Skin Viewer - reason for existance?

[Yakdriver]

Good Morning -
a couple of searches did not help me find a reason why we need a skin Viewer.

In 46 i didn't need one, in CFS3 i didn't need one...
all i needed was the ability to shove the skin files (be that DDS files or bitmaps, with or without alpha channels...) into a folder and basta.
I viewed the skin by firing up the game time and again.

 

I suppose that there must be a reason, or a series of reasons, other than "cause it's more comfortable".
I mean such a skin Viewer costs money, in whichever form... which is in short supply these days.

Can someone fill me in? I am scratching my head here... (nope... no lice this time!)

 

[Jaws2002]

It is useful, but definitely not something I'd hold the ability to use custom skins for.

Not having skin viewer it's not a very big deal, but I consider the ability to use custom skins, mandatory for a flight sim and it hurts the game pretty bad.

[Feathered_IV]

It works very well within the RoF/BoS game design. It allows the user to view an aircraft model in full screen and zoom in in a way that the original Il-2 could never allow. It allows you to view incremental changes as you make a skin without having to enter/exit a mission to review changes. It's good and it works.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Feathered_IV

[senseispcc]

Viewing or not viewing the skins is not the point. The point is there is until now no possibility to integrate homemade skins into the game!

 

Edited November 22, 2014 by senseispcc

[Feathered_IV]

True. But this is a step in that direction, no?

[A-E-Hartmann]

 expect the viewer skins .

the release long in coming .

Edited November 22, 2014 by A-E-Hartmann

[Yakdriver]

It works very well within the RoF/BoS game design. It allows the user to view an aircraft model in full screen and zoom in in a way that the original Il-2 could never allow. It allows you to view incremental changes as you make a skin without having to enter/exit a mission to review changes. It's good and it works.

Okay, that confirms what i was thinking.

I am along the lines pf senseipcc and jaws on this one, and conclude that if such a tool is developed that there must be a market or a target group or a userbase that will use it.

whatever my personal past experience is -maybe i will use it - maybe i won't. maybe i will appreciate it, maybe i won't and rather load Missions...

 

As you said, Feathered... it's a step into a good direction.

 

Answered - thanks gentlemen.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Hawker_Typhoon

[Rjel]

It works very well within the RoF/BoS game design. It allows the user to view an aircraft model in full screen and zoom in in a way that the original Il-2 could never allow. It allows you to view incremental changes as you make a skin without having to enter/exit a mission to review changes. It's good and it works.

I always wanted that ability in IL-2. The original default templates were such a mess. Panel lines that didn't line up. The right side of almost every default skin in the game being slightly lower than the left. They were a mess. I only did a few of complete templates because it was so time consuming getting everything to match up. Making a change, remembering to save it as a multi-layered template (hard lesson learned there), getting it processed to the right color format, sticking it in the right folder, start the game.... rinse and repeat. If the skin viewer works like I'm thinking it will, what a treat that will be.

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

The viewer helps serious skinners to accomplish better quality and more accurately skins due to it's basic feautures.

 

You can view the plane solemly fully rotateable, change lightning settings and shadow simulations and even fully zoom in to tinker with cockpit details ect.

 

Moreover the skin viewer usualy gives you error messages if your skin doesnt work for some reason, for example filesize too big, wrong conversion format or lack of alpha channels.

 

Ingame the only error you get is CTD. Nothing telling you what's specificly wrong with it.

 

Edit: you can start skinning right away without the viewer if you know how to extract the ingame skins, you just cant implement it currently.

Edited November 22, 2014 by [Jg26]5tuka

[Yakdriver]

 

 

5tuka' timestamp='1416666539' post='204451'] Ingame the only error you get is CTD.

well that is a valid reason of the kiind i was fishing for.

in 46, all you would get is " no skin at all "
But the checklist for errors is usually small- file format, alpha channels, naming conventions, subfolders stuff like that.
Those things are quickly learned.

lets see how things go.

[[KWN]T-oddball]

Good Morning -

a couple of searches did not help me find a reason why we need a skin Viewer.

In 46 i didn't need one, in CFS3 i didn't need one...

all i needed was the ability to shove the skin files (be that DDS files or bitmaps, with or without alpha channels...) into a folder and basta.

