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Showing results for tags 'repaint'.
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72 downloads
no screenshot no readme its just a repaint -
![More information about "[FS9+]SkySpirit(now TDS) Boeing 777-346 Repaint : Japan Airlines JA8941 "2010 Doraemon Jet""](//content.invisioncic.com/i324524/monthly_2023_12/2023-12-30_23-14-20-672.thumb.png.b5a55591b69343f2e3ff1461b8944384.png)
Version 1.0.0
56 downloads
Sticker for the airing of the Doraemon the Movie 30th. Textures only, no model included For use with (-300 no ER Pratt & Whitney Engine variant) I will no longer write sim version in title anymore since it's specified on file section. -
![More information about "[FS9+]SkySpirit (now TDS) Boeing 767-346ER Repaint : Japan Airlines JA622J "Dorajet '17 ""](//content.invisioncic.com/i324524/monthly_2023_08/2023-8-12_7-34-44-573.thumb.jpg.cd9771487cc470e2bdfd719703697533.jpg)
Version 1.1
172 downloads
Sticker for airing of Doraemon the Movie 38th Textures only, no model included. (Configuration : 4 door no winglet GE engines) -
![More information about "[FS9+]SkySpirit[now TDS] Boeing 777-3D7 Repaint : Thai Airways Intl HS-TKF Special "Royal Barge Suphannahong" Khun Lahan Sai"](//content.invisioncic.com/i324524/monthly_2023_12/2023-12-30_23-40-49-264.thumb.png.175e3af27c8f39a131d6b1fbb96d9d34.png)
Version 1.0.0
57 downloads
TG's Special livery in commemoration of HM King Rama X reign in 2019 textures only, no model included configuration : -300 no ER with Rolls Royce engines with proper permission to upload from original painter at FB Page : Airbrush Simulator -
94 downloads
TL;DR can be used from FS2004 and ahead Add this to title : +A4000 +TF92000 +D00 for correct winglet and options -
![More information about "[FSX+]Thomas Ruth's Airbus A340-541 Repaint : Thai Airways Intl. HS-TLA "Khun Chiang Kham""](//content.invisioncic.com/i324524/monthly_2023_12/2023-8-17_8-54-15-718.thumb.jpg.8f283586a79b8e2464cca5a41d8a67de.jpg)
Version 1.0.0
25 downloads
Texture only as always. Once upon a time, this thing was used for US flight from Thailand. Well, it's now resting silently at U-Taphao Intl in favor of newer B77Ws -
![More information about "[FS9+]Thomas Ruth DC-10 Repaint : Thai Airways Intl. (Speedline) HS-TMC Khun Sri Ubon"](//content.invisioncic.com/i324524/monthly_2023_12/2023-12-14_20-1-10-733.thumb.png.faabcc59e9d21ca2e071f16bbca53dae.png)
Version 1.0.0
20 downloads
Only textures are included, no models. -
Version 1.0.0
52 downloads
Repaint, AI flight plan and ADE airport files relating to the TAG Airlines C208B base in Guatemala City. An HD targa file is included for users of FSX and P3D. See readme file for complete details. By Doug Roth-
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- ai traffic
- fs2004
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Version 1.1
651 downloads
FS2004 University of Illinois (U of I) C-45H N9887Z/52-10603/AF-533. This repaint is from a photo of a 1953 University of Illinois C-45H, N9887Z, that my great-grandfather co-piloted in 1960 with the Illinois State Water Survey, doing thunderstorm research. This repaint requires Cliff Presley's re-packaged simTECH Flight Design's freeware Beech 18 which you can find here. Repaint by Joshua B. Nyhus. -
Version 1.1
446 downloads
FS2002 North American P-51 "Black Magic". A fictional air racer repaint. Requires the Reno Air Racing P-51 package by Roger Dial and associates, which can be found here. Repaint by Joshua B. Nyhus.-
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- north american
- p-51
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Version 1.0.a
43 downloads
This is the nd in a serious of repaints for countries that flew the North American T-28 in their military. Ten T-28As were ordered by the Batista regime but were never delivered owing to an arms embargo, although at least one T-28 seems to have been acquired at some stage which was put on display at a museum at Playa Girón. This version represents that aircraft. T28 Cuba AF.zip -
Version 1.0.0
45 downloads
After extensive enhancement work on the paint kit I present this repaint for the Mike Cronin Aero Commander 500S AI model - 4_ga_aero_commander_500s.zip see readme for file information. I did not develop a lightmap for this file. For FS2004. -
