Skinning Tutorial By Mattski

[MadJeff 3]

Mattski posted this great tutorial thread over at the Ubi forums, I'm mirroring it here as it's a great quick tutorial on the basics of skinning.

 

Originally posted by mattski_:

Hi,

 

I thought you guys may be interested in a bit of knowledge sharing re: the techniques I used when doing my Mig-29 'Fulcrum Farewell' skin. I'll try and get some supporting images later but here is the tutorial. Also, all of this refers to Photoshop but could easily be done with Paint Shop Pro.

 

This is the Aircraft:

 

 

Forward

-------

This skin is the hardest skin I've ever done. At one point I truly thought I had bitten off more than I could chew and was on the verge of giving up. However, thanks to encouragement from you guys and friends, I continued.

 

Q. Why the Fulcrum Farewell skin and and not another?

A. I saw an article in an aviation magazine about them and there were fabulous pictures of this very special Mig-29. I had originally started skinning another Mig-29 but realised that the skin was already included in the full version of Lock On ! (the black/red Mig-29) When I realised it was already there I decided to look for another challenge, the Fulcrum Farewell Mig was the one for me.

 

Q. How long did it take?

A. Too long, probably about 6 weeks.

 

 

Rivets

------

One of the things I wanted to do was retain the fabulous amount of detail in the original skins. I was dreading doing the rivets and simply 'painting over' the original skin would destroy them.

 

I found a technique that I think works quite well. Here is what I do for Rivets:

 

1. Select all of the original skin and create a new layer from copy - this will give you a straight copy of the original.

 

2. Apply a Threshold function to the image, adjusting as required. This is the stage that 'extracts' the Rivets from the original skin. You will probably get some 'noise' and areas you don't want but they can be fixed later.

 

3. Apply a white removal filter to this layer, this will give you a transparent layer of rivets and 'noise'. The filter is available here: http://www.graphicbuds.com/resources/macwhite.zip

 

 

4. Apply a black colour overlay to the entire layer. Yup, you heard me - put a black colour overlay on it.

 

5. Zoom right in and use the eraser tool and a 1 pixel pencil to remove the 'noise' and create any pixels that the Thresholding operation missed.

 

6. Now, create a copy of your black rivet layer and change the colour overlay to be white. You should now see white 'rivets' over the original texture image.

 

7. Whilst zoomed-in, use the move tool to move the transparent white pixel layer one pixel to the left, right, up or down. See what looks best. You will now have two rivet layers and rivets that consist of one white pixel and one black pixel.

 

8. Adjust the opacity of the black and white rivet layers until the rivets look '3D' and you can see what is beneath.

 

 

Panel Lines

-----------

I did panel lines the old fashioned way, by hand. Here's how.

 

1. Create a blank layer over the original texture file.

 

2. Zoom in and select the line tool, 1 pixel size, coloured black and antialised.

 

3. 'trace' the lines of the original texture. This takes a long time but be patient, it's worth it.

 

4. When you're finished, copy the layer and put a white colour overlay on it.

 

5. Move the white panel line layer one pixel to the left, right, up or down. I find that a move to the left and down works well.

 

6. Lower the opacity of the black panel lines so that they _slightly_ accentuate the original panel lines. Don't go overboard 

 

7. Lower the opacity of the white panel lines until they are _just_ visible. This gives the panel lines a nice 3D effect and gives them a little, tiny, bit of depth.

 

Complex Curves

--------------

The biggest pain in the ...... in the world.

The skin files, esp. the fueslage one, doesn't necessarily work as you expect. For the Mig, the German/US curves on the top of the fuselage actually make use of two sections of the fuselage template file. But, it gets worse, one of the sections has 'dual use' in that part of it is used for the top of the fuselage, part of it lower down. Here is how I did the curves:

 

1. Take a deep breath and get a coffee, you'll need it.

 

2. Look at the thing you want to replicate, study it carefully. Look at where lines intersect vents, panel lines, anything you can see. Try to get photographs that are 'flat' and use the measure tool to measure how big the curves are in relation to something like a vent or hole. Use the calculator to work out the size ratio between the photograph and the skin file and use guides to help you.

 

3. Once you have your guides in place, drink more coffee.

 

4. For the curves, I created a blank layer over the original and set the opacity to around 30%. I then drew large, solid, circles and oberved the curvature of the circle with respect to my guides and the original photo. When the curvature looked 'right' for a particular section, a new blank layer was created and the process was repeated.

 

Some curves need to be 'assembled' from multiple circles/ovals, for this, just get everything into the right place and then merge the layers down. Use the line tool to 'fix' any errors. Of course, you should be checking it in Lock On to make sure it looks right.

 

6. I found the real hard part to be getting the curves to continue across the varying parts of the skin. To overcome this I did the following:

 

7. Create a blank layer and create a manually drawn, random grid over the area you want to match up. Then it was a case of trial and error, observing screenshots and working in photoshop until a good join was made. ( I know some bits still aren't quite right)

 

Paint

-----

Is the fun bit  Once everything is in place, use the eye-dropper tool on the original photo get the right colour. Then 'paint' your airaft. There's nothing hard here but here are a few tips:

 

1. Use a pencil tool with anti-aliasing to remove any 'jaggies you have'. This works particularly well on colour boundaries.

