Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: Krusty on February 16, 2013, 03:03:40 AM
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This is still in progress but I've got to the point I'm comfortable sharing. Still ironing out bump map and spec map kinks, still need to do some details and whatnot. Still a WIP.
This is 1/102 RHAF (Royal Hungarian Air Force). It was an experimental night fighter camo in 1944. The plane was a 210Ca-1, but all 210Cs had DB605 engines, slats, extended fuselages, and almost all of the corrections that the earlist models had. It was far closer to an Me410 than it was to an original Me210. Because of this HTC has given permission to skin 210Cs.
I have more in the pipeline, but here's the first 410.
(http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz63/krustacious/Aces%20High%20Screenshots/ZO20_preview1_rearstbd.jpg)
(http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz63/krustacious/Aces%20High%20Screenshots/ZO20_preview3__frontstbd.jpg)
(http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz63/krustacious/Aces%20High%20Screenshots/ZO20_preview5_belly.jpg)
(http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz63/krustacious/Aces%20High%20Screenshots/ZO20_preview6_belly.jpg)
(http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz63/krustacious/Aces%20High%20Screenshots/ZO20_preview7_top.jpg)
There are a number of profiles, templates, and decal sets for this plane, but most stem from this one photo.
(http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz63/krustacious/Aces%20High%20Screenshots/210Ca_exp_hungarian_camo_cropped.jpg)
I've taken what I can and extrapolated some of the camo hoping to stick with the 2-part spray and splotch overpainting. I think I've done a decent job, but if anyone has additional resources it would be helpful!
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Looks amazing as always! :aok
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Fantastic work Krusty!! So when you gonna come back flying with 71? Miss wingin with ya buddy! :salute
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Looks good so far Krusty.
Only fault I see is your smoke and oil trails. They are too stark in my opinion. The smoke in particular looks like paint.
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I have issues with them as well.
On the lower surface I'm just having a mental block for how I used to do them. I'll have to review some of my previous skins to try and remember my technique.
On the upper surface I'm struggling to make it actually look like an oil slick. It's hard. I kind of know what oil stains look like. I don't know quite how to replicate them. They have almost a gritty quality to them but they are liquid stains. They're transparent, sort of, but also make things look black. Sometimes they have a "lip" or "ring" around them as the oil has dried off and so forth. This is something a large % of 210s and 410s have coming out the back of certain panel lines on top of the engine nacelle. Apparently the design threw a lot of oil. Or it threw a little oil and these planes were pushed so hard there was no down time to clean them. Hungarian 210s especially seem to have an oil slick behind each engine. Some German planes too.
It's not something I've done like this before, and it's annoying me because I can't get it right. Though, I'm sure I can work on the exhaust smoke to make that look better.
P.S. Fu, I miss you all too. Can't right now, but I'm looking forward to when I can.
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Devil, one prime example... It's a grainy B&W photo, and may look a bit like smoke, but in other photos with more clarity it looks more like an oil slick. This just shows a good top view, where most show just the side of the engine from ground level.
(http://i814.photobucket.com/albums/zz63/krustacious/random/me210-8.jpg)
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This is a good looking skin. I love the camo work on the upper surfaces. Keep us posted of course!
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This will be good to have. Nice looking skin. :aok
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If anybody is up for it, I'm looking for specifics as to the oil stains. WHY don't they look right? Wrong color? Wrong opacity? Texture? Looking for some kind of reference for how to revamp them.
EDIT: The top-of-wing stains, not the oil cooler stains. Those will be reworked differently.
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Here's a pic of the default skin 410. You can see where the oil spews out pretty decently. Though it's a bit different than the 210 shot above.
(http://i547.photobucket.com/albums/hh473/cactuskooler/stuff/Untitled-11.jpg)
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Krusty,
With your oil, I would first adjust your color with a little bit of dark green. Start at 100% opacity. Apply with your paintbrush tool where you want it to be heaviest. Then use your smudge tool to spread it out with strokes in the direction of airflow. Adjust opacity to get a better sense of the total effect. Apply more with the paintbrush if it spreads too thin. Also add some streaks to vary the appearance. Ask yourself if the oil slick is strait liquid or more a smokey oil stain. If strait liquid remember that the outside edge of the slick will have a thicker bead cause by liquid tension. If more smokey, use the blend tool to fan out the outside edge using small strokes in a semicircular motion in the direction of airflow. This is also useful for spreading out engine exhaust stains.
