DeFreest Larner

Aha! Funny you should post that! I was just about to mention my "Meterstick" approach (Basically exactly this!) Unbelievably helpful for finding those annoying little areas that need modified! This one looks far better to what I've been using though - the colour coding is really going to help out! For a wireframe I've currently lifted the old RoF one, blown it up and dropped it in. It's not the best solution (the wireframe comes out a bit funny when it's blown up to scale), but it's fit for purpose.

Yeah, that's a great little tool! It'll definitely be handy for selecting individual areas to paint without having to worry about going out of the lines!

And even better! The SPAD template has no wireframe! Joy!!!

And now for my favourite part! Lining up these god forsaken C.O. Stripes in the template!

Nice find! I love it when you get your hands on stuff like that - aircraft being assembled, factory finished, etc. There's a fantastic one from the Levasseur firm of the factory workers hand- painting a camo scheme onto a partially-constructed SPAD XIII, which played a big part in the overall "Look" of the last batch of XIIIs (Once I saw that image I knew they had to be "Handpainted" too. (See: Skinmaker's sickness) Great find!

@Klaiber Wow, that profile of Udet's Triplane is insane!!! Funnily enough, I immediately saw it in "Black and White" when I saw the red and blue stripes...I've been looking at too many Orthro SPADs recently I've always appreciated the craft of restoration - on the surface it just seems as simple as "Re-paint it so it looks shiny", but there's so much toil that goes into it...a real labour of love! I think only Skin-makers and Model-makers qualify as being as mad, ha! I got to see Tiger 131 make the rounds at Bovington once. What a beast.... EDIT: Solved the mystery of the "Black-less" camo on No.13...Greg VanWyngarden mentioned to me that he'd originally scanned the image from a book put out by two Lafayette guys - J.N. Hall and C. Nordhoff which was released in 1919(?). The image of No.13 had been doctored before being published, hence the particularly unusually muted appearance of No.13

Here's a time-lapse of the "upgrading" of No.13! Fair warning, there's quite a lot of "flash-y" screen swapping - I'd recommend setting the video speed to 50% if you're finding it a bit much. Again, sound muted so you can play your favourite tunes while watching Enjoy!

Cheers @Klaiber ! I'd suspect one or two less-than-happy campers with the first batch of S.VII submissions as the more, er, 'expressive' ideas are dialled back to 'historical standard'...I've already had to reject my own first submission One thing that's always been really fascinating to me is how attached pilots get to their assigned USAS numbers, even if the number bears zero significance to them before having it assigned. It's almost always the case that 3PG pilots are gutted at having to part with "their" number if they get reassigned to a unit, and the guys will usually ask to be assigned to the same number if they switch between 103 / 93. One particularly funny case was one of my 93rd boys - he was originally on "12" and I later moved him to "4". He was pretty sad to 'lose' "12", but he accepted it. After a couple months he went to the 103rd and was put on "12" over there....only to request to be reassigned to "4"! ...speaking of numbers, the next stage of "the sickness" has been to try and recreate the handpainted numbers of the 93rd and 103rd. These will later be used as templates and "Re-traced" onto individual XIIIs with the end goal of making each one look hand-painted in the fields of France! The current numbers are traced from existing photos of the two Squadrons - not the easiest task considering most photos have the aircraft off at an angle! The hard part will be trying to "eyeball" the missing numbers and keep them in the correct style for the unit (especially hard with the 103rd, with their pretty French-style numbers!).

.....I was raised on 80s post-punk and hard rock, but you simply can't beat some groovy jazz funk.....

Good stuff! Thanks @Klaiber ! The navy blue example is especially helpful - we're trying to decipher the correct shades for USAS roundels and nose cowlings atm, and blue is a tricky one..... ......Back to the super-exciting 3rd P.G skin pack, here's the next tricky part....enforcing the 3rd P.G's paint policy! We're looking at a full overhaul going into FC2, which will see the retirement of several 3rd Pursuit Group spads (my beloved "No. 0" among them ), which will be kept on as unassigned "heritage" aircraft, not to be used on official squadron nights. Historical accuracy is very near and dear to us as a unit, and the new policy will reflect that - as personal pilot marking was such a big part of the Lafayette's identity we'll be allowing personal markings (so long as they're up to snuff historically), but USAS ships (where the markings were much more rigid and uniform) will be retained in their full historical livery - with no personal insignia allowed. Just like the real USAS, you simply take what you're assigned!

Interesting - I'll run a couple of pics from the 3rd PG stash through and see what it comes up with!

