chompy+layer+tut+2



Part 2 – Making a template.
 * How to use Layers while skinning.
 * By John “Chompy” Masters.

Firstly I’ll assume that you : 1. Have already read part 1, and because of it - 2. Are familiar with the basic operation and use of layers. 3. Have a basic knowledge of how to use PSP7. 4. Know how to use Picpac.

I’ll describe how to do everything in detail at the start, but assume that you’re learning things, and will steadily streamline my descriptions as we go to avoid repetition - hopefully including the important stuff! In this tutorial I will show how I went about creating the wing template used in part 1, but you can start with any PCX file that takes your fancy and create a layered template using it - the same techniques apply, just change the names as applicable. You may want to use more or less layers - the choice is yours. The size, shape, hardness, opacity and density settings I’ve listed are suggestions only, so don’t hesitate to alter them. Feel free to do what you want, using this as a guide, because it will be your template after all!

Start here! You will need Paint Shop Pro 7 ™ or a similar graphics program capable of handling layers, The PCX files that you intend to make a template for, Some reference pictures for panel lines etc. The Picpac utility European Air War for testing.

I’m going to start with the blank PCX file for the HR P-47 D wing, pp47dLEX.pcx, which is contained in this zip, and should be in the same folder as this tutorial. Open it with PSP7. Before making any big changes it pays to do some housekeeping. The first thing we need to do is to save this new file in the Paint Shop Pro format. Click File>Save As and enter pp47dLEXtemplate.psp. Now save the palette - Click Colours>Save Palette, and save it as P47D.pal. Next convert the image to 24 bit colour. Do this by clicking Colours>Increase Colour Depth>16 million colours (24 bit). Now we have the image in the format we need. Feel free to save the changes whenever you want to.

Layer 1 – A metal wing. The layer we are currently looking at is the background layer. If you look in the Layer Palette Toolbar, you will see all the layers that you currently have available. By default the background is switched on. Let’s make a new layer for a bare metal skin to start things off. Click Layers>New Raster Layer, and enter a name for the layer “Metal wing” and click OK. Note that every time we create a new layer, it appears directly on top of the layer we are currently viewing (More detail on how to arrange the stack of layers is comes later in the INTERLUDE section.). Now use the Freehand Selection tool, go to the Tool Options palette and set it at Freehand, Feather 0, Antialias unchecked. Now select the outline around the top wing. If your first attempt was a bit off, use SHIFT while selecting to add to the current selection, and CTRL while selecting to subtract from it. Now that you have the area we wish to work with selected we can paint it without affecting the rest of the layer, which we want to leave transparent. All transparent areas will be displayed with pale black and white checks if there is no information painted on or below them.

Let’s select a colour for the base wing. I like to get this from the EAW palette that we will be using, so that I know which colours are available on either side (brighter/darker). If the colour you select is too dark, you will effectively have nowhere to go when you use adjustment layers to darken the image, and similarly if the colour is too light you will run out of lighter colours. Open up the Pp47dLEX.PCX file again, and use the dropperto select a colour from the palette in the midrange of the greys – say RGB 138, 140, 145. Now go to your template, and make sure that the Metal wing layer is the active layer – you do this on the Layer Palette toolbox by clicking the name. Take the Flood fill toolset it to Blend mode – Normal, Match mode – RGB, Tolerance 100, Opacity 100, and fill the wing area with the grey colour. Ok, that’s your metal wing done! If you need to, later you can come back and fill it with another colour.

Layer 2 – A Green wing. Lets’s make a base green wing while we’re on the job eh? Follow the same steps as above – Create a new Raster layer, called Green wing, the selection we have is already perfect, so don’t change that, take a green colour from the Pp47dLEX.PCX file – about RGB 72, 82, 39, and use the flood fill to paint it.

