Magic Tutorial: How to get your own War Thunder base skin

(the result could be something like this, I prefer to leave some space on the skin to apply ingame decals. A reason for shame is that I choosed the wrong plane for this tutorial. This way my fantastic Do 217 looks a bit strange but that's a different topic).

This is the professional way of quick modding. You can now easily skin every plane with the best result. It also helps a lot when creating your own paints / skins – having a base texture without preset markings and disturbing paint.

Requirements:
- Photoshop CS2 (at least) or Gimp
- A War Thunder installation
- A Plane of your choice

Step 1:
Select a plane and click 'Customization'. Now enable the User skin by pressing the arrow button on the right. It will create a subfolder with the planes skin name inside WT's User skin folder. A dialog screen will appear, click OK. Allright, done?

Step 2: 
Go to the WT folder and enter it's subfolder called '\UserSkins' and enter the newly spawned subsubfolder (you may have to reload the folder with keyboard 'F5').

Open this file by right clicking and selecting the graphic software of choice: Grab the file with the ending *_n.jpg or *_n.tga (wait, you don't have name suffix activated? Uhhh, common hehehe – well, just grab the '_n' file ;)

Example: do_217j_1_u.tjpg 

And now open: _c or _a or whatever else theres a file for. Open it the same way you opened the previous file (don't worry if theres only a _a or only a _c along with a _n).

Step 3:
Gimp or PS is running and you opened both files. Make sure the layer module is visible under 'View > Layers'. Now unlock the layer by doubled clicking on the small locked icon (counts for PS). Do that for both images (wait a second Gimp users. ;)

Make a duplicate of that image (also counts for Gimp's). Okay, now you have two images. Activate the movement instrument and drag-n-drop one image into the other in this order: Drag image _n into image _a or image _c. 

 (image _a)

Position it exactly over the other layer (tip: position it to the top left corner and make sure it has the same position as the layer below).

(image _a with overblended image _n)

Step 4:
Heres the special trick. Simply 'desaturate' the upper layer by changing the layer option dropdown to 'luminace'.

(upper layer set to 'saturation' layer mode)

Now even the national plane markings should be no longer visible, it's just like magic (should work with almost every WT plane skin). All the so called grills and fins are blended into the other image. Sidenote: Those _u files are Bump-Map shaders and those are always handy. Now we will take a look at improving things.

When viewing the details of that image we assume that we could do better, so simply make a copy the upper layer and desature it. Finally change layer mode to 'colour' and flatten the image to be only one layer (click on Menu > Layers > "Flatten layers". That's it, were almost done. Notice that every colored part of the image turned to be a perfect base template? What we now may need is some good contrast, so open the brightness/contrast dialog of your graphic software and play around with the contrast till so have a nicely saturated image (a slight lowering of contrast, e.g. +50 %). And by changing the brigtness to some plus range you can create silver shining iron but it will make dark areas looking grey, e.g. wheels.

 (dark is a start)

Heres where second method is a big help (not mandatory): Once or twice again copy the last remaining layer. Play around with one of the layer options of your choice / choose one that fits best for you. By overblending and overblending many layers with diferrent layers you can also achieve great results.

(Simply played with brightness/contrast, copied the layer and set it to 'hard light'). 

Step 5:
Looking good for a overall base texture, it's done for the first instance right? Ok, now click save as and overwrite the following file in the User skins subfolder of that plane you edited:  *_a.jpg or _c.tga (you could do a backup before but it's not mandatory).

Go back ingame, WT will reload your skin ingame but you need to go to the 'Customization' screen again and press the little reload icon. Make sure to select the User skin in your favorite planes customization setup. Take a look at your new base skin, awesome looking – if you followed all the steps you sure be happy with the result!

 (both you look even good in ultra low quality)

[- Now you know how to handle layers and it needs just a little of practice to get something like this -]

(work in progress, unfinished but allready made of carbon)

Hint: You can even set the output format in the game options to be a lossless TGA file format or a JPEG. It depends on how long it should last looking good (a little insiders jocke). ;)

However, those skins are only visible to the player and can not be viewed by other players ingame multiplayer. But anyway, this skin is now a great template for you and it looks good ingame without further modifications. You could simply apply two decals on it to at least have something to show to the other players. You can play them and maybe a cat near you is looking at your new plane skin. Note: Do not use too much white paint, the render engine of WT only looks half way ok when making some kind of grey paint. Different to that, dark stuff has brilliant detail.

