Painting natural Silver skins

[soulfreak]

Hello,
I would like to do a natural metal skin for a new Palne we are working on (Strike Fighters 2 Serie). But how can i get a accurate metal base for a baremetal skin?

[KevinJarvis]

I'm not familiar with SF2 but if the texture files have alpha channels you can edit them to make the skin look shinier.
DXTBmp is what I use to edit the alpha.
Hopefully someone with experience in SF2 will chime in.
KJ

[Cazzie]

For natural metal aluminum I used the FS call out for Silver, which is HEX 888888 or RBG of 136, 136, 136.

This is a medium gray color than need an Alpha channel to give it the shine of natural metal. It is good to experiment with the Alpha Channel intensity. I like to keep it low, because a high intensity will give sharp angles in Flight Sims with the environment bitmap. Thus, I keep the gray in my Alpha Channels at RBG 175, 175, 175.

Note the fuselage of my repaint of Aeroplane Heaven's F3F-2 and compare it to the wings. Both use a base color of the silver above, the fuselage has an Alpha of 175, the wings an Alpha of 196, as the aluminum was doped paint on the wings.

Caz