"Net" skins

[SixBravo]

I just finished browsing the whole listing of skins for download with PE... and I'm not sure I found what exactly I was looking for.

I'm looking for some skins that work with the MBTs in the game. They add foliage "netting" onto the tanks. It helps break up the lines of the tanks. If I recall, someone did a few of these for the original SB and even did some TIS skins to go with them.... anyone know if something like this exists for Pro PE?

[Jaguar]

Skins with camo nettings would be great. I already tried a couple of times to make such a skin, but sofar without success.
As far as I can remember, for SB Pro PE there was only one skin for the M1A1 that looked a bit like a camo net, though I don't remember the name of the file.

[BipBip]

Without 3D modification, skins with netting or folliage are useless, as their goal is precisely to erase the shapes of the vehicles.

[SixBravo]

I'm just looking for something to be a little more aesthetically pleasing. Function isn't technically important to me right now. lol There's a lot of little details I'd like to see in this game but I'm not gonna bitch when I get so much to start. haha Only thing I really miss from the first one is watching the T-72/T-80 turrets flying off.

I think the netting only looked so good in the SB because of the lower resolution. Oh well. Win some you lose some, right? haha

[Zipuli]

Well, the turrets still fly :)

Zip

[SixBravo]

Really???? I've just seen 'em brew-up.

"Open mouth. Insert foot." lol

[Stratos]

I will apreciate also net cammo in the tanks, can be cool

[Kingtiger]

jaguar, there was a complet camoneting Skin for the Leo2A4 with modified TIS as well. the barracuda netting.. it would be awsome to have in Pro PE as well, but ive tryed to add some camo netting and it looks plain ugly and erased it again. think its gonna be real hard to do it good.

[Scorpius]

I tried to do this last month with the Leo1A5DK but it just didn't look right.

BipBop nailed it on the head I think. The net needs to look like it's hanging off of the turret parts, etc...otherwise it's just a camo net wraped around the tank like wrapping paper on a present.

[Jaguar]

The net needs to look like it's hanging off of the turret parts, etc...otherwise it's just a camo net wraped around the tank like wrapping paper on a present.
Yeah, that's what I think, too. Perhaps if some of the foilage that is used by the graphic engine would (could) be added to the 3D model instead of some netting (see also pitcure below)? I think that might work.

[SixBravo]

Oooooooooo good idea Jaguar. I think that if that were done correctly it would probably be even better than a netting. It would do an even better job of breaking-up the outline......

[Scorpius]

Way back when...probably in 01 I made a skin for SB1 where I just took the stock textures for trees and bushes, and copied/pasted them onto an M1 skin.....It looked like the tank was wearing a ghille suit, lol. It was effective if the tank was positioned along a treeline.

On my last rotation to Hoenfels in 94, some of the tanks we were maneuvering with were sporting some green stuff that looked like astroturf or that green outdoor carpeting you'd put on the patio. It looked okay from a distance but the stuff was problematic as I recall. It was just held on with velcro, but after clumps of mud and sod got embedded in it, it would tend to fall off the sides of the tank. Chia-tank, lol.

[Jaguar]

I made a skin for SB1 where I just took the stock textures for trees and bushes, and copied/pasted them onto an M1 skin.....
I've already tried that, too, with rather sobering results. :shock: :?

So, what I meant is to use some of the 3D foilage and have it attached to the tank as a seperate 3D object instead of just pasting it directly onto the skin. I'm not sure whether that would work but may be well worth a try.

[SixBravo]

I think the main issue we may run into with this would be the foliage interfering with the GPS, GAS, and TIS. If I'm not mistaken, then foliage as a 3D shape does have a blocking ability - unless there is a 2D variant we can swap out and "hang." Much like what Scorpius mentioned... what if one could hang the 2D shapes from different parts of the tank like the turret, gun, and skirts.....? That would be fairly effective to the end we are searching for....? If, of course, its even possible. I'm not technologically inclined enough to even venture a guess at whether or not this is possible. I'll leave it to the gods of skins. haha

[Hackworth]

One thought might be for one of you tallented skinners to create a Barracuda skin for the Leo2A4 and maybe the Leo2A5. And then with that skin make a quick TIS image. I really liked the Barracuda skin from SB1...

