I have submitted a skin to the workshop for the Polycount/Relic "War Paint" competition. It's called "Operation Husky".
It is under the historical category, and was inspired by reference images I saw which showed US vehicles with the typical white star emblem surrounded by a yellow circle. That was unusual enough that I decided to look into it further. Apparently during the North African campaign Allied forces (particularly air support) complained that the US white star could from a distance be easily mistaken for the Axis cross. They addressed this by adding a circle around the star, in white or yellow. Then in 1943, in preparation for the invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky) all US forces were mandated to paint a yellow circle around the white star. This was not done consistently so there are photos that show various interpretations of this, often with an extra thick yellow circle because in some cases they were painting it over an existing white one. At some point after the push into Italy the US forces reverted back to the white star (nothing around it) or white star + white circle emblem for the remainder of the war, thus making the yellow circle a rare sight.
To this day, precious few photographs remain which show this variation of the US emblem, mainly because most film back them was black and white and the yellow is not always easy to spot. But there were enough references available to guide the making of this skin. While (of course) some creative choices were made, a ton of research went into it to try and make the colors and markings representative of those actually used during this campaign, and even the battalion and company designations were units confirmed to have been under the command of General Patton in Sicily.
The majority of the vehicles are painted with a green/olive base and a mix of warm dirt and sand tones hand-brushed along the bottom. There are tonal variations among some of the vehicles to emulate the fact that they were not all painted identically out in the field. I also had reference showing a simpler two-tone green/olive and tan large camo pattern, so I applied that to four doctrinal vehicles to differentiate them more visually in the game.
There was also another idea I had been meaning to try and was able to apply here - camouflage netting. Camo nets were mainly used for static emplacements, but it also seems appropriate for vehicles with more ranged weaponry (rockets, artillery, mortars) which tend to move less often and are thus more vulnerable to attack by air. Not being able to add any geometry I was limited to sculpting nets that are form-fitting, but I think the end result on the four vehicles where this was applied is pretty effective, particularly as the camera and/or vehicle move relative to each other and you see light travel across the surfaces. The nets and ropes that are on them were dialed in to look good from the default camera zoom, with additional detail revealed as you get closer.
All of the vehicles feature significant weathering to show heavy use, and the winter versions have a custom ice and frost treatment that goes well beyond the default snow layer.
The skin pack was broken up into several separate files to get around the current upload size limitation. You can find them in the workshop here:
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=610593869
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=610592068
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=610597189
http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=610595734
If you like this and would like to see it available in the game, please take a moment to vote for it. I would greatly appreciate it!
Many thanks to Georider and Starbuck for their helpful advice and for setting a high bar with their work.
Cheers,
-- FX
Relic Entertainment
cblanco ★ 
보드카 중대 
VonManteuffel 
Heartless Jäger 
