by Hoot » Mon Jun 02, 2003 2:43 pm
Aircraft aluminium is highly reflective; look at any photo of a bare metal aircraft and you'll see just how shiny it is. The B-17G named "Aluminium Overcast" is a prime example. Simply paint the texture alpha something close to a flat black in the areas you want to be entirely metal. If you go a tad lighter (210 instead of 255) you'll be able to see the rivets or panels in the chrome. Since the alpha is a second "coat" of paint, setting things to pure black will result in the actual texture not showing through. Chroming smaller areas (engine inlet, exhaust, leading edges) presents less of a problem since there's likely to be little, if any, detail visible. On larger pieces (737 belly, whole engine cowlings) it'll look like the reflective areas were made out of one piece. Since aluminium doesn't come in sheets that big, you can imagine how odd it'd look.
Doing a "dirty" metal texture is fairly easy. Older aircraft, unpolished parts, or just plain wear and tear will give the metal a light gray or dusty and very light brown "buffed" look. To create that effect is pretty easy. Make a new layer above your texture in Photoshop and paint on either a medium gray or a light brown above the areas you want to wear. Now set your layer opacity to 10-20% so the texture beneath shows through. You can use a Smudge tool to create streaks, using Push will make it look like some sort of fluid tarnished the metal. Running any plugins can generate a whole smattering of effects.
When you're doing the alpha, do it the easy way. Make sure all your different parts (dirt, grime, panel lines, windows, etc...) are on seperate layers. Then simply set the whole thing to a gray-scale image. Save it as a different name so you don't accidently save over your texture. With windows, panels, rivets, and such all on different layers, you can set the reflectivity of each one rather precisely. Keep your original texture up as a reference so you don't accidently chrome an oil spot (I did that once, funny as hell) and have at it!
Have Fun!
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Hoot
