Skinning resources

[II/JG11_ATLAN_VR]

On ‎3‎/‎14‎/‎2018 at 12:51 AM, 8./SG1_SPEKTRE76 said:

 

 

 

must be GUMMIRAHMEN !

[SOLIDKREATE]

3 minutes ago, II/JG11ATLAN said:

must be GUMMIRAHMEN !

 

It’s what the photo said on the side of the aircraft. Maybe the ‘N’ got rubbed off.

[II/JG11_ATLAN_VR]

1 minute ago, 8./SG1_SPEKTRE76 said:

 

It’s what the photo said on the side of the aircraft. Maybe the ‘N’ got rubbed off.

MAY BE

[Pierre64]

An exemple IRL : 

(detail from this photograph of the Italian ace Mario Bellagambi’s Bf 109 G-6 (or G-10/AS ?) of  Aeronautica Nazionale Repubblicana  (F. D’Amico/G. Valentino) :

Another close-up from an other Gustav : 

Edited September 2, 2018 by Pierre64

[SOLIDKREATE]

That is better than mine

[adler_1]

hello

where can i download the soviet star and numbers sets since simmers paint shop closed down .

[beepee]

On 10/26/2018 at 1:55 AM, dog1 said:

hello

where can i download the soviet star and numbers sets since simmers paint shop closed down .

 

Here you go : https://www.mediafire.com/file/szzehticrudjbbw/VVS_Markings.zip/file

 

Edited November 16, 2018 by MF-beepee
Wrong Link pasted

[adler_1]

MFBeepee

thank you

[Ostrich]

Hello,

 

I made the Knights Cross Variants you find sometimes on the German Kill markings on German Fighters so if you need them for your skin Projects feel free to use them. The Kill number below is according to the career mode. Please note that the Markings are inspired by real world marking but not historical accurate.

Please find the psd. files in the zip attachment

Knightscross variants.zip

 

 

Best Regards

Ostrich

 

 

[adler_1]

thank you , could you please develop an accurate wave , 3 colors  for the 3rd group white stroked black , black stroked white , yellow stroked white or black  when you have time .

Edited November 20, 2018 by dog1

[STG77Jeeves]

Does anyone have a an example of a cyrillic "Death to facists!" layer/image/outline they can share?

 

I'm thinking that someone, somewhere, has slapped this on an aircraft and can extract and share that element from an unflattened file.

 

Thanks!

[Ostrich]

On 11/20/2018 at 6:12 PM, dog1 said:

thank you , could you please develop an accurate wave , 3 colors  for the 3rd group white stroked black , black stroked white , yellow stroked white or black  when you have time .

Hi,

 

Maybe if you have a good reference and it would fit my projects.

 

Best Regards Ostrich

[adler_1]

Ostrich

you dont need any reference , its the third group fighter marking .

[JGr2/J5_W0LF-]

Thought this would be of interest to some folks here. I already pre-ordered mine but this book is a must have for skinners if you ask me.... Real Colors of WWII Aircraft

 

https://ak-interactive.com/product/real-colors-of-wwii-aircraft/

[adler_1]

Bugsy

let us know if its really good or just another Osprey 

[JGr2/J5_W0LF-]

I just received this book and I have to say its very well put together and I think it's worth every cent. It's loaded with pictures I've never seen before and I have a ton of books to say the least. I'm in no way being given anything for this but if your a model builder, skinner, or WWII aviation enthusiast then this is a must have book. I am very happy with this purchase. If you buy this book I highly recommend you get it from the company and not a retailer. You'll get it a lot faster. Took me 5 days...

[szelljr]

...for skinners  !!  Street art style.

 

Edited January 19, 2019 by szelljr

[Skywarp]

My contributions

http://www.ratomodeling.com/articles/AVG_cammo/

[Lobos_De_Noche]

I dig this site. https://www.cybermodeler.com/references.shtml

[Mysticpuma]

http://wp.scn.ru/en/ww2/f/451/2/0

[Pict]

I came across a fair bit of old skinning resources on a hard drive recently and when I say old, I mean going back some 15 years plus 

 

So thinking some of this stuff is good, still relevant and might help someone here I opted to upload some as I couldn't find any working links.

