How To Be A Repainter Part One
By Alejandro Hurtado (9 August 2006)
As a daily reader of the FlightSim.Com news page, I get to know about
the history of pilots comparing real and simulated world, new
scenaries, new payware planes and new computer information. I enjoy
it, and every day I check for new articles to read.But I feel that there are some parts of the flight simulator world that aren't reflected. One is the modelers area. Another is the repainters area. The scenery makers area was recently covered, and there was a recent triad of articles about the plane modeler Mike Stone.
But in general these parts of the flight simulator world are dark ones. Maybe you, the "just fly" simmers, believe that to make a plane is just to take a 3 view drawing and scan it to obtain a fully flyable plane. And to paint a plane, you just need to take your scanner, go to the airport and apply it over the real plane.
3 "Ready to Fly" files against "Textures Only"
4 Fantasy or real, newer or vintage
5 Drawings, pictures and history of the real plane
6 Painting and weathering a plane or seaplane
7 Uploading the file and some history after the release
And maybe there are others areas that you, the "just fly" simmers, or another repainters, want to know.
How To Be A Repainter Part Two
Pick Your Model And Request Permission To Repaint
By Alejandro Hurtado (12 August 2006)
Well, no. To find first the documentation is like the joke of the bride who is testing her wedding dress and says: I have the dress, I have the church reserved, I rented the party house, I just need to find the man.
But first of all: what is a model? And what is a repainter?
For "just fly" simmers, a model is the totally blank plane, without colors. Have you seen when you load a complex plane that before you see the colored plane sometimes appears a white form of the plane? That's the model. It is the form of the plane, its weight, its power, fuel, speed, everything except the colors. When a modeler releases a plane, he includes one or two basic paint schemes, usually of a big airline or a big country air force, if a military one.
A repainter is someone who takes this model and adds another color scheme to the plane. Let's take one of my favorite modelers, Mike Stone. He released his Boeing 727-200 plane with the colors of Air France, Alitalia, Condor, Eastern and Piedmont. I have released repaints of this model in seventeen colors, from the wery well known Alaska Airlines to the almost unknow Pride Air. By the way, I just discovered recently that Mike only allows "ready to fly" planes for virtual airlines. The rest of us must conform with texture only repaints, but we will talk more detailed about this in the next part of this series.
Freeware? What's that? Well, there are two different kinds of models: payware and freeware. The first one must be bought, and its repainting is limited; as you can't distribute a payware model for free, you are limited to the people who have bought the package and liked it and see your repaint and know how to download and install it.
The second group, freeware: it's free, OK, but the modelers not allways want someone else to do anything with their work. They, as authors of the plane, can authorize or not to other people to make repaints. Let's say that each model is like a child of its author: you can't go to a father and tell him: "I just met your daughter today and I want to take her to the beach this weekend". The list goes from Shigueru Tanaka, who does not let anybody make repaints without written permission, to iDFG or Robert Versluys, who include a written authorization for repainting their planes.
And, of course, not all the models are good. I know at least one model which is so badly made, that you can draw a straight line, and the line is displayed like an "S".
That's why you must search first the model, and later think, with this model, which plane can you paint.
And request permission? Very important. Some models don't specify if the author allows repaints or not. So, you must send an email requesting permission, and must include the permission with the finished plane you release. If not, the modeler can write to the web site where you uploaded your job, and request to remove it. And worst, if he gets upset, he will never release another model. So, if not directly specified, PLEASE request permission. Many of them will give it to you.
Another kind of permission you must have is the one from some airlines, as American Airlines. You can't release a repaint of its planes without informing the company and without a notification telling that you have nothing to do with the company.
Well, enought for now. In the next part, we will talk about "Ready to
Fly" files against "Textures Only" ones.
How To Be A Repainter Part Three
"Ready To Fly" Files Against "Textures Only"
By Alejandro Hurtado (17 August 2006)
For "just fly" simmers, "Ready to Fly" means a file that you can just unzip into the ..\aircraft directory and the next time you load Flight Simulator, the plane is in the list. Even easier, there are utilities like FSAOM that can automatically install this kind of file.
"Textures Only" is a file that must be assembled, or added, to the
original plane. You must find the file ("base model") released by the
modeler (and that's not always simple), install, copy the textures
folder inside the original plane folder, modify the "aircraft.cfg"
file, change the textures folder name and pray for the result to
work.
[Please note that there are
tutorials
to help with this sort of thing.]
