Info About Plane Skins

[Firecage 1]

Well I am Impatiently waiting for my copy of OFF to arrive and I wanted to ask a question about skins.

 

Is there any where I could get the templates to start working on some custom skins while I wait?

 

I would love to start making up some german aircraft skins that I have made for FE and want to re do alot of them for myself here in OFF. I am very eager to see this game in action.

 

I have the funny feeling this is going to be like the 1st time I played RB II back in the day or the 1st time we got to fly RB3D MMP.

 

Im REALLY looking forward to getting in the air very soon.

 

Thanks for any info you might have. S!

[sandbagger 1]

Hi Firecage,

There are around 3500 aircraft skins for BHaH, which are in DDS format and are located in the installed BHaH folder:

 

CWSWW1Over Flanders Fields/Campaign/Campaign Data/Skins

 

There are no actual templates as such, so you'll need to convert a DDS file of the particular aircraft you want to skin. To do this you open an appropriate DDS 'skin' file using DXTbmp (downloadable from the web). Open the file in DXTbmp then use the lower left editor icon to save the file as as a bmp single layered file to your selected editor (Paint Shop Pro or Adobe Photoshop). This can then be opened and saved as a base layer (pspimage or psd), on which you can build your modified layers to create he skin you want.

 

Once your ready to test the skin, save the skin as a merged Windows or OS/2 bmp and then open it (as extended bmp file) in DXTbmp. Then save it again as a DDS texture (DDS DXT1). Rename that file exactly as one of the same aircraft type already loaded in the Skins folder (remember to save the original first). Then you should be able to see the skin by using the Quick Combat function in BHaH, provided you are a pilot of that Nationality. Just select QC then scroll down to select the aircraft type, then scroll down to the particuler skin you've created.

 

You'll need to have BHaH installed of course, but if you want to get going beforehand, post here and one of us I'm sure can mail you DDS files for the particular aircraft you need.

 

The OBD team specialists for skinning German aircraft are 'OvS', 'Paarma' and 'Makai'.

Edited September 1, 2009 by sandbagger

[Rickitycrate 10]

Hi Firecage, we have a lot of info regarding skinning at this address http://forum.combatace.com/index.php/forum/212-off-photoshop-and-paint-shop-help-for-skinning-and-3d-modeling/. When you get some done please share them in the download section. It's nice to have you with us. I enjoy the user made skins myself having tried to skin and seen how much work it is. I have taken screenies of some of the recent skins in action. You can find them in the Screen Shot sticky. OFF will be different than other sims you've played. Some adjustments to these differences and you should greatly enjoy your OFF time. With OFF campaign and pilot creation I feel OFF is not just a sim but also a role-player. This baby is deep or on the otherhand can be arcade, it's "to each his own". The guys on this forum are kind and generous, so ask away and read the info you can, there is a lot of info. Best wishes, Jim

[RAF_Louvert 101]

Firecage, you are in for a treat Sir. I came from RB3D directly to OFF myself a while back and it was like making the move from your trusty, rusty old '72 Ford Galaxie to a brand new Mercedes SL600. You will love it. And have fun painting too. You'll soon discover you have a much bigger and more detailed canvas to work with than you ever had in RB3D. Enjoy.

 

Cheers!

 

Lou

[Bullethead 12]

Is there any where I could get the templates to start working on some custom skins while I wait?

 

Welcome aboard! New guy buys the drinks .

 

Templates? I haven't seen any. There aren't many skinners who just give them away, because doing the template is 99.9% of the work in making a skin. To do one right, it usually takes all your free time for a week--all weeknight evenings and all day on both days of the weekend. It usually requires about a gallon of Islay single malt to get a skinner to hand over his template :drinks_drunk:

 

I would love to start making up some german aircraft skins that I have made for FE

 

A Fee, did you say? Hmm, that's different--my favorite plane. Post a shot of your Fee skin and if I like it, I'll trade you my Fokker D.VII template for it .

[OvS 8]

Hello Firecage, welcome to the world of OFF and our Forum.

 

Like Bullet and Sandbagger have pointed out, there are no templates we can provide as it is a ton of work to make one. Bullet suggested 1 week... it normally takes me almost a month to make a base template with all the kudos and shading blended as seamless as possible.

 

After that, I can pump out skins at about 1 every 3 days for the Jastas, and aces all depend on the amount of detail and color. Some easy.... some are hell (Gerog Noth's Alb D.III ... I still have nightmares about that one!!)

