Support for 24-bit custom skins?

[Herra Tohtori]

What settings were you using to index the image with GIMP/photoshop?

It looks like you had some dithering option enabled. I'm not sure if there is anything that would make Bright's colour indexing filter inherently better than any other indexing tool. Bright is very good for converting a lot of frames into unified palette for animated GIF purposes, however.

[Spudkopf]

Originally Posted by Herra Tohtori

What settings were you using to index the image with GIMP/photoshop?

It looks like you had some dithering option enabled. I'm not sure if there is anything that would make Bright's colour indexing filter inherently better than any other indexing tool. Bright is very good for converting a lot of frames into unified palette for animated GIF purposes, however.

I've tried every kind of possible combination over the years in both these programs, with and without dithering and unless the skin was more or less 8bit to start with I have had some rather shocking results.

For the most part I usually generi-fi my skins, in that I'll remove the quick ID markings to allow my skin to be non-front specific and also try only to use colours that are already present in the pallet. In many cases this involves the removal of a large amount of yellows from the colour table and when necessary I’ll even go to the effort of removing any extra colours (like those found in the original artists logos or in backgrounds) just to squeeze out every last one of those (my precious….) 256 swatches.

I'd be very interested however to learn what others consider are the optimum settings for both Photoshop and Gimp? So I can continue to experiment.

[IceFire]

I've tried everything in Photoshop to try and get it to do as good a job as Bright does for converting to indexed colour images. Never worked as well. Bright was always superior.

[vpmedia]

I tried Bright in 2005 but turned brown oil into purple (Jutocsa advised same thing), maybe newer version is better.

This is how I save a 256 color image in Photoshop v12, first as png then resave it as bmp.
Theres no other software I know about where you could select the color reduction algorithm (blue drop down list in the pic) which is important to have best quality.
Best result = biggest size (size is in lower left corner).



results:

left side / 8 bit
right side / 24 bit

100%



200%



And this is what happens to the color table when somebody not familiar with Photoshop starts to add his colorful skinner logos:

[Phil_K]

Don't see what the fuss is about really - when you actually play the game, you very, very rarely get close enough to another plane to appreciate even the detail that's available now.

Greater colour depth is OK when viewing skinning as an artform/hobby in itself (which I don't, btw), but from an in-game point of view, the chunky differences in the LOD's (the stepped increase in the crudeness of the model to represent increasing distance) is far more noticeable.

I also don't understand why anyone would be using an extensive palate to skin a military aircraft - the point is to best represent a three-dimensional object (i.e. bring out the play of light on surfaces), not show how great a painter you are.

[Spudkopf]

Originally Posted by Phil_K

Don't see what the fuss is about really - when you actually play the game, you very, very rarely get close enough to another plane to appreciate even the detail that's available now.

"you very, very rarely get close enough" so is this close enough for you?


Perhaps you may have missed the emphasis of my post, I'm not talking about the other aircraft, I'm talking about the one I'm sitting in.

[QUOTE=Phil_K;447282]Greater colour depth is OK when viewing skinning as an artform/hobby in itself (which I don't, btw), but from an in-game point of view, the chunky differences in the LOD's (the stepped increase in the crudeness of the model to represent increasing distance) is far more noticeable.

Sure if your focus is mainly beyond your own aircraft then maybe you do not have the opportunity to admire your own wings, engines, etc. but if you’re flying long bomber or fighter bomber missions you can have plenty of time to look over your wings, and with some German aircraft it is somewhat necessary to do so as the engine related instruments are on the cowls.

Originally Posted by Phil_K

I also don't understand why anyone would be using an extensive palate to skin a military aircraft - the point is to best represent a three-dimensional object (i.e. bring out the play of light on surfaces), not show how great a painter you are.

Most military paintwork is applied with an airgun and thus there are smooth graduations between differing colours and when you add other details like panel lines, rivet detail, stencilling, weathering, etc. then the limitation of 256 colours is simply just that a limitation that is usually resolved by harsh and dithering.

If the entire environment is so un-important then we might as well still be flying Aces over Europe or Air War Over Europe with better FMs.

[vpmedia]

So skinning isnt a hobby & artform in your opinion? Wow

[Phil_K]

Originally Posted by Spudkopf

"you very, very rarely get close enough" so is this close enough for you?

Yeah, but the point I would make is that at this close distance, it is the limitations of the model that is more of an immersion killer than the limitations of the skin - i.e. the best skin in the world won't make up for a model that just hasn't been built for 2048 x 2048 skins.