Slitherine

glaude1955 wrote: ↑Sun Aug 23, 2020 1:43 pm Hello PHCAS,

Thanks for the crews. It's more enjoyable to play with crews than with naked cannons.

For converting gray units to camo units, it would be best if you make available the camo files that were used initially.
Making a mask is not difficult but finding the same pattern is more difficult

Best regards

Yves

Hi Yves,

It seems I found the camo skin. I am in contact with Bruno now. We are doing some tests.

Thanks

Hello Phcas,

Okay, if you need more additional or complementary help, don't hesitate.

Best regards

Yves

Thanks to Wurschtmaxe

Hello Phcas & AKRebel.
Phcas gave me Panzer IIIs to camouflage. Here is an overview of the work. Criticism and advice are welcome.
France takes the lead .
Greetings from France.
Bruno.

Hello Bruno:

I think you should give to the base icon more contrast and a little less brightness... If the base icon is too bright and it has low contrast, the skin file will obliterate the details of the base icon, giving as a result the look of a "flat" and undetailed model.

guille1434 wrote: ↑Mon Aug 24, 2020 8:05 pm Hello Bruno:

I think you should give to the base icon more contrast and a little less brightness... If the base icon is too bright and it has low contrast, the skin file will obliterate the details of the base icon, giving as a result the look of a "flat" and undetailed model.

Hello Guille.
As always, you are the best of us for skins. Your advice is right. I haven't thought about it. I applied camouflage on the models Phcas gave me. I had to create the thumbnail myself. What values of contrast and brightness did you use? And we are talking about the model (Panzer III N) before applying the skin.
Greetings from France and muchas gracias amigo.
Bruno

Hello Guille.
if you look at what Phcas wants on page 116 of this topic, I think I'm close to his request. Maybe the colours should be a little bit darker.
Bruno

Hola mi amigo Bruno:

I use Paint.Net software for editing graphic archives for PzCorps, the options I mention in my previous posts are the ones you can see in the image attached here. I think that the problem is that If you use the new Pz III variants icons that phcas uploaded here in form of previews (I think were made by AK Rebel), they look Ok in the basic, plain, panzer-grey color scheme, but if you use them as base icon to apply on them any camo skin (specially dark ones), those colors obscure (in my opinion) the base icon details. It´s a question of trying several combinations of different graduations of brightness/darkness and contrats between base icon and skin file.

About the colors of German camouflage the problem that in the units we already have in camo most of the time the wheel section is much to dark so all details of the wheels are gone. To improve that and also update the units with the new grey tank graphics from AKRebel as basic graphics, we need a level of brightness that save the wheel details on the graphics.

Help Needed - Command Tanks

Hi everybody. We have more and more graphics of Command (Befehl) tanks but not realy a good role for them in the game. At the moment this units are nopurchase in the game and show up in small numbers in some scenarios. How does the forum look to this units? Do you want them in the purchase screen and what must the role be than? Please tell us.

Example: Command units in the purchase list. Max strength 5. Spotting 2. 50% the cost of the normal panzer. Reconmove.

Hello.
Some explanations for DCS. Let's take an example: Panzer IVF from Guille BaseIconsetMasks. On picture 1, you can see that the tracks are very dark. So, if you apply the skin, the tracks train will not come out and will be even darker. So: adjustment and level ...
2nd picture: the central adjustment is 1.00 as indicated by the red arrow.
3rd picture: I have set the centre to 0.60. Maybe it's too light but the tracks are clearly visible. 0.40 0.45 0.50 are values to try.
Message for Guille: can you give me the download link if you have the latest version of your Icons&Masks database.
Greetings.
Bruno

nono hard et heavy wrote: ↑Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:58 am Hello.
Some explanations for DCS. Let's take an example: Panzer IVF from Guille BaseIconsetMasks. On picture 1, you can see that the tracks are very dark. So, if you apply the skin, the tracks train will not come out and will be even darker. So: adjustment and level ...
2nd picture: the central adjustment is 1.00 as indicated by the red arrow.
3rd picture: I have set the centre to 0.60. Maybe it's too light but the tracks are clearly visible. 0.40 0.45 0.50 are values to try.
Message for Guille: can you give me the download link if you have the latest version of your Icons&Masks database.
Greetings.
Bruno

In the AKRebel Panzer-III grey serie the tracks/wheels are good visible and will also be that in the camo version.

What I did in the past is to take 2 versions of the graphic, normal and light. Than remake the normal unit by place the light tracks over it.

phcas wrote: ↑Tue Aug 25, 2020 11:48 am

nono hard et heavy wrote: ↑Tue Aug 25, 2020 10:58 am Hello.
Some explanations for DCS. Let's take an example: Panzer IVF from Guille BaseIconsetMasks. On picture 1, you can see that the tracks are very dark. So, if you apply the skin, the tracks train will not come out and will be even darker. So: adjustment and level ...
2nd picture: the central adjustment is 1.00 as indicated by the red arrow.
3rd picture: I have set the centre to 0.60. Maybe it's too light but the tracks are clearly visible. 0.40 0.45 0.50 are values to try.
Message for Guille: can you give me the download link if you have the latest version of your Icons&Masks database.
Greetings.
Bruno

In the AKRebel Panzer-III grey serie the tracks/wheels are good visible and will also be that in the camo version.

What I did in the past is to take 2 versions of the graphic, normal and light. Than remake the normal unit by place the light tracks over it.

Yes, I agree.
May be it's too much hard for me
I'm not pro likes Guille. I tried many solutions, many options to make better skins.

nono hard et heavy wrote: ↑Tue Aug 25, 2020 12:30 pm May be it's too much hard for me
I'm not pro likes Guille. I tried many solutions, many options to make better skins.

No you are doing fine. We also can go for this solution, it only is more work.

Hello all,

You can also use DCS just for the track part.
The color pink (255-0-220) is used to modify the brightness.
At the bottom left of DCS, there is a place titled "Use secondary color (Tracks etc)"

Best regards

Yves

Of course, all my advice about more/less brightness and contrast apply when the base icon is more or less "evenly" colored (i.e. when all its parts do not present a great difference in darkness).

Having said this, one detail I did not like about vanilla game tank icons is that in general they lower parts (tracks, wheels, etc...) are very dark compared to the upper parts. In order to correct this, the only way is to re-make the lower part of the icon in a more detailed and lighter way, to make the whole more evenly toned. This problem, in my opinion, cannot be fixed by darkening or lightening the whole icon.

In any case, you can apply the "more lightness" function just to the tracks of the tank figure by selecting just this part of the graphic and leaving the rest of the icon with its original darkness/lightness value. There is no need to make two icons (one dark and anoherf one lighter) and then cuttin and pasting the different parts. This, when considering the number of icons to modify, makes the whole task an enormous work.

As an example, here is a reworked version of the Pz IVF-2 icon.

Another useful tip:

When I am going to use the same camo skin file on several different base icons, I find useful to prepare a "gradient" od different files from the same basic skin file, making them gradually lighter/darker from the basic skin. This is because some base icons looks better than others when applied slightly darker/lighter variations of ths same camo skin. So, it is a question of trial and error to find the best looking icon.