The Graphics Workshop

[Catfish]

Originally posted by fairline
...I'm not sure of their suitability for this reduction technique, but it won't hurt to try:

Doesn't matter, Fairline. The idea of this thread was to provide resources for any type of Civ2 graphic, not just my photo-reductions for units. So fire away.

[Justinianum]

I'm eager to apply your tutorials. Thanks a lot!

[The ANZAC]

Yeah, this is really a boon to all gfx designers out there.

Too bad for the people who had been doing this the old way!

[Catfish]

The following are excerpts from a discussion that took place in the Modern Graphics Showcase thread. Some of it may be useful for unit-makers.

Originally posted by Catfish
Fairline's Leopard 2A3 sure has undergone some treatment in the last week or so.

I was experimenting with PSP 8 on the same unit recently. Using the Retouch Brushes, I created a few camouflage patterns. With the exception of the first tank, none of the patterns below are meant to represent any kind of reality - they're just tests.

All are 24-bit colour units for ToT.

Originally posted by fairline
Catfish: I'd say that first one is a pretty good rendition of Pablo's Spanish camo scheme. Now, tell me about these retouch brushes....

Originally posted by Catfish
What do you want to know, eh? PSP's Retouch Brushes get a mention in my photo reduction tutorial. Since, I'm assuming you've read it, I'm also assuming that you're aware of what they are. For the Leopard tanks, I used the Lighten/Darken brush and/or the Change To Target brush. Some of the tanks were colourised first.

The advantage of these Retouch Brushes lies in the fact that you can manually paint over the unit whilst retaining the underlying texture. Obviously, when using the Change To Target brush, the target will be determined by the selection in the Materials palette. To change the colour, make sure the Mode is set to Color. In the case of the Leopards, I used a brush Size of 1-6 pixels, Step 1, Density 100, Thickness 100, and experimented with Hardness and Opacity. It's a pity you can't combine the Color and Lightness Modes of this brush.

Originally posted by fairline
I 've not only read your tutorial but tried it myself (without any great success!) on some of those Warhammer 40000 miniature pics. Problem was I couldn't find the retouch brushes in PSP 7.04 until today I noticed the 'pointing finger' icon on the toolbar is in fact the retouch tool; it has a number of options but not the 'burn' feature you mentioned in the tutorial.

I hope your not finding my questions too much of a pain in the arse, but this stuff is a genuine education for me..... I suppose I ought to read the PSP manual really

Originally posted by Catfish
The Burn brush isn't that critical if you've got the Lighten/Darken brush. It's a shame that you haven't had much success. Not all of mine are successful, but the percentage rate is climbing as I learn new methods - the Retouch Brushes and split channel colour saturation filters (eg, Hue/Saturation/Lightness) can be critical in the final stages. I’m sorry if I didn’t include the location of the Retouch Brushes in the tut, but I ran out of room in the post. For those who don’t know: they can be found in the Tools toolbar.

As I've said before, many of the Warhammer miniatures suck for photo conversions - step 2 in the tutorial, Selection Criteria, is pretty important. The Warhammer miniatures, as a general rule, have too much detail and have disproportionately large heads and hands (although these can be fixed). Rips from Warcraft 3 are actually more suitable - it's basically the same suite of creatures, anyway.

One thing about PSP version 7 (if my memory serves me correctly) is that it doesn't have scripting - believe me, this makes a difference. I use the 2 scripts from the photo reduction tutorial and the selection script from the camo tutorial. These scripts save me a hell of a lot of time.

I have the Try & Buy version and so do not have the manual. It does have help files. Plus there are tutorials to be found on the Internet. Here's a good site, for example.

[curtsibling]

Catfish:

You are a credit to the community!

[Catfish]

Thanks for the compliment, Curt, but I believe my contributions to Civ2 to be miniscule when compared with most people around here. I never really considered myself part of the Civ2 community - just a passing vagrant - although I've ended up contributing more than I imagined.

[curtsibling]

Enough of that modesty!

[Heresson]

This thread looks nice

[Catfish]

I was working on some non-Civ2 related graphics the other day and remembered the discussion with Fairline about camouflage effects on units using PSP's Retouch Brushes.

