Gents,

It has been a long thorn in my side that for all the plane skins I have made, the one I was never able to do right was the Albatros D.III series, including the OAW.

Some history on the matter... When I walked away from the RB3D world, upon completing my final version of HASP, I fell into a nice project that looked promising. It was a conglomeration of several RB3D SWWISA Devs and a crew of Russian developers looking to create a brand new WWI game. Quite possibly this may have been the origin of what we know as Rise of Flight (not 100% sure on this one).

At any rate, Polovski was one of the modelers and he brought with him a new Albatros D.III model he had been working on. I loved it from day one. It was and has always been my favorite plane, adding in the fine work he did on it made it a match in heaven. Unfortunately this project fell apart due to language barriers, work ethics and several other misunderstanding and I thought I would never seen it again.

Moving forward to the OFF project... Thanks to Polovski and him bringing me in, my 'entry' project was to skin the Sopwith Tripe. I did it well enough to get the job (thankfully it was eventually given to Sandbagger to remaster my horrible work (what the hell is PC12??)) and move on to Polovski's Albatros. He had just finished tweaking it to work in the CFS3 engine. I was delighted to have this dropped into my hands. I loved this plane! I didn't even have OFF at the time, just the model and I started skinning it right away.

Long story short... the skins I did are now 10+ years old and reflect a look that was experimental at best. I did not have the knowledge to distinguish the differences between the Johannisthal and OAW other than the rudder. I did not realize there was a difference in the many aspects of the serial numbers, including wing patterns, colors... etc. I used the model of the Alb D.III 170 as a new plane, when I should have used it to reflect the 'moded' D.III 160. Meaning, the plane skins should have been the same for both versions, rather I made a whole new skin thinking it was a new plane. I also gave many of the Alb D.III 170's Green/Mauve skins, whereas, no Johannisthal D.III's were fitted with Mauve. Only the OAW's were. My techniques on the original skins were very new to me, I did not use any occlusion and was still using the skin to create shadows, whereas now, the DX9 code handles this and leaves a lot to be desired in my original works.

I did what I could with the information and knowledge I had at the time. Over the years, it has been nipping at me every time I looked at it live in the game. As the scenery and effects of WOFF got better, my aging Albatos skins looked worse... and worse.

So...today I am announcing that I will be slowly reworking every Albatros D.III series skin possible. I have no time frame, nor have I discussed how I intend to get these out to you... but as I work the skins, and make more I will be talking with the Devs and looking at the best options to do so. This is something I have to do. Like we reworked the scenery as it looked better with new advances in the game, I need to rework these old skins to bring them to today's level.

Below are some examples of the new skins verses the old. Some obvious changes, and attention to detail has been made on the new skins. The placement of the weight information for the Johannisthal early serial numbers, verses the old. The new skins will show some signs of battle damage in that some will be flying with patches, and wood filler. There will be what looks like canvas patches on some that show the movement of the radiator from center to offset-right when the 'Updated' D.III comes into service. There is occlusion shadowing to give more depth. The cammo colors have been researched and presented as such. There will be more skins, even fictitious ones to add in more color and personality. Many will carry serial numbers close related to, or when possible actual.

So here they are... the new Albatros D.III - Aris SWEET FX settings enabled!!!

Jasta 12
Karl Meyer - subjective

Friedrich Hochstetter - subjective


Jasta 3
Center Radiator field mod and battle damage

CO Hermann Kohze

Carl Menckhoff


Jasta 1

Sounds great..maybe release them in batches of ten?

Thank you, just wanted to post it, THANKS.

OvS;

I'm sure we will all wait with bated breath Sir!

Many Thanks

OvS, I understand your urge to "re-vamp" those skins. Quite a big project!
Take your time! The ones you have done so far are looking great!

Shocking oversight OvS......a shamefully neglected project!!!! How could you.......when you had nothing else to do???? It's about bloody time!!! Whatever you're doing looks awesome.....BRAVO!!!!

Fantastic news! I agree, those ALb DIII skins are long in the tooth.

I know this plane inside and out and have many, many thousands of photos of Albatros D-types, so if I can help in any way it'd be my pleasure. Just PM me.

To start you off, though, in the spirit of constructive criticism, here are some big things to help you out:

1. Remove the row of nails down the spine of the airplane. There was no airframe running down the center of the Albatros D-type fuselages so there was nothing to nail the skin to there. I've seen these nails there on many OFF/WOFF Albs and they need to go. I can't tell if they are present on the new ones above of if that is a panel line down the middle. Regardless, if the latter, remove that as well because the birch skin didn't have any panel line down the center of the spine.

2. Double-check photos. Many, many wing root fairings were made of wood, not metal. So far in my research I have not discovered a serial number pattern regarding which was used when. Just have to go off any photos you have.

