[WIP] De Havilland Mosquito

Interesting notes from https://uboat.net/allies/aircraft/mosquito.htm :

"From November 1943 on wards the Mosquito was also used to attack U-boats shortly after, or just before they entered a port. Warning of these opportunities was provided by code breakers. At that moment the U-boats travelled on the surface, and therefore were vulnerable to rockets or the 57mm shells of the [airplane]".

8 U-boats were lost to Mosquito aircraft (solely or with help).

I've found a nice Mosquito airplane in GWX 3.0, made by Sergbuto. I adapted it to my mod.

Work already done by me :

- edge-splitted the different 3D meshes for better visual rendering.
- added some dirt on the texture near the engines.
- added a 3D model of exhaust pipes.
- made the propellers destroyable.
- improved the collision spheres placement
- added nodes for rockets
- changed the bombs' nodes
- changed the eqp.
- changed the ammo storage with vanilla shells
- added a realistic icon for nav map

Reworking the textures. The main problem is that there isn't a smooth limit between blue and green areas anymore ...

Do you mean that the tiles of the camo pattern are no longer seamless?

gap72 a écrit:Do you mean that the tiles of the camo pattern are no longer seamless?

No, I mean :
1. the borders between green and blue look pixelised now (red arrows)

... but :
2. you're right about the tiles which don't look similar now between green and blue areas (yellow arrows for tiles in blue area)

Okay, the pixelated textures might dependant on a bunch of factors, including texture size, texture format and compression format, and material settings. What did you change recently?

As for the mismatch of camo patterns, matching them is a matter of patience. Are you planning to do that?

On a side note: SH5 has the model of a Mosquito (reportedly a MkXVII, though I didn't check how accurate is that model for the said variant).  Here is a render of it on GR2 Editor:



If you think they can be of any use to you, I can export its meshes and send them your way

gap72 a écrit:Okay, the pixelated textures might dependant on a bunch of factors, including texture size, texture format and compression format, and material settings. What did you change recently?

You can compare the right wing (with my color tweaks) and the left wing which has an original texture, but I think you already understood that. To change the colors, here is how I proceed :
- I put all the blue areas in another layer
- I do the same thing for the green areas
- Then I set the saturation to 0 for both new layers
- Now, I put again some color with "color balance" and then I correct the result with small adjustments about saturation, luminosity and tint.
- Finally, I merge all the layers together.

I can send you the current .dat file with original textures, and also the textures I changed if you want to have a look and try to do something better than me. ^^

gap72 a écrit:As for the mismatch of camo patterns, matching them is a matter of patience. Are you planning to do that?

If you mean that both textures applied respectively on the right and the left side of the central part of the plane (fuselage) are not well joined together at the top, then yes, I will probably try to correct this, and I know this requires patience.  

gap72 a écrit:On a side note: SH5 has the model of a Mosquito (reportedly a MkXVII, though I didn't check how accurate is that model for the said variant).  Here is a render of it on GR2 Editor:
If you think they can be of any use to you, I can export its meshes and send them your way

Thank you for this proposition, but I think the model made by Sergbuto, although not perfect, is good enough for SH3 after some small corrections.

Kendras a écrit:You can compare the right wing (with my color tweaks) and the left wing which has an original texture, but I think you already understood that. To change the colors, here is how I proceed :
- I put all the blue areas in another layer
- I do the same thing for the green areas
- Then I set the saturation to 0 for both new layers
- Now, I put again some color with "color balance" and then I correct the result with small adjustments about saturation, luminosity and tint.

Oaky, in other words, the Mosquito texture looks pixelated because you redrew it, and you didn't apply any smoothing to the new texture. Is that correct?

Kendras a écrit:I can send you the current .dat file with original textures, and also the textures I changed if you want to have a look and try to do something better than me. ^^

Okay, if the problem is smoothing and blending the two layers, I can do that but... (see below)

Kendras a écrit:If you mean that both textures applied respectively on the right and the left side of the central part of the plane (fuselage) are not well joined together at the top, then yes, I will probably try to correct this, and I know this requires patience. Wink

...if you plan to do that, maybe it is better if you finish with your tedious texture-matching work before you send me the two layers in their final layout

Kendras a écrit:Thank you for this proposition, but I think the model made by Sergbuto, although not perfect, is good enough for SH3 after some small corrections.

Okay, no problem

Thank you very much. IIRC, you don't have Paint.net ? So I have to send you all layers in separate files ?

You are right: better sending the layers saved separately in a lossless format as tga or png

P.S: png would be perfect because it supports transparency without need of an additional opacity (alpha) layer

gap72 a écrit:You are right: better sending the layers saved separately in a lossless format as tga or png

P.S: png would be perfect because it supports transparency without need of an additional opacity (alpha) layer

Roger that !

My suggestion is to use three layers: a light blue background, on top of it a green camo layer and, on top of them all, a layer with dirt and wing / fuselage detail. The latter doesn't necessarily need to be transparent: you can paint the grey-shaded detail on a white background, and then multiply the content of the two lower layers with its content.

So, here is the last version, with which I'm just about satisfied.

Original colors :



New colors :

I've redone the canopy from scratch, because it was very messy :