Author Topic: Winter A-20  (Read 1366 times)

Offline Greebo

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Winter A-20
« on: March 22, 2019, 08:39:57 AM »
Thank you to Lyric1 for finding me the info for this skin.

This whitewashed A-20 flew with the Soviet 454th Bomber Aviation Division on the Voronezh front during the winter of 1943.




Offline puller

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #1 on: March 22, 2019, 08:59:09 AM »
Wow nice  :rock :rock :rock
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Online Devil 505

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #2 on: March 22, 2019, 10:15:58 AM »
Stunning.

What is your method for getting that hand-brushed look to the whitewash?
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Offline lyric1

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2019, 10:49:47 AM »
 :aok

Offline DubiousKB

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2019, 11:50:32 AM »
lol it just looks so dirty!   Great job!
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Offline Vraciu

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2019, 01:03:55 PM »
Pretty cool.
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Offline Lazerr

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #6 on: March 22, 2019, 02:35:07 PM »
Is that a picture of a different game??  ;) Very nice.

Offline Greebo

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #7 on: March 22, 2019, 02:52:04 PM »
What is your method for getting that hand-brushed look to the whitewash?

Once I had got the basic outline of the whitewash paint done I applied a series of masks to the layer to age it, one for the brushed on effect, one with a lot of holes in it and one to create some wear around the panel lines. I created these masks with a program called Substance Painter which I have been using for a year or so to speed up the process of making new default skins. It is not very useful for things like making panel lines and rivets but is a huge time saver for doing weathering and complex colour schemes. The nice thing about this program is that it applies any mask I make to the 3D aircraft shape seamlessly so I don't have to worry about a mismatch of the detail on the mask between say the LH edge of the top fuselage texture and the top edge of the LH fuselage texture. Once I had created the masks in Substance Painter I transferred them to my Paint Shop Pro file. I could have done the same thing in PSP but it would have taken me a lot longer to match up all the texture edges.

The problems with Substance Painter are that it is quite expensive and is also completely useless to any skinner who doesn't have the SP-compatible AH source file that Waffle now supplies me for each new shape.

Online Devil 505

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #8 on: March 22, 2019, 05:13:36 PM »
Ok.

Even before using SP, I assume you used these mask types on your older skins?
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Offline Nefarious

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #9 on: March 23, 2019, 12:24:15 AM »
very nice!
There must also be a flyable computer available for Nefarious to do FSO. So he doesn't keep talking about it for eight and a half hours on Friday night!

Offline Greebo

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #10 on: March 23, 2019, 04:22:49 AM »
Even before using SP, I assume you used these mask types on your older skins?

Even in the few years prior to SP I have increasingly used masks and adjustment layers where appropriate. Before that I would just alter the layer directly but the nice thing about using a mask or adjustment layer is that it is non-destructive. Some examples:-

I like to age wing walkway lines and maintenance signs by partially erasing them. The simplest way to do this is to use a full size erase tool set low density and medium opacity and apply it a few times to the whole layer. Then use a smaller erase tool to wear a few areas more heavily. Now though what I do is create a "show all" mask for that layer. Then I apply a full size, low density, medium opacity airbrush tool to the mask, basically spraying lots of grey or black dots all over the white surface of it and then a smaller airbrush tool for specific areas. Both methods give the same effect, a load of dots where the lines and signs are partially or fully erased. The difference is that if I want to reduce or remove the ageing effect later I can either alter the mask's opacity slider to do so or use a white airbrush tool to reverse the specific ageing. With the old erase method I'd have make sure I kept an un-edited copy of the layer to erase again, if not I'd have to recreate the whole layer from scratch.

It is not uncommon to have areas of a plane that have been repainted in the same colour but that don't blend in because the new paint is a lot less faded and weathered. Previously what I'd to mimic this effect is to create a layer with patches of a less faded shade of the base colour. Now what I do is create a hue/saturation/lightness adjustment layer above the base paint layer. This is set to increase the saturation and usually darken the layers below it. I then apply a negative image command to the adjustment layer turn the effect off before spraying those areas that I want to be less faded white. In these specific places this reverses another overall paint fade adjustment layer I use to desaturate and lighten all the paint. Once I have the adjustment layer done I can then alter the effect with sliders until I get the level I want. Not only that but I can copy and paste the adjustment layer's data into a new mask layer that I then place at the top of the weathering group. This mask layer erases all the weathering but on the freshly painted areas only. Again I can use an opacity slider to reduce this effect to a level I like.

When creating paint chips I like to have chips near the fasteners and on edges of access panels, but not on the panels' and fasteners' black lines themselves as this ruins the effect. My old method for doing this was to duplicate all the panel line and fastener layers, set these duplicates to 100% opacity and then merge them all into one layer. Then after creating the paint chips I'd move to this merged layer, select the whole layer's data, go back to the paint chip layer and hit the delete key. This deleted all the paint chips on the panel lines and fasteners but left the rest. Now though what I do is turn the merged panel line layer into a mask. The method is to create a solid white layer below the merged panel lines and then merge these two layers. This gives a white background to the black panel lines. I then copy and paste this data into a mask layer that I create for my panel line layer. The advantage of doing it this way is that when I edit the paint chips on my next skin the panel line erasing happens automatically, I don't have to select the merged layer and hit delete. Its a small time saver but every little helps.
« Last Edit: March 23, 2019, 04:48:18 AM by Greebo »

Offline Molsman

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #11 on: March 23, 2019, 10:58:20 PM »
as always Greebo Excellent Work
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Offline oakranger

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #12 on: March 25, 2019, 06:58:45 AM »
Been a while but I am guessing AH has no winter skin A-20?
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Offline Greebo

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #13 on: March 25, 2019, 07:27:16 AM »
I did a winter skin for the old Boston shape many years ago but this was made obsolete when the new shape was introduced. Since that update I have been concentrating on Boston and A-20G skins, particularly those schemes that might be needed for scenarios.

Offline hgtonyvi

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Re: Winter A-20
« Reply #14 on: March 28, 2019, 06:15:38 PM »
wow Nice!  :aok
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