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Just finished the first livery ... I must say the paintkit could be better ... It's quit an issue until everything works as it is supposed to do. Especially the wing texture is a real mess, and it forced my 16gb RAM to surrender ... one PSD file Oo

Time stands not still in development and when you await a paintkit where you can actually alter anything to adapt it to your pleasure, you need first to dig in more. The layers also contain some logic in their layers.

A very few you actually need to address and those are labeled GREEN. The others in red and yellow are mostly locked, so you normally not need to touch them ever.

For painting with 2048er textures really a 64bit Photoshop is recommended. I worked before with the 32bit version and that loads 10 times slower. I got also 16 GB RAM and never even felt a stutter here while working.

If we would put out a very reduced paintkit which is stiff and unflexible costumers would tell even more. So when you want to adapt it to your workflow, you can! Simply merge then what you only need as one piece overlaid.

Unluckyly the other way around you cant do it, so separating details from a unified layer. So this approach seemed more logic.

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Hi Airmax!

Nice to meet you again! To the paintkit belongs a manual in TXT-File Format in which is described how all works.

But even if you simply scan the layers inside the texture files you could come to the idea how it works. But one must look first.

But as i am no brute, come take my hand and i give you a little guidance here.

The files that end on letter "_C" contain color and reflective information. Reflections sit in the alpha channel, the diffuse color is standard RGB.

There is a special orange flagged layer called "Reflections", mostly sitting on second place below "UV UNWRAP". Thats where you alter the reflective amounts and copy/paste it into the alpha channel. Pretty simple or?

The darker the grey values, the more reflections you get. For FSX you should adapt this, as with darker colors you get automaticly less reflections and so duller surfaces, compared to a bright one (where they lightly overshine into ugly pure white, brrrrr!).

So that "Germania" logo (which looks beside a bit shabby aliased, try a higher resolution version there better to get good reviews later) should also get a strengthened boost on reflections.

In your case i think there is a rest of a lufthansa texture specular data, which still applies its gloss. Those appearance is addressed via the files the end with "_S", traditionally know as SPECULAR TEXTURES.

You know that you have also to work in those files? Similar to reflectivity darker colors reduce the gloss strength of a material in FSX. To keep the illusion of the multi layered coating (which have been introduced soon after WW2) you have to boost the specular value

above those of the white surroundings in this case. The old data you can remove within seconds, as livery specific data is collected in special LIVERY SPECIFIC CONTENT layers. But there are also people on this world who like examples, and so are addressed both parties

with this paintkit. The second data layer inside the specular file (we remember those who were labeled "_S") sits inside the alpha layer and controls the wideness of the glossy hilight. This enables you to create with the same material not only high glossy surfaces

but also things like metal and rubber. Is that magic? YES! Often the really good things in life need more time to be understood. And here we are at the end of our little round tour.

If you have further questions, you can always come back here!

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As I asked several times for a masterfile I decided to make one by myself

Thank you for your (detailed) answer! Until now I just scanned the text quickly, but tonight I will read your text and try to find the information I need. Btw: The Germania logo is not the logo beeing used for the release version. Just a placekeeper as I haven't scanned the internet for a high res logo.

@Masterfile

As I have asked for a masterfile without succes several times I have decided to make one by myself.... Still haven't managed to fit in the fuselage part of the belly, as they seem to have a different size?!? Still have no idea why this has not been implemented yet. I am a real newbie in these things and I did this within 2 hours!

Right now it looks like this (in this case beeing used for my germania repaint):

paintkit-germaniad-asmny07.png

Hi Airmax!

See, such easy the paintkit is to use! The parts of the community that paint the same way like you will be thankful if you share your work with them!

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  • 2 weeks later...

Thank you very much! BTW I would like to hear from someone that prepared other repaints how did he manged with this topic.

In the meantime I did some trials, maybe I found a way to do that, by inverting the colors and converting to grey scale the main RGB picture, and using the result as alpha layer, but didn't tried yet to see how it appears in the sim, so I'm not sure this is a proper way to proceed.

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Hi Andrea78!

The topic you speak over is already explained in the paintkit manual.

But lets tell the story again in even more details in case others have the same question:

There is indeed a collapsed alpha channel inside the file. Thats the data which is used finally by the sim and is contained also in the exported DDS.

In every texturepage featuring an alpha channel in case of our paintkit here, the PSD contains at second position from top an orange colored layer called "REFLECTIONS" when painting inside the "*_C.PSD". So the texture page where the RGB color is also defined.

In case of the "_C.PSD" textures, we need to define the strength of the environmental reflections by grey values, which can range from 0 to 255. The darker the value, the more of the reflections is displayed.

When you unfold the reflections layer in photoshop you will be presented layers for weld lines and ever repeating stuff on the models (sensor plates etc...), all converted already for the logic of the environmental alpha channel. I remember again: The more dark, the more reflective.

Color doesnt count here, so all you will find here is black and white. Such Alpha Channels can even contain 8 bit data (grey values). At the lower end of the orange layer set "REFLECTIONS", you will find a subset for the special livery content aká the specific data of your own livery.

When you painted your regular color layer you copy that data and move the copy to the REFLECTIONS - LIVERY SPECIFIC CONTENT SUBSET. There you create with a fill FX layer the wished greyscale, so reflections amount. If you are done, you save your file and make an exact

duplicate with the corresponding photoshop order. Those you flatten then and make STRG+C (copy that content), then you close that copy of the original again, select then the alpha layer of the original file and via STRG+V post the alpha data within there.

Then you switch OFF the orange REFLECTIONS layer to get plain sight at the RGB data again, save again to keep what you worked on. Then you are done (beside of course to export the DDS file).

Happy painting!

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  • 1 month later...

For the A318/9 paint kit, there is a nice manual explaining what files need to be saved how(i.e. DXT5, flipped vertically, etc). Does this exist for the A320 paint kit somewhere?

Thanks!

Kevin

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Hello Stefan,

I've stumbled over a specular issue with the A320's. Can you point me out where the SPECULAR file is for TURBINE? I mean the cover of the engines.

I'm painting the AIRBUS_EX320_TURBINE_C file but I fail to find the AIRBUS_EX320_TURBINE_S. It does exist for the A319 series, but I cannot see/find it for the A320/321 series.

Many thanks for the contribution.

Regards,

Vital Vanbeginne

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