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Ironically, dark blue is effectively invisible at any distance over close range, due to how the eye gathers light. In mono-chrome, such as vision at night, dark blue is harder to see than black. Also, when silloutetted against the sky, dark blue is harder to see than black.

Just say'n.

SJ

 jeffersonian000 wrote:
Ironically, dark blue is effectively invisible at any distance over close range, due to how the eye gathers light. In mono-chrome, such as vision at night, dark blue is harder to see than black. Also, when silloutetted against the sky, dark blue is harder to see than black.

Just say'n.

SJ

Ave Dominus Nox?

Thats because black is almost never black, but just a really dark shade of another color.

True back almost never exists except in total absolute darkness, in which case you could be pink and purple and it wouldn't matter.

Doing a knight here, mind you its been WiP since they first released the model, the poor thing..

Plan is the old "Storm Lords" titans scheme, which will basically be the heraldic quartering on the leg plates, but a disruption camo on the carapace and shoulders - Mid blue, then a light and dark grey with black lines, almost WW1 in style really.

Fluff purpose is to disrupt attacks from the air by making the facing and movement direction harder to pick out, while still being intimidating to ground units.

Have been thinking a deep grey in place of the black would be better, but the project stalled, despite being a beautiful model as I don't play the game.

Do want to get him done though.

Camo is nice on a big model, but go for the battlefield look with tactical markings as opposed to the parade ground look of home.. perhaps the metal bits painted as well - going for dark grey here over metallic.

 evildrcheese wrote:
Weren't the Mechs in Metal Gear Solid in camo? They were cool.

It really depends on the execution of your idea, but they're your minis, so I say paint them how you like.

D

This kind of blends into Polonius' point about the shape of a Knight.

The Metal Gears tend towards being all hard angles, while the Knight has mostly smooth rounded surfaces.

Just to throw it in the face of everyone who says Knights are supposed to be heraldic and honorable and not be camo - I'm painting one in bright pink and orange camo pattern with not a single heraldic image. Totally generic. Maybe add green stripes in some places. Just cause it's MINE and I can paint it how the fething heck I want to.

i would say that camo wouldn't really work on a knight, they are just too big to be effectively hidden, except of course if they are in a forest. perhaps the best 'camo' would be a Dazzle one. its less about hiding the knight from sight, and more about confusing the enemy as to its range, and general outline:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dazzle_camouflage

It could even be worked into a knights heraldry with very little effort

This is my Catachan Knight. A freeblade. No real back story, just wanted a knight to roll along my Catachans. He is all coroded and rusted in spots from the harsh environment, and, the fact that there are no teams of technicians taking care of him. Slowly falling apart. I did give him a camo patern, and, it seems to be fine.

The original idea of camo was to break up your outline so the enemy didn't recognise you as you, but the knight will still get spotted by it's shadow i recon.

There's no such thing as tacky in 40k, as long as it's not my little pony themed.

 DarthSpader wrote:
Just to throw it in the face of everyone who says Knights are supposed to be heraldic and honorable and not be camo - I'm painting one in bright pink and orange camo pattern with not a single heraldic image. Totally generic. Maybe add green stripes in some places. Just cause it's MINE and I can paint it how the fething heck I want to.

That's nice.

But it's not what the OP asked.

for a camo scheme I'll second the suggestion of a naval dazzle

I did mine in a a camouflage pattern, with the heraldry on the shoulders and shield. The camo is barely weathered while the heraldry looks really old, my fluff is that the hull, legs and similar areas are painted before each campaign while the heraldry is left untouched to honor their heritage and the armour itself.

No painted pics yet, not quite happy with the base yet.

I used a WWII type scheme, something like this.

Go ahead and go it. But here is an idea, paint the bottom part in various browns and the top in various greens then you will have a big moving tree.

 j31c3n wrote:
If you want a camo aesthetic, paint it to suggest camo rather than painting a real camouflage pattern. I'd personally suggest a very very large hex camo pattern, because it's easy to tape off on such large surfaces as a Knight.

As an aside, this is probably the best camo scheme I've ever seen on a Space Marine, and it's really not that great:

i made a similar point a while ago:

*Enter the magic of Copy-n-Paste*

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Whatever you do, keep in mind what the models should be used as.

Models used for display and pictures can have really elaborate and effective "real" camo. It shows up on the pictures and is really enjoyable to watch and appreciate.

On the other hand, models used on the table in conjunction with a lot of other identically painted models need to have more of a "Hollywood" camo.
They need to have the "illusion" of camo without the "effect" of camo. A few groups of models with realistic camo just looks like blobs of colour when viewed from the typical tabletop distance.

