Ive tried to make skins for some times and everytime i kinda stopped midway because i cant figure out which part is which. lately ive seen some high quality template for lower tier props from MacksRAF that colours each side of the plane and each parts differently, liked it and I can’t seem to find other template maker that does this for higher tier plane. Am i just screwed or is there anything I can do differently here
Yes I noticed this about his template too, and find it very helpful.
In general, those template creators do a tremendeous job and providing us with their templates is exceptionally generous I find, as a good template is not only a big part of a good skin, but also probably 95% of the whole work of a skin as I know from personal experience, so a big Thank you to all template authors!!!
As to finding parts, where a template is not providing that additional level of information (theres various different “styles” out there…), simply colour-code or use numbers to identify parts of the texture on the model. Here an example:
It’s a bit of additional work, but very much worth every minute you put into it!
I have to say that sometimes skins are applied very strangely onto the models, with completely unneccessary distribution of parts. The example shown above is of the recent Hornets, where the aerial housing on the fins are separate and distributed over the texture file. I still don’t understand why the modeller has chosen to do so, because it really makes skinning very difficult, but apparently has no advantage or reason at all. I think for my Hornet skins with their Squadron artwork, more than half of the time was spent for only those arial housings, which could easily have been part of the fin texture itself…
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Could this be fixed by WT in-house graphic designer staff to at least make a more skinner-friendly template?