The fact that I know this stuff may qualify me as a nerd.

You think so? Christ, as a teenager I used to paint things called 'Gamesworkshop' Citadel lead Miniatures (Fantasy Dragons and such like) so you have nowt on me lol. Nice little hobby, and it kept me off the streets, and out of Durham Jail. You think I'm kidding? I grew up in 'Walker' lol...Never mind. I am now 33 however and those days are long gone. Hmmmmm....might have a crack at this skinning lark, never bothered with IL-2 either.

A nerd you may be Nick, but yee be a learned Nerd. Gets my vote everytime and you learn something new everyday.....Thanks for the info!

Mark, I spent some years in my youth painting minatures for Dungeons & Dragons, so I can match your nerdiness - and raise you an elf and a frost giant.

I never got into skinning in IL-2, but the possibilities with RoF are much more exciting. There aere some really good paint jobs to have a go at. The D.VII should be a good place to start because the fuselage sides are flat so there's no distortion as the map gets wrapped round the 3D shape. I've got the two Osprey books on D.VII Aces which have a lot of colourful schemes. I might scan some profiles and put them up in a new thread for inspiration. Neoqb are supposed to be releasing templates soon, so maybe that will be a good time to start. I guess Gimp (free) or something like Paintshop Pro (not so free) will be needed.

Cheers,

RD/NickM

+1 on painting D&D miniatures!

Nerd qualification.

Still got all my wargame minis from over thirty years in the hobby (how could I ever part with them after all that painting time)!

On the black Fokker D.VII skin, another technique to add realism, would be to overlay it on top of a default skin when texturing, like the included "factory-fresh" lozenge scheme, and "erase" with a very low setting some of the top skin's texture, exposing the underneath skin base at times (especially at the wear points, like on the leading edges, and around the cockpit area due to "handling", etc). The principle here, is to give the overpaint scheme the look that it's actually painted over the underlying colors/patterns.

You are exactly right. Now that the DR1 is coming out there will be allot of overlay cause the DR1 had very noticeable streaky paint.
I'm so happy this plane is finnally on it's way, I can't control myself!

That's for sure Musicman, especially since the Fokker Dr.I makes such a great canvas with all the historical paint schemes available for it!

The last stuff I was experimenting with before I got involved with KOTS/ROF was adding the look of canvas to my skins. I wasn't totally successful, but I was thinking on the order of conveying the materials that WWI aircraft were made of, and trying to portray the look of linen in my skinning. Today, with these newest sim engines, and with surfaces able to reflect light and better convey the look of metal, varnished wood, and doped linen, the work of indicating these different types of materials texturally becomes much easier. I would have liked to have seen how the technique would have appeared, like the following examples I did for OFF Phase 2 for instance, but within the hgh-fidelity rendering environment of ROF.

Samples of my Fokker Dr.I "canvas" and "metal" texturing attempts, and the technique as used for making things like squadron insignia game art, with fabric weave and folds included (similar detailing we're seeing done nicely on the recent ROF Camel skin):

+1 on painting miniatures

For me it wasnt D&D Miniatures, it was 1/72nd scale planes for a fun-filled little miniatures version of Rise of Flight. It wasn't the 1/144th scale lead planes (too small) but very similar.

It was like playing Richthofen's War but without the limitations of a board and hexes.

Fun Stuff!

Brian, small world!

I started off with plastic 1/72nd scale too, moved down to 1/285th (CinC WWI planes), and finally back up to 1/144th scale.

(apologize for the temporary hijack)

One of our game days:





My Minis!

I'll see your collective D&D minis, 1/72nd scale planes and Citadel minis and raise you a set of Doctor Who and GHQ minis!

Very nice job on the aircraft FlyRetired. I did some 1/72nd planes for Blue Max years ago but I think yours look better I did however construct some 3D bases using extendable walkie talkie antennae and flex straw elbows for altitude, pitch and roll.

Back OT though, very nice work Musicman. Keep up the good job. The improvement in your black is like night and day!

Anybody good with Paint Shop Pro? What I want to do is extract the default aircraft skins. I simply cannot separate the parts that I want to skin from the parts that I do not. The pieces literally run into each other.

Any tips?