Here's a screen shot to illustrate the final effect. The strait oil is on the lower cowling, I exaggerated the smoke effect to help you visualize the effect.
(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff252/DropkickYankees/Smokecomparison.png)
Reference photo's from a 109G-2.
(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff252/DropkickYankees/Oilslick1_zpsd9ce5b96.png)
(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff252/DropkickYankees/Oilslick2_zps6ada961b.png)
(http://i241.photobucket.com/albums/ff252/DropkickYankees/Oilslick3_zps83f2a96d.png)
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Thanks for the ideas, cactus.
The photo of the default skin you list: I don't think that's oil. It's either there or not, and in this case it's not. Some were cleaned better than others. I think what you're seeing is liquid stains from the fuel filler caps, one of which is on top of the engine fairing, several of which are inboard of that fairing.
Examples that had it:
(http://navalhistory.flixco.info/images/PLANE%20Messerschmitt%20Me%20410.jpg)
This 410 is developing an oil slick nicely, only reaching about halfway back on the engine fairing:
(http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-XhRnje2jHGk/T42vswXgbkI/AAAAAAAAE9M/5AabX53I-t4/s1600/me410black13Erprobungskommando25.jpg)
Same for this 210C in Tunisia:
(http://www.feldgrau.com/Me210.jpg)
And many others. I'm not saying all had it, but with this particular skin I want to show the heavy use that Hungarian Me210Ca-1s received. To this end, I would like to have those cowling oil slicks. It won't be a standard feature on my 410 skins.
I'll work on the stuff you gave me from the previous posts. Thanks!
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I think in general your stains should be less opaque the further back from the source they are, as the oil/exhaust would get dispersed by the turbulent airflow. I use a narrow low opacity airbrush tool to make exhaust stains, using lots of strokes to build it up, narrow and dense going to wider and less opaque. I set the tool to have low density and alternate between a darker and lighter shade of grey/brown. This makes it look more like a dirty stain and less like a shadow.
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I am so glad to see me-410 skins, but I am sad that the first new one shown wasn't a German one.
I don't know much about the Hungarian air force/etc but it does look very pretty.
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Too bad we had no D9s...
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I am so glad to see me-410 skins, but I am sad that the first new one shown wasn't a German one.
I don't know much about the Hungarian air force/etc but it does look very pretty.
I have some German ones in the works, too. My second one is German. I would like to do a number of them but the new C2s may sidetrack me a bit.
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The more I look at that skin, the cooler it gets.
Krusty, how many hours does it take you to finish a skin like that?
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It really depends on the amount of detail in the skin. This has a special camo on it which required a lot more time to get right. It also is the first 410 I've done and the first skin of any plane takes more time. Following skins can use the first as a template, saving some time.
This one's taking longer because of issues with the spec and bump mapping that have been annoying me.
I think once I'm totally done with this skin I can churn out half a dozen more 410s that I really want. I just have to finish this first to iron out all the kinks.
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The more I look at that skin, the cooler it gets.
Krusty, how many hours does it take you to finish a skin like that?
Just to give you an idea, it took me 4-6 hours to get my lines and rivets about done.
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Just to give you an idea, it took me 4-6 hours to get my lines and rivets about done.
What are you skinning, Fuji?
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What are you skinning, Fuji?
:noid
I am messing around with an "orphaned" skin. I don't know if I'll have time to finish it due to my time issues now that Im back to work. Hopefully I'll be able to work on it more, if not and someone else does it, no big deal.
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Any luck on this yet? (I don't see any 410 skins anywhere).
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I am at an impasse. I can't get the software to do what I need it to do to create the proper file I need for the spec and bump layers. I can't finish the skin without them.
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What are you trying to get the software to do?
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Give me a solid fill. Instead I'm getting dithering or some such which renders an absolutely hideous spec map and bump map.
The thread I started: http://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php/topic,345588.0.html
Tried a number of variations in procedures/steps taken, downsizing color first, then filling, and down sampling to greyscale after editing, before and after merging layers, etc.
