I was always taught that sharing is a good thing. But sometimes I wonder if - even in the world of shareware - that's fully understood.The guys at EvolveAI and their painters chatted for ages about V5 paint kits that were never released for the A320 and A321 (though they were for the A318 and A319) up until the time the place imploded so spectacularly. I was personally told that the subject of releasing the V5 A320 paint kit was "under discussion and a decision would be made in a few weeks time". Almost ten months later, there was still so sight of the phantomware paint kits. Now it doesn't matter.Alpha-India have also talked about a paint kit for their 757-200, but as yet no sigh of one. Hmm, that sounds familiar.For yonks I've read in the descriptions of new repaints here at Avsim about this 'enhanced paint kit' for one older Aardvark model or another. Now there's an Aardvark 767 repaint "on an exellent new paintkit". Given how basic and clumsy to work with the regular AIA 767 paint it is, this would be a joy to use.But why is it these great improvements aren't shared with others in the hobby? I'd really like to get my ape's brain around that fact. Nut then I am sufficiently deluded to believe the more people who get interested in more aspects of flight simming, the better we'll all be and that attempting to keep it an exclusive club will, in time, do far more harm than good to the entire community.Thank God for the people at The Fruit Stand who seem altruistic, adult and secure enough that they released a bloody good paint kit for their new A300 and right when they said they would. AIt's heartening to realise that there are a few people in the hobby who're properly interested in promoting it.bwob

A lot of the so-called "excellent new paintkits" or "enhanced paintkits" are nothing more than the original released paintkit with a new set of windows and doors (sometimes more accurate, sometimes not), and since the people who made these "enhanced" paintkits don't have the permission from the authors of the original paintkit that they used to make their "new/excellent" paintkit, they can't upload those paintkits.As to why a paintkit for a model that a group made themselves never gets released, there are several reasons, One would be is that it is a HUGE amount of work to take a paintkit that your 'in-house' painters have been using which may have 100's of layers and condense it down into something releasable. Another reason is that in-house painters can get quite possesive of repaints and want to do all the repaints themselves and have some degree of control over the quality of the repaints for their model. Rather than release the paintkit and have 20 minute 'slap-together' repaints showing up within an hour of the appearance of a paintkit in the library.David R

As a painter myself, I have to agree that sometimes one wonders why model A has a paintkit in the release pack and model B never seems to get one at all.I have to agree with David, that the copyright holders are awfully protective of their babies - and quite rightly so. It takes quite a while to get the right mix of layers to present a usable PSD to do the plane justice.And on the other hand, sometimes you ask "Why did that developer even bother with issuing 'that' as a paintkit?" Because sometimes it is merely a single layer bitmap. Other times the developers go overboard.But all in all, I think that "us painters" enjoy the challenge of taking whatever's on offer and then doing our own thing on the base paints. If you were to look at some of my "personalised" paintkits, you'd know. In a recent paint I even ended up with over a thousand individual items (In Corel they are 'objects' in Photoshop they'd be 'layers'). I remember on the Do27 (excellent FS9 plane there!) I even drew in each individual rivet (3000+) and then made highlight and shadow copies - of course I grouped them in the end, but it just goes to show how much detail you can go to if you are possessed by that demon "Paint".And that probably answers the question of "Why do some devs not release a paintkit?" - because they can cost a LOT of time and effort to get right. I have worked with devs on a couple of projects now and have to agree - what does the buying public want? A $25 model or a $35 one?

Thank goodness you're not a MODELLER! YOU probably wouldn't need to map any textures to the model - not with modelling each rivet and panel directly! Since most of the stripes and lettering etc. are done with decals, you'd probably model each decal to the appropriate paint thinkness.(and we won't go into the post-hailstorm version!):)Joking aside, it's details like that that most of us simmers don't realize are done to get those impressive paint jobs. A decent model can be made excellent with a good paint job ... a bad paint job can make an excellent model look, er.... bad.A global thanks to you and your fellow artists for elevating the enjoyment of the flightsimming experience.>In a recent paint I even>ended up with over a thousand individual items (In Corel they>are 'objects' in Photoshop they'd be 'layers'). I remember on>the Do27 (excellent FS9 plane there!) I even drew in each>individual rivet (3000+) and then made highlight and shadow>copies - of course I grouped them in the end, but it just goes>to show how much detail you can go to if you are possessed by>that demon "Paint".>>Felix/FFDSPegasus Aviation Design

:-lol :-lol Yes - I can see where a modeller would have "fun". Mind you, a couple of the devs I am "working" for are at the stage where they are modelling nuts and bolts. Imagine a big P&W 9-pot where you can see the bolts that mount the reduction gearbox to the crank case - and these map to the textures for individual painting! In one recent effort one modeller even had reasonable low poly screw heads inside the VC. (Sadly, the publisher went bust and he never told me who the modeller was so I can't even help privately).But I have dabbled just long enough in GMax to regret not having enough time on my hands to learn or be taught 3D modelling. I can see that "make one, copy paste more" does work there - OK, I wouldn't be mad enough to make all rivets... But I'd love to learn.