Cazzie
SOH-CM-2024
Propwashes are not that difficult and everyone that delves into them has their own technique. I got interested in examining BananaBob's marvelous propwashes and first using trial by hand to make my own. Her is a tutorial on how to do a three-blade propwash, which involves a little more than a symmetrical prop such as a two-blade or four-blade prop. I use Photoshop CS, but anyone with Paint-Shop-Pro, Photoshop Elements, GIMP, or Paint.Net (the last two are freeware) graphic editors can do this.
Part One: Making a prop.
The best way to get a prop is to stop the engine and go into Slew mode and turn the position the prop with the sun in front of it and center and zoom in until the prop fits the screen. Take a screenshot with something like FSScreen or simply hit Prt Scr and minimize the sim and open good old MS Paint in Accessories and hit Paste, then save in a folder of choice and call it propscreen_???? (name of aircraft). Here we are using an old FS2002 He-100D prop.
Next I crop and center the screenshot and save it. I make some grids to center the prop and Select the vertical prop (top or bottom, whichever it may be) and select a brush Tool and paint the Selection in the color chosen, in this case, RLM 70 Black-green. A good place to find RBG and HEX codes from color swathes is SimmersPaintShop: http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/.
Once the Selection is Painted, I click Edit > Copy.
Next I hit Edit > Paste four times. I know this sounds stupid, but bare with me. This gives me my original background that can be completely deleted or painted out and four layers of one pro blades.
Next I rename the layers prop1, prop2, etc. and choose a layer and hit Edit > Free Transform > Rotate. The Free Transform Selection is then rotated and moved to one of the prop locations in the screenshot, making sure the selection is centered on the Grid marks, Another layer is chosen and Free Tranformed in the same manner, again making sure the selection is centered on the grid.
Now, the tale-tail fourth prop blade. It is used to properly size the three-blade prop, because it is harder for me to do with three-blades only. The fourth blade is taken from the original Layer 1, what I named prop1. On this I click Edit > Free Transform > Flip Vertical and Move it up to center on the grid. The entire screen is then cropped so that the vertical two props touch the edge of the crop and the two asymmetrical props are still shown.
Once done, I uncheck the Background Layer and upper vertical prop layer and Click Image > Resize and make the Height 512 pixels, disregarding the Width, but Constraining Proportions. Boom! You have a three-blade Layered prop with a Transparent Background.
After doing this, Click File > New and name it propspin and size it 512 X 512 pixels. Mark the center grid at 256 pixels both ways and reopen the three-blade Layered prop with the transparent background and click Select All > Edit > Copy Merged (this is important). Go to the new prop spin texture and click Edit > Paste. Move the pasted prop down until the center matches the Grid marks.
Next I go through a series of Filters. The first is Filter > Blur > Blur.
After this is done, I click Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and choose Best > Spin > and a level around 15.
Next I find that the Gaussian Blur tool is your friend. I click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and a level of 3.0.
Save this texture as a Photoshop, PSP, or layered format and minimize it. In Part Two I shall discuss how I make the prop disk used and how to make the prop Alpha used. I do this in two parts to minimize the number of image on each post.
Caz Dalton
Part One: Making a prop.
The best way to get a prop is to stop the engine and go into Slew mode and turn the position the prop with the sun in front of it and center and zoom in until the prop fits the screen. Take a screenshot with something like FSScreen or simply hit Prt Scr and minimize the sim and open good old MS Paint in Accessories and hit Paste, then save in a folder of choice and call it propscreen_???? (name of aircraft). Here we are using an old FS2002 He-100D prop.
Next I crop and center the screenshot and save it. I make some grids to center the prop and Select the vertical prop (top or bottom, whichever it may be) and select a brush Tool and paint the Selection in the color chosen, in this case, RLM 70 Black-green. A good place to find RBG and HEX codes from color swathes is SimmersPaintShop: http://www.simmerspaintshop.com/forums/.
Once the Selection is Painted, I click Edit > Copy.
Next I hit Edit > Paste four times. I know this sounds stupid, but bare with me. This gives me my original background that can be completely deleted or painted out and four layers of one pro blades.
Next I rename the layers prop1, prop2, etc. and choose a layer and hit Edit > Free Transform > Rotate. The Free Transform Selection is then rotated and moved to one of the prop locations in the screenshot, making sure the selection is centered on the Grid marks, Another layer is chosen and Free Tranformed in the same manner, again making sure the selection is centered on the grid.
Now, the tale-tail fourth prop blade. It is used to properly size the three-blade prop, because it is harder for me to do with three-blades only. The fourth blade is taken from the original Layer 1, what I named prop1. On this I click Edit > Free Transform > Flip Vertical and Move it up to center on the grid. The entire screen is then cropped so that the vertical two props touch the edge of the crop and the two asymmetrical props are still shown.
Once done, I uncheck the Background Layer and upper vertical prop layer and Click Image > Resize and make the Height 512 pixels, disregarding the Width, but Constraining Proportions. Boom! You have a three-blade Layered prop with a Transparent Background.
After doing this, Click File > New and name it propspin and size it 512 X 512 pixels. Mark the center grid at 256 pixels both ways and reopen the three-blade Layered prop with the transparent background and click Select All > Edit > Copy Merged (this is important). Go to the new prop spin texture and click Edit > Paste. Move the pasted prop down until the center matches the Grid marks.
Next I go through a series of Filters. The first is Filter > Blur > Blur.
After this is done, I click Filter > Blur > Radial Blur and choose Best > Spin > and a level around 15.
Next I find that the Gaussian Blur tool is your friend. I click Filter > Blur > Gaussian Blur and a level of 3.0.
Save this texture as a Photoshop, PSP, or layered format and minimize it. In Part Two I shall discuss how I make the prop disk used and how to make the prop Alpha used. I do this in two parts to minimize the number of image on each post.
Caz Dalton