 

2. Create a copy of the 'painted' bit and apply noise to it. Adjust the opacity of the noise to be around 4% - 6%.

 

Thats it, for now, I hope you find it useful. 

 

ta,

Matt.

[Sokol 444]

Hi, Mattski,

it is a great skin you did, and many thx for the tutorial. how about the idea: uploading the template you made and offering it to the community ? you did a really hard work, and the credit must be yours, so everone who uses this template should give you the credit, but why reinvent the wheel a second or third time ? :-)

 

cheers

Sokol

[Mathijs 0]

Hi,

 

Nice skin.

 

But where can I find the skins that I must copy and paste?

 

 

Greetings,

Mathijs.

[169th_Cobra 0]

thanks MadJeff for bring that across. great tut.

 

Sokol and Mathijs - you might have to go to the Ubi Forums if you want a response from mattski.

 

[Wespe 0]

Great tutorial! Simple and effective.

[bit 0]

Great tutorial! Simple and effective.

hey i have downloaded top gun from combat .ace how to use that file can u tell me now

[N.Forsythe 0]

cool but i don't wan't to pay $1000 dallers for photoshop is thare a less expensive way

[+suhsjake 11]

GIMP and Paintshop pro are the other alternatives. GIMP is free. Or look on eBay for a older version.

[N.Forsythe 0]

GIMP and Paintshop pro are the other alternatives. GIMP is free. Or look on eBay for a older version.

 

 

TY

[RedBladeHR 1]

Your skinning tutorial looks too hard to create such skins, i will use my own skining program for it but...

[RaptoRX 0]

Hi, this tutorial's great, but how can I install the skins? copy in C:\xxxxxx\xxxxxx?? what do I have to do??? thanks....

[Brit_Radar_Dude 1]

Hi, this tutorial's great, but how can I install the skins? copy in C:\xxxxxx\xxxxxx?? what do I have to do??? thanks....

Almost all (99%?) skins, mods, etc in Lockon are made MODMAN compatable by their authors. If you havent already used it, MODMAN is a very nice addon management utility for Lockon that is a must-have! Gives you one click adding/removing of skins, Mods, etc. MODMAN "knows" where to put the files that make up the skin or Mod and it keeps the old files so that the skin or mod can be un-installed later if you wish.

 

Get MODMAN here,

http://www.lockonfiles.com/modules.php?name=Downloads&d_op=viewdownload&cid=165#cat

 

I just can't imagine not using MODMAN. The alternative of having to keep some kind of notebook with details of what mods and skins I've installed over the last 4 or 5 years and how to uninstall them again would be a nightmare....

 

When an author makes a skin, he makes it into a MODMAN pack. The MODMAN pack includes a file with a file extension of .lma or .lma3 or similar. This file contains the details to tell the MODMAN utility how to install the skin.

 

MODMAN expects a pack to be zipped, so don't do an unzip when you download them from the InterNet.

 

In the unlikely event that they have not been made MODMAN compatable, then the author usually will include a readme file to tell you which folder the skin or Mod needs to be placed in.

 

 

Other information about skins you might find useful....

 

Lockon has a fixed number of slots for each aircraft type, some aircraft types have more skin slots than others. In the ME (Mission Editor), in the PAYLOAD section for an aircraft you can set the skin you want. Note that you can change the skins for flyable aircraft and also for the AI aircraft. When you install a new skin with MODMAN (or manually), then that new skin will replace one of the default skins. Which default skin depends on which one the designer of the new skin chose to replace, ie which slot number he chose.

 

Sometimes a readme file with the skin will tell you which slot number, mostly skin designers dont bother and more usually you have to look at each skin to find your new one. When you open up a mission in the Mission Editor and select an aircraft then choose the PAYLOAD screen, you see a picture of the aircraft and you can see what weapon loadout it has, what skin it is wearing, etc. If you look lower left, you see a pulldown menu called COLOUR SCHEME. It tells you the name of the current skin, click on the pulldown and you see the whole selection and you can deduce which slot number the skin is. When you load new skins, it does not necessarily change the name shown in this pulldown menu yet it DOES change the skin. It means you have to look at each skin in turn to find the one you want. Slightly annoying but only takes a few seconds to find the one you want. I'm sure I recall occasionally that new skins I've loaded in the past did change the names in that menu or maybe I just imagined it.... When you finished changing to the skin you want, then don't forget to SAVE the mission (top left save icon).

 

This is the most common problem folks have with D/L'ed skins, they have successfully used MODMAN to add them into Lockon but fail in the final step to actually select the skin "in game". This explains why folks get confused when they fly a mission and the new skin doesn't appear.

 

Example.

The new skin replaces default skin number 3 for the A-10.

You fly the A-10 quick fly mission straight from the main page.

Unless that mission coincidentally used skin number 3, then you would see no change.

 

Example

The new skin replaces default skin number 3 for the A-10.

You fly an A-10 campaign you have downloaded from the Community.

Unless the missions within that campaign coincidentally used skin number 3, then you would see no change.

 

Example.

This time you make your own mission using the ME and choose skin number 3 in the PAYLOAD screen.

Now you see the new skin.

 

Hope that makes it clear.....

Edited September 7, 2009 by Brit_Radar_Dude