Layer 3 – A partially Camouflaged wing. To do this we will use the Metal wing we have already created, and have it showing from underneath. Create a new Raster layer called Camo wing. Because we have the green wing showing over the top of the metal wing, we must switch it off. Go to the Layer Palette and click the glasses iconnext to the Green wing layer. The icon will put a red cross through itself indicating that the layer is turned off. It would be helpful if we could see some of the wing lines through the metal wing while we are painting the camouflage, so move the Metal wing’s sliderback to about 80% or so until you can see the lines clearly enough. Take the colour from the pp47dLEX.pcx file, using RGB 72, 82, 39 again, ensure Camo wing is the active layer, take the Airbrushand set it to Shape – round, Size 25, Hardness 50, Opacity 25, Step 20, Density 100, and paint the areas you want. Right, that’s probably enough base wings for the moment, we can make plenty more later on if we want, so let’s start adding some detail in other layers!

Layer 4 – White invasion stripes. We will do the invasion stripes in four layers, to allow complete adjustability (is that a word?!) Allow me to explain… If we did them all in one raster layer, we could fairly easily change the blacks and whites to different shades, but it’s a lot easier to do them separately, and then we can simply adjust the colour and brightness of the black and whites individually by using Adjustment layers for each, otherwise if we adjusted the brightness of the black it would also affect the brightness of the white.

First, take a look at some pics to decide where you want the stripes to start and end. Take a note of the co-ordinates of the corresponding pixel locations on your template (Shift your mouse over the required spot and read the co-ordinates which are displayed on the bottom left corner of PSP7’s main window), find the difference between the X co-ordinates and divide by five. For my example 131 was the left side, 236 was the right side, so the difference was 105 pixels, and each stripe would be 21 pixels wide. This means that the x value of the edges of the stripes would be 131, 152, 173, 194, 215 and 236.

Right, on with the show. Create a new Raster Layer, call it Invasion White. Take the Selection tool and set it to Selection type – Rectangle, Feather – 0, Antialias unchecked. Now select the area you have calculated for the first white invasion stripe. Once you have that done, hold down SHIFT and select the second area, and likewise the third. If your selection has overlapped a bit you can remove those areas by holding CTRL while selecting, using either the Square selection of the Freehand selection tools. Now you should have three separate areas selected. Take the colour from the pp47dLEX.pcx file, about 192, 193, 194, and use the Flood fill tool to paint those selections. Here we are using a medium white, and we will tone it up or down later with an adjustment layer. You should have something like this



Layer 5 – Adjustment for white invasion stripes. While we have the white stripes selected, we’ll make an adjustment layer to control the brightness of the stripes. It makes getting the right look a lot easier, and later on if the wing highlights become too bright for the EAW palette, we can tone the stripes down a bit.

With the White striped area selected, click Layers>New Adjustment Layer>Brightness/Contrast, then set the brightness level to –30 and click OK. You will notice that the selected area turns darker. Use the Layer palette to highlight the new Brightness/contrast layer, right click, select Rename, and call it Invasion Wht Brightness/contrast. If you think you need a brighter white, adjust the Master brightness level to a positive number How Adjustment layers work. Raster layers contain information on the contents of every pixel. Adjustment layers make an adjustment to those pixels, so if you don’t have any active pixels underneath the Adjustment layers, there will be nothing to adjust, and you will see no change. Also, if you only have an adjustment layer active, you will see nothing. When looking at your image, you don’t see the adjustment layer itself, you only see the effect it has on the underlying layers.

Shift the cursor to the Layer Palette, and hold it steady over the new Invasion Wht Brighness/contrast layer for a second or two. A small thumbnail overview will appear, showing the contents of the layer (you can do this for all layers). Notice that all of the area is jet black except for the areas you previously selected, and they are pure white. Take a look at the palette toolbox now – the usual 24 bit colour palette has been replaced by a 256 colour greyscale palette.

The adjustment layers work like this : The darkest areas show no change in adjustment, while the white areas show the most change. By using all the shades in between we can have many different shades of adjustment in the layer, while using the one Master level. The Master level (amongst other things) can be changed by double clicking that Adjustment layer in the Layer Palette toolbox. Note that the Master level controls the brightness, which is different to the sliders in the Layers palette which control Opacity (or how much the layer shows over the top of the underlying layers.). There are 9 different types of Adjustment layers, but we will only be working with Brightness/contrast with Blend Mode set to Normal.

OK, got that? Beauty! Have a play around with the Master brightness/contrast controls, and the sliders to see what changes you can make, then it’s time to do the Black invasion stripes.

