first BMF:
(http://www.nakatomitower.com/skins/images/screenshots/p47d25_527fs_1.jpg)
I tried to give it a bit of that definition but I didn't "get it" at the time. Overall I find it bland nowadays compared to others.
Now my next attempts I tried even harder:
(http://www.nakatomitower.com/skins/images/screenshots/p47n_413fs_2.jpg)
(http://www.nakatomitower.com/skins/images/screenshots/p47n_19fs_1.jpg)
But overall I think it still left a bit to be desired.
I think I finally "got it" with my later ones, as seen here:
(http://www.nakatomitower.com/skins/images/screenshots/p47n_1fs_1.jpg)
(http://www.nakatomitower.com/skins/images/screenshots/p47n_1fs_2.jpg)
So you see how you can have a nice nose art and tail codes, but the overall skin can still be bland? BMF is very hard to get right, and it takes a critical eye to keep yourself on track. Either you have that eye yourself or you rely on outside feedback (which I would hope you do anyway -- many times I thought I was on the right track only to have folks steer me back on course, and I even scrapped and redid my later P-47N efforts for a much better end result than I initially had thanks to forum feedback).
Kev367th showed how he did his and it was quite impressive and helpful -- this isn't for the detailing just the base underlying colors, even!
The link is here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,179337.0.html
but the image is broken. I think I have a copy of it saved at home but it will have to wait until later when I can check, upload, and repost it here.
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Again, just to reiterate because there were so many images in my previous post:
(http://www.nakatomitower.com/skins/images/screenshots/p47n_1fs_2.jpg)
vs
(http://www.netaces.org/skins/p47n/skin3.jpg)
Yours looks a bit like the latter right now. Mine's not perfect either, but you get the idea.
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Thank you Krusty,
That is what I was looking for. I think I have to spend more time in the base coloring verse setting layers above, the base layer. I appreciate the time.
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Nate, what he's basically saying is your skin sucks and you should never attempt another skin because you suck at it :D
<3
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I posted a short bare metal effects tutorial on the BBS a while ago. It can be found here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,279659.0.html
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I posted a short bare metal effects tutorial on the BBS a while ago. It can be found here:
http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,279659.0.html
Oooh, I missed that one, or possibly forgot about it. Thanks!
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everyone does the wings wrong
myself included my p51 wings are wrong. i only got it right on the b17 default skin.
make the wings blue with highlights and randomness and lighter along the edges instead of a big white highlight in the middle. fuselage reflections if your feeling skilled too but faint ones only in the form of some lighter color by the wing root and darker out further towards the wing tip.
why? because your gonna be looking at it from the side or a side angle most the time anyway.
make it look like the sky viewed from the angle your most likely going to be looking at the bomber from (ie side front or side back)
if none of that makes sense look at the wings on my b17 default skin for what im talking about.
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and if your gonna make a skin 1 clone is fine once in a while to keep people like guppy out of your hair for their grandfathers brothers uncles cousins airplane (quitch) and you might notice quitch is more weathered and faded than the default skin i did but its subtle.
but your already up to like 3 or 4 clones which is just annoying when you could spend that time putting more into just one skin.
the whole bare metal finish in aces high is based around the fact that there is no environmental mapping in game. thus to pull off a bare metal finish you have to "bake in" the environment. the environment is the blue sky the clouds and the ground and variations created by the metal from rivet deformation and metal fatigue etc.
on my skins i also bake in bump mapping and other stuff like that.
its all done based on being accurate from the most common point of view either the cockpit (fighters) or external side views (bombers)
i do the bump mapping by hand for every area in between rivets with a thin white highlight layer and a very faint black layer for faint shadows.
and its not actual bump mapping or environmental mapping. its "baked in" and only beliveable from one angle or a few angles if done well.