I viewed the skin by firing up the game time and again.

 

I suppose that there must be a reason, or a series of reasons, other than "cause it's more comfortable".

I mean such a skin Viewer costs money, in whichever form... which is in short supply these days.

 

Can someone fill me in? I am scratching my head here... (nope... no lice this time!)

 

they did not release the templates they have because of the unlocks as for the skin viewer that is just an excuse to justify not releasing the templates such as this one,

 

[Jaws2002]

In il2 I used to keep the qmb open when testing skins and just load another skin for the type to refresh the image.

In Clod I keep the FMB open when testing skins. Just change plane type back and forth to refresh the skon.

The RoF skin viewer was really nice because you could test the skin under all lighting conditions.

Have to mention that the templates were top notch as well in ROF.

[Yakdriver]

just like i did...
but the skin name needed to be different each time, as it was impossible to reload the same name skin without restarting the game.... the paint was in the cache or something. No F5 reload page function! :-P

[Jaws2002]

they did not release the templates they have because of the unlocks as for the skin viewer that is just an excuse to justify not releasing the templates such as this one,

 

 

To be fair, that's just a skin, not the template. They will release, like in rof layered photoshop templates with everything separated on layers all from weathering, maping, alpha and so on.

That doesn't mean you can't start working on skins based on that .dds skin you posted above. You just can't use them in game yet.

 

A few minutes of playing around with one of them:

 

[Yakdriver]

yea, that's what i am doing for the LaGG too. found a "comrade" skin somewhere and started drawing layers of details.
then i stopped when i heard we will get what we need - maybe these layers will fit my taste perfectly, so why waste time.. :-)

But eventually, custom templates will be done for each plane, just like in the old days.
The effort remains appreciated - compared to an 8bit VOID.bmp this is a major step forwards.
 

[BlitzPig_EL]

I just hope that the inclusion of custom/squad skins into the sim is easy, and the arbiters of what gets accepted or rejected don't quash skins simply because it is not 100% historical down to the last rivet.

 

Squads like to use their own logo/markings and personal tactical numbers.  And no, I don't mean pink Hello Kitty faces splashed all over the thing.

[BlitzPig_EL]

A couple of examples to illustrate what I am talking about, both from IL2/46 with the current HSFX version.

 

 

 

 

Surely examples like this would be no problem.

[Jaws2002]

I just hope that the inclusion of custom/squad skins into the sim is easy, and the arbiters of what gets accepted or rejected don't quash skins simply because it is not 100% historical down to the last rivet.

 

Squads like to use their own logo/markings and personal tactical numbers. And no, I don't mean pink Hello Kitty faces splashed all over the thing.

I don't think they'll bring the aproval system from ROF. It was a bad idea. Too much work for no added benefit. Once the community starts making skins, you need an army of people to work on that alone.

Skining is not something that should be controlled.

It's not worth the hours needed to make it work.

Obviously, the unlocks mess up this aspect of the game as well. Because people have to grind for skins, they won't allow custom skins in the campaign.

Edited November 22, 2014 by Jaws2002

[Yakdriver]

yep... Unlocks is again POTENTIALLY restricting the community of even PROVIDING content.

Unless the team finds a way around.

[[KWN]T-oddball]

yep... Unlocks is again POTENTIALLY restricting the community of even PROVIDING content.

Unless the team finds a way around.

 

potentially? there is nothing potential about it, the unlocks have stopped the devs from releasing the templates they already have because it would interfere with the mickey mouse unlock system they have going  that for some misguided reason they believe this will attract new players.

 

 

To be fair, that's just a skin, not the template. They will release, like in rof layered photoshop templates with everything separated on layers all from weathering, maping, alpha and so on.

That doesn't mean you can't start working on skins based on that .dds skin you posted above. You just can't use them in game yet.

 

A few minutes of playing around with one of them:

 

 

 

what is a skin? it's a template without  layers and that skin came from a template they have and the dev's  not releasing them has nothing to do with a skin viewer, it is of course a mute point as you know because even if we make them the unlock system has us locked out from using them.

