Modeling the VVS Skinner's
Page
Technical Resources
Colour
Below is a link to a TIF file which contains a set of colour chips which
I have developed for use with IL2FB. The file is saved in RGB format; I
suspect that working in RGB is the most common method (although I suspect
that CMYK converts to 256 colour mode more faithfully).
These chips are a pretty good digital representation of authentic VVS
colours. I am sure that most skinner's immediate reaction to them will
be something like, "whoa-- these are gaudy and bright!...". That is the
usual response. Fear not--you have not gone 'round the bend, and those
are the correct shades. Yes, they are bright by Western standards;
the Soviets wanted to replicate colours in nature, not to use old Army
colours like khaki and field grey.
I selected these shades after some considerable experiment. The palettes
used in IL2FB are somewhat peculiar, and they can change from aircraft
to aircraft. I have also noted that most colours on most aircraft appear
to render lighter in the game than should be expected otherwise; the colour
chips are therefore darkened from their natural appearance to redress this
behaviour. These colours can also shift (sometimes a lot) during the conversion
to Indexed Colour mode (256 cols). Therefore, a general caveat-- beware:
check
the appearance of your colour selection in the game, and first time without
weathering, shading, or other 'atmospheric' effects. I do not recommend
to rely solely on the chips, themselves, but rather one should look to
have the game appearance match proper colour resources as closely as possible.
Il-2FB
Colour Palette
Some of the exotic colours (like AEh-9, and Army 4B0) are not on the
chip palette; if anyone needs samples of those, just send an e-mail and
we'll discuss them.
-
Update I
have hit upon a better in-game equivalent for AII Brown. The colour chips
have been updated with this new value.
Templates
Although a number of fine skin templates may be downloaded from various
web sites, we will seek to centralize the VVS aircraft templates for use
in our own project on this page. We'd like to have the templates themselves
be a bit more 'interactive'. In other words, the various discussions and
recommendations on this forum will hopefully be realized in changes to
the existing skin templates.
I believe that this centralization is critical for several reasons.
Firstly, virtually every VVS aircraft skin default (void.bmp) in IL2FB
requires detail changes to produce accurate aircraft prototypes. Secondly,
I foresee that many authors may combine to produce a final template, each
contributing in their own way to the ultimate product. That will accomplished
more easily if the templates, themselves, are posted here, available freely,
and with the relevant discussion and comment to accompany them. These factors
may be all the more important for templates relating to software other
than IL2FB, since the available technical knowledge in those cases
might be less than with IL2FB.
With that in mind, here are the available templates currently judged
to be the most accurate, the most artistically significant, and the most
useful and functional. All of them have been zipped, and are in Adobe Photoshop
PSD
format:
| Game Template |
Artist |
Last Revision |
An all-original template which is suitable for early manufacture 5-gun
LaGGs. Includes early black-border type national markings layer.
An all-original template which is suitable for later series 'lightened'
(Oblegchenniy) LaGGs. Includes later 'Victory' type national
markings layer and several camouflage layers.
Jesters lovely I-185 prototype template.
An updated and improved version of my original I-153 template. It is suitable
to make skins for the normal production M-62 powered Chaika.
A new 1024x1024 template suitable for making skins of the I-16 Type 28.
Includes a plain red star markings layer.
This is a very outstanding MiG-3 template from Nodak01. It is suitable
to produce skins for both the early and later pattern MiG-3s.
This template is suitable to make skins for the La-5 and La-5F models.
Revised template suitable for the La-7. Includes national markings layers.
An original template from Nodak01 (with small tweaks). It is suitable to
make early Series manufacture Yak-1s.
An original template from Nodak01. Alas, I had to modify certain parts
of the template, and as a result it is not as impressive as it was originally.
However, it is still quite excellent. It is suitable to make skins of the
Yak-1b.
Revised template suitable for the Yak-7B. Includes national markings layers.
-
Fuel cell access panel details corrected
Revised template suitable for making skins of the Yak-9. Includes an extra
fuel cap layer for making Yak-9D skins, also.
-
Sorry, I posted an outdated template without some corrections. Here is
the up-to-date version.
National Markings
Following a number of requests, here is a template
of VVS national markings for the period 1938-45.