Layer 6 – Black invasion stripes. This should be pretty easy – it’s exactly the same as the white ones. To go through it quickly – Create a new Raster layer called Invasion Black, Select the area (avoiding overlaps), take a medium black this time, RGB 76, 78, 80 from the PCX palette, and use the Flood fill tool on the selected areas. Done!

Layer 7 - Adjustment for Black invasion stripes. Once again, it’s the same as the procedure for the white ones. Keep the same selection, create a new Adjustment layer, make the brightness adjustment +40. Rename it to Invasion BLK brighness/contrast, and play around with the brightness/opacity settings if you want.

Interlude. Let’s take a quick break and look at the layers we have so far. We want to arrange them so that the basic Raster paint layers are on the bottom of the stack, the invasion stripes Raster layers are above them, and the Adjustment layers for the invasion stripes are right on top. Open the Layer Palette toolbox and check the order the files are in from top to bottom. If they are not right you can change them around by using the Drag and Drop method. Getting the layers in the right order is very important because when we add panel lines and shading we want it to appear on top of the paint job and the invasion stripes. Well, that’s the bulk of the painting work done, now let’s start adding some real detail to the file.

How to select Just the wing. For the next few adjustment layers we only want to work within the wing, so we need to select it. Of course, you can use the Freehand selection tool, but there is a much faster method. I went through this in Part 1, but I’ll go through it again for you.

Using the Layer Palette toolbox, switch off all the layers (including the background) except for the Metal wing, and make the Metal wing layer active. Now use the Magic Wand tooland set it to Match Mode RGB value, Tolerance 0, Feather 0, Sample merged unchecked. Click outside the area of the wing shape and you will select that area. Now click Selections>Invert, and the wing alone will be selected (You could also click on the wing shape without the need to Invert, but you may need to alter the tolerance values depending on your paintjob.).

Some ideas on Panel lines. Panel lines add a lot of depth and detail to the skin, particularly with High-res skins, where you have a lot more detail to play with. IMHO the best look is a darker line on one side, with a lighter line on the other side. This adds a sense of depth and a more realistic shadow effect. Make sure that your lines all fit together the same way e.g. all darker lines on the right/bottom side of the seam, and all lighter lines on the left/top side of the seam. Some people like their panel lines 3 wide, others 1 wide – it’s all a matter of personal opinion. By using layers we can dial up the exact effect we are after. You can use extra panel line layers to create more subtle lines across the skin, which look particularly good on metal skins. Here’s a ripper example made by DeanH

On green skins there are a lot less colours to play with, so subtle lines don’t show up very well. This is why such effects are best done on another adjustment layer, where they can be switched on and off independently of the main panel lines layers. Layer 8 – Adjustment for Darker Panel lines. Create a new Adjustment layer for Brightness/contrast, set the brightness value to –75. Rename this layer to Dark Panel lines. Note that your entire wing has been darkened. If you have an area selected and make a new adjustment layer, the selected area is automatically painted RGB 255, 255, 255, (white) or maximum adjustment. Take the Flood fill tool, get a 0, 0, 0 black colour from the palette and fill the selected area to return it to its blanked out state.
 * Note that all screenshots are taken with the EAW palette**

Switch on the background layer, and on the Metal wing layer turn the slider down so that you can just see the outlines of the panel markings from the background – about 92% or so is good. If you’re not skinning the P-47, find some good reference wing pictures that show where the lines should be, and open that as a separate image. Now we want to draw some dark panel lines. You may want to have lines with differing degrees of darkness, so we’ll pick a few colours and write them down for later reference. Taking the colours from the Greyscale palette, let’s make our standard line RGB 149, 149, 149. Remember that the Darker colours show the least adjustment and the lighter colours show the most (which is kind of backwards I know, but that’s the way it is!), so a darker line (on the wing) would be 175, 175, 175 and a lighter line (on the wing) would be 123, 123, 123. Use the dropper tool to put the standard line colour in left mouse button, and the darker line colour in the right one.

Pick up the Lines tooland set it to Type – Single line, Width : 1, Line style : #1 solid, UNCHECK antialias, UNCHECK Create as vector, and UNCHECK Close path. Now using your background as a guide, first draw in all the horizontal and vertical lines in the colour you think will be right. If the lines aren’t showing up very well you can alter the master level of the Adjustment layer, and turn it back down when you’re finished.

