Crankpin

Hi Eagle As you know they MUST be there. 🙂 sorry couldn't resist - but they must eh. I haven't touched the Extra, but what I've learnt from other texture 'sets' and a quick glance through the Extra folder would lead me to investigate .... for the metal effect - it has to be a _COMP_ file, my first suspect would be 'EXTRA_330_EXTERIOR_LIVERY_COMP.PNG.DDS' - you need to make that invisible - so transparent the RGB and Black the Alpha - that's a maybe but it's what I'd try first. For the decals - looks like 'EXTRA_330_EXTERIOR_DECALS_ALBD.TIF.DDS' ... probably just need to Alpha channel Black behind those decals. That should be enough info to be dangerous - let me know. Cheers John

Hi Guys In case you missed it there's an excellent youtube tutorial about the mysteries and use of those dds files with _COMP_ in the name. They are the ones that manage shiny, ambient occlusion, and metal-ish-ness ,,,, cool stuff ... but I'll leave the explanation to the tute cause I only 20% understand atm. There are some .psd (PhotoShop) files that go with the tute, link will be with the vid. Can't recommend this enough really, lesson quality and usefulness of the .psd resources is way above youtube average. Link to youtube video

LoL. Prolly cause I'm talking Kiwi. I could offer you some ready made UV's for C208 or Beech 350 if that'd help. John

Hi Ron and Steve Over the years I've learned the greatest respect for both your work. Steve especially for help and pointing out stupid things I've done at times. Maybe I can repay that a little bit with how I've managed to get re-started painting in MFS. Yes there's a learning curve (challenge) or two in this, but 'Nothing changes - just the percentages' is true here too, in the end you're still just trying to wrap a 2D texture around a 3D model. And in the end the changes in the methodology will in the end lead to even more impressive results I believe. There were 2 hardish bits for me. Where on which texture sheet to paint what. For which the UV layout is needed. Then there's the bloody confusing file/folder structure needed to master to get the repaint to actually appear in the sim. The UV layout. I got this by using the (FREE) 'Blender' software. There's a great youtube vid by bestdani that got me there. It took many re-watchings after the first 'eyes glaze over' attempt but it's all in there. His end goal is to get people going in 3D painting in Blender (not what I want) but along the way (upto about 1/2 way) he's importing the MFS a/c model into Blender and extracting the UV maps that we can use for familiar repainting techniques in Photoshop or your paint software of choice. Get the appropriate texture sheet dds and matching UV as layers into your paint software and you'll feel instantly at home. The vid and his thread on the MFS forum here will help. Also on that forum you'll find that others have extracted and posted the UV maps for 'some' of the default aircraft that'd let you skip the whole learning and extraction kerfuffle. Just enough info to be dangerous but not TLDR I hope. The dds files. Filenames that end in _ALBD.PNG.dds are our paint file. Filenames that end in _COMP.PNG.dds are the matching magic ones that contain metallic,roughness,shine, and I forget. My old PS 5.1 couldn't cope with the COMP ones, had to bite the bullet and goto PS 2020 to actually see the RGBA channels usage there. The Folder/file structure (sheez) TLDR but I can offer my first MSF repaint posted yesterday on AVSIM as a working model. Sorry the repaint itself is ummm quite rough but I was just trying to achieve an end to end result rather than be proud of the repaint. Repaint here. John

Oh LOLOL, yes I know that one, the 'kitten de-buff', mine likes to lie on the keyboard - which can be hard to recover from at times.

OK I got to the bottom of it, found the person responsible, and hit meself on the head. I think I just chose the wrong livery to wrap up. DOH! It'll be changed on AVSIM soon as I can, but that'll take a day. Apologies to any who had downloaded and here's a link to the fixed installer in my DropBox until it can be fixed on AVSIM. https://www.dropbox.com/s/hi9xaldp7s8g6b6/PMDG_744_jkx_SingaporeAirlinesCargo2.zip?dl=0 Aaaaagh Sorry

Ouch thx Steve looking into it. .cfg seems ok, fat fingers somewhere though ... :(

Singapore Airlines Cargo B747-400F 9V-SFF I chose this one to do while finding my way with the paintkit. Which is a bit different to previous paintkits. But i think I like working from the master entirely, rather than having most of the detail work at the seperate fuselage .psd(s) level. Quicker in the paint - check - repaint cycle. You really only have to pass the livery though the fuse psd(s) on the final builds to pick up the alpha channel. Yes I'd have liked more goodies in the weathering layers, but it won't take much time to work up a catalogue of grungy bits to mix and match. Download from AVSIM https://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=198293

Oh I wish wish wish... I did have a look for useful photos for the 777 in the time of the LoR liveries but couldn't even get close. I 'thought' PMDG were doing a LoR 747 but I was wrong again I guess.

Is this what you mean ? I did some 900s adding that exit. You can find them in the AVSIM library, you're welcome to use anything useful.

The US Bangla can be found in the AVSIM library here http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=196632

Yes this in 'FSX' Ops Center but shows it all works 'as expected' there or did for the Indian P8i I did some time ago. Are you sure you found the 'Select Aircraft Variant' dropdown in the middle of the page ?

Here's the link for my TUIfly Haribo Tropifrutti repaint http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=191289 Cheers

Here ya go Jerome, should be available on AVSIM in a few hours. Enjoy!

Gustavo Aguiar has recently done two, it is indeed a nice livery ..... LV-FVN http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=191176 and LV-CYO http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=191147