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Graphics Tips and Tricks

Discussion of aircraft textures and liveries

Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby 439Tiger » Sun Jun 26, 2011 4:42 pm

Image
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby 439Tiger » Sun Jun 26, 2011 10:18 pm

Specializing in Canadian built aircraft and aircraft flown by the RCAF

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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby MOJO » Mon Jun 27, 2011 9:32 pm

Yep, It was a request from someone a while ago, I can't remember who, and I can't be bothered to search for who it was :wink:


That was me Brett :D
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby gooneybird » Tue Jun 28, 2011 5:03 pm

Ok, that's good :D

I thought for a moment It may have been one of these people who join the forum and post a couple of topics demanding this and that aircraft, livery, airport etc. then disappear when they don't get it In ten minutes :shock:

It's now available from the database :D
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby gooneybird » Tue Jun 28, 2011 9:47 pm

Using Inkscape to create airline titles when no suitable fonts are available.


load your image into Inkscape and if necessary rotate it until it is level horizontally.
Place a guide at the top and bottom.

Image

A lot of these titles can be done using simple shapes, this what we will be doing here.

Turn on snapping then using the rectangle create a rectangle over the letter "I", this can be duplicated and used for the first part of the letter "R"

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Create another rectangle and with the rotate/skew tool skew it until it matches one side of the "A"

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Keep the skewed rectangle selected and select "Object to Path"

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With the "Edit Paths by Nodes" tool select the two nodes on the side that needs to be moved and holding the "CTRL" key move them until they are in the correct position (The "CTRL" key constrains the selected object to horizontal or vertical movement)

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Repeat the above steps for the other side of the "A"

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Create another rectangle for the horizontal bar of the "A"

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Duplicate that twice and use for the top and middle bars of the "R"


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Now things get a bit more difficult.

With the bezier tool draw around the remaining outline of the "R", don't worry about the curves just place a node on the high and low points.

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Select the "Edit Paths by Nodes" tool and select the nodes that need to be curved (Holding the "Shift" key will enable you to make multiple selections)

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With the nodes selected click the "Make selected nodes smooth" icon on the tool bar, you should then have something like this:

Image


Zoom in and make any adjustments necessary to match the image.

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The next thing is to ensure all objects are converted to paths, then select all and select "Union" this will merge everything into one object.

Image

The only thing left to do is to change it to the required colour and stick it on your plane :wink:

Image
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby 439Tiger » Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:15 pm

Warning, spoiler alert :D

Ok so now I'm experimenting with Inkscape a bit but the differences in terminology between it and Gimp are throwing me off... :?

This is what I want to reproduce, sorry for the quality, I had to zoom a lot:

Image

So far I'm here, my font is a little off, but I'll fix it later:

Image

I did get to use the letter spacing and line distance features :D

What I want to do is to create the shadow and also the outline on the text. Both of which are a pain to do with Gimp.

I was also trying to cut and paste like in Gimp so that I'll be able to place it where I want on the livery, but how do you merge text into an image??? In Gimp, you merge visible layers...
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby Zbyszek » Wed Jun 29, 2011 6:49 pm

Both of which are a pain to do with Gimp


Pain?

One minute (as you can see font is diffrent and the shadow should be moved, but it isn't hard to do):

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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby 439Tiger » Wed Jun 29, 2011 7:24 pm

Ok then, I still haven't figured it out yet... :oops:

But I still want to learn Inkscape :wink:
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby gooneybird » Wed Jun 29, 2011 8:14 pm

Ok, I'll see if I can explain this without pictures ( let me know if you get lost and I'll draw some nice little pictures). :wink:

With your text fill colour selected you can then select a colour for the stroke (this gives you the outline) by holding "Shift" while selecting from the palette or using the colour picker, or of course you can also do this, and alter the stroke size, from the "fill and stroke" tool box.

When you have the fill and stroke to your liking click right on the text and select "duplicate" (this creates a copy directly on top of the original).
Now change the fill and stroke colour of the duplicate to black.
With the "Select tool" (F1), select the black duplicate, and click on the "lower selection to bottom" icon (or press END).
The black text will now be under the coloured text, you can now select the top text and reposition it so the black bottom layer acts as the shadow. After you have them in the correct position select both (drag a box around them with the "Select tool") and group together (CTRL+G). Grouping them together means you can move, copy, resize etc. without any part getting out of place.

Re. merging layers:
Forget about it :wink: just keep it on it's own layer.
In Inkscape when you export to a bitmap (always export as bitmap, NEVER save as png) it will only save the visible layers.
You've worked with layers in Gimp so that wont be a problem for you :wink:

You can copy and paste as normal, but I tend to create the extra bits an pieces off to one side then drag them into place and resize if necessary.
This is completely different to Gimp, where I used hate the fact that moving something moved everything on that layer, In Inkscape you can just move anything selected without affecting the rest of the layer.

Another tip, If you have 2 or more objects stacked on top of each other and want to select a lower one hold the "ALT" key while selecting and it will cycle through each object.
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby 439Tiger » Wed Jun 29, 2011 9:34 pm

Well the shadow effect works :D

Image

Now is there a trick to doing outlines??? I tried scaling, but it affects the letter spacing as well :?
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby gooneybird » Wed Jun 29, 2011 10:48 pm

To keep the same proportions between fill and stroke when scaling objects made sure you have the left hand "Affect" button pressed (top right of the screen - with tool tip "When scaling objects, scale the stroke width by the same proportion")

One thing to remember about applying a stroke to an object is that the "outer edge of the object is the centre of the stroke" For instance if you apply a 10 pixel wide stroke to a circle it will be 5 pixels outside and 5 pixels inside the outer edge.

Sometimes It's better to have several copies of the object you are working on and try different settings with each until you are happy with it.
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby 439Tiger » Thu Jun 30, 2011 4:34 am

Yes, I thought so...I have two versions of the logo that I'll be playing with...I can't say that I won't go back to Gimp to finish the livery though :wink:
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby gooneybird » Sat Jul 02, 2011 12:12 pm

That's What I did, kept going back to Gimp or Photoshop until I was happy with Inkscape :lol:

Here's a more expanded version of the previous rivet tip using Inkscape.

Image

Although most aircraft are covered in rivets you cannot see them unless you are within a few feet of them, also most modern aircraft use flush rivets so this method is not really suitable for them.
My personal rule is "If you cannot see it on a screen sized photo then do not put it on the livery".
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby Boeing » Thu Jul 07, 2011 1:46 pm

Hi I know this sounds stupid but how do you add text without seeing the text box in Gimp, do you use the text box anyway?
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Re: Graphics Tips and Tricks

Postby MOJO » Tue Jul 26, 2011 8:42 am

Hey Brett,

How do you go about adding weathering to your textures?
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