I like that lower pic though I agree they look too large, I think if you somehow kept the 1 pixel white center of each rivet unblured in a separate layer and blurred the white and black around it and made them low opacity or fill that may be what you are looking for
dont forget to do everything visible from the cockpit shaded to look 3d from pilots perspective!!! ie all 3d effects lines panels rivets shaded to look recessed or etc from pilots perspective if visible from cockpit. fuselage and undersurface would be normal but wings would be mirrored ie cut and paste and flip white panel line layer so the white line is always on the inside of the black line on recessed panel lines on top of the iwngs and H stabs
my technique which I think I saw you post on is posted here:
http://www.hitechcreations.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=164558heres a summary of my method also posted on the link I think
I make them very transparent if your using photoshop adjust the transparency or fill to a very low setting and play with using linear dodge (white layer) and linear burn (black layer) this give the rivets more of the color of the fuselage and less black and whiteness. if using these effects linear dodge/burn works best by lowering fill % and leaving opacity high or at 100%.
now the deal with real planes especially painted planes is you are not gonna really see the rivets but you see exactly where they are from where they pull down on the sheet metal you might want to check out Airliners.net or some aircraft pic site and observe this for yourself (trust me on this I am a licensed pilot Ive worked around airplanes for years sitting on top of the wings fueling them and I currently work with all kinds of metal (mostly aluminum) in a sheet metal shop and I have been studying this effect and a technique to reproduce it since I first tried my hand at skinning)
if your willing to invest the time in the most effective technique I have found is to shade the wing itself around the rivets with a layer of white and a layer of black around the rivets (fuselage: black above and ahead of the rivet lines, wings: black outboard and behind rivet lines) (fuselage: white below and aft of rivet lines) I then use a bit of bluring to soften the effect and make it transition and curve smoothly.
this is a new technique for me and I have only attempted it on my p38G lightnings and my P-51D mustangs (you can download them online and check them out offline if you want to see the results of his method.
the intent is to not rely on the rivets but on the actual sheet metal to describe the structure and surface of the plane.
both times I have tried this I used a small brush 2-4 pixels and only 13% opacity 13% fill (easy to remember
) for black and white and used about three or so strokes on each little area and I left the layers at 100% everything.
you could experiment with making the brush 100% opacity and going back to the layer and lowering its opacity down to 13 or 30% or somthing thus your skin may have a more consistent shading effect all over.
