I've been exchanging emails back and forth with a gentlemen who painted an amazing private Airbus A319.  Everything except the rear fuselage looks great.  For some reason there doesn't seem to be an alpha channel or maybe specular mapping?  I'm not sure of the terms since I haven't painted in a while.

 

The file is in the avsim library and works on the Aerosoft Airbus...  if you have it can you check this texture?  Maybe it's just me

http://library.avsim.net/download.php?DLID=196564

 

The file in question is: AS_A319_EXTTAIL_C.dds

 

Here's a video I made after I imported the mdl into MCX and the paint... panning around should help you notice what the difference is.  In case the video doesn't work here's a screen shot

 

 

Hi

 

I just had a quick look and it seems that the Alpha layer is incorrect, you could always use a program like DXTBmp to open a stock A319CFM texture sheet and "borrow" the Alpha layer from that so you can import it into you repaints texture sheet.

 

I hope it helps.

 

Jim Hodkinson

See, I did that, and it still didn't fix it.  I'm totally at a loss... and I bet the painter is too.  

 

To see the shine the alpha would be all white right?

 

I compared a forward fuselage dds file with the problematic one, and they are identical (after I updated the alpha)... still no shiny texture.  I looked at the spec files too, they are basically the same between forward fus and aft.

 

No clue!

Hi

 

I have not repainted the Airbus for a while but the texture sheet in the download you have is certainly unlike

any of the stock versions as the download one seems to be almost overall white and not the much darker stock versions,

they are both saved in DDS dxt5 format though so I cannot see what would stop your modified version with a borrowed

stock alpha layer from working as the rest of the fuselage sheets with the exception of the nose do have the darker

stock alpha layers as long as they are saved in the DDS dxt5 format, as noted above the nose texture also has

what looks like an overall white alpha layer, the belly sheet seems OK though.

 

Other than the above I cannot find anything that might cause the issue you are seeing at your end.

 

Now much help I know.

 

Jim Hodkinson

That's ok - flightsim is always a mystery to me!

 

Thanks for your F1 king air 200 repaints in the past - I used them a lot when I flew FSX!

Hi Ryan

 

Apologies for not getting back to you sooner but it was 05:30 here and I had to break off for a while, and thank you for the

generous comments on the F1 KingAir schemes, it has been a while since I did any of those, but back to business,I opened the

texture sheets in DXTBmp just to check the Alpha layers once more and the nose and tail section had the almost overall white

Alphas, I then exported the darker Alpha layers from the paintkit .psd files and add them to the ones from your download,

and as you have already found they display almost the same as yours did in the model viewer with a noticeable difference

between the tail and nose sections, so I then looked at the actual livery and noticed that the tail section has a slightly

darker base colour, it is almost as though it has a blue hue to it when compared to the front section where the two texture

sheets join, so seeing as between us we have exhausted almost all the Alpha and Spec layer options I can only assume that

the actual liveries blue hue of the tail section texture sheet is if not the base cause then a contributing factor in what

you are seeing, other than that I am at a loss to explain it.

 

Again not much help, I would if possible contact the author just to see if the actual master .psd files show the slight variation

in the base colours that I am seeing at this end.

 

Jim Hodkinson

It seems to be less of a color issue but more of a shiny texture problem. I've got no idea though.

Hi Ryan

I must admit that I did not try it out in P3D as I have yet to reinstall the Airbus so checking the gloss level or lack of it
is difficult to check in the Model Viewer I was more or less concentrating on the difference in shading compared to the forward
section, repainting is just so much fun when thing like this crop up.

Sorry that I could not be of much help though as it is one of those things that can really bug you when things like this happen,
but I have just about run out of ideas on this one.

Jim Hodkinson

Man Photobucket is an increadible mess these days.

 

You pic shows a darker aft section and this is because the alpha is off or the norm is off or different from the forward section. Use DXTbmp and pull the forward fuse norm texture into  your paint program as well as the alpha. Then keeping those two textures open again use DXTbmp and pull the rear or aft section texture and alpha into your paint program. Compare the forward and aft norms and alphas to see if one is darker or lighter than the other. If there is a difference you will have to lighten or darken either the aft norm texture or alpha to match the forward ones.

 

Even just a little difference in the alphas can make a big difference in the sim. The darker alphas usually are set to add gloss or shine to the norm and these all must be uniform for all exterior textures, fuse, wings, tail and so on. 

 

Same with the norms, particularly for a segmented fuse. I know when I did the JF Connie there were, I think, seven fuse sections and keeping them all   exactly the same tonality and intensity wise was fun. 

 

Then we throw in the spec map and those must also match across the board. 

I already pulled the alpha from the forward section - made no difference.

 

I'm not sure what the norm is though

Normal map is the main map texture in the DXTbmp window. So your saying the two alphas from the forward section and the aft section are the same shade of gray or dark gray?