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Virgin's incredible candy apple metalflake paint.....I'm attempting it


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I always chuckle when folks comment "I don't see the real value of PBR....what does it do?"

Well....for one... it gives painters the ability to FINALLY replicate metal that is not "painted on" and reacts to the environment its in (reflects the ground, clouds, service vehicles, etc) and of course shows off the sun's glint like this:

See the clouds reflecting off the bottom of the fuse?

 

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What PBR also allows painters to do is replicate painted metallic finishes like on Virgin....

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There is a LOT of tweaking that needs to be done on no less than 2 texture maps and 4 color channels to replicate this effect....meaning that I may be tweaking it for forever to get it to look right LOL.

The one drawback of the graphics engine in flightsim is that the transitions between light and dark happen very abruptly and are too stark in my opinion....meaning that I may never get this effect to look good in all lighting situations....like it may look great with the sun glinting on it...but when its in the shade...it may look a tad dark.  With PBR...we can now control the shadow effect quite nicely, however it is a static adjustment that, once again.....is at the mercy of the graphics engine.

We'll see if I can come up with a median solution that both shows off that marvelous flecked paint effect in the sun and is not too dark on the other side.

 

This is taking painting to the next level...with PBR...gone is the limitation of flat-nonreflective effects. :)

 

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Finally! I was wondering if someone was going to take on this repaint :) I'd imagine it is fiendishly difficult to get exactly right in all lighting conditions, although there are repaints out there for the PMDG 747 and QW787 that sort of come close. The latter has the metallic effect, but the red is too 'orangey' rather than that lovely cherry red it is in reality. Best of luck with this one!

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