Hello amazing repainters, I would absolutely love if someone could do the following repaints for the following airlines' and aircraft for FSX; - Vistara B737-800 (for Default FSX B737-800) - Spicejet/9W Hybrid (for Default FSX B737-800) https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.flightradar24.com%2Fdata%2Faircraft%2Fvt-sys&psig=AOvVaw1xzw7mZWEOFDEC2HsdFmFC&ust=1616853296841000&source=images&cd=vfe&ved=0CAIQjRxqFwoTCKjf5YWOzu8CFQAAAAAdAAAAABAI - Air India A321 (for Default FSX A321) N.B - Could the respective repainter please also paint the default FSX A321's IAE styled engines with the livery's engine paintjob too to the best of their capabilities? Thanks! And if someone could please repaint the Nepal Airlines A330-200, that would be amazing! (for the FSX Tom Ruth A330-200) I know I'm asking for a lot but if anyone could do any of these repaints I would be absolutely grateful. Thank you in advance! :cool:
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How To Create Your Own MSFS 2020 Liveries by vLegion_ Introduction Past versions of Microsoft Flight Simulator have had vast numbers of freeware repaints created for them, and there's now no reason to think that MSFS 2020 will be any different. However, the techniques for creating liveries/skins are new and will have to be learned by those interested. vLegion_ has created several videos to help you get started and has allowed us to present them here. Hopefully this will get your creativity going. Please remember to share your repaints with us though the FlightSim.Com file library. MSFS Livery Tutorial Hi guys, I have made a video on how to create your own liveries in MSFS 2020. This has been a highly requested video in my discord so here it is. I kept it as short as possible. Please comment if I can assist further, I will try my best to assist. Download Template (Does not include DDS editor) Download NVIDIA Texture Tools Download Liveries Pack (Official Pack Download) How To Installation: Open the downloaded file Extract to a location of your choosing Open your game files folder Default Locations are: Steam // %appdata%\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community\ Microsoft / Game Pass: Go to %localappdata% (search using windows search), then Packages\Microsoft.FlightSimulator_RANDOMLETTERS\LocalCache\Packages\Community Install the files from the GAME READY Folder into the Community folder. If you have already installed the mega pack, then you will need to update your Layout.json // Located in AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community\liveries-a320 && Aircraft.cfg // Located in AppData\Roaming\Microsoft Flight Simulator\Packages\Community\liveries-a320\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_A320_NEOas explained in the video. Full readme available in download, too long for description. Editing Install DDS Editor if you're using Photoshop(available here). Open the four provided PSD's Alter Image / Colors as Required To Change color click the panel in the right that says PAINT HERE Use the provided guidelines to assist with the creation of your skin, make sure to hide them when you're finished so they're not in your final export. Save file to the directory of your template as DDS using Ctrl + Shift + S Launch Game Enjoy your new skin! vLegion_ My Youtube Channel My Discord MSFS Livery Mega Pack Discord -
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Does anyone know if there is a 29 (BATUS) flight Army Air Corps repaint (Green,sand/hemp and dayglo scheme) for the UKMIL Gazelle AH1? If not anyone fancy doing one?
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Quite a simple repaint but that's what I needed to get back into it. And yes, it's another freighter screenshot post from me. Sorry!:D I hope you like it. I shall probably upload it to the library soon. It's for the Vistaliners B734. Happy flying!!
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Hi guys, Was just wondering if anyone would be kind enough and interested in doing a Congo Airways repaint for the PA CFM A320. I have attached a photo which is not my own:). Many thanks.
