Liveries and Repaints for Default Aircraft

[EagleSkinner 36]

I notice that there is still much discussion about "free" liveries. There is "fair usage in the public domain". By way of an example: nearly all my paints were with the owner's permissions. Believe me, you don't want to go through a legal battle and "Cease and Desist" orders (I have had a couple - one was a Pitts owner...)

The legal point is that most personalised liveries are copyrighted either by the artist or the aircraft owners. On the other hand, some owners simply buy an off the peg Cesspip with a factory design. These can be considered easier to copy - no less illegal, but with easier usage if it's already in the official flightsin. Also, having worked for Airbus, I can tell you that commercial livery designs can command a six figure sum just for the artwork design - and more. Some companies even copyright the colours too.

If you are into repainting, take it from me - a small amount of research will help you find the owner/operator and they are more often than not extremely happy to say yes. For them it's recognition, and for you it's a new friend on Facebook or whatever. Remember my T6 Reno Racer paints? The midnight airforce (Tami Kuehn and family), Thumper and others were all happy to say yes - and contact with the owners usually gets you access to a great photo library. Patty Wagstaff? The lady said yes to me. Chuck Lischer? (Marchetti f260 - sadly RIP and cat 5) he said yes. Bob Bishop - BD5 acrojet - cruise missile impersonators... "Yes". Many of my Christen Eagle skins - all agreed by owners. Even a commercial carrier or three is on my list

So my advice is try to make contact with the copyright holder. It's well worth the effort and everyone is happy. Just be careful if you do it for money - the © holder might want a cut then.
 

[EagleSkinner 36]

Okaaayyyy....

I have found the liveries folders - they're in the place you told the download to go when you first start the sim after installing. The conventions ASOBO have used are mind numbing! But once you know where they are, you'll have paths like this: F:\msfs\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-sr22\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_SR22\TEXTURE

but take a note... they are still using a folder called "SimObjects" - but not in the way we're used to. In fact the labelling is back to front. Ther is not one "SimObjects/Airplanes" folder - but one for EACH aircraft type. if I show you a list, you'll get the drift...

F:\msfs\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-208b-grand-caravan-ex\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_208B_GRAND_CARAVAN_EX\TEXTURE
F:\msfs\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-a320-neo\SimObjects\AirPlanes\Asobo_A320_NEO\TEXTURE
F:\msfs\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-b787-10\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_B787_10\TEXTURE

(That will surely give the Windows filing system a headache - an explorer search will no longer get one SimObjects and Airplanes folder but one for each aircraft, currently 30 aircraft in the deluxe install but eventually hundreds - and each one separately indexed on your hard drive. And there are more in other branches of the tree such as ai aircraft...)

The basics remain the same though. You still have texture.cfg files and aircraft.cfg and all the other contents you had in FSX. They have just made things a lot more complicated. The livery stripes, for instance, are mapped separately so painting the fuselage a new colour will still have the basic livery stripe on it. You will have to paint these separately. A possible issue there if you try to eliminate them, because there appear to be bump maps, emissives and more mapped to each sheet - touch one basic texture sheet for the exterior and you may have to modify all maps.

A note to admins: this topic / thread may well become "lively". Especially when we get down to the nitty gritties opening the artwork.

[Gaiiden 98]

On 8/16/2020 at 5:54 PM, liams said:

you can make your own repaints, people have been doing it in the beta 🙂, ive just done it in paint.net

yup that was the 1st thing I did

However officially livery support would be nice to also include multiplayer persistence. As of right now all C172s flown by other people look like this to regardless of what they do to their own paint jobs

[simsuper80 12]

On 8/15/2020 at 2:48 AM, Bottle said:

Welcome back. MFS also brought me back from the dead.

So far there’s little information about liveries. They are negotiating with airlines and I expect they will be injected into the sim as available and for free.

As to repaint, no news so far.  I’m assuming you’ll be able to do it via the SDK which will be available for all users.

So why do they have to negotiate with the airlines? Traffic addons like ultimate traffic never had that problem 

[amiraa 9]

Wow - looks super complex....!

Anyone know how to decompose this into a tutorial or guide we can follow?

 

[brynair 0]

Hi,

I'm looking for some info about doing my own repaints. I was used to personalise my sim in FSX (with the planes I fly IRL). I would like to do the same in ou new MSFS :-) But like I read before it's not the same "folder structure" and not so easy...