Once you have done all the horizontal and vertical lines, check the Antialias box in the Tool options palette, and draw all the lines that are on an angle. This is 100% necessary for angles lines, but if you use AA on vertical lines IMHO they become too wide and undefined. By the time you add a brighter line to the other side, you end up with a panel line that is 4 pixels wide, which is IMHO too much. Of course, the choice is yours! Note that the AA option causes your lines to appear a little less defined than the straight ones of the same colour. You can compensate for this by using a colour with a slightly higher RGB value.

With the lines done, you may want to add some individual rivets. If you think you may want to switch the rivets off independently of the lines for some skins, make a separate layer for them. Rivets are easily done with the Paint Brushset to Shape – square, Size 1, Hardness 100, Opacity 100, Step 25, Density 100. If there are a lot of repetitive patterned rivets to do, I like to make a row of dots, then copy and paste them to the next location. Unfortunately a selection on an adjustment layer is an empty selection and cannot be pasted. You can get around this by creating a new raster layer, and drawing the rivets with the required colour on them. Select ONLY the rivets with the Freehand tool, then use the Arrow tool

and right click on the image to quickly access the copy command. Activate the Dark Panel lines layer, and use the arrow feature to paste the rivets straight into your adjustment layer. You can delete the new raster layer you created later, but for now leave it, because you may need it again for the lighter rivets.

Layer 9 – Adjustment for Lighter panel lines. Here you follow exactly the same routine as in the above layer, drawing the lines and rivets right beside the existing dark lines. The only difference is that when creating the new Adjustment layer, you set the Brightness value to +35, and of course rename it to Panel lines Lighter. After all that is done you should end up with something like this:

At last it’s starting to look like a real wing! BTW have you been saving??

Layer 10 – Adjustment for Darker wing shading. You should still have only the wing area selected, if not, do so using the procedure outlined earlier. Create another Adjustment layer, Brightness set at –75, and rename to Shading Darker. Once again, the selected area will be automatically painted with the max. adjustment value of 255, 255, 255, so use the floodfill tool to paint it 0, 0, 0 black. The trick here is to get a nice even transition to a darker colour at the edges of the wing. We will use the Airbrush set at Shape – round, Size 25, Hardness 50, Opacity 1, Step 20, Density 100 to do this. Take a 200, 200, 200 white from the palette, and use several strokes around the edge of the wing to start the effect. Don’t go too far towards the centre of the wing, because you will want to lighten that area with the next layer. Use multiple, even strokes, trying to keep a nice, smooth transition. As you get closer to the edge, make the brush a bit smaller, so that you can blend everything smoothly right to the edge of the wing. If you stuff it up, just use the Brush tool with a size setting of 50 to paint it all black so that you can start again. That’s the beauty of layers. You can start this layer all over without ruining hours of work!

Here’s a tip - I like to pull the slider back to 75% or so, and then paint until I get the look I like. Then if you want more shading later, you can just turn up the slider, without adjusting the master brightness level. Here’s another progress shot.



An alternative to the above method, would be to use Raster layers, and paint on the shading/lighting FX with an airbrush, using pure black for lowlights, and pure white for highlights. It does a similar job, plus you can actually see the paint you have applied on the layer, rather than just the effect of the paint. The drawback is that while you can adjust the opacity, you cannot alter the master Brightness as you can with Adjustment layers. Because of this, I prefer to use Adjustment layers.

Layer 10 – Adjustment for Lighter wing shading. Once again, this is a similar technique to layer 9. Create a new Adjustment layer, Brightness set at +75 and rename to Shading Lighter. Fill the wing with 0, 0, 0, black, and then set the Airbrush to the same settings you started with above (size 25), and use the same colour (200, 200, 200). What we want to do here is create a highlight along the top of the wing, from the root to the tip. Use several steady strokes to get a base, and then progressively get a smaller airbrush as you move towards the centre of the highlight. Now it looks even better

Layer 11 – Minor Panel lines. Now that we have a pretty good basic wing, lets try adding some minor panel lines. You can do this in exactly the same way as the main darker panel lines, just use a darker RGB colour, and have AA on to make the lines as subtle as possible. Here’s the wing with the extras – nothing that will put DeanH out of a job, but a nice wing regardless!