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How To Be A Repainter Part Eight Practical Exercise: Painting For Dummies By Alejandro Hurtado (19 September 2006) Well, I surrender. I received so many emails requesting a practical example that I decided to release this one. How to start? First, download and install a file called DXTBmp. Second, download Mike Stone's Fairchild Metro 3 (SMETRO3.ZIP). Install the plane in your flight simulator's aircraft directory. There are some files and a folder that don't install in the right place, so must be hand moved. At last, the result must be same as the one I present here. Searching in the aircraft folder you must have five folders and two files inside the "metro3" folder. Now, copy the content of the texture.1 folder to a new folder called texture.x, and inside, create another folder called "help" or "ayuda" if you are Spanish fluent. Before we continue, we must choose the new texture we want to do. I selected a plane used by Lynx Air International in June 2001. The next step is to enter on www.airliners.net and search a Metroliner 3 with the registration N892MA. There is just one picture. The next step is to open the "texture.x" folder. There are 27 files, all except one distributed on pairs. Each pair has similar names, but the first finish with _l, and the second with _t. "_l" means "Light", the illumination when it's night time. "_t" means "Texture", and these are the only ones we are to change. So we reduced the amount of files to work from 27 to 14. The unpaired one is called propdisk_t.bmp, and if you click on it you'll see the image of a spinning prop. We don't need to change it. Tire, prop, gear and main wheel and nose wheel don't need to be changed either, so we reduced from 27 files to 8. Now open DXTBmp, load extended image, go to ..\aircraft\metro3\Texture.x, and select cowls_t.bmp. You'll see two gray rectangles with some horizontal and vertical stripes. The little rectangle up and right is the alpha channel, the "reflection" channel. Select Alpha, Export Alpha Channel and save inside the "ayuda" folder as a_cowls.bmp Select File, Save 24 bit Image and save inside the "ayuda" folder as cowls. Do the same with the other nine files. It doesn't matter that some of them are only white rectangles. When finished, exit DXTBmp and load your favorite graphics editor. I use an old "Photostyler 2.0" acquired with my first hand-held gray-scale scanner (and I'll not tell you my age, I'll just tell that I don't feel good dating teenagers). Once inside your graphics editor, go to the "ayuda" folder and open cowls.bmp. If you look carefully, you'll see that the same pattern is repeated three times: One for the outer left cowl, one for the outer right cowl and the last for both inner cowls. Looking at the picture of the real plane, the only change we need to do is the color of the cowl. Pick the color from the picture, and paste on the cowls.bmp file. Remember what I wrote about metal surfaces? Use the brush to apply slightly darker and lighter zones with fast horizontal movements, but protect the darker join lines to prevent covering them. Make changes on the transparency and diffusion of the brush. When finished, save the file and load DXTBmp. Select File, Load normal image, cowls.bmp. Click on Alpha, import alpha channel, a_cowls.bmp Now select File. Save as extended Image, DXT3 with Alpha, over ..\metro3\texture.x\cowls_t.bmp. Surely you will want to see if you did it well, but if you load Flight Simulator, you'll see the original grey cowl. Why? Because the FS doesn't know that there is another texture. How to tell it?. Go to the ..\aircraft\metro3 folder and open aircraft.cfg (if the .cfg extension is not assigned to any program, assign to Notepad). This is the first part of the file: [fltsim.0] title=Fairchild SA 227AC Metro III sim=metro3 model= panel= sound= texture=1 kb_checklists= kb_reference= atc_id_color=0x00ffffff atc_id=N700MS ui_manufacturer=Fairchild ui_type=SA 227AC Metro III ui_variation=Northwest Airlink description=The elegant King Air is a high-performance, pressurized-cabin, twin-engine turboprop airplane. Most often employed as a corporate transport, it usually seats from 9 to 11 (although it's certificated for up to 17 people). Many a young pilot has stepped up from more lowly positions to corporate flying in the right seat of a King Air. Piloting the beautiful Beech is a logical transition into the more complex world of turbine engines and larger aircraft. See the Aircraft Information section of Help for tips on flying this aircraft. atc_heavy=0 atc_airline=Northwest atc_flight_number= atc_id_font=Verdana,-11,1,600,0 visual_damage=0 atc_parking_types=GATE We are going to copy this, and paste above. Then, we are going to change the COPY, not the original one. We must write the next: [fltsim.1] title=Fairchild SA 227AC Metro III N892MA Lynx Air sim=metro3 model= panel= sound= texture=x kb_checklists= kb_reference= atc_id_color=0x00ffffff atc_id=N892MA ui_manufacturer=Fairchild ui_type=SA 227AC Metro III ui_variation=N892MA Lynx Air description=The Metro can trace its lineage back to the original Swearingen Merlin I executive transport. From the Merlin I Swearingen developed the turboprop powered II and III which were to form the basis of the new Metro commuter airliner. The Fairchild Metro III is used extensively around the world on short flights between cites. It provides exceptional speed for a twin engine prop aircraft, but is reknown for its challenging handling. atc_heavy=0 atc_airline=Lynx atc_flight_number=1225 atc_id_font=Verdana,-11,1,600,0 visual_damage=0 atc_parking_types=GATE