There are two good reasons and two bad reasons for "Textures Only" repaints. The good ones are: the resulting file is smaller, so you can upload and download it more easily and quickly, and for a modeler, the final user must download the original base model file, so his work becomes well known and very often downloaded.
The bad ones are: if you are a "just fly" simmer, and you don't know about folders, notepad, aircraft.cfg editing, renaming and another niceties, you'll never fly this plane. The second one is that sometimes the original plane can't be found. I have downloaded "Textures Only" files with the legend such as: "for the model of John Doe", but it doesn't say where to get this model or its file name. Sometimes it says: "the model is in the www.plane.plane.plane.com adress", so you open Explorer, insert the adress and get a beautiful "error 404: page not found".
I'm sure that you are now believers of the "Ready to Fly" option. I
am too. But it has two problems: the first one, its size. Usually a
ten megabyte model has only two or three megabytes of textures. But
that's not the real drawback. The real problem is that sometimes the
modeler feels that his work is not appreciated, that his original
file and texture are not always known. There is at least one file
where the repainter put the name of the real modeler but with my
email adress--I protested inmediately. But the truth is that a
modeler who releases his files with including permission to repaint
better known than the other modeler who does not.
Because each repaint with his name says that he is so good that we,
the repainters, want to work with him. That a model of Mike Stone,
Kevin Trinkle or SGA is so good that you can download it and start to
repaint without fear of finding some big mistakes in the plane that
your work is lost. And for the "just fly" simmers, sooner or later
they, as us, will learn who does really good models, and in this
moment he will recognize a good modeler by his name no matter if the
repainter included the name or not. And, please, don't refuse the joy
of a "ready to fly" file to all these simmers. We, the repainters,
are aware of the great need that the virtual world has of you, and we
will give you proper acknowledgement of your work.
And that's why I put on my knees every night praying that the
modelers keep releasing planes giving the permission to publish
repaints with the model, panel and everything included. Because the
idea of all this is that the many of you, "just fly" simmers, can
download and fly these beautiful planes. We, the expert simmers who
know how to correct a missing gauge problem, or change a pointer
from a bad panel to some favorite one, we can live with "textures
only" files. But the ones who are starting to enjoy this world, the
ones who will make the future of the modelers and repainters, they
can't do it yet.
Well, enough for now. In the next part, we will talk about what's better: fantasy or real planes, newer or vintage ones.
How To Be A Repainter Part Four
Fantasy Or Real, Newer Or Vintage
By Alejandro Hurtado (23 August 2006)
Well, at last we are closing to the part that bring us here: to
repaint a model!On this part we are going to select the plane that we want to repaint, and how.
Usually many of us select a picture of a real plane and "just" start to do the best transformation of this picture into the virtual world (me included). But a few of us do a fantasy painting, a kind of "how will I paint this real plane if I were a rich man?"
It depends of the imagination skills of everyone and our artistic orientation. Doing fantasy models allows us to commit mistakes without problem. If you don't put the national markings in a fantasy military plane, it does not matter. In the other hand, you need to have decoration skills!
By the way, if you think that the included white, blue and red 727 (right) is a fantasy plane, it's not. It's one of the Braniff planes painted by Alexander Calder. To paint a real plane requires you to find pictures of both sides of the real thing, and sometimes up and down ones to see the wings. This plane had up, down, left and right wings totally different. But we will talk about it on the next part.
The repainter who wants to make a "real" plane, must take care of the
details. He has no invention needs, but must know about weathering,
shadows and sometimes he has to figure a missing part if it is not
displayed on any picture.
Newer or vintage planes? Well, I do both. Each one has pros and cons. The newer planes have plenty of documentation, somentimes you just need do to a trip to the nearest airport to find the real one. But many times they are already done. That's why I always do a search on the web before start a project. For example, I was thinking to do an MD-11 from Citybird. I searched, and found one already repainted that was really good. So I downloaded it and started to search another to do.
I'll want to propose something: If you are member of a virtual
airline, do first the planes of your airline. If not, do the planes
of your country's airlines. Take a look: how many planes can you see
in your nearest airport that are not made for Flight Simulator?
About 18% of my repaints are Spanish planes, and 8% are Venezuelan
ones, my two countries. Another 8% belongs to South American ones. If
you don't live in USA, help the rest of us to know your country. Of
course, the finished files will have less downloads, but we are not
doing that for money, but for joy.