Adding further Raster layers – The star and bar. Ok, so our wing looks not too bad (perhaps a shade dark, but we can change all of that in a couple seconds with one stroke of the flood fill tool on the metal wing layer.), but we are missing the wing insignia. This file can be used for either the left or right wings of the HR P-47D, so if we add the insignia on a separate layer instead of painting it directly on the wing, we can switch it off for a right wing, or even an RAF version! First we need to find a good insignia to use. You could create one using Vector layers and the Vector tools, but for now I’d suggest that you pinch one from any of Salty’s HR P-51 wing PCX’s. Use the selection tools to select it (duhh – what else, you dopey instructor!), remove any panel lines and marks that it contains, create a new Raster layer called Star and Bar, and copy and paste it straight in. Arrange it as it should be, then click Selections>Defloat to drop it from a floating selection onto your new layer. If there are any stray pixels that don’t belong, select them and cut them out of the layer. Layer ??? – Adjustment for the star and bar. Because the star and bar may really stick out depending on our wing paintscheme, we need to be able to adjust it’s brightness. Use the magic want technique described earlier to select just the star and bar, i.e. switch off all layers except the star and bar, and make sure the star and bar layer is active. Then use the wand to select the outside of the image, and hit Selections>Invert

Now create a new Adjustment layer, with Brightness set at –50, and rename it to Star and Bar Brightness. Use the slider and/or the master brightness control to get the effect you desire.

You may have to take another look at the stacking order of the layers to get things to show up in the correct sequence. The Star and bar layer should go on top of the main paint layers, but should be beneath the panel lines and shading layers, and the Star and bar Adjustment layer should be on top of the star and bar layer. Drag and drop the Layer names from within the Layer Palette toolbox to do this. Surface imperfection FX Adjustment layers. We’ll now add some light and dark adjustment layers for various FX. Firstly a Light Adjustment layer for scuffed marks and chips on the paintjob, and then a Dark Adjustment layer for powderstains, oil and fuel spills etc

Create a new Adjustment layer, brightness +50, rename to Scuffs and chips lighter. Use the airbrush set at Size 10, Hardness 50, Opacity 5, Step 20, Density 100, and use a colour of about RGB 201, 201, 201 to make some scuff marks around the wing root where the pilot would climb aboard. Use a brush size of 3-4 to make some marks around the corners of the ammunition bay panels, and in various other wear spots. To make paint chips use, a size 2-3 Airbrush on similar settings, but with colour RGB 255, 255, 255 or thereabouts. Once again, these settings and colours are approximate values, so experiment with what works best for you.

Create a new Adjustment layer, Brightness –50, rename to Stains. Use the airbrush with a similar setting to above, and similar colours. Paint the powder and oil stains where you want them. Remember that colours with higher RGB values will show the most adjustment.

An alternative to using an adjustment layer for stains would be to use a Raster layer, and spray on the colour you wanted with an airbrush. That way you can have different coloured stains, rather than just darker ones, and you could still use the slider to alter the level of the effect.

Vector Layers So far we have used two types of layers – Raster and Adjustment. The third type of layer the PSP7 supports are Vector Layers, and in the next section we will be using them to make an RAF roundel, but first I’ll outline some basics about Vector Layers.

You may remember that Raster layers contain information of what is contained in every pixel on a basis of RGB colour (we use the painting tools on these), and Adjustment layers contain information of the changes each pixel should make to the underlying pixels. Vector layers contain information about the location, shape, size and colour that each vector should be painted. We can only use Vector based tools on Vector layers – these tools are the TextDrawPreset Shapes, and Object SelectorIf the active layer is a Vector layer, all the other drawing tools are greyed out. “Hang on, “ I hear you asking, “When we drew the panel lines on the wings, we used the Draw tool on a Raster layer – how could this be done without using Vector layers then?” Well, I’m glad you asked! Select the Draw tool, and open the Tool options box. See the option there to “Create as Vector”? – we had that unchecked. PSP7 gives us the choice of using these Vector tools to create the objects as a Vector or a Raster image.