Be sure to include the "x" on the texture line and the "1" in the first line. Now, if you have done all right, save and load Flight Simulator. There will now be two entries under Fairchild Metro III: N892MA Lynx Air and Northwest Airlink. Load the first and you'll see your new cowls. Now follow the wings and stabilizer. Load your graphics editor, and load the file stabs.bmp. If we look at the original pictures, we can't be sure about the stabilizer and wing colors and markings, but we can imagine that they are metalic and without lettering (do you remember what I wrote about never use only a picture?). Repeat the same steps: same color, same effect. Or just cut and paste from your cowl texture to your wings and stabilizer textures. Or find ideas from another painter. That's why I prefer that any of you can do your own tests. Once you finish wings and stabs, use DXTBmp to reconvert, load Flight Simulator and check the result. Someone says that we the repainters can be identified because we don't remember how to liftoff a plane. (Ja, ja.. er... how is it?). I'm including a picture of our half made plane: our new wings but still with Mohawk fuselage. I have good news: If you did it well, the next repaint of a Metro III that you want to do, you'll not need to do wings, cowls and stabilizer again. So we reduced our 8 working files to 4, maybe 5 if our next plane has the cowls painted. The next step is to change the tail. Edit tail.bmp and remove both color stripes and the name "MOHAWK", but remember to include the black line that was covered by the logo. One of the reasons I like Mike Stone's planes is because he includes a folder called "base textures". It contains all the textures before any decoration, just parts and joins. So if you had some doubt, open the "base textures" folder and load the "tail_t.bmp" file. Once you are finished, load "a_tail.bmp". Do you remember that this is an alpha channel? There are no colors, just gray scales. Remove here the "shadow" of the logo and save. Spin.bmp is the spinner, the propeller cone. Just use here the same color used on the cowl. Nose door is white, with the number 892 on both rear sides. Try changing places and sizes until success. And, at last, the most difficult texture: the fuselage one. We will start removing the two red stripes and the name "Mohawk", but it will be easier just loading the base texture called fuslg_t.bmp and working with it. We will start cutting the Lynx painting under the "real" cockpit. Cut it and paste on the fuselage texture. Of course, you must resize and clear until you reach the right color and size. Again, try and try until success. I did the curved line and the two written lines on the main door, too. And the green zone on the fuselage. As we don't have windows references, we must guide by the junctions of the fuselage. Don't expect to do it right the first time, just try, convert and see the result on FS. Here is the plane when I did the first test. The green zone has the right position, but the door knob and the logo under the cockpit are badly located. The emergency exit is too narrow. So I had to continue to test, move and resize. By the way, I pick the green color taking a square between two windows, and diffusing the color heavily. The result was the right color to use. Once the Lynx logo, the door and both green and blue stripes are correctly placed, the only thing to do on this side of the fuselage is the registration. I used an special font called amarillousaf, which is normally employed for military planes. You'll find it searching the web. I selected a similar size, stretched vertically the result and distorted laterally to obtain the left to right inclination of the registration code. Now we have finished the port side. We can copy the result to starboard, but remember that both sides are different. Copy only the similar zones, and paint again the different ones. You'll see the resulting plane here: And now, at last, the repaint is done. But we can't release it as is. Mike Stone allows "textures only". The remaining steps are: to create the installation file, the file_id.diz (description), the picture and finally to zip all the files and the textures.zip folder. About the installation.txt file, I'm giving you here a simplified sample one: FS2004 Fairchild Metroliner III Lynx Air N892MA Lynx Air is a North American charter company with some Metroliner III's in its fleet. The Metro can trace its lineage back to the original Swearingen Merlin I executive transport. From the Merlin I Swearingen developed the turboprop powered II and III which were to form the basis of the new Metro commuter airliner. The Fairchild Metro III is used extensively around the world on short flights between cities. It provides exceptional speed for a twin engine prop aircraft, but is reknowned for its challenging handling. Model By Mike Stone. Textures only by Alejandro Hurtado. Needs SMETRO3.ZIP. INSTALLATION: Cut and paste the texture file, "texture.x", into your metro3 aircraft folder. ("x" being the variable assigned to the texture). Then, edit the "Aircraft.cfg" to add this header to the aircraft list: [fltsim.x] title=Fairchild SA 227AC Metro III N892MA Lynx Air sim=metro3 model= panel= sound= texture=x kb_checklists= kb_reference= atc_id_color=0x00ffffff atc_id=N892MA ui_manufacturer=Fairchild ui_type=SA 227AC Metro III ui_variation=N892MA Lynx Air description=The Metro can trace its lineage back to the original Swearingen Merlin I executive transport. From the Merlin I Swearingen developed the turboprop powered II and III which were to form the basis of the new Metro commuter