Need an opinion of a skin...

[Wrench 9,851]

Was looking at my FAA Corsair Mk.2 (F4U-1, Royal Navy for the unenlightened), and noticed the skin actually looked pretty crappy. So..after spending most of last night, and all of today redrawing all the panel and adding 'interpertative' rivet lines (meaning they're not quite accurate...), and now getting the correct (FS numbered) colors for the camo scheme.

 

I wanted to experiment with fabric surfaces, which is something I've never quite gotten the hang of.

 

Here's some close ups...don't know how well the fabric texture will show here in these screenies...

 

 

 

and a full view. You really can't seem them from far way, but at least the panel lines look a whole lot better!! And the colors are MUCh more accurate.

 

 

I still have to do something about the fues roundel...it's too bright. Probably de-saturate it a little. Never figured out that 'opacity' thing Dave keep going on about...

 

If/when released, it'll just be an update of the skin bmp (and 'wings' bmp that goes in the cockpit folder) , along with the fixed roundel.

 

Gotta love those 'Detail & Scale' books!!

 

Let me know...

TIA!

Wrench

kevin stein

[Talos 0]

Looking good!

 

I love the D&S books, I have a good amount of them, especially the ones I collected going to the Va. Air Museum and the USS Yorktown.

 

With the opacity thing, you should be able to open the roundel in Gimp or a program like that and reduce the opacity there, resaving it then after that.

[Wrench 9,851]

It's which channel that's got me fuddled...I assume it's in the RGB channels not the Alpha (Photoshop 6)

 

must....find...better...tutorials...

 

D&S books are super...I've got about 15-20 gigs of all kinds of stuff on pdf ... mushroom, monogram close up, D&S, Osprey, In Actions, Pod Lupa, TiBU, Kagero, Aerofax, Aircam, Warpaints...etc...lots and lots of good stuff out there.

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[Talos 0]

*Is up to 21 gigs in addition to hard copies*

 

In Gimp, there is an opacity slider on the layers window, that should be all you need.

[Guest Saganuay82]

In Photoshop you have that window with Layers Channels and Paths. There is an Opacity slider right there. Changing the opacity will change the freshness of the look of it. Not so bright and colorful.

[Wrench 9,851]

That's a little better....

 

 

Never done that before (I'm used to layer opacity for skinning, of course). Had to remake the tga from another bmp, create a copy layer, then fade that approx 80%, overpainted the original layer, flattened, then made the decal from that. As usual, I've probably gone the long way around to do it...as per usual for me.

 

It's much easier with solid colors, say the "Royal Navy" & serial number decal; you can just flood the RGB layer with a lighter gray (70% gray works good for faded numbers), and go from there.

 

Thanks guys! That's one more bugaboo stomped on!

 

Wrench

kevin stein

[+Jimbib 747]

Hey Wrench, to get some highly detailed blueprints, try these...

 

http://airwar.ru/other/draw/f4u.html

http://airwar.ru/other/draw/f4ucorsairds.html

http://airwar.ru/other/draw/voughtsikorskyf4ucorsairdr.html

http://airwar.ru/other/draw/f4ucorsairajp.html

http://airwar.ru/other/draw/f4ucorsairsol.html

http://airwar.ru/other/draw2/f4u4.html

 

Also, for some advanced surface texturing check out this tutorial here, its really simple, but very effective...

 

Making Surface Texture Effects

 

Looking good mate!