@Vonrd Currently using F59014 for FC yellow! Several different reds being used atm, will need to check them all later... ....Here's a fun one: The list of known 213th airframes. This is just one of our four squadrons.....I think we might be on FC Vol.7 or Vol.8 by the time this pack is ready LOL! In order to "Minimise" (ha!) the workload, the plan is to constrict each squadron to minimum needed aircraft initially, then eventually Aircraft Numbers 1 through 24

Yeah, if each skin had an individual Normal Map that would be a big headache gone..... After some further testing last night I think that generally the lavender / more muted purple tones will offer less extreme reflectivity and the indigo / pinker tones will be more aggressively reflective (and start to stray from the 'doped' look). This is a bit of a generalisation, but it seemed to be the case from what I could tell. On a semi-related note (might be of some interest regarding Jasta 10), I also did some testing for the 103rd's 'Chrome Yellow' numbers. I have a little bit of a love-hate relationship with the colour yellow in terms of FC skinning (about 2 parts love and 98 parts hate). While skinning the USAS birds I've discovered that the colours you are using can be reeeeaaaaaaalllllllyyyyy deceptive in the template - eventually coming out really weird in-game. Yellow is probably the most temperamental colour in that regard. It has a tendency to end up looking like a construction workers' hi-vis jacket in-game, even though it looks great on the template. For the 103rd's yellow numbers I started out with....well....yellow! However, using just a yellow shade would appear very neon-y in the game, and certainly didn't look like a realistic depiction of paint. I was using something around this colour - typically what you'd think when somebody says "Yellow": As I played around with it some more, I started introducing some more orange tones into the colour - which immediately made a huge difference to the in-game appearance. After slowly dialling it in, I settled on F59014 for the 103rd's numbers: As you can see, that's very orange looking on its own. I would paint the numbers above the weathering layer to avoid decolouration - but on one test I decided to paint them below the weathering layers so that they'd be nicely weathered along with the other markings. For that I had to use this shade(!!!!) At a glance, you'd think there's no way that would come up looking like an accurate representation of a number painted in yellow - but just have a look at this screenshot I took while testing the visibility of 103rd numbers at a distance! I think that looks spot on, personally!

The trouble seemed to be coming from some magenta tones in the N-map - I replaced those tones with the lavender that most of the N map is made up of. I'll be sure to drop it off here when it's done - ATM I'm just messing with the N map, making extreme changes and seeing what happens, etc. You can get some absolutely crazy effects with some colours...! Much as I'd love to get those brush strokes in there, each plane is likely to have a different Sioux (or at least a different placement). There are some details missing from the default that I'm hoping to add in though! (Main one being that little factory tag you can barely spot just above the 3 of No.13). I'm also going to see if I can take out the indent for the mechanic's plate. Much as I'd love to leave it in, the various SPAD manufacturers would bolt the plate on in different places to one another, so some of our SPADs would inevitably end up with a "Phantom" plate indent. EDIT: I'm using the Nvidia .DDS plugin - don't know if that's the same one you mean! EDIT 2: Either the magenta tones were causing the weird 'wet' shine, or the combination of them and the lavender tones beside each other were. Will keep posting with N map findings!

A good example of how extreme the orthochromatic effect can be is seen here on Capt. Hambleton of the 213th's SPAD XIII. Hambleton's aircraft bears the C.O's tricolour stripe on the fuselage - his was painted blue/white/red, but in the picture you can't distinguish at all between the blue and the white, and the red looks pitch black! The same thing can be seen on the rudder. As a point of interest, this has actually been one of the biggest mysteries plaguing the USAS paint shop at the minute - the 213th's numbers have always been assumed to be painted in black, but they could just as easily have been red!

@Klaiber Thank you sir! The short answer - Pretty much yes, you have to go photo-by-photo! But, there are some things we know about SPAD camo that can help fill in the gaps. The long answer: The French 5-Colour Camo is a pretty tricky subject, and has definitely been one of the biggest and most gruelling "research projects" for the recreation of the U.S. Spads. It all depends on how accurate you want to be... Several firms built SPAD XIIIs during the war, with the vast majority of USAS Spads being built by Kellner, Bleriot and Adolphe Bernard. SPAD had issued a standardised 5-colour paint scheme to these manufacturers, but scrutiny of the aircraft reveals that each manufacturer had their own distinctive "take" on the pattern itself, which can be identified by various different telltale signs. No.13 pictured above is a Bleriot pattern. From identifying the manufacturer, you can take a good guess at the general camo layout - but the next 'level' of research would be to identify different serial batches. The manufacturers would largely follow the same patterns, but individual batches (E.G, a 2700-series Bleriot or a 15000-series Bleriot) would have their own little deviations from the factory's general pattern. The good news is, though, if you can identify which factory the Serial came from, you can usually get a pretty good approximation of the camo scheme. the biggest challenge (as you picked up on!) comes from trying to 'decipher' the orthochromatic film that cameras used back then! Not only does orthochromatic film have a very unique look (being non-sensitive to red light and highly sensitive to blue light), but there are tons of things that can affect the overall picture - type of film, type of camera, time of day, even the time of year! A fitting example to use would be the famous Jasta 11 line-up photograph - just look how dark the (assumedly) bright red shows up! All of this can obscure the camo pattern, and can also have some very strange side-effects (such as No.13's camo apparently not having any black paint in it - even though it surely did unless the SPAD was prematurely rushed out of the factory!) For reference, here's another photo where the dark green (overlapped by the Number 2) can be seen very clearly against the light green...! Note also how much brighter the number appears, and how the blue of the Indian head feathers appears to be white! The final piece of the puzzle, which makes identifying the camo even harder, is that it's probably the case that the dope wasn't always correctly mixed (there was a very specific technique to the mixing of French 5-colour dopes that was outlined in excruciating detail by a USAS report) , and that the dope also contained aluminium powder which would alter the appearance of the camo under certain light...the discrepancies in colour coupled with the 'weirdness' of orthochromatic film lead to a lot of educated guesses having to be made! Re: the Indian head placement - I noticed that after I took the screenshot (it never fails!!!) - another picture of S.2742 (No.13) also shows that the stylisation of the Indian head on the side is just a teensy bit off. She's "fit for purpose" at the moment, but No.13 will later be receiving a uniquely-painted Sioux as closely matched to the real No.13 as I can get it!