airliner. The Fairchild Metro III is used extensively around the world on short flights between cities. It provides exceptional speed for a twin engine prop aircraft, but is reknowned for its challenging handling. atc_heavy=0 atc_airline=Lynx atc_flight_number=1225 atc_id_font=Verdana,-11,1,600,0 visual_damage=0 atc_parking_types=GATE Where you must replace the "x" with the following number on the [flightsim. ] line TERMS OF USE: These textures are FREEWARE. You may distribute them freely provided that no money is charged for them. It may not be distributed by CD or disk. You may put it on web pages that do not charge a download fee without asking further permission. The file_id.diz will look similar to this one, or different, as you want: FS2004 Lynx Air Fairchild Metroliner III, registration N892MA. Lynx Air is a North American charter company with some Metroliner III's in its fleet. The Metro can trace its lineage back to the original Swearingen Merlin I executive transport. From the Merlin I Swearingen developed the turboprop powered II and III which were to form the basis of the new Metro commuter airliner. The Fairchild Metro III is used extensively around the world on short flights between cities. It provides exceptional speed for a twin engine prop aircraft, but is reknowned for its challenging handling. Model by Mike Stone, Textures only by Alejandro Hurtado. Requires SMETRO3.ZIP. Remember, always include the name of the modeler (and yourself too). Copy both files into an empty folder, copy the texture.x folder inside and add the screen shot of the plane that you prefer. That's how will look the new folder. It doesn't matter if you call the text file as readme.txt or installation.txt The last step is to zip the folder and upload the file to your favorite web site. And that's exactly what I did. The result of this exercise is called txt02ah.zip which can be downloaded here. Alejandro Hurtado dracosist@cantv.net Read other articles in this series -
How To Be A Repainter Part Seven Uploading a File And Some History After The Release By Alejandro Hurtado (13 September 2006) Here is the pain and suffering. I remember something similar when I read "The Divine Comedy". Why? Because when you finish a plane and release it, the plane is no more your plane. It's just one more of thousands of files in a database, and you must rely that it will defend itself. How? Well, we will see it soon. But first, for "rookie painters", what is needed for a successful upload? First at all, the modeler's permission. It must be included for the reasons I wrote on the second part of this series. It is usually included on a file called something like "readme.txt" Second, a file name. Some web sites request that the name of the file has to be no more than 8 characters long, So you must "compress" the model and identification of your plane in such a little space. I use the first four characters for model identification: d328, b727, p51d and so on. The next two characters are "ah": Alejandro Hurtado. And the last two are just a sequential number. So, my Boeing 737-200 from Avior Airlines, the same that I boarded few years ago, is called B737AH49.ZIP. My very detailed Dornier 328 from United Express is called D328AH75.ZIP. But, if you are going to use my method, please change the "AH" by your own initials! Third, the file_id.diz file. (Full details can be found here.). It's a text file telling the plane's name, modeler, repainter, version of Flight Simulator and a brief description of the repaint. And if you want your file to be downloaded, try to do it well. It's not the same to say "Boeing 727 prototypes" as it is to say "Do you know how many and how were painted the prototypes of the Boeing 727? And where are they today?". The second is a more attractive and interesting description, and tells to the "just fly" simmers that you know what are you talking about. This description must be attractive, short and yet include all the relevant words that a simmer will search. For example, if you had made Finnair Santa Claus MD-11, include the words "special Christmas" in the text, or nobody will find it. Let's say that this is the presentation card of your artwork, or the first weapon to make this file to success. Fourth: the attached picture. It's the second weapon you must give to your file for self-defense. You must include a picture good enough to use as wallpaper, but so simple that it can be understood and liked with the small size that the web sites must use to publish it. I have a wonderful picture of a B727 flying inside mountains with an Alaskan thunderstorm, but if you reduce it, then you can't say to which airline it belongs. Fifth: Another obligatory file is the installation instructions. It changes depending if you made a "textures only" file or a "ready to fly" file. It usually is a text file called "readme.txt". You don't need to reinvent the wheel, just read the installation instructions of another plane and copy them to yours. Plus, you can include in this archive any other information you believe is important: plane handling, airline information, history of the real one, etc. Sixth, the results of your work: if you made a "textures only" file, a folder called texture.x; if you made a "ready to fly" file, include the four folders (panel, texture, sound and model) and two files (aircraft.cfg and model_of_plane.air) that the plane needs to work. Of course, there can be an effects folder, a gauges folder, and another textures folders. It's not so difficult because all these extra folders must have been included in the original plane. I'm not being more specific