carenado repainting guide

[Captain Vodka]

After spending all my time behind the yoke or joystick in FSX I would dearly love to be able to repaint some of my payware aircraft for running my company in Air Hauler. Of course all to be ready for the AH2 release too, fingers crossed , sometime this year.

 

So my question is Id like to repaint my Carenado and Aerosoft fleet

 

These will include the Carenado C208b EX and Malibu Mirage and then the Aerosoft Twin otter extended.

 

Ive had a look round for some help on You Tube for a how to repaint the carenado aircraft first but too be honest.

I haven't found anything that will truly help a beginner.

 

I have Photoshop CS5

What else will i need?

 

can someone help me with any you tubes vids on specifically Carenado how to repaint? and the 'Twotter' EX from Aerosoft

 

 

any help appreciated

[StringBean]

For Carenado-

 

peace,

the Bean

[bdf369]

Nvidia texture tools for photoshop are helpful, they allow to work directly with DDS files

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

 

My recollection is Carenado "paint kits" are DDS files instead of layered PSD files. The video above is great for painting technique.

 

Be sure to flip the texture when loading and again when saving, there are checkboxes in the load and save dialogs to do this. When saving I generally don't generate Mipmaps for non-AI aircraft, and use DXT5 compression. Make sure you preserve the filename when saving out the DDS file.

 

If you're a raw beginner, just try adding a texture folder and add an entry to aircraft.cfg for your repaint variation, then load up the paint kit texture in PS, add a layer and splash a bit of color on it and save the DDS file out to your texture folder. Add a texture.cfg like this:

 

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc526975.aspx#TextureConfigurationFile

 

You can preview repaints using ModelConverterX (MCX):

http://www.scenerydesign.org/development-releases/

 

In MCX, import your aircraft's aircraft.cfg file and choose your repaint using the Livery list in the toolbar. You can keep MCX open and press the Reload Texture button to see changes you make after you re-export the DDS file from photoshop.

[Captain Vodka]

thanks guys ill be diving into this on my week off.. next week. . . might be back with some further questions

 

many thanks

 

here we go. .

[Captain Vodka]

Hi guys. .many thanks for the info previously. So much in fact I've learnt how to create and export some basic creativity to my Air hauler bird. The carenado EX C208b.

 

Welcome to SCAIR.

 

 

Next question. Is it feasible / possible too open up an existing dds file into photoshop , add some graphics. Im not the best person for creating the nice smooth dynamic curve lines in PS. So was hoping to use one of the Carenado supplied paints as a guide?

 

Is this possible. . ?

[PAULCRAIG]

Good start.

 

You will probably need a plugin to open dds files directly, the alternative is to convert the dds files into bmp format using DXTbmp. You can use any of the supplied painted textures as template by copying it onto a new transparent layer of your layered paintkit. With practice you will be able to paint nice smooth curves, there are tools in Photoshop to help with this.

[StringBean]

I agree with Paul, get the nVidia plugin.

 

With it you can open .DDS textures directly in Photoshop, make your edit and save back to .DDS.

 

No need to ever use DXTBmp again. For .DDS textures anyway.

 

https://developer.nvidia.com/nvidia-texture-tools-adobe-photoshop

 

peace,

the Bean