I'm really hating Photoshop these days. I miss PS5. It just won't run in Win7, though. I'm pretty sure it would let me get this done because I believe I had to do some similar things with the purple mask color on some old 1st Gen skins.
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Sorry but I can't really help you with Photoshop as I use Paint Shop Pro. Personally I work in greyscale from the start with the bump and spec maps. I start by importing the skin bmp as a layer into my greyscaled image file to line everything up with and then any other layers that I can use from the skin image file. The program automatically converts colour layers to greyscale. All I have to do is save the file as a bmp whenever I want to see the results in the viewer, no conversion needed.
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Although my progress has been set back many months, it seems I can keep working on it. Trying to go between GIMP and CS5 accidentally lost me a lot of work and I had to go back and re-do what I'd already done, but based on the comment from the other thread somebody suggested where I can change some settings in the color options of CS5 and it seems to work.
I really dislike CS5 compared to PS 5.1. The options are all hidden and jumbled around, it's not as simple and user friendly, and they changed how the program handles layer blending (defaulting to 8-bit? Blech!!) and down-sampling. Case in point it was force-dithering every time. There's an option under color settings that I think was the culprit: "Use Dither (8-bit/channel images)?" which among other settings I changed. It now seems to allow me to do what I want. You have to hit "more options" to even see it as checkbox to uncheck, which is lame to the extreme...
Anyways, I'm trying to re-acquaint myself with where I left off. I need to do some more work on details and keep tweaking the weathering (exhaust and stains are much better now!) but what's really annoying is my guess-work with how I want to adjust the bumpmat.txt file. I've been trying out a lot of settings. Also toying with levels on the specmap. Making exhausts reflect the least, the oil leaks reflect more, the default camo reflect medium, and the field-sprayed camo to reflect more (as if it were fresher, not dulled by time and the elements). It's a bit of a guessing game as well. Sometimes it doesn't seem to turn out how I imagine it will. Oh well. Progress is progress.
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More angles, trying to catch the light at different points to see if that helps show off the spec and bump mapping...
Also a fairly close up high res shot for some of the details.
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I like the paint scheme, but the exhaust stains look much to dark, more like oil spills.
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Can I get an opinion on the actual oil stains?
I was using some actual 410 photos for the area and dispersion of the exhaust staining, but I think I made them a tad too dark. I need to tweak it or do something.
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Can I get an opinion on the actual oil stains?
I was using some actual 410 photos for the area and dispersion of the exhaust staining, but I think I made them a tad too dark. I need to tweak it or do something.
The stains trailing back from the center object on the bottom of the engine nacelles? Those look pretty good.
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Those and the oil silcks on top of the wing cowlings going back to the flaps. I did rework the center ones underneath (those are the oil coolers, FYI) and gave them better texture with streaks.
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Looks awesome :aok
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I like it, Krusty, but the smoke and oil staining still need work. In particular, the upper wing oil stain behind the engine cowling is way too heavy. I know you're trying to replicate the effect seen in a specific photo, but that photo is not of the plane you're skinning, and that heavy of staining is not typical of 210/410's. Also, the exhaust trails are too dark and too opaque.
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Actually, it is quite typical. I've got dozens of examples to work off of. The exact flow pattern is based on one particular photo, but the all-encompassing black smear after that cowling line is quite normal on all but new airframes. As I'm skinning a particularly weary airframe I wish to include that kind of oil staining. The exact how is what I am trying to nail down. The exhaust stains are also noticable on a number of 410s. 410s had a lot of losses, and a lot of replacements. You find a new ride and it's clean. You see one that's survived a bit and they're dirty as heck around the engines.
The oil slick behind the cowling is even visible on some 110s in the exact same way, as a matter of fact.
The more I look at the exhaust stains, the more I hate them, however.
I think I got the exhaust stains on the nacelles okay (with some tweaking to help the points you mention), but the spread over the wing is making me sad right now. The texture doesn't look right. I'm rusty at this. There was a time I'd have nailed it in the first go.
EDIT: I am, in retrospect, considering reducing the oil slicks behind the cowlings simply because I can't get it to look the way I want. There would still be a long streak of oil if I do this but I'm thinking of making it narrower and not as flared at the trailing edge.