I've been painting aircraft for a little less than a decade but I'm new to the NGX. I understand the crop zones and find them helpful on the -900 but I'm confused about the process when dealing with other variants, such as the -600,-700,-800. I have posted an image which demonstrates a blue shape rising up an -800 fuselage. The fuselage on top demonstrates how I want the line to appear disregarding the unused blank section. The fuselage on the bottom indicates how I believe it would need to be painted to ensure allignment in FS. Is there an easier way than interupting the line to ensure proper allignment between fuselage crop sections? I'm not accustomed to interrupted fuselage sections like this. Any help would be appreciated.

 

Trial and error Pat sorry thats just the way it is.

Hi Patrick

Your assumptions are correct, though you'll find the 'crop zones' are not pixel perfect in most cases and require a pixel or two nudge as required. I tend to work from the window positions for better accuracy.

I also have a simple hull outline for each model centered on the middle fuse section that I use as a guide to paint the fuse overall, then copy/cut/paste the front and rear sections away from the center as required. With each of those copies, copy more than you need as it's good to overlap the color layers where they are joined.

 

Cheers

John

Thanks for the help, Rich and John! Personally, I find it much easier to conceptualize paints when there are not such interuptions on the template. If you use Photoshop, you can create an Action to, for instance, move the forward (Fuselage 1) "crop area" layers to abut the details of the middle section (Fuselage 2) to create a normal looking template. You have to run the Action for each individual layer but it still only takes a few minutes to complete. If anyone is interested in this, I can provide more indepth details. However, I have not yet perfected the process myself.

Sorry Pat I was any help but if you have any shortcuts send them my way buddy appreciate it.

IMO the best thing would be to create four uninterrupted fuselage templates and add some positioning anchors to fuselage section PSDs...

 

However, I am too lazy to do that for myself... Not enough painting to kill the hours doing this I guess...