Dwight's Camo Sprayshop

[nikivdd]

The sprayshop is still the best thing that happened to the Panzer Corps modders alongside all the lovely threads with custom made units.

Even compared to the user-made campaigns? I hope not.

- BNC

This is not a campaign thread, so it would be utterly ridiculous to compare this thread with user-made campaigns.

[guille1434]

Halibutt: Thanks for sharing that fabulous camo skin file! Cheers!

[Halibutt]

Ok, updated my Polish camo collection, will work on it a little more. So far it includes the following four schemes:

1. Standard tank 1936-1939 camo
2. "Japanese" style camo used between 1931 and 1936
3. "factory green" - the colour some of the tanks were painted with before leaving the factory
4. plain green (or more properly brownish green) - some vehicles, notably trucks, ambulances and so on, were left with this colour and didn't have any proper camo pattern applied.

Here's the files.

Polish Japanese-style 1931-1936.png (24.94 KiB) Viewed 7869 times

factory green.png (1.25 KiB) Viewed 7869 times

plain green.png (1.25 KiB) Viewed 7869 times

[Halibutt]

Now the thumbnails.

Polish Japanese-style 1931-1936_Thumb.png (7.01 KiB) Viewed 7869 times

plain green_Thumb.png (228 Bytes) Viewed 7869 times

factory green_Thumb.png (229 Bytes) Viewed 7869 times

[guille1434]

And then, thanks again for your excellent work, giving all us more to learn about Poland forces in WW!!!

[Halibutt]

And then, thanks again for your excellent work, giving all us more to learn about Poland forces in WW!!!

Let's add 7TP to the list then. It's vanilla icon with non-historical insignia removed.

7TP tank

Polish_7TP.png (27.86 KiB) Viewed 7850 times

mask

Polish_7TP_Mask.png (4 KiB) Viewed 7850 times

[BiteNibbleChomp]

The sprayshop is still the best thing that happened to the Panzer Corps modders alongside all the lovely threads with custom made units.

Even compared to the user-made campaigns? I hope not.

- BNC

This is not a campaign thread, so it would be utterly ridiculous to compare this thread with user-made campaigns.

Fair comment.

And then, thanks again for your excellent work, giving all us more to learn about Poland forces in WW!!!

Hang on, what is 'World War Exclamation Mark Exclamation Mark' anyway?

- BNC

[Halibutt]

Hang on, what is 'World War Exclamation Mark Exclamation Mark' anyway?

- BNC

No idea, I'm too much into WW! at the moment. Here's the FT-17. The icon is by Bebro, I merely prepared a mask for it

FT-17

FT-17-bebro.png (19.51 KiB) Viewed 7839 times

FT-17 mask

FT-17-bebro_Mask.png (1.38 KiB) Viewed 7839 times

[BiteNibbleChomp]

Hang on, what is 'World War Exclamation Mark Exclamation Mark' anyway?

- BNC

No idea, I'm too much into WW! at the moment. Here's the FT-17. The icon is by Bebro, I merely prepared a mask for it

GODDAMNIT!!!!! Why doesn't this make any sense?

************************

Also, I have already got that exact icon, from a few months ago. It is set to appear first in the v1.2 Patch, but won't be used until GC 17 or 18.

- BNC

[Halibutt]

Guys, I need some help with my next icon. I made a completely new TKS. It's from a 3d model available through SketchUp. I made it somewhat larger than the vanilla TKS - it's still smaller than medium tanks, but large enough to be visible. However, for some reason the Camo Sprayshop doesn't work too good with it: some colours are applied just fine, but others do not show up as expected. This is especially visible in my latest "Polish 1936-1939 camo": both green and brown look as almost the same colour, like olive drab, or something similar. Any ideas?

TKS

TKS - new - halibutt.png (24.12 KiB) Viewed 7783 times

mask

TKS - new - halibutt_Mask.png (4.56 KiB) Viewed 7783 times

[Akkula]

Guys, I need some help with my next icon. I made a completely new TKS. It's from a 3d model available through SketchUp. I made it somewhat larger than the vanilla TKS - it's still smaller than medium tanks, but large enough to be visible. However, for some reason the Camo Sprayshop doesn't work too good with it: some colours are applied just fine, but others do not show up as expected. This is especially visible in my latest "Polish 1936-1939 camo": both green and brown look as almost the same colour, like olive drab, or something similar. Any ideas?

