P3DV4 Aircraft Textures / Registration Change

[Les Parson 99]

Greetings, 

I'm new to P3Dv4 with a question - I've read FSX aircraft textures are not necessarily compatible with P3DV4. What I'm looking to do is change a stock registration in the Carenado T210M from - N782S (stock red paint) to my custom registration - N77CP using the same stock red paint. Is that easily accomplished? 

Thanks / Les Parson

 

 

[mawibo 33]

Hi Les,

FSX aircraft are not necessarily compatible with P3Dv4, but textures work just the same as they did in FSX and P3D < 4. If you now how to modify a texture in FSX, you can modify P3Dv4 aircraft textures in the same way.

Maarten

[Chock 17,769]

Depends what you mean by easy. As a repainting task it would be fairly simple, but then again, anything is easy so long as you know how, so let's learn that shall we...

you will need the free paint program paint.net, which can be found here:

https://www.getpaint.net/

You might also need this little utility too:

http://www.mwgfx.co.uk/programs/dxtbmp.htm

Although most add-on aeroplanes come with layered paint kits, they can sometimes be a bit finicky to use (it ain't rocket science, but let's try a simpler approach on this occasion). There is an easier way to do a really simple repaint such as changing a reg number, but... Before you do any of that, make a back up copy of the texture folder for your aeroplane and save that on the desktop temporarily so that you can put things back how they were easily should anything go awry.

What you would then need to do is find the texture in the aircraft folder which had the registration number on it, open it up in paint.net, and use the Clone Stamp Tool to paint out the existing registration. The tools can be found by clicking on the word Tool (there's a surprise eh?) up at the top left of paint, which will open up a drop down menu.

Using the clone stamp tool is pretty simple to do, just get a suitably sized brush from the menu along the top of the program's interface, then place the brush over part of the red paint job which is well clear of any other detail, now press the control key down and click your mouse, then release control and the mouse button and that will choose that area as a source point, now move your brush over the registration and click the mouse button and you'll see how that thing works. If you cock it up, press Control+Z to undo the last thing you did and if you really cock it up, just close the texture file without saving it and you will not have broken anything, so don't be afraid to have a try. Note that you might have to choose a few source points as you paint in order to remove all of the registration without making it look obvious.

Now select the Text tool and choose the Colours panel (icon up at the top right of the paint interface with a spectrum circle on it) and pick the colour you want your registration number to be. Click and type in your new registration. Then you save the file and that's it, although some add-on aircraft textures might require you to convert the texture to a suitable format, and that's where that little utility Dxt.bmp comes in, as that is what it is for.

This is just a very quick guide incidentally, but it should be enough to get you going. Congratulations, you now know how to do repaints.

 

[Les Parson 99]

Thanks for all the information; that is much appreciated. In this case, I had the custom N77CP texture in FSX and simply copied it over to the P3DV4 Carenado T210M without issue. Moreover, I did the same with custom C210 sounds and it all worked just fine. To be honest, I probably should have done this before I posted. On balance, you have provided valuable information and for that, I am grateful. Thanks again. 

 

[Leen3131cs 107]

Using DXTBmp  we must make sure we have the DLL set wich is a separate download  from the same website installed to too. Look for GFX DLL`s.

When actual editing a texturefile , the best workflow to follow is to open the files in DXTBmp and export if from there to your paintingprogram.
SAVE  ( just save , not save as) the edited texture in your paintingprogram and "Reload after Edit"  your texture in DXTBmp , THEN its  time to "save" or "save as" your texture in/with DXTBmp.

Following this workflow you keep the Alpha-channel in the texture intact.

MIND when loding a extended bitmap and saving it to DDS the image must be flipped vertically ( upside-down) to show correct in the sim.

[jdwgraf 52]

On 9/19/2017 at 1:11 AM, LDP1949 said:

Greetings, 

I'm new to P3Dv4 with a question - I've read FSX aircraft textures are not necessarily compatible with P3DV4. What I'm looking to do is change a stock registration in the Carenado T210M from - N782S (stock red paint) to my custom registration - N77CP using the same stock red paint. Is that easily accomplished? 

Thanks / Les Parson

 

 

Were you successful ? Working on a similar request for the " electric blue " livery ( also here in the forum ) . If not , are you wanting the reg in the same position ?

 

John Glanville

[Les Parson 99]

Yes, I simply used the desired texture from FSX and made the necessary aircraft.cfg change.