 

Do you know anything about the possibility to do our own liveries ? Is it going to be possible ?

 

Thanks and enjoy the new sim ;-)

Brynair

[z06z33 781]

On 8/17/2020 at 5:56 PM, EagleSkinner said:

I notice that there is still much discussion about "free" liveries. There is "fair usage in the public domain". By way of an example: nearly all my paints were with the owner's permissions. Believe me, you don't want to go through a legal battle and "Cease and Desist" orders (I have had a couple - one was a Pitts owner...)

The legal point is that most personalised liveries are copyrighted either by the artist or the aircraft owners. On the other hand, some owners simply buy an off the peg Cesspip with a factory design. These can be considered easier to copy - no less illegal, but with easier usage if it's already in the official flightsin. Also, having worked for Airbus, I can tell you that commercial livery designs can command a six figure sum just for the artwork design - and more. Some companies even copyright the colours too.

If you are into repainting, take it from me - a small amount of research will help you find the owner/operator and they are more often than not extremely happy to say yes. For them it's recognition, and for you it's a new friend on Facebook or whatever. Remember my T6 Reno Racer paints? The midnight airforce (Tami Kuehn and family), Thumper and others were all happy to say yes - and contact with the owners usually gets you access to a great photo library. Patty Wagstaff? The lady said yes to me. Chuck Lischer? (Marchetti f260 - sadly RIP and cat 5) he said yes. Bob Bishop - BD5 acrojet - cruise missile impersonators... "Yes". Many of my Christen Eagle skins - all agreed by owners. Even a commercial carrier or three is on my list

So my advice is try to make contact with the copyright holder. It's well worth the effort and everyone is happy. Just be careful if you do it for money - the © holder might want a cut then.
 

As an aircraft owner I'd love to find my plane in flight sim,just saying.

[EagleSkinner 36]

3 minutes ago, z06z33 said:

As an aircraft owner I'd love to find my plane in flight sim,just saying.

As an owner, you can happily allow repaints - if the plane has been modelled of course.

[bernd1151 6,072]

On 8/17/2020 at 7:10 PM, EagleSkinner said:

OMG! The grumpy git is back...

Hi there - EagleSkinner could be back out of retirement if this works. You've probably forgotten me anyway 😉

Nope, haven't forgotten you at all, Chris 😉😉

I still have many of your old liveries, for example the ones you did many moons ago for the default FSX P-51 and still today I like them, although I don't fly in FSX anymore.

 

So, welcome back, old friend.

Bernd

[EagleSkinner 36]

15 minutes ago, brynair said:

Hi,

I'm looking for some info about doing my own repaints. I was used to personalise my sim in FSX (with the planes I fly IRL). I would like to do the same in ou new MSFS 🙂 But like I read before it's not the same "folder structure" and not so easy...

Do you know anything about the possibility to do our own liveries ? Is it going to be possible ?

Thanks and enjoy the new sim 😉

Brynair

Looking at the file structure, it should be relatively similar to FSX. The only issues I see are probably the need for different editors. Some of the DDS images don't seem to want to open in DXTBMP.

It will be fun trying to unravel the file trees though. Very much so! Instead of having "root\Sim Objects\Aeroplanes\aircraft modell\variant" Asobo have gone: "root \ aircraft model \ Sim Objects \ Aeroplanes \ variant

The new system looks like this:

F:\msfs\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-208b-grand-caravan-ex\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_208B_GRAND_CARAVAN_EX\TEXTURE
F:\msfs\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-a320-neo\SimObjects\AirPlanes\Asobo_A320_NEO\TEXTURE
F:\msfs\Official\OneStore\asobo-aircraft-b787-10\SimObjects\Airplanes\Asobo_B787_10\TEXTURE

[EagleSkinner 36]

5 minutes ago, bernd1151 said:

Nope, haven't forgotten you at all, Chris 😉😉

I still have many of your old liveries, for example the ones you did many moons ago for the default FSX P-51 and still today I like them, although I don't fly in FSX anymore.

So, welcome back, old friend.

Bernd

Hi Bernd, long time no see.

I think I might wait until the 3rd party devs come up with some more sensible texture file systems and await their comments. It's going to be a bumpy ride.

Chris