because, remember, there are manuals where you can read the detailed specifications. (FlightSim.Com offers tutorials on installing complete aircraft here and repaints here.) So, once you made a zip file with all the previous parts included, you can upload this. Just pick your favorite web site, hopefully www.flightsim.com and another one if you want. There are sites where your artwork can have a score, there are sites where the downloads are counted, there are national sites and there are dead sites. And here is where we the repainters begin to suffer. When you released your repaint and a flightsimmer says "beautiful plane but slow". Well, thanks for the beautiful, that's what I intended, but a PBY-5A has a "never exceed speed (Vne)" of 173 kts. It can't be supersonic! Sometimes one of your better creations receives a bad evaluation due to installation mistakes. Sometimes the web site where your file is stored suffers a crash and all the counters are reset. But not everything is bad. Many days you receive emails from people who like your creations. And from any place of the world! You can have friends from Panama, Austria, Spain, UK, Aruba... A few days ago I met an air hostess and she was interested in me! (Well, being a blond man with green eyes helps a lot.) And many of the feedback and ratings are wonderful. Thanks, thanks, thanks. Another reward you can receive is when you do a search on the Internet and find your files on other web sites. It means that someone downloaded your artwork, liked it and uploaded again to another place. Sometimes a virtual airline selects one of your planes for its fleet. It is better for me that a 10/10 rating, but not better than a email. Of course, it can happen only if you do a good job. As I said before, I am making these for joy, but once you decide to release a file, it's a matter of self esteem to do your best to release a plane as good as you can do, given the proper family, real job and time limits. Because the third and last weapon you give to your file is your reputation. Because I want that anybody who downloads one of my seventy plus files can feel that I did the best I could. It includes doing fixes when something was wrong. Sometimes, even doing your best, there is a mistake: the color of a shadowed part of the plane was different, the flight dynamics are improved... then do a fix, and release it. A fix must have the file_id.diz and the installation.txt files to help "just fly" simmers to correct the mistake. I could include many other things that you would be interested to know, but I don't include them in this series. When I start to receive feedback from you, the readers, I saw that many of you believed that the name of this series was "how to paint". But I don't want hundred of repainters using the same method. I want people trying, inventing, looking for ideas and improving the work done for many others, me included. Alejandro Hurtado dracosist@cantv.net Read other articles in this series -
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How To Be A Repainter Part Six Painting And Weathering A Plane Or Seaplane By Alejandro Hurtado (2 September 2006) At last! We are ready to do what brings us here: to paint a Flight Simulator plane. I'm supposing you are going to repaint an FS2004 (FS9) plane. In the old FSFW95 days when people didn't use things like cell phones and there were advanced devices like Betamax and music cassettes, the texture files were stored in a special format, called *.*af files. The repainting was done using TEXCON01 to convert the *.*af files to bitmaps and back again. FS2000 was easier for the repainters: its planes used normal bitmapped files, and could be modified even using Windows Paint, as did at least one repainter. Today, we use extended bitmaps with alpha channel. Alpha is the reflection channel. The metallic parts are more reflective than the tires, for example. I use the DXTBmp program to convert the files. I know you must have selected your model and the pictures of the plane you want to do. I was preparing a long discourse about the tools, steps, kind of files you must open, alpha channel and so on. But I realized that there are a lot of manuals about how to repaint that do just that, some of them on FlightSim.Com. Of course, if many of you request me to detail this part, I'll do. But I think that, reading the manuals, and knowing how your graphics editor works, the only thing you have to do is try, fail, retry and succeed. To give you a detailed example of how to do an specific repaint with specific tools, will be like Tony Vallillo (the one from Golden Hawaii and others) giving you the pre-flight checklist and tell you how to kick a tire. So, I decided that the main purpose of this series of articles is to give you ideas, motivation and clues about how to be a repainter. We are going to talk here about weathering. Weathering is the art to simulate that a virtual plane is real and has been used. To weather a new virtual plane you just must take a virtual hose... guess not. Any plane has its age, but we must take care about what age we want to show. Once I saw a plane in demonstration colors, all rusty and full of water streaks. The detail was that the demonstration planes never get rusty, because they are kept clean until they are sold to an airline. It's something like to paint cargo containers on the Titanic deck. There are four kinds of surfaces: metallic, fabric, painted metal and composites. Each one must be painted different. Fabric is perhaps the most easiest to paint. WWI planes and many of WWII were made of fabric. There were no junctions, or speed lines. And