 

Starting with some .psd templates for national insignia and lettering by an Italian fellow called Alx, who had/has a web site called Wings and Coffee main page is still up but no sign of downloads.

 

Seven little templates all in one handy 1 megabyte zip file

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Wings & Coffee.zip

Edited October 12, 2019 by Pict

[jasta11ace]

Thanks for this, Pict.

[Pict]

Your welcome. If only one person got some benefit out of it, then it was worth the small amount of time it took to do. I will put up more, but need to check who the authors are and if they are still available elsewhere or just lost. I don't want upset anyone, so this could take a little time.

 

The next one is credited to a guy called Mr.Big. Do a search for that and all sorts of nonsense pops out and up, as I just found out 

 

==========================================================

 

British Markings, specifically Hurricane related, by Micheal Fuller aka Mr.Big.

 

British Markings.zip

Edited October 12, 2019 by Pict

[Pict]

US color swatches from the 1930's -1940. I have zero recollection where I came by these, but I put them together in a little Photoshop .psd to keep them together and make then easy to use in Photoshop.

 

Could help make a cool retro paint job on a P-39 or whatever, with the meatball roundels on yellow wings / blue fuse?

 

US.zip

Edited October 12, 2019 by Pict

[RNAS10_Oliver]

https://www.seawings.co.uk/images/colour charts/British Aviation Colours of WWII.pdf

 

More than just a colour chart as the link might suggest. But rather provides some of the Air Ministry Orders given through the war that instructed how aircraft were to be camouflaged and marked.

Edited October 28, 2019 by Oliver88

[ICDP]

Metal chipping layers for P-38 Lightning

https://btcloud.bt.com/web/app/share/invite/zfbYFo6fM8

 

OD layer and metal chipping for P-51D

https://btcloud.bt.com/web/app/share/invite/yCKsf10J85

[Pict]

If you've been looking for a Cyrillic font , here's something you may find interesting.

 

I just ran into this project that was released a mere 15 days ago, where the graffiti soviet soldiers left on the Reichstag building, Berlin back in May 1945 has been turned into a truetype front. I think it's a pretty cool thing to do and may make a for an interesting base to do VVS codes or inscriptions.

 

 

The soldiers handwriting taken from photos has been turned into this "May" font.

 

 

More info here https://en.pobeda.page/font/

May-Regular-v1.zip

Edited October 30, 2019 by Pict
Spelling, tweaking etc.

[336th_Ripper*]

@PictNice find!

[Raptorattacker]

HERE is a P'shop document with Brit Layers for the Mustang. It includes the Sky Fuselage Band (NOT as straightforward as you would imagine!!), Alternative Brit Roundels (with the two-colour upper wing roundel), The yellow wing ID stripes and the OD and Grey camouflage (sorry, the upper is in one layer).

I hope this gives someone some help...

Rap

[336th_Ripper*]

On 12/31/2018 at 12:44 AM, 361st_Bugsy said:

Thought this would be of interest to some folks here. I already pre-ordered mine but this book is a must have for skinners if you ask me.... Real Colors of WWII Aircraft

 

https://ak-interactive.com/product/real-colors-of-wwii-aircraft/

Hey Bugsy , since we both bought this book, I just wanted to mention that the authors went through great lengths to capture the original colors and in some cases could not get the exact match and referred to the Federal Standard and explained their deviations from the standard. The PDF colors http://www.ak-masters.com/app/pdf/RCEquivalenceDIG.pdf

differ from Cyber Modeler  https://www.cybermodeler.com/color/ana_matrix.shtml The differences are not huge but if you take the color picker, you will see what I mean. I think converting these colors to RGB (HTML) is probably the culprit. It seems that this is what @ICDP used as a reference for his Camo. If you look down you will see the Bibliography  from where they obtained their colors. 

 

Will the real color please stand up

Edited November 19, 2019 by 361st_Ripper*
Added the word Not!

[JGr2/J5_W0LF-]

Yup both paths are better then one path...Confucius says lol NP It always good to have historical references. I keep all my skinning in the historical sense unless its for personal reasons...Good work mate!

[336th_Ripper*]

History of RCAF Roundels http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/382/Roundel-Round-Up.aspx

 

[Raptorattacker]

On 11/18/2019 at 10:07 PM, 361st_Bugsy said:

Yup both paths are better then one path...Confucius says lol NP It always good to have historical references.