The vintage planes, just because there are difficult to find, have
the charm of old things. Not just to fly it, but to see how the old
things were done. Of course, there are some planes that are new and
old at the same time: the museum machines, especially the flying
ones. One of my repaints is the P-51D that flew in the movies "The
Empire Of The Sun" and "Memphis Belle". It's an old or a new one? Or
one PBY-5A Catalina that was converted to a water bomber and was
being sold on the Internet the last time I checked it.
Of course, you are not obligated to paint your planes in the standard, always the same airline colors. Sometimes, especially on an anniversary, or Christmas time, the airlines change the decoration of their planes. It happens too with the military ones: almost every air festival or Tiger Meet the planes wear special decorations that never repeat again. And sometimes, when an airline rents a plane to another, the resulting painting is a mix of both decorations.
Really, it does not matter what kind of repaint you want to do as long as you must have done your selection by now, and you must be eager to start to put colors on the screen of your computer. We are almost there, because the next part is to find drawings, pictures and history of the real plane.
How To Be A Repainter Part Five
Drawings, Pictures And History Of The Real Plane
By Alejandro Hurtado (28 August 2006)
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.
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.
How To Be A Repainter Part Six
Painting And Weathering A Plane Or Seaplane
By Alejandro Hurtado (2 September 2006)
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 casettes, 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 bitmaped files, and could be modified even using Windows Paint, as did at least one repainter. Today, we use extended bitmaps with alpha chanel. Alpha is the reflection chanel. 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 specifical repaint with specifical tools, will be like Tony Vallillo (the one from Golden Hawaii and anothers) 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 carburators 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 slighty 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 allways have myriads of parallel lines, each one of
slighty different color from the adjecent. 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 mather 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 higth 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 slighty different angles, the tails have
slighty 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.
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, thats 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.
How To Be A Repainter Part Eight
Practical Exercise: Painting For Dummies
By Alejandro Hurtado (19 September 2006)
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]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:
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
[fltsim.1]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.
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
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 propeler 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]Where you must replace the "x" with the following number on the [flightsim. ] line
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
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,Remember, always include the name of the modeler (and yourself too).
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.
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.
How To Be A Repainter Part Nine
Taking Things Further
By Alejandro Hurtado (17 November 2006)
But if you followed my previous articles, and if you did my practical exercise, you may have noted that it was a simple one: just for beginners. So I started to feel that it was necessary to do another exercise, this one more complex.
And I started to feel that it would be a good idea to choose a
totally new model for me. After all, it will put me again at the
point of examining the textures as if I were a novice repainter. To
make it more real, this article will be writen in real time.
My first step was to make an inventory of the models with "open repaint policy", plus the models which I already have permission to repaint but I have never done. And I chose the Douglas DC-8-60 model. Why? First, it's almost a new plane for me. I have flown this plane before, a Cygnus Air repaint of the Historic Jetliners Group's model. The first time, I remember fighting with the autopilot all the way up and down to the nearest airport until I did the first thing anybody must do but nobody does: to read the manual.
This manual says that the 60 series are very powerful planes, and this excess of power makes it dangerous to fly the plane at full thrust except if you are climbing fully loaded or if you want to break the sound barrier and the wings (the 70 series are even more powerful). It says too that the autopilot (the panel must be downloaded apart) is a semi-half manual old-fashion device. But nothing of it is useful for a repainter. So I proceed to search DC-8 pictures. Of course I liked the Cygnus Air planes, but it was already done, so why repeat this one having so many others? After all, there were 556 DC-8's in total. The same happened with Viasa. At last, I found some good liveries.
If you remember, the first step is search the model, the second is REQUEST THE PERMISSION. So I searched for the HJG site, registered in the forums and opened a request. I had three candidates, but I requested for Arrow Panama.
Meanwhile, and checking the textures, I found that the fuselage is split into five pieces. It was necessary in the old days of FS98 and FS2000 due to the 512 pixels side limit, but not now. And the textures have alpha channel. It probably means that the model was a good FS2000 one, but was improved and updated for FS2002, and the instructions says that it works perfectly on FS2004. Will someone tell me how it works on FSX?
It does not mean that it is an old model. The planes are upgraded very frequently. It just means that an old texture can be used over a new model with new flight dinamics.
It also has a different texture for each engine. And that is VERY important for a repainter, because some airlines paint each engine differently, and if you have only one or two sets of textures, your repaint wouldn't be accurate to the original.