you can even simulate the ribs, painting diffused darker lines. Of course, the only way to do a perfect simulation is to look at real pictures. For example, if you find pictures of B-17, DC-3 and other American planes of WWII, the skin was metallic, but the control surfaces were fabric covered. The fabric gets cleared by the sun, but only the upper surface, of course. It's usual to paint invasion stripes on these planes, but remember that many transport and bomber crews felt that it was too easy to see and removed the upper stripes, leaving a mix on metal, camouflage and black/white areas on these zones. I said there were no speed lines, but the engines dropped oil, so we must do darker, defined lines and stripes leaving from engines, cartridge exits and carburetors and following the airflow. It means that the line is curved on the fuselage over the wings, for example. Painted metal and composite surfaces is more difficult. Usually they have no oil streaks. But any airplane, even the newer, has darker lines where the junctions are. There are very diffuse lines leaving the joining line in the airflow direction. If the plane is small, you can even paint the screws. WWII planes, fighters, regional jets, they all have screws that can be displayed following the junctions. On the wings, the area after the airbrakes has darker airflow lines than the fuselage, due to the air resistance and the water that can be stored here. And the engines near the fuselage, as is the case of DC-9 and 727, can have a long, teardrop darker zone caused by the burned fuel. In the case of military planes, the reverses creates another darker zone, as is the case of many Tornado's tails. On the seaplanes, the flotation line was green, due to algae, but the submerged surfaces were clean, because the running water removed all the dirt. And a seaplane, even in war time, spends many of its time docked, specially on rainy days. So usually there are no high speed marks, running horizontally (after all, the PBY Catalina was so slow that the crew used a calendar instead of a clock to reach the meeting points). The seaplanes had rust zones falling from windows, junctions and struts. And the places where the anchors and ropes scratched the paint had metal streaks. Many seaplanes had metal scratches on the base of the doors, due to the difficulty to board the plane. Again, be careful with the kind of plane: a CL-215 or a PBY waterbomber has no rust. They had smoke streaks, dark and diffused, running through the wing-engine junctions. Again, watch some pictures. The bare metal surfaces are the most difficult to do. You must remember that there is not a "metal" color. There are metallic colors: copper, aluminum, steel--each one has its own color, from clear grey blue to dark gold. Here is where a repainter must look closely at the original pictures and decide which base color has each part of the plane. Usually the wings and fuselage are composed of some different parts, each one with slightly different metal color: airbrakes, krueger flaps, cargo doors, wing roots. Plus, the metallic surface has junctions, sometimes has oil leaks, and very often screws. You must combine everything you have learned. And you must do something new. The metallic surfaces are never monochromatic. They always have myriads of parallel lines, each one of slightly different color from the adjacent. To simulate that, I use two methods: to copy a small piece of the original picture inside my work, file, and duplicate this bit many times, or to generate random points and distort the result into long lines. Of course, you must add the speed lines to the result. No matter than the "just fly" user never sees the plane closer to detail the work, no matter that the alpha channel emulates the metal by a high reflex, a good metallic repaint must have all this. Do you see why any repainter specializes on a few models? Because the most difficult is to find the right amount of dust, junctions and detail for each plane. Sometimes I include help files for repainters inside my creations. If you look on my Air One Boeing 737-800, you'll find a texture for a white fuselage, with all the weather marks but without any airline decoration. But I must confess that I don't follow this rule all the time. After all, it applies for aged planes, and I like to do newly painted planes. Even if you want to paint a plane as was painted in February 1985, it doesn't mean that you must put twenty years of dirt over the wings. Just paint it as was on April 1985. And remember that the main thing that brings us here is the joy of doing something beautiful and sharing it with all the flightsimmer community. Another difficult point about repainting is the use of the "cut and paste" skill. I, as many repainters, used to cut the airline logo and paste it on my work file. It happens especially on the tails. If you see, or download my Air Europa's Martini repaint, you'll see that almost all the fuselage and tail were made using the "cut and paste" method. Does it means that I just scanned the picture? Never! The pictures used to have shadows, as for example on the fuselage under the stabilizer, on the tail surface if the plane is a T tail shape and the engines if they are underwing. So, if you just copy a picture and paste it on the work file, you'll have something similar to roll a picture around a trunk: everybody sees that something is very wrong. In this case, I had to cut the pictures bit to bit, correct the distortion due to the perspective (it made the doors near the far end of the plane seem curved), adjust to the windows of the model and correct the tonality and light of the picture to match the one I selected. Plus, very frequently you must repaint over the pasted zones to homogenize the colors and remove the original reflections. And a warning: some models are not 100% accurate to the real planes: sometimes the wings have slightly different angles, the tails have slightly different shape... you don't see it until you try to make fit a cut tail image over the existing guide. I don't blame the modelers: they sometimes start to do their models with a 3D view that will be a few centimeters long. As I said in the first part of this series, I'd like to read a "how to be a modeler" article. The next and last part is how to upload the finished file and some history after the release. Alejandro Hurtado dracosist@cantv.net Read other articles in this series -
