Skins

[WldThing]

Ok i have been wonderin about this question.  How do some of you skinners make the skin so shiny? When i downgrade my skin to 256 colors i lose much of the light... So how do you guys get that "crisp" look?

[weazel]

I make my skins in Photoshop 512x512, but do the 256x256 8 bit color conversion with Fireworks.

It doesn't lose detail or color.

[ramzey]

WldThing, which one skin for example? Mby u do smth wrong?

What software u use to paint?

[WldThing]

P51 Skin .. and i use PSP 7 to do my skins.

[ramzey]

I cant tell u nothing about p51 D , bicose im not try to reskin him
Or any silver airplane:(

My advices about PS7:

first flat all layers
if u make skin in higher res then AH standard, do not change size by "image size" option.

Make another window with correct size /256x256 rgb/.
Move layer from your psd file to new window
Scale moved layer by "layer scale" in edit menu, do that by nombersnt manual. Just type 25% for example if u rescale skin from 1024.
After that aligin center /vertical and horisontal/ layer to background layer.
Convert to indexed colors /PS should ask about flat, just agree/

this way give much better effect then simly command  "change size. Thats one of tips with works on pS;)


ramzey

[WldThing]

cool thanks for the tips ramzey!

[Kevin14]

Man, ramzey is easily the most helpful person with PS

[Bullethead]

Question for the Skinning Gods....

I want to try my hand at skinning the 51B to look like an A36.  The particular A36 I want to copy had stars on both wings, top and bottom, instead of 1 on top and 1 on the bottom of the other wing.

So I exported the 51B's stock textures and discovered that there are no stars on the wings at all in P51BTOP.bmp.  Instead, the stars apparently come from MARKINGS.bmp.  This is just the stars on the wings--the fuselage stars are draw on the textures in P51BSID.bmp.

My question is this:  How do I keep the MARKINGS.bmp stars from showing up and blocking the stars I'm going to draw on the wings?

Thanks in advance.

[BenDover]

does the markings.bmp come with a markings_a.bmp?


well, if it does you can locate the stars on the markings_a.bmp, you can just black it out


if not.......................... ..........

[Bullethead]

BenDover said:

you can locate the stars on the markings_a.bmp, you can just black it out

Ah, cool.  Yeah, it's got such a thing.  Thanks for the tip.

This won't screw up markings on other planes, will it?  IOW, does each plane have its own complete set of textures (including markings and all those dashboard instruments) or are these things shared?

And is there a FAQ on texturing planes around somewhere that I can look at and quit pestering you all with questions that no doubt have been asked and answered many times?

[Dux]

The USN Midway skins needed to have the MARKINGS_a.bmp blacked out. Yes, every skin that uses those markings will have them disappear now.

It seems the boys at HTC went through several evolutions concerning how they were going to go about this stuff... which is a normal and necessary process... and they abandoned the "separate-markings" technique after a few models.

Easy to work around, though. If the blacked-out alpha affects another plane, simply paste the same insignia onto that skin.

[Bullethead]

Dux said:

Yes, every skin that uses those markings will have them disappear now.

OK, so I guess that means all those dashboard instruments are also shared, right?

It seems the boys at HTC went through several evolutions concerning how they were going to go about this stuff... which is a normal and necessary process... and they abandoned the "separate-markings" technique after a few models.

Well, I haven't looked at all the textures yet, but the ones I've seen so far only have a skin for 1 wing, which gets mirrored onto the other wing.  This works fine for everybody except the US, which for some reason chose put its national markings on 1 wing only.  Hence the need for the separate markings thing for them.

Easy to work around, though. If the blacked-out alpha affects another plane, simply paste the same insignia onto that skin.

That would be good in a way, by allowing you to weather the insignia to match the rest of the plane.  But seems to me that would cause another problem.....   Wouldn't this make the US stars appear on both wings due to the mirror effect noted above?  That happens to be what I want for the skin I'm working on, but it's not appropriate later in the war.  Is there a workaround for that?

[Dux]

1. Yes, the instruments ARE shared. Someone once did some nice metric instruments for German planes, then discovered that they were all shared.

2. *Most* skins have upper and lower surfaces of each wing (except probably the one that you're interested in). I've seen a few stabilizers that share top and bottom textures... most of the "Blue" planes do.

There is no real workaround when this happens. Just hope that someday the planes will get an updated skinning from HTC.


re: your earlier question about an FAQ... this forum will be the closest thing to an official FAQ that you'll find. Browse through the last couple month's worth of posts, and I think you'll find that just about any question you can come up with has been answered (or at least discussed).

But still, don't be afraid to ask anything.

[BenDover]

what hitech can do.


Make it like sounds, so you put the textures for that plane only in a folder in the texsrc, and ones for all of em in the root texsrc dir

[ramzey]

noo they dont, i hope u dont wonna have cheaters on server with glass cockpits and invisible airplanes?

Until all terrains-skins are under HTC control thats can't be happend.

ramzey