Hi all,

Now that I've got my new pc up and running I've been getting back into playing RoF and so decided to have a go at skinning, the idea being that I'd like to skin aircraft of well known Kiwi airmen.
To that end here is a w.i.p of Ronald Bannerman's Sopwith Dolphin. Bannerman scored 15 of his 18 victories in this aircraft and was the most successful Kiwi fighter pilot of 1918. The first screen shot isn't very good, sorry, so you can't see that the upper port wing is a slightly different colour due to repainting, which is also the reason for the lack of stencils. The second pic shows some of my experiments with the alpha channel (not something I've dealt with when skinning before) where, amongst other things, I played around with making the engine cowling more shiny... which I overdid although it does look cool




Cheers,
HB

Looks nice ! The dolphin is so particular.
Great news you have a brand new pc.
++

Thanks! I must admit I ignored the Dolphin for a long time as I assumed it would be a bad flier because it looks so odd! But when I read that it actually had good performance I gave it a try and now it is a favorite of mine

I've done some more work on it, namely making the cowling less shiny, the tyres darker and re-doing the serial number as I hadn't got the typeface quite right. I'm just about finished so I've contacted admin to get a Dolphin folder created in the RoF downloads section.

A new w.i.p for the Brisfit as I'll be doing two skins of aircraft flown by Keith Park. One will be for the version with the F.III engine and the other (pictured) will to be used on the F.II version, as although the real aircraft had a 4 bladed prop (like the F.III in-game) it also had the shorter exhaust pipes like the F.II and, more importantly, was fitted with a Sunbeam Arab engine which was less powerful than either of the Falcon engines we have in the game.
Don't mind the roundels, I was testing some colours which is why they look odd so I'll be working on those as well has the weathering which is too extreme by default on the template for my tastes.



HB

Nice to see you back in the saddle again

Cheers

Had a chance to work on this today and spent a lot of time fiddling with the alpha channel and the shading/effects layers as the default settings on the template produce some quite heavy bands/transitions between shades.
Looking at the work of other skinners it seems that it's a problem that everyone experiences and so it's a case of mitigating the effects... the real problem areas being the lower wing and the tailplane. I feel like I'm doing a decent job of it within the game's limitations, so here are two w.i.p pics, the second shows what I mean in the area of the lower wing that's in the shade.





I have some details to work on but hope to have this finished soon and so start on another of Park's Brisfits.

HB

A new w.i.p, this an FE.2b flown by 'Reggie' Kingsford with 100 Squadron, which was a specialist night bombing unit hence the black paint scheme. There aren't any known photos of this aircraft so this skin is a combination of details he noted in his log book and diary ("PEPPS" being his wife's nick-name) together with what is known from photos of other aircraft of this unit.

That's very cool mate.
So what did they bomb at night ????

Stuff that was big enough or well lit enough for them to see Airfields, rail junctions, factories and the like.