Plus there is the unknown quantity of people's personal monitor setups as well, to add even more confusion to poor ol' Confucius!! Ergo if you were to send me a swatch and I compared it to one of mine (arrived at by elimination, of course) then there would be numerical differences there as well. On TOP of that there is also the unknown equation of what paint they were using to, say, paint over D-Day stripes in the theatre. British? American? Mixed on-site out of both?.... AAAaaaaargh!! The plot is DEFINITELY thick as soup eh?!!

ps Happy New Year!!

Rap

[Pict]

On 11/20/2019 at 8:41 PM, 361st_Ripper* said:

History of RCAF Roundels http://www.vintagewings.ca/VintageNews/Stories/tabid/116/articleType/ArticleView/articleId/382/Roundel-Round-Up.aspx

 

 

Interesting article, full of info and for me, especially the history of how the roundel came into being in the first place, thanks 

 

However some of the detail about the FAA & RAAF are a little off as they seem to be lumped under SEAC. SEAC roundels were dark blue with light blue centers (which the article gets right when you read that far down), not white centers, as was the case with both the FAA & RAAF. As it is a Canada-centric article this minor confusion can be easily understood.

 

The RAAF went through the process of ditching the "meatball" and the red in the fin flash in New Guinea in 1942, so quite unrelated to SEAC. It didn't happen overnight and some P-40E's had a mix of roundels for a period, with no meatballs on the over wings, but still on the under wings & fuselage, while also retaining the red in the fin flash. Been a while since I looked at this, so there's more detail about this out there and I may be a little off the mark.

 

That said the info relating to the Royal Navy FAA roundels is yet another story as they were not SEAC roundels but fleet roundels. That's not to say that they weren't similar to SEAC roundels for the same reason, ie., avoiding confusion with Japanese roundels. I will try to extrapolate a little  

 

S.E.A.C. was largely an Army & Air force affair, although it did have a Royal Navy component under it's command, it did not reach as far as the East Indies until August 1945 and never reached into the Pacific. It's air component was the 3rd Tactical Air Force, which did not have RAAF units in it's number.

 

At the time of the photos in the article of the Grumman Avenger & Hellcat with the large blue roundel with small white center, the Royal Navy fleet in the far east was called the East Indies Fleet (EIF). Here is photo of EIF Hellcats showing the variations used. 

Hellcat with the tail in the air is a Mk.I (F6F-3) it has the temperate FAA camouflage, EIF roundels, white ID bands, but retains the red fin the fin flash. Hellcat with it's tail chewed off is a Mk.II (F6F-5) with the standard USN paint scheme overall sea blue, EIF roundels highlighted with white rings to separate them from the blue camo and white ID bands. The missing tail would not have had red in it's fin flash. As I noted above, SEAC did not reach into the East Indies till August 1945, by which time the EIF had long since gone. So nothing to do with SEAC.

 

Not at all complicated  Like they used to say, there's the right way, the wrong way & the navy way of doing things 

 

The Seafire in the article with the roundel & bar is from the British Pacific Fleet (BPF). This fleet was made up of partly of the EIF, but now as the name suggests operated in the Pacific and alongside the US Navy. Hence the bar added to the roundel to help prevent blue on blue incidents. So also nothing to do with SEAC.

 

EIF Squadrons

BPF Squadrons

Edited December 29, 2019 by Pict
Update

[Bo_Nidle]

http://www.littlefriends.co.uk/  is an excellent website for anyone looking for research information/ inspiration regarding 8th USAAF Mustangs,Thunderbolts and Lightnings.

 

Packed with information, profiles and period photo's from each fighter group.

 

I started using it way back when i was skinning for IL2 Forgotten Battles & IL2:46, and pleased to find its still going.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Bo_Nidle

[PatCartier]

Your work will bien usefull, thx.

[Pict]

Here's a good little website for anyone looking for different language fonts, but doesn't want the hassle of downloading (sometimes paying) and installing them.

