Almost weekly many painters are complaining about Carendo paints being so hard to do, on this forum and others.

 

Carenado textures are always a bit like a jigsaw-puzzle.

Making texture-parts being lined up correctly is allways a bit difficult.

Very often painters are wasting a lot of time on it ,especially when they make serveral liveries for the same aircraft.

Making a "total-fuse" ( assembled set of fuselage textures, displaying the complete side of the fuselage)  is the solution , its worth the effort even for a single paint.

 

When making a "total-fuse" the alignment has to be done just once. 

 

As most Carenado planes come without a paintkit, I allways start making my own paintkit.

I use the "blank-livery" wich is most of the time a bit ( to )  dirty here and there.

It is quiet some work but it can be cleaned manually.

 

Then I make a layerd PSD and use the blanks for the toplayer, set this toplayer to multiply and paint everything under this layer likewise iI was making a painting on a canvas.

 

Doing a livery on a "total-fuse" is simple , just paint the complete texturesceme on the "total-fuse" and copy the textureparts to the final texturesheets.
When the cheat-lines , main-texture-sceme , or camouflage has been done on the totalfuse its advisable to continue  on the smaller layerfiles, when your rig is`nt powefull enough to handle huge layerfiles.
Mind; Making dirt is ideal on a total-fuse, it will fit seamless wihout color-differences.

 

The time invested in making a "total-fuse" is very well spent.

I always make a "Total-Fuse" when I plan multiple liveries.

 

How to make a "Total-Fuse" :

 

Place a line of 8 different colored pixels (height just one pixel) on each edge of every texturepart on the texturesheets.

Load the textures in the sim and see which color is the last visible pixel for this part.

Now you can make marking on the textures to see wich parts of the textures are obsolete.

Copy and paste the visible parts to a large texturesheet and use platelines for vertical alignement.

 

Now you have your "Total-Fuse" and start painting.

Making a "Total-Fuse" takes some  effort , time will be payed back when making the livery.

 

screens showing "Total-fuse" for ( cleaned)  Carenado Centurion and Aerocommander S500

Nice!