[Scorpius]

Hack, refresh my memory please, barracuda skin???

[Hackworth]

http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/armored_vehicles/tank/leopard/web_gallery/images/leopard_011.jpg

I went looking for the old skin, but it's not posted anymore. It seems Sean had to nix the SB skin downloads to make room for PE. And the archived forum doesn't have downloads available anymore either. It's called the Mobile Camoflauge System, or MCS. Barracuda is a nick-name. the skin came with a sweet TIS image that was mostly dark, like the present T-80. It's darker than the background normally because of the effect of the thermal reducing net. It reminds me of Zimmermitt on WWII panzers. It's killer.

Apparently several other types are fitted out to other vehicles as well.

Australian Leos with it fitted. there was a notation that they only purchased units to cover the crew areas of the vehicles. I have no clue as to why only those areas...

http://anzacsteel.hobbyvista.com/Armoured%20Vehicles/Images/leo27ph_27.jpg

and a Swedish Strv 122 in full clad:
http://www.aeronautics.ru/archive/armored_vehicles/tank/leopard/web_gallery/images/leopard_002.jpg

I'll see if I can't find the old skin and it's accompanying TIS image for reference. I'm sure I have it burned on to some disk around here.

[Scorpius]

Ahh! Cool! Gives one all sorts of ideas....

I think I do remember that skin. I may even have it on a backup cd somewhere....

[Scorpius]

I'm thinking about the possibility of the newer digital micropattern skins...

http://www.uniteddynamics.com/camo/faq/

[Jaguar]

Ah, that could come quite close to the looks of those camo nettings. Might be well worth a try.

[Scorpius]

Ah, that could come quite close to the looks of those camo nettings. Might be well worth a try.

Experiment underway!!! Will report back later! :D

[MajorMagee]

The Germans had several WWII camo schemes very much like these micropatterns. Nothing is ever truly new...

I had tried something similar for the SB Pro PE vehicles a couple of months ago, but I never could get it to look quite right. I'll see if I still have some pictures.

[Scorpius]

It's pretty involved, so this is gonna take some time.

You're right, what is old is suddenly new again.

[MajorMagee]

Here's a montage of a Fractile Micro-Pattern at varios distances. This was never finished, so it's pretty rough. What I was doing was to use two layers in PhotoShop. One with a large scale "traditional" soft edged camo pattern, and a second, smaller scale, pixelated one on top of that.

[Jaguar]

That looks promising to me, MM.

Scorp, looking forward to your work on this.

[Scorpius]

Wow that looks good! IMO you should keep with it MM. It's quite good as it is. Jaguar, thanks! It's gonna take a few days but I'll have something to show ya soon.

[SixBravo]

Wow!!! That looks good!! Impressive. You guys never cease to amaze me.

[Vati]

Good camo, but it has actually a reverse effect at distance in SB.
Problem is that SB and most other sims are not using pixel shaders or other tricks (ie translucency as SB does with trees) to simulate the blending with background at range. You have flat colors, so if you want to blend at distance, you would actually need to go for a single or 2 color pattern at most.

[MajorMagee]

Could someone please tell us how the different LODs are generated in SB Pro PE?

To my eye it just looks like simple pixel averaging has been used, but this may only be an artifact of the jpg format used by the screen capture function.

[Vati]

MajorMagee, different mipmap texture blending cannot solve the problem.
The problem is in huge portion of single color of the background (terrain).

[MajorMagee]

I got to thinking about how to fool the renderer into making the vehicles blend invisibly into the background. Looking at the lowest detail version above, it was clear that what was jumping out the most was the darker pixels that corespond to the shadows on the vehicle.

I made a 50% saturation, 50% brightness one color skin to check what the environmental shading was doing to the texture pattern. Light does not brighten the surface beyond the starting colors. Surfaces that are hidden from the light source, or are on the back side (West) are darkened to 30-38% brightness, and saturation remains at about 50%.