 

 

It's basically a virtual keyboard with some added functionality (that you can find in the little setting button at the bottom of the input box), quite handy, especially if your not working on your own computer 

 

https://www.typeit.org/

 

I just typed the following sample including a selection of  scientific, European, Polish & Russian fonts in seconds without downloading or installing anything;

 

ΓΔΛΞΠΣΦΨΩ∞∘∂∫∮∯∇∇½¼∕∤⊥‰ø≫²³√∛

åæâéèêøóøóòôąćęłńóśśźżàâæçéèêëïîôœùûüÿ€äöüß

ăâîșşțţţ

θωερτψυιοοπ

ασδφγηςκλ

ζχξωβνμ

яшертыуиоп

асдфгчйкл

зхцвбнм

Edited January 31, 2020 by Pict

[Pict]

Eliminator now available for IL2 BOX (currently in Beta).

 

 

After many years, 15 at least I would think off the top of the head, since I made a little tool called "Eliminator" for the original IL-2 series and after responding in this thread here, I decided to convert it for use in the IL-2 BOX series.

 

It's intended application is to find those elusive parts of a template and it had a track record of success in doing so. It works in a different way to other tools made for this purpose, not saying it's any better or any worse, just another tool that works another way. However when used correctly it will 100% sure find that elusive part as long as it's on the skin-able area that you can access. IL-2 BOX uses other not readily accessible skins for stuff like wheels and bombs, so these do not apply.

 

The tiny little installer is a minute 385kb, that's k as in kilo, however it will decompress lots of skins at 4mb each and will swallow over 1.3gb that's g as in golf !!! So be fore warned about space usage. The installer also gives you an uninstaller that makes it quick and easy to delete these skins once your done and was the main reason I went with an installer. Anyone who really want a zip or any other kind of compression file, just ask and I'll send you one.

 

It works very simply by a process of elimination, hence the name. We start with Elim_start and look at the model then depending on what colour  our elusive part is, in the case of our Fw190D-9 radiator cowl this is Blue, so the next skin we select is Elim_blue, now we see it has turned to Yellow, so we select Elim_blue_yellow. Now it has remained Yellow, so we go with Elim_blue_yellow_yellow and finaly we see some part is yellow and some green with a slice of red nearby. This is very helpful to pinpoint the part on the template.

 

Pictures speak 1000 words and gif's are even better  

 

 

Once we have reduced to area to the skin Elim_blue_yellow_yellow we can load that into Photoshop over our template, reduce the opacity and locate our elusive part...hopefully 

 

Here's another gif to help visualize the process of elimination by repeatedly quartering the search area.

 

 

This process can be continued with ease right down to a 4 square pixel skin giving the search ability down to 1 pixel if needs be !!! You just cannot miss as long as it's on the skin-able area that we can access.

 

======================================

 

As this is an open Beta for now, I would ask anyone interested to give feedback and if possible help tweaking the skins as they lost some definition along the edges after converting. I don't think that's a game-breaker, but I'd prefer it to be spot on.

 

Additionally I'd ideally like to make an expansion into the next 5th layer of elimination which may be more useful now things are at 4k. This would be a massive amount of repetitive work for one person and I simply dread it   However as a community project it could go quite quick if a few others pitched in. If your interested let me know and we can co-ordinate what needs done.

 

P.S. Do we need a 2k version? 

 

Have fun with this little tool.

 

 

 

 

Elimintor for BOX 4k Beta.zip

Edited February 1, 2020 by Pict

[Jaws2002]

Thank you!!!

 

The reason it doesn't work for the turret of the panther is because at least some tanks use two 4k textures. In the case of the panther one skin for the hull and one for the turret and wheels. 

  The hull skin has to end in &1 and the turret skin for the same texture is the name of the hull skin plus #1

 

I tried it with the eliminate start texture and it works.

I renamed  Elim_START to Elim_START&1 then i copied and pasted the texture  and renamed the new texture Elim_START&1#1. That way the game knows this two work together and here is the result:

 

 

 

However, other tank templates don't follow this exact naming rules.

 

Edited February 1, 2020 by Jaws2002

[Pict]

That's interesting and news to me, thanks.

 

I've duplicated & renamed all the files and tested them on the Panther, all good. Tomorrow I'll compile them as a separate version just for "twin skin tanks" and put it up here for trial 

 

It's going to be over 2.6gb of skins when decompressed, so I think it's probably better to keep it as a separate version for the hard core tank skinner's out there 

Edited February 1, 2020 by Pict