Hours later, I checked in the HJG site, and they wrote me that Arrow Panama was done. Same for Fine Air, and two more. After another picture hunt, I requested permission for Canarias Cargo. At this point, I was starting to think that 556 planes aren't so many planes as I believed. But, lucky me, nobody had done this livery before. I must point out to you that all the process since my first post took only 24 hours.
HJG has a very organized way to store its creations: a base zipped file, with all the common files for each version that repeats in every model, a textures only file for each repaint, three files for the panel, another for the sounds and another for the special effects. It saves disk space to the limit, and makes me feel like if I were assembling my own computer, or plane. And that's what I did, to assemble a flyable model of a DC-8-62F. I don't include the panel, sounds or effects in my finished file: it saved more than 10 Mb of space and you still can go to the HJG page and download it.
Next steps: to make a new folder inside the textures, called "ayuda"
(help). Convert all the necessary textures from DXT3 with alpha
channel to normal, plain and silvester BMP format. If you have some
question, read again my first exercise. By the way, a reader of my
previous articles wrote me about a new graphics program, open source,
that permits you to work directly with DXT3 files without conversion,
and many other adventages. Unfortunately, days after I received the
email I had to format my machine and lost this info. But the program
is there on the Internet, somewhere out there.
At this point I searched every known picture of the Canarias Cargo DC-8, and there were two DC-8's and one A300! This company was bigger that I thought. I discovered too than the company closed on June 1996, but this is not relevant. Both planes are slighty different. Must I do only one or both? Well, if I do one, nobody will ever do the other, and the additional work is small. So, the file has two textures.
Another problem is that I have six pictures from the right side, and only one from the left. It means that I'll have to guess some of the left lettering, and the tail must be made by hand.
Sixty lines above the title, and four days after I have the idea, I haven't touched the graphics editor yet. But it is like everything in life: if you want to do it right, better get ready first. Now we are ready. I loaded the fuselage nose and removed the previous livery. The texture is detailed, without dirt. But this tutorial is about advanced repaint. So I pick the base color, darkened 5% and applied over a vertical joint with an ample blush. Darkened again and applied with a smaller brush and the same again. Then, reduced the dark zone ahead of the joint, and stretched aft. Of course, I was using one of the real pictures of the plane to compare. The result was a dirty zone very similar in age and direction to the real one. As it is my first time with this model, I'm going to make a "base dirty texture" for the fuselage, make a copy apart and then, paint the lettering over. This way, my next DC-8-60 repaint will be easier.
Looking at the pictures, there are dark streaks of rust falling from the doors. It will be simulated with an eliptical brush, maybe 30 pixels high by 4 pixels width. After whitening all the fuselage and putting some dirt here and there, I couldn't resist the temptation and pasted the right tail over the tail's texture. Of course it didn't fit at the first try, but you had to look well to see it.
In my first practical example, I included illustrations of all the repainting process. At this point there are only two illustrations: one of the white plane, still with the original green engines, and another with the first texture of the plane, the cockpit section, showing the dirt and rust from joints and doors.
On the second and last part of the exercise, I'll finish all the dirt zones, the engine painting, the lettering and the tail. Surely the plane will be released by now, so you can see it published here as DC-8AH83.ZIP.
How To Be A Repainter Part Ten
A New Bird
By Alejandro Hurtado (26 December 2006)
To do that, I selected the lower quarter of the fuselage texture and darkened it 4%. I selected the lower 3/4 of the darkened area, and darkened another 4%. And so on. Of course, you still can see the straight separation between each grey rectangle. So, I took my brush, and diffused the zones until each one blurred its borders. Of course, I was careful with the dirty lines leaving the fuselage junctions and the junction itself.
Another improvement is the windows. The real ones are not grey rectangles; they have shadows and reflections inside them. So, start brushing again.
It would have been enough for any other plane but the DC-8 has a transversal section like an eight, not circular. So we must put a slight shadow at the floor level, where the doors begins. Darker zones, diffused borders...
Here is the finished "dirty white" nose textures (left). As you can
see, even separated from the model, it has some depth. And that's
the idea. Now we can store these "dirty white" textures and use them
every time we wish to repaint a DC-8-62F. There are many more DC-8s
waiting to be repainted, and you can do that.
The next step was to fix the tail, resizing the cutted picture over the corresponding texture. This time we have luck, because there are no shadows to "erase". After some test and try, it was done, just the right side, because the left will be more difficult and it will wait for a while.
