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Post by Chris B on Aug 28, 2005 8:46:51 GMT -5
I did ask, and I got some feedback about spin brushing metal panels... Darned tricky in the end, but this is what I have come up with so far. OK, it's in a modern planer, but the technique can be applied to vintage stuff. Do feel free to give feedback and let us know how it works for you. Thanks Chris
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Post by sgtmajor on Aug 28, 2005 11:24:16 GMT -5
CBris.... That is awesome...... can you point me to where you got help in how to do that? I've tried TOO many times and never have seemed to have much luck.
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Post by Chris B on Aug 28, 2005 13:00:16 GMT -5
'Fraid I had no real help on this, just guesswork and posting a couple of my trials around to get feedback (not much). After I'd got this far there was a great link on simflight with good pictures of real world polishes. #
Going by them, I need to add a wee bit more shine for stainless steel. Aluminium is fairly ok here - considering Al always tends to corrode/patina a slight matt finish.
How? Corel Photopaint was used, but I guess it's the same in Photoshop.
Create a circle without a border. Create a "conical" fill using white as start and finish and then a darkish grey from around 35% to 65% - and at an offset of 45 degrees ish so that the filled circle looks like it's quartered... The axes should be roughly horizontal and vertical (a bit like the BMW car badge)
Give the circle a graded transparency from opaque in the middle to transparent at the circumference.
Then just start placing multiples of this circle onto a plain new picture. The pattern is up to you. For the exampler shown I am placing new circles at 100% separation horizontally and 50% vertically with each subsequent row also displaced 50% of a diameter horizontally... I have tried different patterns with different ratios in the separation betwee centre of the circles. Some you have seen in my threads here and in simflight.
Oh, my master cdr file is approximately 50 circles by 50 circles - yes - a good 2500 discrete objects. You can always work with a copy of this file and "flatten" all objects into the background so that the filesize is minimal.
Save the picture.
Open the skin tecture you want to apply this pattern to and create/copy a mask of the part you want to fill on to this new graphic. You can increase the size of the mask as far as you want to get a good fill effect.
Use the mask to "create a new object" from the pattern of circles and copy this new object back to the original aircraft texture - remembering to rescale it back to original size.
Take a copy of this new panel piece and insert it now into the alpha mask part of your texture file. You can play around with transparency and lightness levels until you're happy. Darker mask colours are more reflective, but if you have a very reflective alpha part of the texture, then you should also darken the main texture file.
Then create a dxt3 file using your favourite DXT3 / bitmap tool and plop it into your aircraft texture folder...
(er, you do have an extra plane in your aircraft folder cald "texture.test" or something like that, no? It helps... Just duplicate an appropriate texture file and add another aircraft to the aircraft.cfg file as you would for any repaint download. You can faff around with the tester model as much as you like and when happy, just create the final texture from a duplicate of the texture.test Leave "test" - you can always use it for your next project...
Trial and error and experience...
I shan't post originals because the Corel master file is just quite a few megabytes - sorry. Besides, they wouldn't help much as .cdr files
As for my model in the picture - I thinkl it needs a tad more shine and a bit darker base texture behind the alpha...
Sorry for the "words" - there are a lot more professional "how tos" on the web - this is just a ten minute hint...
Chris When I get back from my next trip... Work...
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Post by sgtmajor on Aug 28, 2005 13:42:12 GMT -5
Chris.... THANKS MUCH!!! I just started using Corel Photopaint so have a lot to learn yet..... along with PSP 8 & 9. (smile) However, at least I now have an idea how to create it. I'll have to give it a whirl tonight some to see if I understand everything.... but once again "Thank You" for sharing. From the photo's it appears you have once of the best finishes I've seen to date!!! That REALLY looks good......BTW.... I love the wood finish on the Eagle... that looks great!
Best wishes, Steve R.
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Post by Admin on Aug 28, 2005 17:01:00 GMT -5
Great post Chris... I'm going to move to the Builders & Painters forum.
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Post by Chris B on Aug 28, 2005 19:46:27 GMT -5
Sure thing Tom! sorry...
