Aces High Bulletin Board
General Forums => Custom Skins => Topic started by: Greebo on June 17, 2020, 06:33:48 AM
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Thank you to Lyric1 for finding me the info for this skin. This is an update of a skin originally submitted by Fencer in 2008.
This Mitchell bomber named "Nulli Secundus" (Latin for "Second to None") served with the RAF's 180 Squadron during 1943. Beginning in January of that year this squadron bombed enemy communications, troop concentrations and other targets in France during the run up to D Day. They continued these attacks after the invasion right up to the end of the war, moving to France in October 1944.
(https://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=400398.0;attach=32571)
(https://bbs.hitechcreations.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=400398.0;attach=32573)
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Looks great
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:aok
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Great work.
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What shade of gray are you using for the S map and for the P map? That sheen is nice.
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Great update! Amazing work as always Greebo! <S>
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DAMN!
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Jolly good show :aok
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Excellent work as always, Greebo!
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Beautiful job, Greebo.
What shade did you use for your OD green on this one. It may be a good one for V to try on his mustangs for a darker/fresher OD shade than I suggested.
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There are two shades of Olive Drab I use, the darker is RGB 65/63/51 and the lighter is RGB 83/79/61. I used the darker for this skin as its a pretty good match to a colour photo of this aircraft Lyric1 found me.
With all the weathering layers on top there is a fair bit of variation in the shades of grey in my lighting files, but typical final values are around RGB 55/55/55 for the S file and 15/15/15 for the P file. The lighter specular file gives a reasonably powerful reflection but the dark power file spreads this reflection out over a large area to prevent it looking too glossy.
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There are two shades of Olive Drab I use, the darker is RGB 65/63/51 and the lighter is RGB 83/79/61. I used the darker for this skin as its a pretty good match to a colour photo of this aircraft Lyric1 found me.
With all the weathering layers on top there is a fair bit of variation in the shades of grey in my lighting files, but typical final values are around RGB 55/55/55 for the S file and 15/15/15 for the P file. The lighter specular file gives a reasonably powerful reflection but the dark power file spreads this reflection out over a large area to prevent it looking too glossy.
Are you leaving things like shadows and highlights for panel lines et al. In the S and P maps or do you remove them?
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Looks great. Did they redo the base size of the 25?
Btw let me know if you want reference photos of skins of mine. I was able to recover my files from a failed drive this week..
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Early AH2-era multi-engined bombers like the B-25 can now be submitted as either a 1024 or a 2048 res skin. My original idea when creating the B-25C template was to simply alter my existing 1024 res B-25H template. When I got started though I found this was going to be more work than I anticipated so I decided I might as well go the whole way and make an all-new template in 2048 res.
I am mainly concentrating on the B-25C schemes that will be the most useful for scenarios at the moment, so I've done RAF, USAAF desert, USAAF SEAC, and Soviet winter skins. My next B-25C will likely be a Soviet summer skin. Possibly an update to your existing one to get rid of the horrible glossy finish that AH3's new file system has lumbered it with or maybe one of the other Soviet schemes that Lyric1 has found me photos for. Any other info you have on it will be appreciated though.
I leave shadows turned on in the S and E maps but not the P map, highlights are turned off in all three maps. On the P map I add a layer to represent the sharp panel edges on either side of the panel lines. To create this I make copies of all my panel line layers and merge them into one, turn these lines white and then copy and paste the white lines four times, each time offset one pixel in each direction. What I end up with is white panel lines that are three pixels thick. I then use a selection of my original one pixel panel lines to delete the centre pixels of these wide lines. So I end up with dark panel lines that give very unfocused reflections bordered by light panel edges giving very sharp focused reflections. It sounds more complicated to do than it is but I doubt the effect is all that noticeable except maybe on a NMF skin. This technique was something Waffle suggested I do when specular maps were first introduced to AH2 and I have done it ever since.
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Ah, very good. I do the same except I've left the shadows on in the P map as well. I'll try it with them off.
Thanks for the info.