This next screenie shows the Layers Palette toolbox as you will see it in the next step.

A few things to note from this screenie - 1. The different icon next to the Roundel layer – this indicates a Vector Layer. 2. The white box to the left of the Vector icon is an expansion tab. When we click this, all the vectors that are contained in the vector layer are displayed – click it again to minimise. 3. I have called the four vectors red, white, blue and yellow. The icons next to them indicate that those vectors are made with the Draw or Preset shapes tools. The icon appears if it is a Text vector. 4. Individual vectors can be turned on and off, providing the master Vector layer is turned on, however there are no sliders for individual vector levels. 5. The RED vector is typed in bold, which indicates that it is the selected vector on this layer – note the difference between a vector that is displayed with the glasses icon, and a vector that has been Selected. You can select the vectors by clicking on their name, but only one can be selected at a time. 6. If you look closely around the red dot on the skin, you can just see a series of lines and squares. These are the Vector editing nodes, and we can move and alter the vector with these. 7. The mouse (not pictured) is currently held over the Yellow vector, and you can see a preview thumbnail. 8. The stacking of the vectors, within the Vector layer, with Yellow on the bottom through to red on the top, and note the way it displays correctly on the skin.

Enough taking about it – lets have some action! Making an R.A.F. Roundel. This is a useful technique I’ve used that isn’t in Mosi’s tutorials, so I thought I’d include it. Use your imagination and pretend we’re doing an RAF skin! We will do a four colour roundel, using a Vector Layer to create four round vectors. Even though the four colours of the roundel are on the same Vector Layer, we can still edit each one independently of the others.

We want our Roundel to appear above the main paintjob, so activate the uppermost wing paint scheme and Click Layers>New Vector layer, and call it Roundel. Now go to the Pp47dLEX.pcx file and take a yellow out of the palette. Remember to get one from the middle range of yellows, so that you have room for the adjustment layers to shift it brighter or darker without turning it brown or white. RGB 202, 169, 76 will do fine. Set that yellow as both the foreground and background colours (left click and right click using the dropper) – this way the circle we draw will be filled in solid. Now take the Preset Shapes tooland set the shape to Elipse, Retain style UNCHECKED, Antialias checked, Create as Vector Checked, Line width 2, Line style #1 Solid. Shift the cursor to the spot on the wing where you want the centre of the roundel to be, and take note of the x,y co-ordinates displayed on the bottom left of PSP’s main window – in my case 90, 40. Now hold down the right mouse button, and drag the circle out to the diameter you require. Check on the co-ordinates again – one set will display the width and height of your circle, so set it so that is perfectly round. About 45x45 pixels is ok. To finish off, on the Layers palette, click the expansion tab next to the Roundel layer to display all it’s vectors. The one you have just made will be called Ellipse. Right click it and rename it to Yellow. That’s the first bit done.

Normally we could just go straight on and make the next vector, but it originates from inside the currently selected vector, so switch the Roundel Vector layer off, and switch it on again. This will de-select any vectors, so that the vector node points don’t display on the skin. Now take a darker blue-ish colour from the PCX palette, about 53, 53, 53 and load it in both barrels as before. Take the Preset Shapes tool, go to your centre co-ordinate, and make the circle 41x41 pixels. Rename that vector to Blue. Follow the same procedure again to create the next colour. De-select vectors, load white RGB 210, 210, 211 from the PCX, go to centre co-ordinates and make the circle 25x25 pixels, then rename to White.

Do it all again, this time using red, RGB 111, 36, 36 at 19x19 pixels.

Because we made our roundel starting with the yellow vector, all subsequent vectors were placed on top, as can be seen in the stacking order in the Layers Palette. If the order isn’t right, drag and drop until it is.


