This article will outline my own
methods for making canvas control surfaces. This technique will work for most
any flight sims. I am using Photoshop Elements 2 for this article, and all the
reference images are shown at 2X actual size for extra detail. This particular
example elevator is not from any game, it's custom made for this guide.
We'll start with the elevator untextured. From here I use the rectangle marquee
tool to select the area of the elevator to shade:
Now with the selection made in the shape of the depressed area to be shaded, I
use the brush tool with a soft feather, and a size about the same as the narrow
end fo the selection. I use black color, and gently shade towards the interior
of the control. Be sure to let the shading feather to a very light level or
even completely fade out towards the tailing edge:
Now, the above image shows the shaded area, but it's too mechanical and squared
off to look really nice. So I use the eraser tool, and carefully feather away
the edges of the selection to soften them, and I also use the eraser to round
the corners off a bit, shown below:
That looks much better I think. Now we need to repeat this along the lenght of
the control surface. Rather than manually repeating this process, you can use
the copy/paste commands to make copys automatically. Here's a step by step on
how this is done:
1. Select the area to be copied
2. Press the "V" key to switch to the move tool.
3. Press and hold the "ALT" (creates a copy) and "Shift"
(nudges by 10 pixels) keys on the keyboard, and press the arrow key on the
keyboard once. This will create a copy and nudge it 10 pixels away from the
original (in the direction of the arrow key you pressed), all in one easy step!
4. Now you can relase the "ALT" key (as we don't need another copy at
the moment) and use the arrow keys to align the new copy in exactly it's
correct place. Remember that holding "Shift" while using the arrow
keys will move the selection by 10 pixels, while the arrow key alone will move
by one pixel.
5. When you're ready for the next copy, just ALT+Shift and arrow key again and
the selection will be copied again for placement as above. Very easy to do,
easier than writing it.
Here's my results by nudging the copy up and down:
Ok, we're getting there. If you would like to add a bit more depth to the
effect, then try highlighting slightly with a small feathered brush in white
paint on the areas between the dark shading. This can be useful as well along
the leading edge of the control surfaces to simulate a rounded look. I've done
both below:
And now shown at actual size, 100% zoom:
Hope this helps out!
Surface Effects Techniques
When making skins, I enjoy the
surfaces to have some effects which simulate a texture, rather than just be
plain color. I've tried many ways to do this over the years, and I'll share
some of the easy and effective ways I've found in this article. I'm using
Photoshop Elements 2, but this will be similar on any other program.
Firstly lets look at the sample area in a solid color, green in this case.
You can see all the panel lines, and the rivets, plus shaders for the control
surface, but there is something missing. The most simple technique is to add a
highlight along the area, in white on a new transparent layer. This often adds
a 3d effect. I've also added a slight darkening to the leading edge to further
enhance the effect.
Alread it has a better look. Now lets add some more advanced layers. I like to
start with a large noise pattern to give a basic mottled effect. Below is what
this layer will look like by itself. This is created on a new layer, which is
RGB of 128,128,128. Then I use the "add noise" filter, and then the
"gausion blur" filter to get a very smooth large pattern.
When applied to the skin I use "Overlay" blending mode, and adjust
the transparency to make a more subtle effect, this is the result:
Now, lets repeat this process, but use a smaller size noise pattern. This is
good for planes that will be more heavily weathered. Below is the layer by
itself, again just RGB 128 with "add noise" but this time with very
little, or even no gaussion blur filter.
And applied the same way, "overlay" mode, with adjusted layer
transparency:
Ok, that's looking great. No longer is there just open color area, but rather
everything looks to have a form of texturing.
For a final effect, we can use the special pattern brushes that many paint
programs come with. For this example, I'll use a couple of patterns based on
flowers. Flowers? Ah yes, at first they may seem inappropriate, but they really
work very well! Here is a sample of the brushes using black paint on a white
backdrop:
Clearly you can see the flowers and leaves used as the pattern in this sample.
Now lets use a new transparent layer, and a light gray color on the brush. With
a wide feather and low opacity, we can get this effect over our base green
color (other layers hidden to reveal the effect better):
Now that is much more subtle, and you can no longer tell what the source is as
clearly. Now when I adjust the opacity and reveal the other layers you can see
the result:
Excellent! Notice how the random pattern creates a texture pattern when
combined with the other two layers we've also built? This can be a very useful
trick when working on parts that are weathered metal, or where paint is uneven.
Also consider that you can add custom brush patterns, which can be finer in
size and detail, and be used in just the same way to create areas of chipped
paint. I used a small default pattern, shaped like a smear of dirt to create
the effect shown below very quickly. I started with a base spray of black (with
plenty of brush "scatter" for a nice random effect) followed by
alternating white and a metallic sky blue color for a metal color. I then
touched up the layer with some light erasing using a similar pattern brush to
blend the effect more smoothly. The effect is pretty nice to have been created
in only seconds. Down the lenght of the sample on the right, you'll see the
brush pattern I used, shown in black paint.
Using the
Panelfinder Tool
Many people have downloaded and
used my Panelfinder over the last couple years, and ocassionally there is some
question as to how best use this tool. Hopefully this article will provide some
guidance.
Firstly, the most basic part of using the panel find is loading it up as a skin
in IL2/FB. The download is provided in the proper format to load in to IL2/FB
immediately. Just put the panel finder into the folder of the plane you need
help on, and select that skin and run a quick mission. Take a look at the
trouble area, and see if you can find the colors and hopefully numbers showing
on the part. Also look to see if there are any dotted lines or divider
lines/boxes visible to help locate the area. Take note of any details,
preferably take a few screenshots of the part while the panel finder is on the
plane for future reference without reloading the game.