In order to get a true blend with the background any surfaces that would normally be darkened (under skirts, bottom surfaces, etc.) should be painted with a roughly 15% lighter shade than everything else. When this is darkened by the shader they will end up having roughly the same look as the fully lit surfaces. You can never make up for the surfaces that change shading with orientation (slab sides), so those will always be either a little too light, or a little too dark. I'd probably split the difference, and make those 7% lighter than average.

[Scorpius]

I like what you're doing!

[Scorpius]

I'm working on this now. I'm coming up with a process in Photoshop that I think will work with some experimentation so I don't have to paint everything by hand.

[Scorpius]

Okay at least I'm finally getting somewhere with this. A step in the right direction but nowhere near what I want as an end product. Once I get the desired effect I can start blocking out the pattern with a 3 color theme. I've got a few other tricks to experiment with.

[Scorpius]

Getting closer to what I'm looking for. I'm done for tonight. I actually found a free filter that does 80% of the work for me.

[Jaguar]

That looks promising Scorp. Perhaps still a bit rough around the edges, but I'm looking forward to the final version. :)

[Scorpius]

Thanks Jag. It's getting there slowly, lol.

[MajorMagee]

A good check of your result is to convert the screenshot to B&W. This will let you quickly see if the values blend in smoothly with the background, or jump out at you.

[Scorpius]

I'm getting close to something good. It's just a matter or refining the process of using certain filters in a certain order and then some clean up.

[Scorpius]

BTW it's only a matter of time before we have true cloaking technology for armor, then it's on. Q'a'pla!!!

http://www.motorpsychorealms.org.uk/spacedout/ssbirdofprey.jpg

[cobrabase]

I'm with YOU Gowron!

The day that Windows XP made it impossible to play Klingon Academy I wept for the empire.

"I AM NOT A MERRY MAN!"

[LUPUS]

I created an MTLB with Nets on the left and right side, works good from the distance...

http://www.steelbeastspro.com/imagepreview/tarnschema.JPG

http://www.steelbeastspro.com/imagepreview/mtlbtarnneu.JPG


Just a Prototype, but i think it works good so far.



Lupus

[Scorpius]

Nice work there Lupus!

[LUPUS]

Heres another one, German Leo1A5 :

http://www.steelbeastspro.com/imagepreview/leo1tarn.JPG




Lupus

[LUPUS]

Now i finished my first "Net" Skin ! Just take a look at my German Leopard 1 BattleCat :

http://people.freenet.de/prien/leo1tarnfront.jpg

http://people.freenet.de/prien/leo1tarnseite.jpg




Lupus

[MajorMagee]

Very nice job with a difficult task. :)

[LUPUS]

Another one, Leo 1 with Net's and Trees :

http://people.freenet.de/prien/leo1tarnneu1.jpg



Lupus

[Stratos]

Looks outstanding!!

[Jaguar]

Looks very good indeed! :thumbup:

[Scorpius]

Coolio!

[LUPUS]

Another nice Picture of two Leo 2A4, with Trees and Net's

[RogueSnake79]

All of those look awsome guys.

Here's a skin I would love to see a net on. With or without, its still one of the best skins out.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/RogueSnake79/tiger.jpg

[KevoM1]

which skin is it? I'd like to have it!!

[Scorpius]

Thanks Rogue!

That's my Ambush skin, it's in the download section. Do a search on ambush 2006.

[Jaguar]

That's my Ambush skin
Which reminds me.....where's the Marder and the Jaguar? Man, I want my Afrika Korps!

[Scorpius]

You'll get it when I get some free time to make them, lol. I needs a couple of weeks.

[LUPUS]

All of those look awsome guys.

Here's a skin I would love to see a net on. With or without, its still one of the best skins out.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v512/RogueSnake79/tiger.jpg

I download your ambush skin and put a net on it ! Pictures will come soon !


greets

lupus

[Scorpius]

Look forward to seeing it Lupus.

[Scorpius]

Correction from earlier: Search for Ambush Pack for the 2A4 and 2A5 together.

Ambush 2006 will only yield an earier version of the 2A4.

[singleshot]

small video with LUPUS´ netskins with 2 leo2a4

Heer im Einsatz (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oPL_1TE-_8g)

[Scorpius]

That looks great in the video!