(limited support for white: Details on the planes skin are not visible, almost plain white actually beeing a grey base template to not bloom the overall appearance)

On a fun level – playing War Thunder

While I ain't had that much time recently heres how I describe War Thunder.

Pretty unknown? No, not any more thanks to WT. 

This is a He 112 in the B-1 variant, YAY

The first thing I had to do is buy me 500 Golden Eagles, a good invest in a bird called He 112 B-1. I really needed to have that plane because it was my main airplane while playing Hereos in the Sky (a more or less unkown MMORPG). AFAIK that other game offered the He 112 B-2 type but who cares (seems I do). This He 112 has a charming look and it's the perfect workhorse for leveling up, e.g. climbing the WT tech tree and spending 3 Euros wasn't that hard with the result of a plane with fast turn speed IMO. Too sad that it's only a Tier 1 plane. It is one of my absolute favorites.

While in World of Warplanes in the beginning you can start with Ar 65 and where WT begins with He 51 as the starter plane, in WOWplanes you can choose between Fw 56, Ar 68 and the He 51. Both games WOWarplanes and WT offer a different variaty of planes, you ain't gonna miss a single plane but this only counts when playing both games at a time. Both have great GFX and accurate modeled aircraft. However the real IL-2 player will miss the realness-factor since WOWarplanes and WT are no simulators. Here is where WT gets a plus point since it offers cockpits and major airplane controls like gears, flaps, elevator trim and what so ever. However, theres a possibility to setup lots things and it seems that since WT is from one of the former IL-2 series developer studios that indicates a masterplan of IL-2-ilizing the whole world on a it's multi plattform game. The all over summary would lead to a casual experience but who knew that this would feel like a dream becoming virtual reality. This ain't no simulation = who cares, it might end up beeing one, no doubt! This time things like camera positions and stuff are really made for the moment and lead to a epic ingame experience. What I really call epic is the OculusRift like feeling when playing WT with a gamepad and pressing the target focus button. Yeah, it's quite easy to handle WT, that's why it's the smarter IL-2 but never tell that to a IL-2 fan, please. Let's just not forget that WOWplanes offers other interesting aspects and that I would play it from time to time again if my PC would not suffer from it. Let's say it has great GFX and my PC not ;) My favorite waste of time will be WT because I really like how they push the game to certain directions, digging their Dev blog and reading patch notes are the first proofs of addiction.

What fascinated me most at WT was the following:
- awesome atmosphere, breathtaking action with lots of control
- the combination of air, ground and sea (sea will be adeed I guess, e.g. the WT logo)
- a contemplative implementation of at least a first bunch of dream planes
- steady development, new planes, tanks and maps all the time
- stunning level of model details (the movie GFX option is great for screenshots)
- your own skins and you can even upload meshes (awesome)
- even my badly half-broken cooler handles the FPS with even good looking results

I would say this has future. I expect modern times jet aircraft to come sooner or later but first more of those historic airplanes, please ;) My first impression of WT is really really good. You will miss all the expert skill and hardware leveling stuff. It's very comfortable to play with not much to do (R & D parts of game are boring but anyway usefull). Usually I would say no way I want to select different engines, hull platings and stuff. But I guess I'm not the only 'virtual collector', means the gameplay is built around the research tech tree and this is a great thing since I can have best equipped stuff without all the struggle that it ment when I was playing other tech tree and equip games. It's a race for the highest tech tree plane and the Tier system is very easy to understand (unlike other games). The dev blog shows that there a five more german planes in development. And those are impressive like the Fw 200 or the He 219 'Uhu'. I wonder if they ever can have the amount of a game called Heroes in the Sky or the legendary IL-2 '46 game. A US military historian once said a funny thing about aircraft developings of WWII, especially in terms of germans: 'Instead of building one plane and making it better and better the germans built dozens of planes'. So the biggest question will be (while even Wikipedia ain't got a full list of aircraft yet, neither I). Will there ever be a entire summary of all aircraft of that time? ...I'm not sure ;)

My two cents, actually three. No, I forgot one, uhm
- theres a big difference when playing with mouse-aiming or with a gamepad. Players tend to call gamepad users n00bs but actually they have a way trickier gameplay to handle. Theres also a difference when playing on a console and on a PC and that difference is clearly visible and within gameplay when comparing PC and console version. This is a call for more respect on us gamepad users, you keyboard-mousers, you ;)
- This game could have more features but they might be added some how, some way, who knows.
- uhm? << to be solved

I will definitively create skins for War Thunder, stay tuned. I have to finish a He 162 for IL-2 first. Today I finished the first He 112 test skin, this means I will offer it here for download when the word 'test' can be replaced. :D

And let me finish this post with this kinda saying comment: 'There are too many airplanes that you wanna fly around with but only a few games to jump inside'. Those would be IL-2, Wowplanes, War Thunder and HitS. At least four things less to worry about. It's depends on you to seek for your favorite planes, WOWplanes has lot's of fancy ones, too and remember, WOWplanes has some WT doesn't has and so on. But it could be that WT will get to be the only game needed in future. Now that will never happen since IL-2 stands alone on it's throne and similar to that WT will take it's time to reach almost perfect state and while good things take time I will continue the game switching even WT will be the first instance from now on.

