Our first profile

[f22raptor2006]

Rock will be looking at paint schemes for now as his computer is in good order he is also spending time flying in IL2. My computer has graphics card fail so I'll go do all the lighting or at least most of it from now on since it's very time consuming doing lighting and my computer is not able to do anything else.

Ok I've updated a few areas, the nose length and shape is basically correct, i've checked with various other profiles and real life pictures, each one seems to differ a slight tad here and there...

Aircraftprofiles if you could link me to your site that would be great. I kind of understand your idea of the shadow under the wing but it's a bit confusing for someone like me who a week or 2 ago couldn't do lighting properly or wouldn't normally try doing it. At the moment they have gradient masks on the shadows so they should be lighter the further they get down, how much so may not be quite so noticeable.

A few lighting corrections I've done tonight. (have school during the day and various coursework to do so not much time to work) Air intake lighting on the top has been edited and fixed still probably a bit of work needed there. Nose has been edited so the light gets thinner closer to the point. and a few bits here and there on the fuselage. Removed the droptank for now cos it was the wrong size anyway and i'll redo that later.

[Otterkins2]

Incredible first effort Henry!!! A couple of points to pick out here tho. First, your panel lines are just flat drawn lines. You need to give them depth with shading and highlights. Secondly, your overall finish is far too smooth. You need to add a bit of random noise to make it more believeable. Lastly (and this one's a biggie), the aircraft is several layers pasted together and it's painfully obvious. The intake, wing root and horizontal tailplane need to be smoothed and blended to the fuselage so that it doesn't look so artificially assembled. We have some real masters at that here, so maybe a few of them will chime in with tips on how to do that.

In the meantime, really solid first effort and I hope we'll be seeing more from you guys!

[f22raptor2006]

Incredible first effort Henry!!! A couple of points to pick out here tho. First, your panel lines are just flat drawn lines. You need to give them depth with shading and highlights. Secondly, your overall finish is far too smooth. You need to add a bit of random noise to make it more believeable. Lastly (and this one's a biggie), the aircraft is several layers pasted together and it's painfully obvious. The intake, wing root and horizontal tailplane need to be smoothed and blended to the fuselage so that it doesn't look so artificially assembled. We have some real masters at that here, so maybe a few of them will chime in with tips on how to do that.

In the meantime, really solid first effort and I hope we'll be seeing more from you guys!

Thanks for the comments

With the panel lines I've done them the usual IL2 Skinning way so one black layer, one white layer underneath offset by 1 px to the right and 1 px down. Then also a dark brown layer blurred by around 2-3 px with gaussian blur.... Maybe cos this profile is 5 times larger in width than a normal il2 skin it is not as obvious that there is white highlights. Any ideas on how I should go about this with profiles of this size? (5000px wide or 132cm)

ok finally regarding the layers looking pasted on top of each other at the moment it's just 1 background colour layer for the whole plane shape and the rest is lighting on top of it, the lighting i realise needs quite a bit of work so that's probably making the joints look slightly screwed up etc... Also should the intake really need to be blended into the fuselage? There's probably around a foot at least in real life on top of that intake before you get to the main fuselage... or did you mean it in a different way?

Thanks for your help.

[Aircraftprofiles]

One way to do a easy panel line effect is to add the lines in a seperate layer in PS. Then choose "Layer style" in the Lyer menu. Choose "Bevel and Emboss" and make it "Outer Bevel" and the Technique "hard". Size: 1 and opasity of the shade (the black area 0% and the highlight 100 %). Make sure to choose "Down" in the Direction and set the global light to the angle of your other highlights.

The hard way, involves adding a great number of lines with the Airbrush...I think that´s better suited for WW II era aircrafts...but it might work on a Eagle...;-)

Keep up the good work !

Here my Tomcat rendition...feel free to ask if there´s anyhting you want me to expalin

[Vacajun]

Nice start guys!! Welcome to the club.

In the spirit of helping, two comments for your consideration:

The rear end needs some work for accuracy of shape. The tail cone is too angled, tail radome is not angled enough and the formation lights need to be relocated. Hope the photo helps.

Second comment is to watch out for using manufacturers logos-at least here in the States. Not a good idea, regardless of our personal attitudes toward industry legal department watchdogs--let's not even get into that.

Keep up the good work!

[f22raptor2006]

Thanks for the advice, I will look into correcting those tomorrow. Paint scheme is now 95% finished i'd say, little bit to do on the wing and maybe a bit of opacity changing etc left to do when i've finished everything else but the rest is all there. Did a little bit of lighting today and i've moved what you called the formation lights at the tail to be more central and further forward.

[Aircraftprofiles]

The highlight on the first part of the intake is really good ! so is teh shade cast by wing/intake...good job !

However, I do have some further comments (you must be thinking: here we go again !):

1. The highlight on the nose don´t follow the shape proporly. Try and raise it, so it arces abit more (hope that made sence).

2. The shade on the nose should be equally dark from the intake to the tip of the nose...it looks like it´s fading near the tip of the nose. That makes the aircraft seem flat on the front, rather than round.

3. The highlight behind the canopy looks too strong in my eyes. The aircrafts fuselage is getting more and more narrow, and therefore it´s turning it sides abit more away from yoru light sources, than the fuselage i front of the canopy. Try and tone it down (and make it more diffuse). Same thing goes for the part of teh tail the slopes down behin dteh vertical stabilizer.

4. there´s a few sahdes that looks out of place. the shade on the intakes viertical leading edge, at the wing root and at the front of the bump on the intake (the thing where the wing is mounted)

hope you can use my comments !

[Supah]

There shouldn't be a shading gradient fill running up the side of the intake I believe, in my memory that area is as flat as a late nineteen nineties Gwen Stefani's chest.

[Vacajun]

Supah is (as usual) right on. Also, add some shading/highlighting to the wing-fuselage fairing thingie. Hope the photo helps.

Keep it up!

[Vacajun]

Sorry, I forgot a few more suggestions regarding shading- Take a long look at the shadow cast by the intake on the fuselage. The only way it can be curved in that direction is if the sun is behind the aircraft. The shadow is not in concert with the wing and tail shadows. Also, the pitot shadow is much too dark.

Here is one of my early profiles of a local Eagle in the old grey colors which I now gag on--notice how the shading on the upper inlet makes it look circular in shape?

I'm posting it to give you some shape comparisons.

Have fun!