[Rjel]

I just hope that the inclusion of custom/squad skins into the sim is easy, and the arbiters of what gets accepted or rejected don't quash skins simply because it is not 100% historical down to the last rivet.

 

Squads like to use their own logo/markings and personal tactical numbers.  And no, I don't mean pink Hello Kitty faces splashed all over the thing.

I agree. I think even the best skinners from IL-2 would admit their early work in no way compared to later skins they did. I'm afraid if the process is made too complicated to get skins into the game, we'll never see that same caliber of work. Or worse, someone new to the art, will never even get a chance to improve.

[Yakdriver]

Someone new to the art will turn himself to other platforms.
Not everyone has normal and Bump maps and whatnot, but there are plenty of virtual planes to Paint on so many different Platforms.

[A-E-Hartmann]

I agree. I think even the best skinners from IL-2 would admit their early work in no way compared to later skins they did. I'm afraid if the process is made too complicated to get skins into the game, we'll never see that same caliber of work. Or worse, someone new to the art, will never even get a chance to improve.

also hope that it is not the case .

 

 

Took just a few minutes to create these skins with our template

 

hoping that it is simple one use .

[Bearcat]

I just hope that the inclusion of custom/squad skins into the sim is easy, and the arbiters of what gets accepted or rejected don't quash skins simply because it is not 100% historical down to the last rivet.

 

Squads like to use their own logo/markings and personal tactical numbers. And no, I don't mean pink Hello Kitty faces splashed all over the thing.

I agree. I made custom skins for every sim I have flown regularly. The Mustang in my sig is from a skin I made for WoP which looked so much better than IL2. I just hope that this community is more like the original IL2 community in terms of sharing and comeraderie as opposed to some other communities currently active that I will leave nameless where some people selfishly keep their work to themselves. Of course it is theirs to do as they wish but one of the things that made IL2 so great was the generosity of it's community and hopefully the devs will remember that and implement things that will foster that sense of community moving forward. I will never forget one of the things that endeared me to the IL2 community was when I knew nothing about skinning at all and after seeing the squad skins on the 777 site (ironically) I wanted some custom skins for the then as yet unformed 99th. I asked IAFS Painter if he would make me a custom Retail skin for an La5 and a P-39. What he did for this noob stranger was make skins for both aircraft in olive and metal with nose markings for all four squadrins of the 332nd, 16 skins in all and that act of kindness in addition to the fun I was having with the sim and the overall friendliness of everyone else had a lot to do with me diving into IL2 with both feet.

[==LD==Lemsko]

reason?

 

to make the life of an artist comfortable and easy

[A-E-Hartmann]

 

 

I just hope that this community is more like the original IL2 community in terms of sharing and comeraderie as opposed to some other communities currently active that I will leave nameless where some people selfishly keep their work to themselves.

 

For my own part I plan sharing many of the project .  

reason?

 

to make the life of an artist comfortable and easy

I hope .

[Yakdriver]

No purpose in making planes if they can not be flown in all their beauty, Asap and for free.
I mean... we all like planes, right? The stuff with Props, Wings, Guns n stuff like more Guns, more Bombs and a shatload of rockets...?

[==LD==Lemsko]

For my own part I plan sharing many of the project .  

I hope .

 

when  made the textures for my warbirds ient models i used 1k res textures. they usually used between 300 and 600mb memory.

now absolute top is 4k. since its an area we have to deal with the memory needed, when having photoshop open with fully layered work grows potentially.

double resolution, 3 times more data inside.

i have a system with 8gb ram, only for that reason alone a small viewer means a lot of time saving while working on a texture without the need to start a memory heavy app every time to recheck your work.

Edited November 24, 2014 by Lemsko

[6./ZG26_5tuka]

If it works as in RoF I seriously doubt we'll ever see above 2k skins (current ingame skin resolution). Over there files were restricted in size and needed special coversation mehtodas to fit the parameters ingame, otherwise the skin woudlnt load.

I hope it's going to be different in BoS as 4k skins can look pretty fantastic comapred to 2k ones due to better decal and marking resolution, though talented skinners will also be able to provide great details in 2k only.

So hopefully we
ll have more "freedom" compared to the RoF system ( which stopped me from skinning due to strange file conversation methods I couldn't execute with Gimp, so I had to drop it).