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Post by Roger on Aug 28, 2005 19:49:08 GMT -5
Chris it's not a problem but your post is an ideal one for our 'Builders and painters' forum. Some clever stuff going on there!
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Post by Chris B on Aug 28, 2005 20:57:10 GMT -5
It's all a matter of patterns and repetition - since doing the Eagle above I was also given a link in simflight to a professor who does this kind of thing as a hobby. I have had a brief exchange of mail and this is a result of options... Horizontal and vertical offsets. Here's a new sample. In the top pattern, I have merely given the circles a plain transparencey. In the others it's all a graded radial transparencey at different angles of rotation. Looking at the way he does real world car dashboards and all sorts (including pen knives...) I can see that there's a lot of indiividualism available...
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Post by Chris B on Aug 28, 2005 21:03:17 GMT -5
Oh... by the way - it's only really time consuming in setting up. After that it's cut and paste in the binary algorithm - 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, one row, two rows, four rows, eight rows...
Just remember to use grids and lock to grids...
...and remember to save the identical patern to your alphas too - looks a wee bit better than a plain dark grey - you might be surprised!
Chris
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Post by kimber on Aug 28, 2005 22:05:48 GMT -5
This took about 30 seconds to do this, I just do the panels in aluminum and use clone to airbrush the pattern on!! I resize the page to get the right size!! If I get a bit out of the lines, I just erase the errors!!
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Post by sgtmajor on Aug 29, 2005 2:02:46 GMT -5
Chris and Kimber....... WOW....... and here I thought I was starting to figure this painting stuff out...... Silly me!! (smile)
Truly beautiful work!
Best wishes, Steve R.
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Post by Chris B on Aug 29, 2005 12:57:01 GMT -5
Nice one Kimber, really good effect you conjured up, but may I critique (just a wee bit - nothing serious) You have a shiny overall alpha by the looks of things. The main reason the WWI engineers came up with this polish scheme was to disrupt reflections from the metal cowlings. It turned into an art form a lot later and the professor who's given me some pointers has taken to a real artwork... On the other hand - if you laquer a spinbrush surface, you end up with a smooth surface again - in which case your reflections are back to right ;-) Or - is that dynamic shine on your cowling? Haven't go a clue yet how that works... Here folks, try this URL and be really amazed! www.cs.ucr.edu/~eamonn/et/et.htmChris
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Post by Roger on Aug 29, 2005 13:09:12 GMT -5
Hi Chris, There may be some model shine incorporated in Kimber's shot. I find the utility from Ivan Hsu with the 'kiss' interface from 'Wuhwuzdat' very easy to apply. Even I can do it and I can't paint for toffee ;D
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Post by Joao Paz on Aug 29, 2005 18:59:39 GMT -5
Hi Chris, There may be some model shine incorporated in Kimber's shot. I find the utility from Ivan Hsu with the 'kiss' interface from 'Wuhwuzdat' very easy to apply. Even I can do it and I can't paint for toffee ;D Hi Roger! What's that utility you're talking about? It sounds interesting... does it allow to play with the specular shine? Chris and Kimber, Great posts and will try my hand at it, for sure, thanks to you guys Chris, about... ...that's specular shine, and is independent from the textures... in a way. The 3D modeler adds it to his/hers creation, inside GMax or FSDS2, etc. Specular shine can interact with the alpha channel triggered reflections, in the sense that a high (darker) alpha will make specular shine less noticeable, as it will also make colors less rich. So when it comes to alpha is *really* a matter of balance. If there's any interest I'll be happy to post here a few notes about alpha channels ... or how they work for me. Chris, here's a little tip that which imho will make your already great model look even better: In spite you added so panel lines and riveting on top of your texture, it is still clear that it is a *single* texture as there is continuity all over - not sure if I'm making myself clear... but if you look at Kimber's pic you'll see that she juxtaposed several texture areas; you could select the areas delimited by the panel lines and displace them a few pixels, vertical and horizontal, so that they look like separate panels. Kimber, did you use a plain color for the alpha? There's an hint also enclosed in the question Best, and thank u u2! ;D Joao
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Post by Chris B on Aug 29, 2005 20:15:25 GMT -5
Yep - I see what you mean Joao. I'll add that to my next.
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