Stefan Hoffmann
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Posts posted by Stefan Hoffmann
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Hi!
We are not limiting repainters to low-quality textures here by our pure will. It's simply a downside of the decal technique, which aims to efficiently use texture space and computation time to make an adapted approach with local detail. Of course, this limits the painting freedom compared to FSX and P3D. But you must also accept the technical limits that hardware still applies. When I remember right, FSLabs did an A320, which is much smaller in total surface area than an A330. Note that with the increasing area, the memory demand grows not linearly but by square. Then the aircraft must work in an environment that consumes masses of texture data (satellite imagery for the ground) and on top of gigabytes of textures when the plane is operating at a large airport. We cannot influence the landscape texture use, and we cannot influence the airport texture memory usage, which other developers decide, and often they like to consume a lot for their scenery. So we have to aim for a partly invisible target and carefully decide how much we can go with our aircraft to run stable at a large bunch of different hardware (graphics cards can come still with very different memory sizes, shader number etc...). Of course, we want to please everyone we can with our products, but we won't change how our aircraft are technically designed.
But as told one of our primary goals is to make our customers happy. So don´t see all lost now for your issue; we will have some discussion about the next days internally first.
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Hi!
It's worth emphasizing that painting for MSFS operates differently from P3D. For smaller to mid-sized planes such as the 737 and A320, the traditional single-texture approach may suffice for achieving adequate resolution. However, for larger aircraft like the A330 and even the 747, the decal technique is necessary. This means that we are limited to a maximum of 2K resolution for the base textures, with fine details such as text labels, decor, welding lines, and rivets distributed through decals. While some developers may have opted to reuse their old paintings, we prioritize ensuring that our aircraft run seamlessly across a wide range of hardware platforms.
Each airline has its own unique Livery_A.psd, with the registry located in varying positions. Therefore, when using the decal technique, you cannot expect to freely paint the registration in any location. Your hires' material can only be placed within the designated decal area. The only consistent asset is the winglet decal.
1. New decals for your custom registration would have to be created first in a unique model.
2. No.
3. No. Creating 4K or 8K versions makes no sense for us in production as it exponentially makes things slower during development. However you can create upscales of the paintkit textures. But it will also significantly enlargen the graphics memory footprint
and maybe not run of platforms like XBOX.
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Hi!
The LIVERY_A.psd and so the content on the corresponding decals can be altered to create a manifold more variants for the airlines that are provided. The decals provide also reserve space to use new aircraft names (especially Virgin Atlantic and Lufthansa) or to exchange decorative paint (like the lady on Virgin Atlantic).
However fully changing the decals will not work. As an end user you get only already compiled models. Even if you can load them in Blender, you wont be able to fully recompile to model as placements and animations inside the model get lost. Also giving away the original models wont work, as there are
many months of research and hard work in them.
This is a downside of the new MSFS painting technique. As you can observe on repaints done for other aircraft, often repainters make those livery specific decal stuff fully transparent (and so invisible) and blow up the texture to a higher resolution. But be warned, that this may work
at high end graphics cards / PCs, but the effect on low end machines and XBOX may not be acceptable. While on small to medium aircraft you can partly achive high end looks by using 4K resoluted textures, on larger aircraft this is a no go because of the much larger total surface area of the aircraft
and the behaviour of the texture to square their memory demand when doubling the resolution. Imagine simply, that you could cover even a twin otter aircraft fully with a single wing of an A330.
Not even with 8K textures you get the visual result on the other side you can achieve with a fraction of memory space using decals. This is simply the new repaint reality we also face in our internal production and be asured that we welcome any help doing additional repaints.
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Hi!
The file LIVERY_A.psd contains livery specific decal details. This means, that all those liveries inside the paintkit have special geometry for mapping just those decal content. Thats why they are all unique.
So using the LIVERY_A.psd file you can only change the asset content located on such decal geometry. You can make the geometry fully visible if you use a dominant color, like pink, and use full opacity all over the area.
Note that texturing for MSFS is different to texturing for P3D or FSX. While in the older case you painted ALL content directly in one map, you now can only paint low to medium resolution stuff onto the fuselage anymore.
All really fine detail like small text labels, screw, rivets and seams all reside now inside extra decal geometry mesh floating above the base fuselage and are rendered in a special pass to not create a flickering effect as for depth tracing inaccuracies.
On the other side you can make all the livery decals invisible by making the alpha fully black / make all full transparent. The LIVERY_A.psd contains only color content for wingtips and airline specific labels.
Hope that helps.
Kindest Regards
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Am 20.2.2022 um 15:04 schrieb Trevor Hannant:
Am I going mad/blind - I can't see the DHC6_DECALS_INTERIOR_INFOBOARDS_albedo.psd file in any of the files linked above. I thought perhaps it would be a separate later in the DHC6_300_EX_WHELS_PAX_Decal_Label_albedo.psd file but don't see it there either.
Anyone able to point to it for me?
Hi Trevor!
As this is a part of the interior model and the paintkit only features exterior stuff normally this isn´t included yet. We are discussing internally to release also those mentioned files for repainters to change.
Kindest Regards
Stefan
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Am 14.2.2022 um 15:54 schrieb Donka:
Thanks for this Mathijs - this is going to make the livery creation process a lot quicker. I do notice there are some missing elements in the Paintkit though. Using the 300PAX fuselage for example, the Static Stuff group is missing some cockpit interior items such as internal door lining. This is also missing from the UV layer which may partly explain why it is missing. It does show up on the example sim albedo layer at the top if enabled though so we can manipulate that to fix the paint kit.
I've not checked them all yet and will do a quick livery test and export into the sim this evening but just wanted to share this so you can hopefully feed back to the texture artists if they can update the paint kit.
