AH3 skins

[NatCigg]

I like a little blinding glare of gloss surfaces in sun.  It reminds me of real life. Number 3 was my favorite.

[Vraciu]

I like a little blinding glare of gloss surfaces in sun.  It reminds me of real life. Number 3 was my favorite.

I'm not a fan of it obliterating the entire object.   Especially on a flat, non-reflective surface.

[Citabria]

pretty much anything greebo does tends to be amazing so i would follow his example personally of combining active and baked effects for a wider range of performance variations in players computers.

just bake it as if its in level flight for bumps reflections everything.

will work perfectly at almost all time for bombers and no one in a fighter will see anything but the top of the wings for a split second when fighting or even when traveling...

if your looking at your wingmans skin in formation... yep your in level flight so its easy to bake everything in flight sims for those with lesser computers to still get a good skin to look at while having the advanced effects in addition to baking working in tandem tends to be win win for everyone.

[Easyscor]

I need to ask, what is "baking" in this content?
I don't want to guess and be wrong.

I'm hoping to use the skin editor for better custom object textures.

[hitech]

Next version will have another addition.

Now the Brightness will equal (Set Brightness - Environment Multiplier)I.E.  the Slider -  your _E  texture.

So Shinny planes will be washed out less.

HiTech

[Greebo]

Thanks HT, will try that out.

Easyscor, in this context "baking" means painting an effect onto the main skin that could also be done with one or more of the effects maps.

So for example it is possible to create an illusion of the metal areas being more shiny than the painted areas of a skin on the base skin itself. To do this I paint bright white highlights on appropriate areas of the skin like the upper half of the fuselage, along the highest part of the wing etc. The layers for these highlights are then placed below the painted markings layers, but above the aluminium layer, so the highlights are not seen on the painted areas. Now this "baked-in" effect can look good when the plane is facing the right way up but odd when it is upside-down since the highlights look like they are reflecting light from below. The specular map however creates shiny areas whose highlights are based on the position of the sun so does not have this problem.

[Bizman]

Thanks for explaining that term even to us who never do any skinning. Very informative!

Actually, creating an illusion or "baking" is something I've been wondering about concerning terrain tiles: I know that planting a real looking dense forest would be very annoying for both the GV's and the bombers who'd like to spot a GV. For the rest of us deep forests would add immersion. By baking the forest terrain we could possibly get the best of both worlds. Then again, I may be well off the mark again.

[Easyscor]

Thanks very much for your explanation Greebo.

[Greebo]

Tying the brightness slider to the environment map in patch 87 is a definite improvement. I can set the brightness slider much higher without losing the contrast between the metal and painted areas of the skin.

[Greebo]

I wanted to experiment with normal mapping for fabric effects a bit more so I skinned this fabric-winged early-production Hurricane Mk I. The "lighting only" skin viewer screenshot shows the fabric sag, raised fairings and panel lines generated by the normal map. When viewed in-game the fabric effect looked too strong so I ended up turning it down a bit as can be seen in the alpha screenshots.

The skin is of a 1940 Belgian Air Force Hurricane Mk I of the squadron 2/I/2Aé based at Schaffen-Diest. This was one of 20 supplied by Britain prior to the German Blitzkrieg on May 10th 1940. These aircraft were a priority target for the Luftwaffe and all were destroyed on their airfield in the first two days of the attack on Belgium. Thanks to Lyric1 for finding me the info for this skin.

[lyric1]

 

[Skuzzy]

Very nice work Greebo!

[Vraciu]

Greebo is amazing...

But the skin viewer controls SUCK!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am sorry.  Dale is a nice man--and very smart--but the controls are driving me nuts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Boss, please.  You have to give us the old controls in  AH3.  I beg you.  Or as my Nigerian friends say, "I BEG."       

[Chilli]

Greebo is amazing...


Boss, please.  You have to give us the old controls in  AH3.  I beg you.  Or as my Nigerian friends say, "I BEG."       

or...................  Change the scroll to activate axis rotation.  Currently the scroll loops with the center of the loop some distance from the center of the plane.

[Vraciu]

or...................  Change the scroll to activate axis rotation.  Currently the scroll loops with the center of the loop some distance from the center of the plane.

Something.   Dale is trying to improve the viewer.   His changes are a benefit in many ways.  However, ditching the pivot/axis rotation is a step backward.   Having *BOTH* features would make the viewer as good as I can imagine it being.

We need to come up with a care package of Wild Turkey and send it to him by New Year's to get this change implemented.