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Old 04-09-2015, 08:45 AM
Leif Ohlsson's Avatar
Leif Ohlsson Leif Ohlsson is offline
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Vector wood textures experiment

Vector wood textures should be good for creating parts to be printed on colored paper. The wide variety of pixel-based textures available seem to be less suitable, since the outcome of printing an image on colored paper is unpredictable. Vector wood patterns on the other hand can be constructed so as to leave the areas between the pattern lines transparent, letting the paper color dominate.

Here is an experiment with vector wood textures on a real example. This is a stab and one of its ribs in 1/16 scale, with two simple vector wood patterns applied, one for the rib type of parts (solid wood with holes cut out), and one suitable for ply covering parts:




How the rib was made:

The original wood texture was reduced to 1/16 scale ≈ 6 percent. It was then stripped of its yellow background color, and the pattern proper elongated to fit the rib.

Clipping paths of the stab & elevator ribs were applied to the pattern, and most of the protruding (now invisible, but still irritating) paths cleaned up.

The clipping path patterns were inserted above the basic yellow color (simulating the paper color), but below the holes (white) to be drilled.

A copy of this was made with the pattern in 50 percent grey, @ 50 percent opacity. (Disregard the small blue lines; they are paths accidentally selected when making the screenshot.)

Finally the two versions are shown inserted into the original part from the drawing. Note that parts to be cut out will be without the base yellow. The last two examples are just to get an idea of what they might look like when printed on yellowish paper.

How the stab ply cover was made:

For the stab a larger wood pattern was used, scaled to 20 percent in order to replicate a possible ply pattern. The pattern was then elongated to enable making a clipping mask from half the stab leading edge ply cover.

The texture used here was different, in that it does not consist of one pattern overlaid on a base color, but in fact two separate patterns. This is good, since then you can try both patterns. I chose to work with the lighter pattern, but recolored it darker. Two result are shown in the top view of the stab - one colored version, and on 50 percent grey, @ 30 percent opacity.

Note that the underlying base color in the drawing, light brown, was chosen to replicate some paper color closer to aircraft birch plywood.

Reflections:

There is much room for experimenting with just these two simple textures, which I find most adequate. You can try them at various scales, various elongations and various colors in different opacities as overlays to be printed of the colored paper of your choice. I will probably use the colored versions in both cases.

You may ask why use vector patterns when there is such a plethora of very good pixel-based textures to be had? I agree that for printing on white paper, the latter are much more suitable and easier to work with, and I have had great pleasure in creating my own little library of such textures.

The idea here, however, was to develop a method of working with colored paper. This would not be suitable for the ordinary, fully built-up models, which we are used to. But I thought it would be extremely useful for developing uncovered, framework, models of antique aicraft. In such models you would have to handle myriads of small details, like the rib and stab leading edge parts seen here.

Printing these details on colored paper would greatly simplify the assembly work, I thought, eliminating the need for edge coloring, and enabling sanding of parts without losing edge colors.

If you want to explore the possibilities I enclose the two textures used in this experiment in both .ai and .eps format, plus the Illustrator drawing. (An .eps version of the drawing unfortunately turned out to be just a tad too large to be able to attach; a zipped pdf-version, however, managed to squeeze through...)

I should also say that this experiment originated in a thread posing a query for repeating textures (not vector). This post in that thread will give you the original source for the textures used here, and also some more zipped useful vector wood textures.

In a way, this technique means retrograding. I have some old kits which are made this way, copied on colored paper.

Leif
Attached Thumbnails
Vector wood textures experiment-vector-wood-textures-exp.jpg  
Attached Files
File Type: zip Vector wood textures exp.ai.zip (847.8 KB, 33 views)
File Type: zip Two textures used.ai.zip (363.0 KB, 17 views)
File Type: zip Two textures used.eps.zip (542.3 KB, 17 views)
File Type: zip Vector wood textures exp.pdf.zip (889.4 KB, 27 views)
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Last edited by Leif Ohlsson; 04-09-2015 at 09:31 AM. Reason: Adding .eps-versions
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Old 04-09-2015, 10:05 AM
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Don Boose Don Boose is offline
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Another outstanding and superbly illustrated and described tutorial. Many thanks, Leif.