Now, come back into your paint program and load up the screenshots you took.
These will be your reference when comparing to the panel finder.
The easiest way to compare the panel finder to the skin you are painting is to
add the panel finder directly into your skin PSD as a new layer. Now by simpy
toggling the panel finder layer on and off, you can direcltly spot the area
where the hidden part is close to. Here's an animation showing the panel finder
layer hiding and showing, with the example red box illustrating the area I
might be looking for on each.
Now, most certainly there are some parts which will just be too small or oddly
mapped to be findable with the panel finder. For these parts, you'll have to
use trial and error, but at least you'll be close to the right place.
Rivet and panel
line special effects
For this article I'll share some
techniques I've used to make my panel lines and rivets blend more smoothly into
my skin work. In my early skins, you can see that my panel lines are very
obvious, and I later wanted to tone this down, but just less opacity didn't
look very good in some cases.
Firstly, we'll show a basic panel and rivet set, drawn in pure black and white,
using the techniques shown in other tutorials on this site.
Using a simple gray base color, with surface shaders created using techniques
in my surface effects tutorial on this site. Panel lines and rivets in black are way to obvious as you
can see.
The most basic solution is to just lower the rivet and line transparency, but
this sometimes just looks washed out as shown below. I'll outline some better
options.
My favorite method involves making copies of the rivet and panel layers, and
manipulating them. Lets take the panel lines. Copy the layer, and invert the
color on the copy layer, then move it below the original panel line layer. Now
you should have black lines, over white lines. Now by using the "gaussion
blur" filter on the white lines layer to blur it and make the edges soft,
you should get this effect when the black line layer is hidden:
When you add back in the black line layer and adjust their transparencies to
look good, you get this effect. Notice the small white high light rim around
each panel line? I personally think this has more depth than just fading the
black lines.
Now repeat this process on the rivets layer, and adjust their transparencies to
get a nice shine around each rivet as shown below, first the white rivets only:
And now with the black rivets layer added in, a nice subtle effect, but also
not looking simply faded:
Now lets add in a camo paint layer behind these layers. We'll have to re-adjust
the transparencies when we change the colors, but this is quite easy and makes
for a better match to the camo colors The result is quite subtle, and you can
still see the white high lighting around the lines and rivets very faintly
blending into the overall scheme.
As a final effect, you can make some of the rivets on the surface have a
brighter shine effect, as though they are worn. Just make a copy of the black
rivets layer, and invert the color to white (pressing
"CTRL"+"i" does this). Now use an eraser with a
feathered brush, and randomly erase most of the white rivets, being careful to
leave small patches here and there of light ones. Adjust the layer transparency
to best fit them into your skin. Here's my results:
Very nice I think, and better looking than when I just fade the lines and
rivets. Hope this is helpful!
Canvas ribbing effect
For this tutorial I assume
you are familiar with the tools used. Tutorials on using layers and selection
tools can be found elsewhere on this site.
To create a light effect on
the ribs that you can find on any aircraft with a canvas skin, we start with
the basic lines of the ribs.
First we create a new layer.
On this layer you draw lines that are two or three times as thick as the
original rib lines.
Next you open the Gaissian
Blur effect. Select a blur amount that reaches about 25% of the distance to the
next line
Since I think the fading
effect is a bit too thin (not dark enough), I duplicate the layer on which I
applied the gaussian blur.
Next I merge the duplicate
layer with the original layer (In Photoshop CTRL-E from the duplicate layer).
After merging the
layers I have first the basic riblines and on top of that the gradient.
As you see below that leaves
me a much darker gradient. It's better to have a gradient that is too dark then
to bright. That way you have a usable layer for both very dark and very bright
background colours. With the opacity of the layers you can select how much
effect you want for every situation.
Now I blur the layer a
little more until I think the effect is OK. About halfway the lines you should
still have the original colour though.
Now my blurred
lines/gradient are good I think I duplicate the gradient layer again.
Now I invert the copy of the
blurred layer. The option Invert makes the colour you have negative. Since I
have black as basic colour, the new layer will become white.
Over the greem background I
have now three layers .
From bottom to top: the
basic riblines, the black gradient and on top the white gradient.
That now leaves a strange
gradient. That is OK, we now move on to the next step.
Let's say I make a rudder
that needs a shade below the rib and a highlight above it.
With the dark gradient layer
selected, I make selections with the marquee selection tool from the rib to
halfway the rib above it.
I make all selections at
once by holding the CTRL key while starting a new selection.
When I have made my
selections of all parts. I press DELETE.
Now all dark gradients above
the ribs are deleted. You can see that only a white gradient is left above the
rib.
With the light gradient
layer selected we repeat the action desribed above, but now from the rib to
halfway the rib below it.
After pressing DELETE again
you can clearly see that we have a highlight above the rib and a shade below
it.
It looks very overdone. So,
now you can play around with the opacity of the three layers to get the right
effect.
I suggest you keep all three
layers seperate. That way you can reuse them on many different colours.
For example: on bright
yellow you might need 100% opacity on the white gradient and only 5% on the
black gradient to get the right effect.
On a dark blue or navy blue
colour the values will be the other way around. There is never one setting that
gives the best result in every situation.
Below a toned down shade
effect. Here I have removed the original rib line completely
The same shade effect, but
now with the original ribline slightly visible.
But, like me, you might have
the opinion that the ribline should be highlighted a bit, since it sticks out
and catches more light.
To simulate this, I have
inverted the ribline to white
I hope this tutorial gives
you some ideas to create ribbing and other light effects.