back to basics

[smilo]

I am wondering how painters come up with those fantastic panel backgrounds.
I have several 2D panels with inactive switches, lights, levers and holes for gauges, etc.
I would like to cover them up and have a blank slate for gauge placement.

so, just how do you do the blending and shading?
is there a tutorial somewhere?

thanks in advance

 

[Moparmike]

I think most of it is just artistic freehand work, at least it is for me. Like painting outer textures, I'm sure everyone has a different technique.

Search around at flightsim or avsim for Dai Griffiths gaupaint.zip. This is a tutorial on painting/shading gauge bitmaps but the same principles apply to complete panel backgrounds too...just on a larger scale.
Maybe that'll give you a few ideas.

 

[MaddogK]

I wouldn't say 'most of it's freehand' but everyones got their own technique for editing bitmaps. I primarily use MS paint but keep at least 1 of every edit so I can fall back to previous edit if I screw up. Paint is easy to work with on single layers and lends itself nicely to edit layers exported from photoshop. With photoshops layers you can use paint to create/edit a certain section, then import it into a photoshop document as it's own layer and move it, rebalance the colors, shrink/expand it, recolor, etc until it's just right on your panel. Make a backup then 'flatten' the image and export, fire up FS to see how it looks. I've taken pics from magazines, online manuals, etc and turned them into working panels. I'm not yet good enough with 'photo-realistic' panels but I dont care, I'm not into the eye candy yet, thats why I don't release my stuff.