Don
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Old 04-09-2015, 11:43 AM
Revell-Fan Revell-Fan is offline
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That is COOL! Thank you very much!
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Old 04-09-2015, 11:49 AM
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Leif Ohlsson Leif Ohlsson is offline
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"Envelop" technique even smarter - a lot smarter!

Thank you Don, and Revell-Fan! I'm happy too, even happier than an hour ago. Here's why:


"Envelop" technique even smarter - a lot smarter!


My greatest worry about developing a technique for vector wood pattern parts printed on colored paper was thin and curved parts, like the fuselage longerons.

It turned out to be really simple, and an experiment pointed to a much smarter technique also for ribs and ply cover. Here's what it looks like:




The new technique:

As I - trembling - searched the Illustrator's menu's for something that would allow me to curve a vector pattern along the lines of an existing path, I came upon an option called "Envelop", with various options. I decided on the "Make with top object".

It seemed to indicate that I should place a copy of, let's say the curved bottom longeron above a copy of horizontal wood pattern. I first tried a full-length wood pattern, and it worked perfectly, producing a pattern which not only was bent along the outlines of the longeron, but also limited by it. Thus, there were no stray paths like in the previous attempt, and nothing to clean up. (These stray paths were invisible but still a nuisance.)

Further experimentation showed that I didn't even have to use elongated patterns - the short rib pattern automatically elongated itself, limited by the longeron's outline. Extremely good!

Vertical cross members were just as easy. I did not even have to rotate the pattern to fit the slightly slanted outlines of the second vertical cross member.

From there, it was only natural to try the technique on the rib from the previous experiment. And of course it worked a charm!

The ply leading edge cover is not perfect yet, but further experiment should get us there.

This is a really, really good technique!

Leif
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Last edited by Leif Ohlsson; 04-09-2015 at 12:33 PM. Reason: Adding leading edge experiment
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Old 04-09-2015, 11:51 AM
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Looks good Leif. But where were you when I was doing this the hard way on the Fokker D.VIII!
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Old 04-09-2015, 11:53 AM
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Leif Ohlsson Leif Ohlsson is offline
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Ray - I was busy being inspired by your work. And that's the truth of it!

Just took me a little time to mull it over...

- L.
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Old 04-09-2015, 12:49 PM
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Lief - excellence explanations, and a very interesting methodology invented by you. And great illustrations!

Thank you very much for sharing. You can think of me fiddling this weekend!
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Old 04-09-2015, 01:00 PM
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Those look real good. That technique could be used to make weathered wood pieces.
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Old 04-09-2015, 03:06 PM
kcorbin kcorbin is offline
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Very appropriate method to use on the structural pieces that would have been steam bent. But of course not the right thing to do on the surface of a piece of ply where the grain would not have been following a curve as it is sheet goods.
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Old 04-09-2015, 03:44 PM
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Leif Ohlsson Leif Ohlsson is offline
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Leading edge problem solved

Right you are, KCorbin. That was the next problem on the agenda. I think/hope I may have found the beginning of a solution, or at least the principle of a solution. It goes like this:


Leading edge problem solved

The leading edge problem was solved the way the real part in all likelihood was made up - by dividing it up into sections. The pattern was then applied to each section, one at a time:




Note here that the small section of the original was applied to all sections. No need to twist and turn or align any part. Just place a copy of the section above a copy of the pattern, and press key-stroke command-option-C (on my Mac). Absolutely a one-stroke solution!

Kevin, and those who would like to fiddle - remember the preceding step about creating new copies each time, both of the pattern and the section to be textured.
Did I mention that there is no need to move the pattern or place it physically above the parts in the drawing? When I - following the menus in my program - have written "above", that refers to the paths in the path list. Nothing needs to be moved around.
I cannot underline enough how smooth, simple and powerful this process is. In the paths list, select the part (copy of) plus the pattern (copy of), and make your keystroke. Done!

Truly miraculous.

That being said, I will probably not reduce the ply pattern so much in size. It will be nice to have larger and more sweeping swaths of the darker pattern. And the dividing lines between the sections shall be thinner, like they would have been on the real aircraft. But that's for when I will really be doing it on a project. This was just experimenting with the method.

Leif
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