The point of painted vehicle camo is to break up the outline of the vehicle thus making it harder to identify, and even making it hard to recognize as being a vehicle in the first place.
While this is very useful in real life it is, in my experience, not so good on models used for gaming.

Another example is face paint. This is most often demonstrated in Hollywood movies.

The point of facial camo is the same as for the vehicles. The breaking of outlines and making the face unrecognisable as being a face. This is mostly done by inverting the way light and shadows fall on faces.
This means painting black on the light areas (such as nose, cheek bones, eyebrows, chin and ears) and green on dark areas (such as eyes, under the nose, cheek hollows). This can be further broken up by the use of brown.

Here is where Hollywood steps in. If Hollywood used real face paint, we would have a hard time recognizing the individual actors. So they created the illusion of camo without the effect of camo.

This is Hollywood at its "finest".





This is more realistic.



Hail to the ultimate badass.


So, how do we actually achieve this?

Well, its mostly about allowing contrasting colours to play along and how less is more.

Contrasting colours, such as differently coloured shoulderpads (an iconic Space Marine feature), prominent chest eagles (what Space Marine would hide the symbol of the Imperium?) and distinctly coloured weapons (good for WYSIWYG) is one way.

Keeping in mind that less is more, is another.

See how the realistic camo is pretty busy and "jumbled up"?




GWs suggestions, while oddly coloured, has are more usable intensity that is seen as camo while not actually being it.



Notice how the Guardsmen have contrasting armour, belts weapons and details? That is part of what makes them recognizable as Guardsmen, even while wearing camo.
The colour choices might not be to your liking, but that isn't my point. The "amount" of camo is though.

Practically I find it easiest to use a triad of colours. Use the mid-tone as a base colour, add markings with the darkest colour and then add small dots or stripes with the lightest colour (making sure to touch or slightly overlap the darkest tone).
One piece of advise is to make sure the colours are somewhat faded. This can be achieved by a thin wash over the camo'ed area after it is painted, or by lightly drybrushing the base colour over the darkest tone before adding the light-tone detailing.


Wow, that turned into a rather longer post than I expected. Hope it helps.


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I don't know. I wont work on something as large as a knight or moving models, but there is something to be said about camo models on the board being ignored because they don't get noticed. I have done this with static squads of both marine scouts and IG on numerous occasions and my opponent remembers during my shooting phase or if they are on an objective but many times have my units been forgotten since they don't stand out. It hasn't worked for me on moving units or vehicles.

I went to the extreme once and had a sniper scout squad with lichen ghili suits in a forest plot(also made with lichen) smack dab in the middle of the board. Both of us forgot they were there until it came time to pick up at the end.

You'd be painting a 35 foot 100+ton robot in camo.
That's really really silly.

For a Knight, I think the camo would kind of be a missed opportunity (given the options for heraldry on a Knight).

If it's attempting to use camouflage you'd want to break up the silhouette of the Knight and avoid using things like the banners that it comes with. So much of the sculpting and detail that are on the Knight would be things you would be removing or obscuring, if the goal was a knight that was actually attempting to be camouflaged.


Now, if the knight wasn't trying to use camouflage, but simply 'wear the colors' of his allies, you could easily take the colors of the Cadian camo and use them on the model, without painting camouflage patterns on the armor. Personally, I think that would be a good compromise that allowed you to make a Knight which fit in with the rest of your army, but also still have a Knight that exemplified the 'pseudo-medieval' heraldry and personal bravery that the Knights seem to embody.

To me its a war machine, trying to win and be successful while taking as little damage as possible in order to stay in the fight longer. Heraldry is nice for the parade field, its silly on the battlefield, thus my armies go for a grittier more dirty field. In this case that means my knight will do what it can to avoid being seen or hit from air strikes. Yeah, camoing a 35 foot tall robot to blend in with the ground is useless vs other ground targets(unless you are in a heavy forest), but unless you have absolute air superiority, blending in vs air targets would be vital, especially as they can spot you and come back around from the backside for a strafing run where your shield isn't blocking. Or a scout aircraft can spot them and figure out where the rest of the force is and spoil the surprise.
But it comes down to realism, do you want your army to be more realistic or do you want parade gloss. I tend to keep looking when I look through galleries of paint schemes at exotic bright, over adorned schemes and tend to look hard at weathered, realistic schemes. Its all in what you prefer.

Even aircraft were camo'ed according to their environment so they cant be seen from above.

Very cool.