TKS - new - halibutt.png

TKS - new - halibutt_Mask.png

I think you could try to darker the color your vanilla model just a litte. Maybe I wil try later, right now I am working 100% of this day on my Soviet Campaign.

[guille1434]

Another tip that may be useful: I know that the DCS program can't apply camo skins well over "colored" (I.e. in any other color than grey). I think you should convert you icon to greyscale colors and then use it as a base icon for the DCS software.

[Halibutt]

Another tip that may be useful: I know that the DCS program can't apply camo skins well over "colored" (I.e. in any other color than grey). I think you should convert you icon to greyscale colors and then use it as a base icon for the DCS software.

It's better, but the colours are still to light. I'm out of ideas...

TKS - camo.png (20 KiB) Viewed 7692 times

[ThvN]

Hi Halibutt, I have never worked with DCS ( ) before, but guille's hint gave me an idea to test for you. But first a little thing about your TKS icon: it seems the lighting on the TKS is the wrong way around, the shadows should fall to the left. You'll have to mirror the icon otherwise it will seem 'off' when you put it between other units.

OK, what I did was take your original icon, and following guille's advice I first desaturated it. That was easy, 2 clicks in Photoshop. This will prevent colorized parts messing up the next two steps.

Then, I got the impression that your icon is very bright (whitish almost), so I darkened it a lot but upped the contrast a bit (step 2). This was done mostly by eye, but I have some values to compare to.

Third, I tried to color this darkened icon a bit to make it look more like the standard PzC colors for the Polish tanks. This is done by comparing RGB values and estimating/guessing how much adjustment is necessary. In the end I had to darken it by a few % again to better match the colors. This adjusting is very fiddly and some icons never really get the right look, so it is not exactly my favourite bit, but I did it anyway because I am curious if the DCS will give you different results for the darkened and the colored icon. Otherwise it might stand out too much, so now you can try all options and see what works best.

[guille1434]

Thvn approach to solve the problem is very similar to what I usually do to transform internet pictures into more or less "vanilla" looking icons... First, convert to grayscale, then to play with bright and contrast to try to find the correct grey base color (I always tent to make base icons a bit on the light side, because after the DCS software applies a skin, it turns out darker. Besides, in my skins folder I have several "shades" of each of the camo skins I normally use, because not always applying the same skin gives consistent results. Some icons look better with a lighter camo skin, and other with a slightly darker variation of the same. I make the camo "shades" in -15% brightness steps...

[Halibutt]

Thanks guys As to shadows, if only I was skilled enough to play with cameras and light sources in 3ds Max/Blender/SketchUp... I know it's doable, but I never got to do it right...


Anyway, I tried a similar approach in my next icon, the PZL.38 Wilk heavy fighter (drop me a line should you need the 3D model, I can mail it to you). I desaturated everything but the windows/canopy so that it stays blue. It seems the approach actually works.

PZL38_wilk_grayscale2_Mask.png (6.18 KiB) Viewed 7662 times

PZL38_wilk_grayscale2.png (25.14 KiB) Viewed 7662 times

And a proof it works in Camo Sprayshop - a Polish plane in Soviet camo

PZL38_Wilk_proof.png (20.75 KiB) Viewed 7662 times

[Halibutt]

BTW, I completely reworked the Japanese-style camo for Poland I posted earlier. Please find both the files and the svg template attached.
Cheers

japanese camo.zip

(36.21 KiB) Downloaded 245 times

Polish Japanese-style 1931-1936.png (53.37 KiB) Viewed 7658 times

Polish Japanese-style 1931-1936_Thumb.png (8.82 KiB) Viewed 7658 times

[Halibutt]

My wz. 29 armoured car ready for makeup

wz. 29 - icon

wz29_v2.png (15.08 KiB) Viewed 7606 times

[Akkula]

Pretty nice guy, can´t wait to see it in action in some mod!

[Halibutt]

And another fun unit: the Polski Fiat 508 "Łazik" staff car, an excellent all-terrain vehicle mass-produced in Poland (but I guess it could be used for other armies as well). Detailed description and some sample skins are available in my thread.

Polski Fiat 508

Fiat_508_v2_halibutt.png (12.9 KiB) Viewed 7510 times

Fiat_508_v2_halibutt_Mask.png (1.51 KiB) Viewed 7510 times