Rather than applying specific effects locally in this manner, I decided that it is easier to apply an effect to an entire layer. You can then paint normally within the new layer/s via the Paintbrush and Airbrush tools. Using various Blend modes you can retain the texture of the original unit.

1. Load up your image in PSP. Always work in 24-bit colour.
2. Run the unit selection script (see the Camo tutorial). Deselect any further regions that you don't want to paint.
3. You may even want to greyscale the image at this stage and then restore the colour depth to 24-bit.
4. Right-click the Layer palette and create a New Raster Layer. In the Blend mode box, select Multiply (dark), Screen (light) or Overlay (combo) - your choice. You can modify opacity levels later using the slide bar in the Layer palette. This will be your painting canvas. In fact you could create multiple layers with different Blend modes for a single unit. You can also work on the original layer. Simply switch back and forth between layers.
5. Paint away with your Paint Brush and Airbrush tools, or the Retouch brushes for that matter.
6. When you're done, go to the Layers menu -> Merge -> Merge All (Flatten). If you wish to retain the layers for later use, instead of flattening the image, hit Ctrl-Shift+C (Copy Merged) and paste into another file.

I suppose some of you are going to want pics, so here are a few Nemo and Fairline (the Kings of Mechanised Military) units I just finished painting. All the original units were plain silver or grey with no camouflage patterns. Used multiple layers for most of the units. The only brushes used were Paint Brush, Airbrush and Lighten/Darken. Oh, and this time all the paint jobs are based on reality.



Edit: Some screenshots of some more units I've been working on for one of my scenarios. I used up to 5 layers for some to create weathering effects. Also been using the Soft Light blend mode. (Hmmph. IE always displays png files considerably darker than my graphics editor.)


Credits: Fairline – Challenger 2, Chieftain, Eurofighter, M113, M1A2, M2, Su-24, Su-37, T-72, T-80 and T-90. Balou – Infantry. Jimmywax – MLRS.

[fairline]

Fantastic Catfish

This is very bizarre, but I posted a modified King Tiger about 10 minutes ago in the WW2 thread, using you texturing idea

[Catfish]

Yeah, I know. I just made comment on it a few minutes ago.

[Caesar the Glutton]

Thanks for all the helpful info everyone!

[fairline]

Catfish: I've just seen the screenshots you added of the modern vehicles - they are simply fantastic. I'm particularly interested in the Gulf War stuff. Would you care to share a little more on the weathering technique?

[curtsibling]

Catfish, those are some stunning modern and WW2 units!

I wonder if I could use that nice mottled Me262?

Units of that quality looking corking in ToT.

[Catfish]

Originally posted by fairline
Would you care to share a little more on the weathering technique?

I simply painted the vehicles using multiple blend layers, as described above. I suppose the "weathering" technique is analogous to dry brushing used in real painting.

In colouring the T-72 (see previous post), for example, I laid down a base tan colour using the Airbrush tool in a Multiply blend layer. Colours were sampled from the photo of an Iraqi T-72 model (see below, reduced to 50% of original size) – using Ctrl + Right or Left Click – and then adjusted in the Materials palette. I couldn't find any decent photos of Iraqi T-72s in desert camouflage – most were of charred wrecks from the first Gulf War. In this case, I just wanted a generic Middle-Eastern T-72.



As a general rule, I leave the opacity of each layer at 100%, adjusting the opacity of individual brushes as required. Using Airbrush in an Overlay layer, I painted around the base of the turret, between plates, around hatches, smoke grenade launchers, fuel tanks, etc, with shades of rust. I then highlighted these features in Soft Light and/or Screen layer/s using shades of tan.

Adjustments are made using the Lighten/Darken brush, particularly in the base layer. More than one layer of the same type is not unusual.

Finally, if you plan to "reskin" the unit at a later date, I'd recommend saving it in PSP's proprietary format, which stores layers and selections. I've attached the T-72 image (saved using PSP 8.10) to illustrate my point. The layers have been renamed. The blend layers can easily be cleared using the Eraser tool.

Originally posted by curtsibling
I wonder if I could use that nice mottled Me262?

No problem.