 * Editing Vector layers**

We use the Object Selector toolto alter our vector objects. Select the white vector in the Layer palette (or click it with the Object selector tool), and the node data appears on the skin. Use drag and drop to alter the nodes. The centre node will shift the entire vector, the node with the small handle coming off the centre node will rotate the vector, and the nodes at the sides and corners of the vector allow you to resize it. There are a whole host of other options for the Object selector in the Tool Options box – click the Properties button, or the Edit Text button (for Text vectors), and you can change the colours well as a host of other options. For further information on the Node and editing buttons, I suggest consulting the PSP manual. If you are unhappy with any vector, you can select it and delete it from the Layers palette, and make a new one. An Adjustment layer for the Roundel This is done in exactly the same way as the adjustment layer for the Star and bar, so I’ll run through it’s creation briefly. Switch off all layers except the Roundel layer. Use the Magic wand to select outside the star and bar, hit Selections>Invert, then Layers>Create new Adjustment Layer, Brightness –50, rename to Roundel Adjustment, and blend it to get the best look.

With this method all the colours on the roundel are controlled by one slider. To alter the colours individually, you would have to delete and re-draw them in a different colour, which is only about 10 seconds work each. Also note that when you turn the brightness down on the slider, you create a dark ring around the roundel. This is because those yellow pixels around the very outside have been AA’d, contain very little yellow, and quite a lot of grey, so the underlying wing colour is darkened. If this effect is unsuitable, switch the adjustment layer off and change the colour of the roundel manually, by using the Object selector button, and clicking Properties on the Tool options box (or delete the vector and draw a new one). Adding Text to the skin. (Squadron codes, nose-art, wing text etc.) Add the text to a new layer just above your main paintschemes. Text can be done several ways, depending on the look you want. 1. With the painting tools (on a Raster layer) 2. With the Text tool (on a Vector layer) 3. With the Text tool (on a Raster layer)

1. You can make Basic letters by using the selection tools to make an outline then fill with colour (Use Aintialiasing on the selection tool if you don’t want a hard edge.), or just paint the letters with a brush. 2. Use the Texttool and place your text on a Vector layer if you need maximum flexibility to deform the text (stretch, compress, warp, rotate, curve etc.) 3. Using the Text tool on a Raster layer still allows you to stretch, rotate, skew and warp the image, but you don’t quite have the same amount of Deformation options as you do with Vectors. Method 1 should be easy for you to do, so I’ll go straight onto method 2. Create a new Vector layer and call it Noseart. Take the colour you wish to use for the foreground (stroke or outine of the text) and background (fill off the text) from the EAW palette. Now take the Text tool, place it on the bottom left hand corner of where you want the text to go, click and the Text entry box will pop up. Shift the box so you can see the preview of the vector, and you can see the changes as you enter your text, select the size, font, script, and a heap of other options (also stroke and fill colours but it’s best to do them from the EAW palette). Make sure that you have Antialias checked, and the ‘Create As’ set to Vector. Click OK to create your text.

Now that the text is created, you can use the Object selector tool to modify it. Double click a node on the vector to display the Vector Properties box, to change any settings (recolour, AA, line style, stroke width etc), or drag and drop the nodes to shift, stretch, rotate, warp, twist etc. Using SHIFT, CTRL, or SHIFT+CTRL while dragging gives different deformations (see your manual for better explanations). If you want to change the font, style or the content of the text, open the Tool Options box and click the Edit text button.

Method 3 is pretty similar. Create a new Raster Layer and call it Noseart2. Select the colours you want, click Selections>Select None, put the Text tool where you want it and click to open the Text Entry box. Enter your text setting, but make sure you have the ‘Create As’ set to Floating. AA should be checked, but that’s a personal preference. Click OK. Your text is placed on the Noseart2 layer as a Floating selection. Shift it where you want with the Mover tool and you can paint the selection with the painting tools. If you don’t like the colour, just repaint.

We can use the Deformation toolto shift the nodes in much the same way as we did with the Object selector tool on the Vectors. If the size or text style are wrong, just click the Back button to undo the text and start again. Once you are happy, click Selections>Defloat. A final warning! I must repeat… IMPORTANT - Be warned that all the layers will be merged when you apply the 256 colour palette, and you will lose all your layers when doing so. It is a disaster if you save your lovely template into one layer and lose all the hard work you have done, so be very careful about what you are saving, and make backup copies. Make it a rule to never hit theicon if you have merged the layers, and always use File>Save As when you are saving your final 256 colour image to a PCX file. Now that you have made your basic template SAVE IT! Save a couple copies in fact! Squirrel a few copies on a floppy somewhere! Be very careful about how you go creating images from your template, trust me - you do not want to learn the hard way……….

