First attempt

[yofloema]

Hi gents,

I spend some weeks to read a lot of thread and admire your fantastic job.

So i decide to try making profile and hope you can help me in this long road.

Here is a first attemp only on prop, your comment will be fine.

Thanks

[Vigilante]

I like it so far. If it were mine, I would work on adjusting the shadows and highlights so that they appear to come from the same source and, although it's hard to tell at this stage of the profile, I would probably mute and/or blend the highlights and shadows - less burny and screeny, and more of a gradual change in tone like you get using gaussian blur.

[GrubbyFingers]

Hi yofloema, welcome aboard!

The dark outline is the first thing I'd lose. They tend to have a cartooney feel about them. Edges can be defined with a bit of shading or a highlight.

It looks like you are off to a good start. You seem to grasp the basics of shading and light. You might like to broaden the highlight on the upper prop blade so it gives more of broad curved surface feel. It looks too much like a leading edge at the moment.

You've picked a subject close to the hearts of many profilers here. No doubt you'll get bounced by the Luftwaffe Brigade shortly!

Keep it up.

Grubby.

[yofloema]

Thanks Vigilante and Grubby and thanks for your nice tut it help me a lot.

I try to work well the different techniques before begin a entire profile.

Just one question, how can i make to keep structure visible and hide lineout.

I hope you undertand english is not my mother language.

Thanks for your help

[Vigilante]

It depends on what graphics program you are using to draw with. I can help with Paint Shop Pro, and lots of people can help with Photoshop. Adlabs is the GIMP expert.

[yofloema]

I use photoshop CS3 for drawing and illustrator for lineout

[yofloema]

no help for the outline ? arf i'm block with this, don't understand how keeping texture and hide outline.

do i use a new layer ?

[Vigilante]

Yes, if you can put the outline on a seperate layer that's the way to go. Sorry I can't be more specific - I don't have the programs that you use. But the idea is to use many, many layers for each element and save them all in your graphic program's native format. Outlines are one element, shadows and highlights are others, color areas - and use as many subdivisions as you need to keep everything flexible but still organized.

I know that you're doing profiles, not skinning, but if you download a skinning template for IL2-1946 from the downloads section you will see how layers are used this way.

[yofloema]

Thanks vigilante i will look at that

[Jarink]

Here's what I do (now). I start with a line drawing and then use it as a basis for the alpha channel (or mask, depending on what your program calls it - I use GIMP) on each layer. Here's an example on a drop tank image:



The black and white thumbs to the right on 4 of the 6 layers is an alpha channel. (in this case, the alpha channel sets transparency). The thumbs on the left side illustrate the actual artwork. For this drop tank, I first drew the outline of the tank on white background, filled it in and reversed the colors (because black is transparent). I then copied that layer to each of the other layers so that all of the alpha channels would be exactly the same. If you look at the "texture" and "grunge" layers, you'll notice that they cover nearly the whole image. However, the use of an alpha channel makes certain parts (black) of the layer transparent!

Some layers, like the plumbing layer, did not get this alpha channel treatment since they are "one-off" layers.

To me, there are two main benefits of this technique:
1) All similar layers will have exactly the same transparency (or boundaries)
2) I don't have to paint within the lines!