Skinners Templates

[JG52Krupi]

What are the chances of getting the aircraft templates before release?

[meshuggahs]

Depend on which release. If russia gets it by the 25th I'd say pretty good for us getting it on the 31st ;)

[JG52Krupi]

It will be interesting to see just how good the vanilla skins are, the only decent one in il2:1946 IMHO was the tempest skin.

Also did I hear somewhere here that the vanilla templates are locked?

[Foo'bar]

But you guys know that we will not have skins in the usual form?

[meshuggahs]

I just hope that the servers are able to enforce skins to be used online, vanilla or not.
Would be cool to have authentic skins with swastikas and all, but if it cant be forced to everyone use "real" skins, I'd rather go with vanilla ones so we don't get "unmarked hard to tell the difference" skins.

[JG52Krupi]

But you guys know that we will not have skins in the usual form?

Really? I haven't done much skinning just played around with skins in il2:1946, so what's the difference between il2:1946 skins and clods skins?

[JG52Krupi]

I just hope that the servers are able to enforce skins to be used online, vanilla or not.
Would be cool to have authentic skins with swastikas and all, but if it cant be forced to everyone use "real" skins, I'd rather go with vanilla ones so we don't get "unmarked hard to tell the difference" skins.

+1

Hopefully they have taken a leaf out of rise of flight and will have a historical and fictional skin pack voted on by the community.

This way you will always see a normal skin unless the other players also have the official skin pack installed.. No downloading at the start of the game, only problem is that the skin packs are getting larger and larger.

This method is by far the best you will always see a historic skin unless you have the fictional skin pack installed.

[Foo'bar]

Really? I haven't done much skinning just played around with skins in il2:1946, so what's the difference between il2:1946 skins and clods skins?

Oleg or Luthier told that skin files will contain separated layers for riveting/panels, weathing, markings and pure coloring.

AFAIK only the pure color layer will be editable. The benefit is that those separated color layers can be much smaller than the others so online traffic can be saved when it comes to spread them via server to all clients.

[JG52Krupi]

Oleg or Luthier told that skin files will contain separated layers for riveting/panels, weathing, markings and pure coloring.

AFAIK only the pure color layer will be editable. The benefit is that those separated color layers can be much smaller than the others so online traffic can be saved when it comes to spread them via server to all clients.

I was hoping skins would not be server set, as I said before it should use a system similar to rise of flight, it's a more user friendly way of obtaining skins rather than being forced to download someones obnoxious flame skin or bright pink coloured skin.

Seriously my skin folder was full if so many large files and aggravating color schemes that I'd delete the whole folder rather than search through it for the one or two decent skins.....

[choctaw111]

As already said, the skins will already come with multiple layers.
I can only imagine that the "rivets" layer and some others will be locked (you can't really change the rivets locations on a real plane) with the ability to only change the "paint" layer.
This will make the skinning process much easier for novice skinners but imagine how much greater work the experienced skinners will produce.
Il2 had 512x512 but I read at one point a couple years back that Oleg was talking about 2048x2048.
Is this still the resolution for the new skins?

[JG52Krupi]

Hopefully FlyByShooter will be back, while there were a lot of distinguished skinners on il2 his work just blew me away fantastic detail!!

[Foo'bar]

As already said, the skins will already come with multiple layers.
I can only imagine that the "rivets" layer and some others will be locked (you can't really change the rivets locations on a real plane) with the ability to only change the "paint" layer.
This will make the skinning process much easier for novice skinners but imagine how much greater work the experienced skinners will produce.
Il2 had 512x512 but I read at one point a couple years back that Oleg was talking about 2048x2048.
Is this still the resolution for the new skins?

I think to recall Oleg mentioned that standard skin sizes will be 2048² max for online and that they think about even larger sizes 4096² for offline. But I could be wrong.

[Extreme_One]

The panel lines and rivets etc will be hardcoded for each plane and that all we will be able to edit or create will be a colour layer.


http://forum.1cpublishing.eu/showpost.php?p=197636&postcount=40

We have split up the paintscheme, the actual colors, from the rest of the texture - the rivets, the panel lines, the weathering, etc. The user texture is just the colors, i.e. your experience as a texturer is like simply coming up to the finished plane with some paint and a paintbrush, not actually re-riveting it or moving panels around.

So the user texture can actually be a smaller resolution, 512, even 64x64 and still look all right-ish since the riveting and the weathering on top of it are 2048x2048.

[Blackdog_kt]

I can understand experienced skinners being a bit annoyed at the inability to strip the 3d model down to nothing and start from scratch.

That being said, it will be easier for new-comers to come to grips with skinning if we don't have to be afraid of erasing the panel lines and rivets.

That last part of Luthier's quote leads me to believe that the current system was mainly chosen for purposes of streamlining multiplayer exchange of skins: if the lower layers are still high resolution and we can easily create lower resolution camouflage layers on top of that, it will be easier to see customized skins online with smaller downloads.

I'd say i'm ok with it either way but i'm also ok with people feeling strongly about this one way or the other. I guess that for a skinner it's not only the camo scheme that matters, i have a feeling that they are enjoying skinning everything from the rivets up just like a plastic modeler is building a kit. In that sense, i hope they get the option to edit the underlying layers too once the SDK is made available to the community...especially since this is necessary to create 3rd party flyables or even correct the occasional mistake on a stock aircraft without having to wait for an official patch. More options down the road is always a good thing ;)

[Stiboo]

But....

one of the first things to try is set weathering to zero and add custom weathering anyway :)

It will not be long before all three layers are available ( colour, weathering, panels/rivet ) official or unofficial - modded/new planes will need access to all three..


I want a dirty 109! :cool:

.

[Friendly_flyer]

I think to recall Oleg mentioned that standard skin sizes will be 2048² max for online and that they think about even larger sizes 4096² for offline. But I could be wrong.

I seem to remember the number 1024 x 1024 (like now) being mentioned. I would be very surprised if there isn't a "markings off" option, allowing for making marked skins. Basically, the art of skinning from now on will probably be about adding subtle variations in the paint and equally subtly ad shading and highlights to emphasize the hard-coded rivets and panel-lines.

[Extreme_One]

I seem to remember the number 1024 x 1024 (like now) being mentioned...

I'm not sure if this has been asked or if it's common knowledge yet but could anyone tell me what resolution the aircraft skins are going to be? I think skinning for this new sim is going to be something special! :)

Apparently 2048x2048

2048x2048.

But, it's complicated.

We have split up the paintscheme, the actual colors, from the rest of the texture - the rivets, the panel lines, the weathering, etc. The user texture is just the colors, i.e. your experience as a texturer is like simply coming up to the finished plane with some paint and a paintbrush, not actually re-riveting it or moving panels around.

So the user texture can actually be a smaller resolution, 512, even 64x64 and still look all right-ish since the riveting and the weathering on top of it are 2048x2048.

[JG53Frankyboy]

perhaps with "mods on" it will be possible to use totaly new skins , read all layers are made by 3.party skinners.
with "mods off" only the 'color layer' v´can be edited...

and sure , over all, the 'skin on/off' have to be selected ;)

soon we all will know :D

[JG53Frankyboy]

......I want a dirty 109! :cool:

.

you just have to move the "weathering" slider on the option screnn on your plane...