Your own resident paint-genius @Vonrd may be on to something... Played around with a section of the Normal Map to try and get rid of the really irritating "Wet" or "Metal" look that shiny WW1 ships have, and the results of the first quick test looked quite promising.... The red line divides the unedited portion and the edited portion of the N.Map it may just be the in-game lighting and angle (I only had a brief look) but it would seem like the edited portion looks far more like the smooth, almost "Matte" reflectivity of doped linen. The unedited portion shows the "Problem reflectivity" - which looks pretty bizarre and certainly doesn't look like doped linen. Luckily I've had the chance to see both real and airworthy reproduction WW1 birds up close, and the altered shine looks actually quite similar to what I recall - cheers Vonrd! I've also finally finished the majority of the work for the first of our new Bleriot-Built SPAD XIIIs for the 3rd PG skin pack 3.0. Here's a comparison of one of the old v1.0 skins vs the new v3.0's. The shading messes with the image a little, but you should be able to get the picture. No.13 still needs its unique Indian head and some other alterations. And the real deal:

Morning, gents. I've driven the 3rd Pursuit Group to madness with my skin-pack updates as I work towards repainting our SPAD XIIIs, so I thought that I'd give them a break by irritating you fine people with my skinmaking nerd-isms instead. I became the 3rd Pursuit Group's "Paintmeister" largely through the fact that we didn't have one, and I'd tried my hand at it before. What that led to was myself falling down a seemingly infinite rabbit hole of perfectionism, where I became totally determined to make our skins as totally "real" as they could possibly be. At first this started with me trying to switch the "Font" numbers our old ships had to properly "Handpainted" numbers - from there, I wanted "handpainted numbers" that actually looked like they had been applied by brush strokes, and it only got worse from there. I'm just gearing up for the next big 3rd P.G. overhaul, which will hopefully include a uniquely hand-painted insignia per aircraft based on a basic template (as the real Lafayettes and 3rd P.G. guys did), as well as individually-painted-on numbers for fuselage sides and wings. Being so very interested in historical authenticity, this means that any new SPADs the group takes on will have to wait for their markings and insignia to be 'painted' on! As there are a couple skin-makers among you chaps, I thought I'd share some of the madness for any interested parties. --------------------------------------------------------------------------- The first 103rd insignia has been completed, although the "Stencil" isn't yet done. Instead, this one was traced over a real 103rd head. For this one I was really trying to capture the "handpainted onto fabric" look, which I hope to have on all the numbers and insignia!

Ain't it fun being the Paintmeister for a four-squadron group? If anyone can relate, it's me (also currently overhauling our XIIIs) I'll definitely be delving into the Normal Maps for the XIII.

I've not dabbled in normal maps much but I'll give it a go!

Hey, gents! Recently I've been working on yet another revision of the 3rd P.G's SPADs, to "fill in the historical blanks" that I missed with the last iteration. One thing that has been most irritating has been trying to perfectly replicate the unique appearance of the French dopes that were used to paint USAS SPAD XIIIs. For a little context, French 5-colour dope had aluminium powder worked into the dope. A very thorough USAS report from 1918, about the mixing and application of these dopes, stated that "The surfaces are neither glossy nor dull but can be highly reflective", which is what I've been trying to emulate. After weeks of tweaking, re-tweaking, and generally slipping ever-further into madness, I was pretty gutted to find out that the unique effect...can't really be done in FC. Well, it can, but the way reflectivity works with the template, it makes the wings look like they're made of glass rather than fabric. However, I did come up with a little chart to try and save any fellow skinners the nightmare that is trying to find the perfect shade of grey for your alpha channel! Hopefully some of the skin makers here will get some use out of it!

Huge congratulations, Lead!

Not sure that can be done! Certainly not simply

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Thought you boys might enjoy this one