Dirt from gun and engines

[DefaultSlayer]

i don´t find such a tutorial on the site if there is any, link please.

Im working on a Su-27 skin for LockOn and i want it to have dirt like from many times of shooting and many times of maintainance around the gun. As it is now the entire skin is completely clean and i do not want to make it look like a cold war veteran that´s been standing out in the rain for 30 years but I want it to look like it has been used for some time atleast.

and is there some way you can make the skins less shiny, now when i fly with it it shines like a lighthose and can bee seen from many miles away, i want it less glossy looking. Will it change if I make it more rough skined or has it nothing to do with that?

I have read Ericjs skinning tutorials but im not good enough wioth photoshop to just make this and that, how to make good looking dirt?

[Serval]

Here are some tutorials about weathering:
http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/foru...ply-smoke.html
http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/foru...eathering.html

Study photo's of dirty aircraft and then apply the effect described above.
To make a skin less shiny it generally helps to add some noise to the color. And the dirt will also help.

[DefaultSlayer]

ok, thanks alot. now when i think about dirt and old plane engines it reminds me of my trip to Paris this summer, I went there for Le Bourget of course.

the showed an old Lockheed Constellation, i had never heard of it before and at the time i didnt apreciate it as much as the new state of the art fighters.

anyways, when they started it in front of the audience there was a huge cloud of thick black smoke and then flames of fire coming out of the engines. So you can understand if an old WWII (dont know for sure but i think the Constellation flew some time around WWII) time plane gets some exhaust stains over time

really old stuff i guess. or maybe it was standard procedure in the old days with fire in the engines?

[Serval]

in ww2 aircraft were not cleaned very well, so stains were seen quite often.
Sometime black and sometimes white, depending on how well the engine was tuned and how bright the background is.

[DefaultSlayer]

ok, but i cant find any pictures of dirty guns. I see pictures with alot of dirt and "weather" on the underside of fighters.
But i havent seen many pictures of fired guns, as far as i know you dont use the cannon often in peacetime.

[Serval]

Well they are used in exercises.
But imagine: you know the source. from there the burnt powder flows along the aircraft.

Then you would something like you see on this picture.



But I'd do it very subtile since I hardly see this on modern aircraft. Besides is the gun not the main weapon.

[Serval]

I found a picture of a Crusader in Vietnam.



But this one is really dirty. Most other Cusader pics show little to no dirt.
But it gives a good idea on how gunpowder makes a fuselage dirty.

[DefaultSlayer]

hehe, that F-8( the crusader is the F-8 right?) looks like it has been trying to kamikaze down on a battlefield a rainy day or something.

thanks for the pictures. so, there is not gunpowder marks that goes forward?

in lockon there is alot of smoke from the SU-27 when you shoot so i can imadgine it gets dirty behind the barrel, but i think i have seen a picture with dirt running along the path of the bullets on the plane on the JAS 39 gripen.

i tried before to make some gundirt on my skin but it seemed to not work since i had no dirt whatsoever on the rest of the body.

[Serval]

On the F-8 you see gunpowder around the mozzle, so also some going forward.
But imagine: A yet flies pretty fast. Powder is light, so takenup by the airflow pretty soon.

Try to tone it down by setting the opacity of the layer with dirt until it blends in nicely.

And if you apply dirt like described in the tutorial above in a very light fashion then you can create just the right effect of an aircraft looking a bit dirty where the gundirt also fits in nicely.

[DefaultSlayer]

that is a big problem, either it is to transparent so it looks like just a coffestain on it or something or it becomes to vivsible and looks like it is a "microsoft paint" just spalshed on there in 5 seconds.

but i guess there is a perfect opacity for it if I just try.