Status Report: My Modding Projects

Right now in real life: Working on the Punt Boat
(Season begins soon)
[Image Source: sxc.hu]

I've been busy recently. There are a lot of things I would have shared with you that I allready forgot. Never mind, let's face the important things at least. Real life goes first and I wouldn't be the first blogger to fail and this would be my number #Iduno construction zone. But I'm still in the game working on some Mods. In general, the things I like to play with are:

– Product Design (means concept drafting)
– Skinning
– Mesh-importing
– Map-editing
– Playing with config files

The Universal Cargo Box is one of it (I missed to do anything for it recently). The MagShield UVW-Textures is another. Meanwhile I do one or two Delta Glider EX and Arrow Freighter skin jobs. Seems Orbiter is my game of choice. But theres some Mod evaluation going on with Vehicle Sim. And I'm still creating a huge Scenario for IL-2 (but I wonder if it will be compatible with the newest Patches). For IL-2 I plan to create another dozen of Skins. And the BSG Diaspora game also awaits my long time ago promised Flight Skills Test map. I don't want to talk about other things since most things never get finished and some are too heavy to do anyway. Big fun could be the scenario creation within the Map Editor of WC Saga (placing cat's in space).

The idea to create my very own vehicle leads me to research good looking shapes since years and I'm now about the enter the dimension of cockpit design / texturings. Let's see, maybe I start from inside-out instead of drawing exterior concepts first. In the end, I'm trying to match polycount, once I have done the all the research and experimenting, aswell as finding the right plattform-game. But oh wait I was dreaming, just saying, the vehicle would be a space, air, deepsea and floating thing with feets, skids and wheels in one. ;)

Little by little I try to do my part. While I crashplay vehicles and things all the time, I always enjoy Open Source Mods and I wish I could do more to provide others with my little creations. This way I want to shout a BIG THANKS to all modders of vehicle Sims, be it by scripting awesome things or just adding mixed vegetation to the games. Every good Mod makes a game more immersive and theres a huge lack of that thing in every detail... when speaking of virtual games.

Oh and by the way, improving this Blogs look and feel is another thing written down on my task list. This Blog is a free time thing, now highly ranked at search engines but still almost without visitors or feedback. I don't have the time for playing games these days and my PC is a waste since I needed to change it's cooler. Anyhow there should be some releases coming up in the matter of sooner or later. And of course, I will write about the one or other topic on my mind as soon as they appear or whenever I have the muse and time for it.

WIP UNIVERSAL CARGO BOX

WIP WIP WIP UNDER CONSTRUCTION

Features:
– Note: the texture part is just for fun, no real labels so far but I provided "room" for them. Theres also space for a logo and the "funny wrong placed QR-Code". Also misses some serious scratches
– The usual OLED-Screen (will run a texture of "Linux on steroids"). The Xpad2 is gone (maybe a UMMU will hold it in his hands)
– The red LED-backgrounded 'drag-slide-to-open' mechanism
– Input / Output vents
– The retro control module (now with USB-Connector and XY-Hardware-Slot) + even with some lil' LED system status indicators
– Covered modules (8 possible): Coolant, Electronics, Refrigerator, Pressurizer, whatever (could also count as extra cargo space, e.g. just in case)
– Case study as eye-candy: Somebody forgot to put a module cover back again (might be part of a random box out of +200 planned cargos with little individualization gimmicks)
– The usefull 'LED-Sheeter' also likes to be part of it
– Has Handles, oh yeah baby – Fork lift bottom access
– Space Fork connectors (4 for now, maybe more will be added)
– LED light stripes on each side help locate the box
– The body of the box is made to be sturdy to avoid collision with the soft-parts (but so far it's only plastic)
– At the back: Coolant for integrated computation + old fashion coolant vent
– A little solar collector
– A Gesture Detection Sensor (for the Touchpad)
– Invisible but included: Ambient light sensor, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and duno what
– Other things might be added, too