Weathering a reskin?

[jeff1959]

I know there are locomotives for reskinng that have one or more layers of weathering. I would like the reskin I am doing of Dave Snow's SD-70 to not look like it's straight out of the paint shop. My efforts at weathering tend to look like I let a three year old loose in the program.

Does anyone have a weathering layer for this loco? Or how do people do weathering to look so real?

 

[griffinjim]

I've never really weathered well, if you're using Paint.NET you can use a second layer and set it to "Multiply", that MIGHT do the trick but I'm not sure.

 

[pware]

My one and only reskinning & weathering project has been for a steam loco which started out jet black with red trim lines - straight out of the paint shop. I replaced the black with a dirty grey without the red trim. I then created several different layers of faint (reddish, diffused) rust and several separate layers ranging from a dirty black to a dirty faded red for other components such as the front coupler bar, piston heads, firebox, etc - all with multiple rust layers. A total 20 layers all up. The coal tender received a similar treatment with some panels (as optional layers) painted to look like more recent repair work, etc.

I then used different combinations of those layers to create different weathering variations of the loco and tenders.

My graphics program was GIMP. It was a lot of work but I am constantly amazed at how good (my biased opinion) they look in TRS19 and TRS22.

 

[davesnow]

Weathering can be very difficult to make it look right. There are so many places that get REALLY weathered (edges of stuff like doors, bend points) and other places that don't weather much. It's almost a necessity to use a layer or two, and then use weathered metal plus use the blending options to make it look real.

It's so hard to make it look real, I usually don't bother with trying to weather locomotives.

 

[jeff1959]

Thanks for the advice. I hate how auto-correct on my phone changed the title from "Reskin"

 

[HiBaller]

Jeff. If you go back and advance edit your first post, you can change the title to what you want it to read.

Bill

 

[Paulsw2]

I got my initial view about weathering from a post by Jim Ward, aka Sniper297, way back when. Unfortunately, the useless search engine on these forums is unable to identify the original posting, but it goes as follows:

PAINTING GUIDE by Jim Ward (Sniper297)

The purpose of this guide is to help you get comfortable weathering locomotives, rollingstock, and other objects. It is assumed that you have a basic understanding on how to use your paint program in creating layers.

Although fairly basic in nature, the techniques described here can make a dramatic effect in turning a plain-Jane model into something you can be proud of.

For this tutorial, we'll use our older GP9 locomotive. Although this guide was drawn around our v1.0 GP9 templates, the procedures and examples can be used for any texture applied to any object. As with all our guides, this painting guide is a work in progress.

The beginning
Here's a simple, yet effective, way of adding a "weathered" look to your locos...

1) Add four layers to your image. Name them "Grime", "Rust", "Dirt", and "Dust."

2) Save the image back to a PSP (Paint Shop Pro) or a PSD (Photoshop) file. This will retain the layers created for this tutorial.

Grime RGB: 0.0.0
1) Set the airbrush tool to a width between 150 and 200.

2) Spray black over the "Grime" layer so you can just see through it and make it "spotty" (uneven) - the more the better.

3) Hide the "Grime" layer.

Rust RGB: 136.57.4
1) Spray a red-brown color over the "Rust" layer so you can just see through it.

2) Hide the "Rust" layer.

Dirt RGB: 126.113.38
1) Spray a yellow-brown color over the "Dirt" layer so you can just see through it.

2) Hide the "Dirt" layer.

Dust RGB: 192.192.192
1) Spray a light-gray color over the "Dust" layer so you can just see through it.

2) Unhide all layers.


Finishing the paintwork
1) Set the properties for each of the new layers between 10 and 30 percent transparency, adjusting each layer to achieve the desired effect. The percentages for "Grime", "Rust", "Dirt", and "Dust" shown here are 30, 25, 25, 10 respectively, but you can adjust to suit your likes and needs.

2) Save a copy of the image back to a BMP or TGA in preparation for conversion to ACE.

3) Convert the saved BMP or TGA file to ACE format using Scott Miller's AceIt utility. Use Shape File Viewer to view your work, and you're done!

Hope that helps!

Paul