Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: HornetUK on February 04, 2013, 10:54:09 AM
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Hi all, this is my first ever post and I am looking for some help from you great skinners.
Can anyone point me in the direction of how to access and change the reflective qualities of a skin so i can make it look like real metal?
can find anything that looks right in the files in the folder, there seems to be no place you can enter ENV map information.
Is it that the only reflective skins are the default ones?
Hope someone has the answer
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You can alter the overall specularity (shininess) of a skin by altering the material.txt file either with a text editor or directly from the skin viewer.
From the skin viewer you click on the material button, then select "specular" and adjust the three upper sliders to suit. Moving them right increases shininess and vice versa. When you press OK the viewer saves this setting to the material.txt file. The output of this would be something like the one below when viewed in a text editor:
0.267,0.286,0.341,Ambient
0.733,0.714,0.659,Diffuse
0.000,0.000,0.000,Emissive
0.650,0.650,0.650,Specular
11.180,Power
The fourth line here is the one you are interested in. Editing the three numbers higher makes the skin shinier with 1.000,1.000,1.000 being as shiny as it can get. Personally I'd suggest something like 0.200 for dull camo jobs and 0.600 to 0.800 for bare metal.
You can now also add a specularity map to your skin which lets every individual pixel of the skin have its own specularity setting. This is a lot more involved though. I'd suggest reading the "using bump and specular materials" thread in this group and also this BBS thread (http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,327390.0.html) has a lot of useful info.
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Hi Greebo,
Great fan of your work, look at a lot of your skins to see how you have done things to get ideas on how to do things.
Yes I understand how to affect the aircraft Shinny what i am looking to do if to make it reflect its environment like say on the P-51 d you can see certain part of the aircraft and surrounding area in a reflection.
Can one do that with those setting as well?
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OK, environment mapping is very simple to add so long as you have already added the bump and specular maps for your skin, it won't work without these files. In the viewer in the material section just slide the environment slider right or left to adjust the effect. This alters the bumpmat.txt file, which now has a fourth row of numbers. The key one is the bottom right number, 0.300 in the case below. The closer this number is to 1.000 the more environment mapping you will see. A setting of 1.000 looks chrome-like.
0.275,0.275,0.280,1.000,Ambient
0.680,0.680,0.670,1.000,Diffuse
0.000,0.000,0.000,1.000,Emissive
1.000,1.000,1.000,0.300,Specular
10.000,Power
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Yes I understand total what you are saying but it a true reflection like with the P51d which you can see the reflection of the terrain bouncing off the metal? That was the ultimate effect I was looking for a the enola gay is totally reflective and you would be able to see the whole environment of its surrounding in the metal. Sorry to being so finicky just looking for perfection I guess. I am very lucky I have adobe illistrator and photoshop and want to make my skins as realistic as I can
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A skin for the "Enola Gay" may not be accepted into the game. That was a specially modified B-29 for carring atomic bombs - which we obviously do not have.
That being said, there are plenty of other bare metal schemed Superfortresses that would be welcome in the game.
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we have a number of modified aircraft in here like the RAF b-17 which never carried bombs as it was a acm aircraft and also had no bottom turret and also the mossi bomb recon skins which are also used in here for the bomber. anyway the marking are less important it is getting the air frame right and if i cant use it for that then i will have to find another to use it for and there are many lol
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Environment mapping is a reflection of the surrounding terrain. When the effect is enabled on a reflective bare metal skin like most P-51s, the upper surfaces will reflect the blue of the sky and the lower surfaces the terrain below the aircraft.
I would think it fairly likely a skin of Enola Gay would be accepted despite the real aircraft being a bit different to our B-29, having no upper and lower turrets for instance. It is a certainty that an A-bomb variant of the B-29 will never be modelled by HTC, so there is no real reason not to allow it. However it would be a good idea to check it is OK with HTC first before spending any time skinning it.
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Thanks Greebo! Ah haaaa, it has all clicked I have got the reflection I so wanted.
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Some sample shots of the b29 skin I am working on. No where finished about 60% there.
Using Adobe Masters Collection CS5 (Using Illustrator and Photoshop)
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More......
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ENola Gay was a VASTLY modified variant of the B-29. All nuke carriers were an entirely different subset of bomber.
It would be like skinning a B-52 onto the B-17. It doesn't belong, and IMO it shouldn't be accepted.
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there are many aircraft on here which are not correct. such as raf b17 skin which was not a bomber but a ecm plane also had no chin gun or bottem guns. Also the mossi bomber, there are photo recon skins for the bomber. both totaly incorrect skins. Enola gay could carry normal bombs it practiced over japan with normal ones
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The Enola Gay skin has no place in this game. It was a silverplate modification with no defensive armament and no defense armor plate, and special gear for only dropping the massive atomic bomb. It also had special engines and propellers. There were only 15 of these planes built. The Enola Gay only dropped 2 pumkin bombs, which were shells the size and weight of the atomic bomb but stuffed with basic TNT instead. These bombs have no equivelant in this game and were not normal. They were not used for anything other than testing release of the real bomb (without wasting the real thing). The entire plane, from when it rolled off the assembly, to actual practice flights, to the actual missions it flew, were all 100% geared towards atomic bomb detonation. Nothing about that plane was like that of a conventional B-29.
As for your comments: There are some that are slightly different, then there are some that don't belong at all.
The RAF B-17? It was a B-17 in all areas except one: It didn't have the chin gun. It was otherwise very similar to the B-17G we have in-game. It did have the ball turret. Perhaps not the best fit, but closer than the Enola Gay to a standard B-29.
The photo recon skins on the Mossie 16? Well this plane was extensively used as a photo recon platform. There was another mark designation that was identical to our mk.XVI but was used for photo recon. HTC has declined any unarmed photo recon skins to be placed on armed planes in this game (i.e. P-38s, etc), but since the Mossie16 bomber has no forward guns they have specifically allowed the photo recon version that was very similar to our bomber version to be skinned. It's the exception to the rule, but it is all logical.
There have been some folks that intentionally try to sneak skins in that don't belong. Training skins, ones that never saw combat. There are some in-game already. These folks know what they're doing and just bypass ever letting folks in the forum know about it so we can't raise any objections. Please understand, the objections come from a good place. We have certain criteria for skins in this game and some folks abuse those for whatever selfish reasons. The rest of us are just looking out for the integrity of the game's skin selection.
I could name half a dozen skins in this game that don't belong which are used often enough. I've tried reporting this and it gets nowhere. Removing a skin once it's in is almost impossible with the way HTC works. Because of this it's important to make sure skins are peer-vetted before submission.