Preface

This tutorial covers creating bare metal effects, making weathering effects, as well as the basis of skinning. Some parts will be more useful to some people than others.

Skinning a plane in IL2 Forgotten Battles can be daunting. Not only in terms of skill and know how, but also in hardware and software tools required. I hope this tutorial can be a waypoint on both fronts. The most important part of a first successful skin is just sticking to the project until your happy.

I'd like to start by saying that tools should not be focused on to strongly. Most popular graphics packages are more than capable of fine work. Many are available for under $100 US, and there are always bundled packages, where hardware includes a piece of software that is usable for skinning. Photoshop Element 2.0 and Paint Shop Pro 7 are good, popular examples. I've used a dozen similar programs in the past decade that were nearly as good, but cost less or were free, like the GIMP. On the hardware front, a mouse is quite usable to paint a skin. Some of the more delicate details will require careful overlapping of strokes to get nice feathers, but its not as easy as using a pressure sensitive pen tablet. A few models are around $100, with sizes generally about 4x5 inches for the working area. More ...