Hi Donka!
Note that in MSFS only the outer shell is existing in the exterior model. The cockpit itself (and with it even the insides of doors) are part of the virtual cockpit model. Cockpit and exterior model are fully separate entities now. So you wont find any of the interior parts anymore in the external paintkit which exists already in the interior model. We will have to discuss if we publish some editable version of the interior assets so.
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Hi Ddeuce!
Why not ask you the creator of the paintkit himself? He should know how photoshop works! ;-)
But to say it in plain letters: Using photoshop is 10 times as easy as driving a car, surely a thousands times easier than
flying an aircraft. Since you seem to have mastered the more complex things, you WILL be able to tame Photoshop too.
People listen, simply ask!
As first help i can tell you, that photoshop organizes the photoshop files in the layer table. This you can imagine as layering
transparent plastic foils onto each other. The more on top they are in the table, they more on top they would also on the
real plastic layering. Some is drawn plain color (mostly the lowest ones). On others exist small pencil dots and lines, they
are layed on top the plain color. The cool thing is now, that the layering can be "almost" limitless and when you change or add
a detail you can easily move, switch on/off, scale and rotate the layer content INDEPENDENT from ALL OTHER STUFF.
Thats beautiful! When you have understood the system i swear you, you wont try another software with the lack of this feature.
I work now over a decade and a half with it, and it never failed to support me.
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Hi DDeuce!
First of all the readers need to know what paint program you use now in first place to help.
Adobe Photoshop is THAT tool amongst artists and repainters, only a small fraction i know of, that are using different formats.
But very often the are plugins and converters from PSD to other software formats. Would i myself have that problem then i would google from "PSD conversion paintshop" for example, if you got the last one in usage currently.
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Hi Ddeuce!
Your need is understood, the armament seargent just gets some additional LAU-7 launchers for you out of the AS ammo dump ;-)...
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Thanks Ddeuce!
Good to see that the passion we invested touched the heart of someone. So this makes all investments done going up in a larger sense...
This is what life should be about!
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CDF is included, of course!
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Thanks DDeuce! I will try to recreate that also lightly optically distorted, as it would have passing the reflective combiner glas one time, and being reflected and enlarged from top lens/mirror.
I guess the light green tick comes with clear filter, while i will use the red one i think for our version.
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Hi Ddeuce!
Do you have access to a sharp image of the reflected target reticle when the gunsight is powered up?
Cheers
Stefan
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Pardon my "civilist style" lol...yeah Mark 4 panels.
Were they backlighted? And i think the suncover could be closed completely, so not randomly to drop bombs already on the home base runway by hectic..?
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SKYHAWK: Yep, i see the double antennas there, however this is the first i encounter on a marine version. Im not sure if im going to paint this next days, but with the paintkits delivered you should be pretty fast in doing one.
Basicly you only have to drop in color there and new labels if you want. Soft shadows, dirt, rivets etc...will be in separated adjustable layers. So everyone will be able to tune the look up to the pixel...
Currently i model and texture the changes for the military cockpit version (gunsight, some additional glareshield panels), so not wonder when it becomes a bit calmer for some days. But maybe some WIP images will be posted...
After that payload (weapons, tanks) so there is still something to do!
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The military versions come, when we keep the glareshield/gunsight area in focus, pretty originally. There will be no 3d GPS in them, as it was in reality....
When i understood that right, there was some map case centered above the glareshield and beside the hardpoint manipulation panels....
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Dual flexible antennas is see in my references here ONLY on Air Force Variants, NEVER on US Marine Variants.
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Hi Skyhawk!
The armed forces not made a consistent art out of their liveries it seems. The Aerosoft Bronco X Marines livery was also done by photo reference, in detail by the book FAMOUS AIRPLANES OF THE WORLD, ISSUE 45/1993/3, page 66.
It was published by BUNRINDO Co. LTD. There all those special markings werent painted on the aircraft, nor was the wing painted in plain white color. I guess the photo you posted comes from a later date.
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We proceeded here too far now with the old style paint on the 409 to stop. Maybe we do new style later.
One interest i have. If you have contact to the director could you find out which font they use to name their bases near the pilot entry?
The places look like hand written: Ramone, Porterville, Grass Valley. That text font to know would help a lot!
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Hi DDeuce!
Without the paintkit, so the uncompressed original files, you will never be able to export the textures in highest quality. Every time you save them, they will loose quality.
I dont know if it was clearly enough communicated, but CDF Broncos will come as update and paintkit during january. So you even not need to use any of your time to enjoy it in some time...
The paintkit bases on the N409DF and also features the special air condition intake and outlets which where fitted later to fight the californian sun and forest fire heat.
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LOL
And here's to Stefan!
:beer3_s:
THX! But i better keep to my tea...
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Well while it's been interesting to watch two threads of bickering so far, what's really caught my eye is the tape measure presented to us a couple of pages back. I'm sure whoever is holding this rather fancy tape should be wearing bright red nail varnish.
Briefly borrowed from my wife...
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Indeed very nice photowork!
Especially the last picture where you put the modell in front of a real background :goodjob_s:
Otto
Also the "real" background is purely computer graphics.
LIVERY_A.psd vs Base Texture
in Repaints
Posted
Hello!
As you can see in our preview forum for the MSFS A330 there is a Turkish Airlines livery available now (TC-JNP). As I can see that your design closely follows the Turkish Airlines design base idea, you can now apply your VA design to that paintkit. There is a large decal for the text "TURKISH AIRLINES" where you can apply your VA logo and so on.
We hope that this will help you in your painting efforts. However note that we nevertheless follow the decal approach also consequently in the future.