 

best to do as Sandbagger suggests... start with a base Jasta .DDS file, then build from there. The problem with the DDS format is that it begins to loose clarity and sharpness the more you replicate it. So I tend to remake the whole template... then save a new one for each Jasta... then add in aces from there. This way I know I have all clean saves based on the 1st draft originals.

 

The E.V I am working on now is by far the best skin I have ever made...period. With the help of Polovski's suggestions, and shading requests, and Makai's correct lozenge coloring... I have been able to really add a higher level of detail to this plane that I never thought I could.

 

At any rate.... have fun with it... and post your results. Don't be shy... and we're always here to ask questions of. We have some very good skinners on this board in Olham, Widowmaker, Bullet and a few others that would be more than willing to give advice.

 

But my best advice to start out with.... keep it circa. WWI planes look silly in modern colors/patterns.

 

All the best,

 

OvS

 

 

 

[Bullethead 12]

Bullet suggested 1 week... it normally takes me almost a month to make a base template with all the kudos and shading blended as seamless as possible.

 

Yeah, I was thinking from my POV, already having your efforts as a starting point. Doing it completely from scratch like you do is WAY more involved .

 

The E.V I am working on now is by far the best skin I have ever made...period.

 

I look forward to seeing it.

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Yep..Check out the skinning section of the OFF forum..good place to start!

 

Great to have another skinner aboard!!

[+Paarma 0]

My advice is to make the markings much desaturated and using fuselages texture and overlay the color to it. People useally who start doing skins use too bright color for start, like i did, but in the game when you flying in the clouds and see the a/c colors and compaired to terrain colors. Mostly you need desaturate colors more than you first think.

And yes use baseskins but use texture even its example bright white band in fuselage. The black and white colors are hardest. I useally needed 6-10 layers in white or black fuselages.

Also take time to learn effects the photoshop offer. Always use new layer for each details example dirt. And yes make the skin look dirty!

Anyway i think you will get more authentic look immediately when start do very desaturated colors and then raise the saturate leven a bit and go to test it ingame.

 

Cheers

 

Arto

[Bullethead 12]

My advice is to make the markings much desaturated and using fuselages texture and overlay the color to it. People useally who start doing skins use too bright color for start, like i did, but in the game when you flying in the clouds and see the a/c colors and compaired to terrain colors. Mostly you need desaturate colors more than you first think.

 

One trick to doing this VERY easily is to use a white background color. Apply your paint layers above this at full saturation levels, then gradually move the opacity sliders for the paint layers down, watching the effect as you do so. This "fades" the bright paint layer, decreasing its apparent saturation.

 

Doing things this way also opens up many other possibilities. You can now have other layers under the partially transparent paint that will show through the paint. This is good for doing 3D effects like the small valleys between wing ribs, or making fake raised lumps on what is really a flat surface on the model, etc.

 

So, make a completely 255/255/255 background layer, then put the original skin you're using as a pattern on top of this. Then make a 3rd layer that's also 255/255/255 over the original skin and cut out holes in it over stuff on the original skin you want to keep, such as maybe the cockpit interior or whatever. Otherwise, you have a blank sheet of paper. Hide this 3rd layer to trace out the parts and mark things like panel lines, then put it back to see what your paint and other work looks like.

[Olham 164]

In the "downloads" section, you can get skins already, but they are of course all painted

in lovely ways. When you have your sim, search the folder "skins" for the craft you want,

and pick one, that doesn't have any individual markings.

 

For browsing through and opening and converting of skins, you could get "DXTBmp",

a free download. Open the skin, save it as a 24 bit bitmap, and work on it in your graphic

program. Finished, you save it back to dds format, into the "skins" folder.

[Burning Beard 14]

You can also view the the skins in the original format using IrfanView, which is a free graphics viewer. You can open all sorts of different graphics files, including DDS, and in the case of the Skins folder you can quickly cycle through the whole thing to look for individual skins. I recently used it (this morning) to cycle through Rabu's excellent N17 skins to find one that would easily convert to a layer mask in Corel Photo Paint.

 

Beard

Edited September 2, 2009 by Burning Beard

[UK_Widowmaker 571]

Hate to be a party poop, but if you could please post this stuff in the skinning section..it would stay around for newbie skinners to read...and not get lost in the annals of forum history??

 

Just a thought