I present to you my livery pack for the 103RD Aviation Sand Sharks, a fictitious Apache squadron, operating in Syria and the Persian Gulf. As a case study, I wanted to see if I could use plastic scale model painting techniques, like pre- and post- shading, airbrushing, weathering, chipping and rust, grime, oil and grease streaking, etc., in a digital world, to create something one might consider hyper- or photo-realistic. I approached it from the perspective of a scale model builder, not a 3D texture painter, and had to come up with some clever ways of reproducing those techniques I have been using for years in the real world in a convincing way.
This skin pack contains the efforts of my 90+ hours hand painting virtually every surface of this bird (including rocket and missile pods, as well as the 230 gal fuel tank). There are 10 different versions, in both clean and dirty for 20 total. I hope you enjoy them!
-Koder
*** Please see note in the description about downloading the bundle.
Thank you for downloading this skin pack! I appreciate your interest in my work. This project both started and ended completely by accident. To set the context, I find many of the default skins to be a little too clean. As a case study, I wanted to see if I could use plastic scale model painting techniques, like pre- and post- shading, airbrushing, weathering, chipping and rust, grime, oil and grease streaking, etc., in a digital world, to create something one might consider hyper- or photo-realistic. I approached it fr om the perspective of a scale model builder, not a 3D texture painter, and had to come up with some clever ways of reproducing those techniques I have been using for years in the real world in a convincing way.
This skin pack contains the efforts of my 90+ hours of first finding, then meticulously hand painting virtually every surface of this bird (including rocket and missile pods, as well as the 230 gal fuel tank), before some catastrophic dumbassery happened. The master files with all of the weathering layers, editable numbers, etc., which I intended to release as a reusable template for any color Apache skin you could possibly want to create, was accidentally deleted, both from disk, as well as from the recycle bin. Therefore, I can no longer make edits to the master files, generate new tail numbers, etc. meaning these bad boys are as done as theyre getting. Every attempt was made to make the textures seamless, but there are some minor areas that were not "completed" in my mind, but alas, they are set in stone. I hope you enjoy them!
-Koder
*** NOTE: Since the bundled files are just barely too large to upload here due to file size restrictions, I tried to make it as easy for you as possible to download the (up to) 20 skins that are included in the bundle. The download contains an html readme wh ere you can download the files directly from my website, Amoeba Games (
http://www.amoeba-games.com/fst). This way you can choose to download only the versions you want, by tail number in clean and/or dirty variants. The files are 100% safe but feel free to run them through your anti-virus tool of choice. The strange URLs (/ClickRouter.aspx?linkid=1234) are only so I can route you to the correct file for each skin individually. You will then be redirected to the actual zip file which you will see is appropriately named (ex: AG_Sand_Sharks_[TailNumber].zip or AG_Sand_Sharks_[TailNumber]_Clean.zip accordingly).