3. Remove frame shadows from the ailerons, elevators and rudders. Albatros D controls surfaces were very smooth in appearance. The rudder sometimes had frame shadows but they were few and if any were seen they very subtle as a rule. Way more so than is currently seen.

4. Alb DIIIs in the 600-649/17 and 750-799/17 serial number ranges (i.e., the second and third production batches) had square footsteps in the nose of the plane, just as the D.III (OAW)s had.

Hey, OvStachel, great work! I would love to update the skinning thread with some new info if you could answer a few questions for me.

1. Did you start fresh or paint over a previous skin?
2. What software are you using?
3. How many layers are you typically ending up with?
4. Are you using airbrush or some other technique for the painting?
5. What is occlusion shadowing?

Thanks for any help!

Jim;

Thanks for those statements, I needed the education.

Thanks for the support guys. Like I mentioned, it will be a long process, there are hundreds of skins I will have to remake, but in time, each will be addressed.

I will be contacting you JFM, I had planned on it. I will make those corrections to the original template, as you mentioned.

Rick, to answer you:

Hey, OvStachel, great work! I would love to update the skinning thread with some new info if you could answer a few questions for me.

1. Did you start fresh or paint over a previous skin? I had the original wood template I made, along with the placement of each component from 10 years ago. The wood template I felt was still very good, and looked accurate for the D.III as compared to many pictures I have studied. I knew where to put things as the original template has not changed at all. So it was just a matter of repainting over what I had done years ago... however... each major component has it's own template, and I build each piece seperately, then add them in to the master template for each Jasta... then once the main 'Jasta' skin is complete, I begin to create each Ace as such. It makes it look as if the plane was painted over in the field. Also, thanks to Parmma, I was able to borrow some pieces I really liked from his D.V/D.Va template as well. Such as the wheel, elevator texture I made from his white elevator, and a few engine access plates and use them to build my own pieces.
2. What software are you using? I still use Photoshop CS2... yeah.. I know.. it's old, but it works and I know where everything is.
3. How many layers are you typically ending up with? Depending on the Jasta, anywhere from 30 to 100... but I also merge a lot of layers. It's a process really. In the end some of the main templates I can get down to 20 layers... then add in the Ace schemes, which I try to separate into individual layers.
4. Are you using airbrush or some other technique for the painting? Everything... I also go out and look for many other useful paint brushed to add into PS. Grunge, splatter, heavy brush... etc.
5. What is occlusion shadowing? It's a shading technique. It adds in a lot of depth to where 2 pieces meet (like the wing roots, the elevator to fuselage... etc. It's very useful and adds realism. It was something Polovski turned me on to a few years back when I was creating the Fokker D.VII skin template. I've been doing it ever since, as we all use in our skins.

Thanks for any help! No problem... I'm happy to help you and the guys any way I can.

hi all - this is very neat and will be exciting to follow

i am also trying to improve my 'skinning abilities' and am in photoshop and illustrator as well

i am currently working on making a master template of my own and i chose to start with the Halb DIII as it currently only has the 'default' skin available

question ... is there or are there, master templates available that are more of just a white sheet with the seperate areas for mapping laid out in light black line? on a few areas of the halb i am having a heck of a time trying to 'map' edges that wrap around the fuselage from different pieces so just curious?

OV can you do a thread with a bit of a 'coles notes' or summary of the occlusion process at some point as well as maybe a bit on texturing and or weathering with other brushes? if not no worries but would be very helpful

thanks all

Ron

Fantastic! Best of luck to your project and looking forward to seeing the new and improved skins!

Thank you very much for that great info. Would you consider posting what the base skin (just the wood texture) looks like in game just so we could see a before and after? I understand if you don't want to or can't, but it would help some of us "wanna bes" see how it progresses.

Thanks again!

manitouguy, if you look in the skinning thread in the FAQs and References subforum, you can see how Olham suggested putting "graph paper" over your plane to help see the contours. That might help you!

Good stuff- glad to see you're still working on skins for the game. I got many great hours from HASP back in the day.

Very nice work OvS. The updated D.III´s looks great in the sim.

Cheers

Arto

They look great OvStachel!!
Sadly, Albatros D.IIs don´t look as good as D.IIIs TO ME. There is something in the wood pattern in the earlier Albs that make them less convincing in my humble opinion.

Update:

After more tweaking and information passed to me by JFM, she's coming along nicely.

With the new version(s) you will see a lot of differences between units, models and serial #'s. I won't go into great detail yet, but unlike what we always thought about the 2 different manufacturers, there is a lot more that separates them other than the shape of the rudder.

Here is a nearly complete Jasta 10 Johannisthal built D.III.

I'll update this thread now and then with more pics as more skins become available.

OvS

Sweet