Natural metal B-17G 303rd BG "The Floose"

[oboe]

Still tweaking the metal layers.  I've reduced the Power values and increased Environmental reflectivity.   Many times I see the old B-17 skins still being used in the MA, and with their mirror-like supercharged reflectivity, they DO look good at medium-far distances.  I'm trying to capture some of that yet still keep it reasonable so that it looks OK when you inspect the skin closely, as in a walk-around.   It's too bad about the stretching and lack of detail in the engine cowlings and cowl flaps but I can't do much about that.  The wing surfaces have the same spec, power, and env as the fuselage, but glare/shine seems to be activated only by direct illumination, so in these images they appear to have a dull silver-painted look to them.

Click image of full-size version:

[Devil 505]

Nice one.

[oboe]

Thanks I didn't have a lot of reference info on this one, just Kev's original skin and a few photos of the nose art, along with a nice full-plane image of a stable mate:

[Vraciu]

I would consider some darker panel line shading.  It's a game concession but might break up that painted look you are concerned with. 

It seems to match the photo as it is now though. 

Nice job.

[Greebo]

Love the skin Oboe, the lighting effects look spot on to me.

It's always difficult to get an acceptable NMF look in AH, given the way the reflections work in the game. Things I do to the diffuse map to negate the grey-painted look a bit include making adjacent metal panels slightly different shades of grey, adding large blurred white highlighted areas across the thickest part of the upper wing and horizontal tail surfaces, as well as giving all the upper surfaces of the aircraft a blue tint. The trick with all these effects is to keep them subtle though, you shouldn't see them unless you know they are there.

[lyric1]

 

[Hajo]

 

[oboe]

Thanks guys!

Yes I do the same things Greebo - the slight bluish tint and the altering the shades of panel sections help alot.  I've played around with the panel line opacity a bit, and also adjusted the specularity of the tops of the wing tanks without changing their shade in the diffuse - that might give an subtle but real-looking variation in texture.   The wingtops do look nice when in sun glare.

Joe Baugher's USAAF serial number site says "The Floose" was the first 8th AF heavy bomber to complete 100 missions.   She crash landed after her 102nd mission, and was salvaged.   I *think* that means she no longer flew but was used as a source of spare parts? 

[hgtonyvi]

good one.