Skinners, Beta Testers, etc: Halb CL.II & CL.IIau

[IRFC Hawkeye]

Have any of you noticed this?

I was working on skins for these planes, and when getting the final pics in-game, I noticed this:

3-D object in skin file and on plane, seen in the game's viewer program:

Plane as seen in the game....object missing!

This is true for both the CL.II and the CL.IIau.  Skin doesn't matter; even the default skins have this lack of the object which is clearly visible in the skin template as a separate 3D object in the cowl area, where the engine would be.  I went to a lot of trouble to line up stripes on this object (first skin shown), and it's disappointing that it doesn't work in-game.

There are other parts objects that are 3D in the skin files, and I'm beginning to wonder if there are any others that aren't rendering in the game.

Any ideas? 

[Klaiber]

Wow, that's really interesting.

Have you posted over on the IL-2 boards?

[Butzzell]

The area is a Blister covering a generator for the radio...... if you have a radio. Not all Halbs had the radio and so it is missing in many photos from the period.

The game takes this into account.

 

If you load the radio in the game you get:

 

The blister is hiding in the cowling area where there would be a cut out for the engine. You can find it when you turn on the wire frame:

 

[Britchot]

That’s pretty impressive attention to detail.

[IRFC Hawkeye]

On 12/30/2019 at 9:05 AM, Butzzell said:

You can find it when you turn on the wire frame:

 Oh yeah, I live by the wire frame:

Which is why I was disappointed by the lack of the 3-D object in the first place.

How did you find out it was a blister for an optional radio generator?

I would have expected the splatter camo to encompass that area though, with the lack of camera, instead of having that green substrate color (see your second pic).  It gets covered up in any case by the blister object when it's there.  If I had known this before submitting my skins, I would have tried to figure out how to copy a section of the splatter camo and paste it over that area.  Somehow, when it's a blister, it doesn't look out of place, being green like all of the other covers and blisters that stick out on the fuselage. But being just a flat spot with a different color, it looks wrong, like the sides of a frog's face  

I thought I had the viewer thing figured out when I saw THREE forward firing guns on the standard CL.II.  At that point I assumed that the viewer showed all possible modifications at the same time, so you could see how it looked in any configuration.  However, take a look at the CL.IIau in the viewer, and you'll see only one forward firing gun, although twin forward firing guns is still an option on the CL.IIau.  So much for the logic of showing all possible options in the viewer.

[Heinrich]

On some skins there are parts where the seams don’t match. Calculate where a line connects to another part becomes an even more time consuming job. Even some of the details are not in the correct place like here on the Albatros:

[IRFC Hawkeye]

"Show grid lines" helps with that.  Even if corresponding parts aren't proportionally sized, you can judge a fractional distance relationship between the two parts, and align accordingly.  Sometimes there are enough wire frame lines to make a good judgement (the blister above is a good example and I was able to nail it on the first try).

I improved my early Halb CL.II skin by painting over the "bare spot" that's there when the radio is not installed, with the splatter camo pattern.  "Spot Healing Tool" is your friend:

Anyway I think it looks better now, when the radio is not installed.  The late model skin already had stripes painted over that spot.  Thanks again to Butzzell for the correct info.  S!