In the first part of this exercise, we talked about two slighty different planes. One of thes differences is the engines. EC-892 had all the engines blue. EC-GEE had two blue and two metalic engines, at least part of its life. Eventually it had all the engines blue too. In fact, if we want to reflect all the paint changes for only two planes over two year, then we must do five textures. But it's not necessary, at least I don't feel so. So let's just do one texture for each plane.
The metallic engines, as the wings and horizontal planes, can be found in another HJG DC-8-62F plane. After all, they have good painters and there is no need to reinvent the wheel. To make the blue ones, the only difficulty is to find the right tone, but we can do that cutting a square of color from one of the pictures as explained in the first exercise. A bit of shadow, and it's ready.
On this picture (right) the fuselage remains white, the inner
engines are blue, and the outers are metallic. It means that we are
going to paint EC-GEE first. The right side of the tail is
finished.
To finish the fuselage is not difficult, but we are going to need
more tricks. The words "Canarias Cargo" are big, and extend between
textures F2-62F.bmp and F3-62F.bmp. So, how are we going to know the
right size for the letters? The answer is to create auxiliary
texture 1024 pixels long by 512 pixels high. Just copy both
textures inside and start to try. There are two ways to add the
company name on the textures. The first is locating the same font
they used and adding the name as text. Unfortunately I couldn't find
it. The other is to cut the logo from a picture, and resize over the
provisional texture I created. That's what I did. Warning: a cut
and resized logo never has a homogeneous color. Remember allways to
fill the letters with the homogeneous, right color (left).
Of course, at this point you will be bored of paint, try, repaint and retray. Remember that it is a hobby, not a madness. I used three days to do all the things I have written after the title, and I'm going fast. I you are a beginner, or have less than ten repaints, it would had taken two weeks since the first brush... unless you be so concentrated that you have not eaten since the beginning of this exercise. If so, take a rest! There is a wonderful life out there!
After some eating, phone calls to the friends telling how good a
repainter you are and a date with the girlfriend... or boyfriend? Are
there some women painting planes out there? I'd like to know, and it
will be fine. As I said, after a rest, the plane must be finished by
starboard only (right). We can start now on the port. Cut the flag
and register code, and copy on the lower side of the texture. The same
with the "Canarias Cargo" logo, but watch out! When we created the
auxiliary texture we inverted the lower side. We must rebuild the
lower side and find the right position of the letters using the only
available picture we have (left). By doing that, you'll see that
the "g" of "Cargo" is cut by a window. It's not a mistake, the
real one must have been cut too, but we have no way to know, because
there are no pictures displaying this place. Anyway, as the window is
dark, it seems that the word "Cargo" can be read without problems, so
it must be OK.
Easy, don't you? But now comes the tough part: the left tail. The
first step is to select the right side of the texture tail, invert it
and put in the lower side of the texture. And... thanks to the
repainters angel! The tails logo automatically puts as the real one! My
worry was to repaint this slim lines by hand. I would have do, but it
would have taken me two or three days. Sorting by luck this kryptonite
rock, the only thing we must do is to "erase" the letters and put
again the right way. To erase, we can cut pieces of the tail just
over the letters, and paste over. I did a false texture showing the
original position of the pieces as white rectangles, just to show you
(right). The last step of DC-GEE is to paste the tail's right
"Canarias Cargo" on its correct position, and... voila (left)!
But the way, I always back up my planes two or three times, every
time I finish some important part. We will do a temporary backup
right now.
Shall we start with EC-892? The differences are: all the engines are blue (the metallic part ahead is white), the fuselage letterings are slighty different, the front door has different floor color and the registration number changes, of course.
Just copy the finished EC-GEE textures inside another folder called texture.1 and start to change. This time, the name of the company is painter OVER the fuselage windows. Well, the cargo does not care about it.
I'm explaining nothing about documentation and configuration files, because all that was explained in the first exercise. The only difference is that HJG allows you to upload complete aircraft. So, the readme.txt doesn't need to explain how to add the textures to anywhere. Instead, this is the part of the installation in the readme.txt:
Unzip dc-8ah83.zip in your "Aircraft" folder of FS2004 or FS2002, install your desired panel and that's all. If you don't know how to install a panel, just let the default Boeing 747.
Of course, HJG has panels, sounds and effects and they explain how to
install all this. The only remaining thing was to remove the "ayuda"
folders, finish the readme.txt, aircraft.cfg and
file_id.diz, and
upload
the file to FlightSim.Com (picture, right).
Alejandro Hurtado
dracosist@cantv.net
Powered by ScribeFire.
No comments:
Post a Comment