Loading the EAW palette OK, for the moment we are done! Activate and tweak the necessary layers to achieve the look you want. Because of the gigantic difference between 16 million colours and 256 colours, we have to check what the new skin looks like with the EAW palette applied. Save the file now by using theoption or File>Save or Save as. Make sure the background layer is on, click Colours>Load Palette, and load up the p47d palette you saved earlier (this will merge your image), to see how it looks. If you need to make changes, click the Back buttonuntil you are back in 24 bit colour again, make any changes you need to, then save the file and load the palette again. Continue to do this until you are happy with the overall look.

Another neat little trick… Adding Noise. You may or may not want to use this option, but I think it really helps. The template we have made makes great skins, but they look just a bit too much as if they are computer generated images (or too CGI). We can use PSP7’s effects to take the smoothness out of the image, and give the skin more of a “Real world” look. Try this fix out and see if you like the effect. This is the last thing we do before loading the EAW palette and saving our new skin as PCX.

Once you have the right look (are you sure that you have saved your template?), select the area you wish to add the noise to (usually all of the skin you have been making), click Layers>Merge>Merge All (flatten). Now click Effects>Noise>Add, then select Noise : 4%, select Uniform, and click OK. This generates a random pixel effect within the selected area, which adds a little more character to the image. Try some different variations of the noise effect and see if you get any you like. Use the Back button to undo any changes you don’t like.

At Last! Once you have it looking right use the File>Save As function to save it as Pp47dLEXcamo.PCX or whatever, and you’re ready to picpac and try it out in game.

The Bottom of the wing. We have concentrated our efforts on the upper surface of the wing so that we can get some fast results, but the bottom of the wing could also be done at the same time. To do this you would need to Select that area as well when you are working on each layer. For example, when doing the Metal wing layer, we would use the Select tools to select the bottom wing area as well, and fill it with a darker colour than the top wing. All painted layers could be done this way, but adjustment layers for the bottom wing would be best done as separate Adjustment layers. By doing this, you can adjust the effect of your top wing shading, without affecting the bottom (and vice versa)

Hurrah! Well, that’s a pretty good starting template, but there’s no need for it to be the end! You can add as many new layers as you need. Here are a few ideas. Go back and do some different paint schemes - a jungle camoflage wing, desert, winter, night-fighter etc. - add some more panel line detail. Remember that you can alter any layer with ease if you don’t like the current look. Of course your template doesn’t have to be perfect. You can take your finished look, load the EAW palette, save as PCX, and still do any minor touch-up work that it may require from there. In the end, it is all about having more options. And yeah, that’s only one wing – what about the rest of the aircraft! :)

Conclusion. Using layers should be no more difficult than skinning with one layer, but will give you extra control over your skin, allow almost infinite variations of paintschemes, and save a lot more time. You still use all the standard skinning techniques, but you just put them all on separate layers. It is useful not just for Hi-res skins, but for any skins – aircraft, ground objects, terrain. Also not just for EAW - I’m sure that you can see an application for layers in whatever type of graphics work you may do. I’ve been using layers for less than a week, yet and I’m converted.

Credits. Thanks to Mosi for making his great skinning tutorials. Many of the painting techniques described in this tutorial were learned from him. If you don’t have them, get them here - http://mosi.furballcentral.com/. Through Mosi sharing his knowledge, I’ve been given a solid foundation on which to build this tutorial.

OK that wraps it up for me. I know it has been rather long winded, but I hope that you have learned something about using layers, and have digested enough information to start doing all your skinning using layers - If not, that’s cool. The best place for extra technical information is your Paint Shop Pro 7 ™ Manual and/or Helpfile, because I’ve only described a fraction of the PSP7’s features. If you need any help, or have any comments on this tutorial, don’t hesitate to contact me by email, or at the online home of European Air War, the EAW message board at http://www.simhq.com/

If I hear of just one skin being made with layers because of this tutorial, it will be well worth it! Good luck!

John “Chompy” Masters, 18th March 2003 jdmasters@ozemail.com.au http://www.ozemail.com.au/~jdmasters/