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How To Be A Repainter Part Five Drawings, Pictures And History Of The Real Plane By Alejandro Hurtado (28 August 2006) Once time long ago I bought a karate book and, immediately after the introduction, I found the next phrase: "If you are no able to run one kilometer without stop, don't keep reading this book". Well, if you are a fantasy repainter or you don't care if a plane is Swedish or Chinese, just forget this part and wait until I release the next one. I'm supposing that you have, at least, one picture of the plane. Is it enough? No, never. Almost every plane has differences between port and starboad side. And, if you can see all the fuselage paint, it means that you can't see the wings. Let's do an example with the Boeing 727. Have you noted that a well documented picture never says 727-200? It says 727-212, -2Q8 and so on. That is because every airline orders its planes with slight differences: more or less bathrooms, kitchens and seats. So, if you count the windows between the back door of the plane and the engine, they are not always the same. And the 737-800 has an air intake and two cargo doors on the starboard (right) side, but not in the port (left) side. Another reason to have more than a picture of the plane is the time and weather. Wet planes are darker that dry ones. I remember, when I was doing my Swisswings Do-328, that all pictures showed black letters and grey lines... except one. This was the only one taken on a sunny day. The others where all taken on a cloudy day. Wet planes often seems more glossy than dry ones. This is a thing you must take care when we talk about military planes. Many European fighter pictures are taken on rainy days, and even a matte Bf-110 seems to have its alpha channel high. A good place to find pictures of modern planes is www.airliners.net but remember that you can't put the pictures inside the finished file, because they are copyrighted. Of course, it's not the only web site, there are others. Another good real place is your local airport. Also, the airlines' web sites, the planes magazines, etc. Remember to check if the airline includes the register code of the plane on the wings. Some do, another don't. Some of them even paint the wings instead of leaving it bare metal. The military planes include country identification on the wings... some only two, some four. But there are Sudafrican planes that don't have any. The search for vintage aircraft is different. You can find pictures and side views on the historical sites. Sometimes also in plane magazines and old books. But another way to find information about vintage aircraft is to buy a scale plastic model. They include many paint schemes and the plane is displayed very detailed and by every side. Let's say that they did the investigative work for you. Usually you can finish with many pictures of the plane from different years, from different places. On WWII, for example, the winter camouflage was very different from the summer one, even with the same plane. Even in the same squadron each plane had different camouflage. Here is when you must choose which plane, or how many planes, you want to do. Yes, you can do more than one. One thing I like to do, when I can, is to follow a specific plane for many years, and release different repaints inside the same file for each change of paint, or each airline it served. It's funny to see that sometimes a regional plane travels all over the world in a few years. And here is when the history of the plane is important. Maybe some of you know why a particular 767 is know as "the Gimly Glider"? Or know there is actually the third prototype of the Boeing 727-100? Many of you had downloaded the "Memphis Belle", but there were two of them. The real one, and the plane of the movie. The pin-up girls were different, and the real one had dark green stripes over the wings, elevators and upper fuselage. A famous P-51D is called Cripes A'Mighty, but there was a P-47, a P-51B and two P-51D's called Cripes A'Mighty and flown by George Preddy. Also, today exist a P-51D in flying state called Cripes A'Mighty. Another good source for information is...www.flightsim.com, of course. The plane could have been done for FS5 or FS98. I never do a repaint that was already done less than six years ago, but it's always worthwhile to search for similar or older files. So, take your time and find so many pictures and history of a particular plane as you can. If don't, find pictures of similar ones. And if don't, well... do your best. Enough for now. The next part of the series is "Painting and weathering a plane or seaplane". Any question, you can send me an email. Alejandro Hurtado dracosist@cantv.net Read other articles in this series
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