MSFS texture conventions

[EagleSkinner 36]

I have been rather puzzled by the way textures are stored and named in this new sim. So first off - has anyone started a thread that covers the creation of the many various separate paint textures and what JavaScript files are there fore? (the .json ones)

Is there a texture size limit such as 4096 x 4096. Do we need a Texture Max Load plugin?

Are we still using BXTBMP to convert the image sheets - incidentally DXTBMP seems unable to open some of these. What format do we save the DDS files in? Flipping - is that still an issue? Vertical or horizontal. Bump maps and speculars - what are they called now? It looks like there are now 5 or 6 different sub-sheets per texture sheet - in FSX we had paintwork, bump and spec.

Is there an SDK yet?

There's a lot going on already and I am waiting for the 3rd party devs to come up with some attractive, well modelled, dynamcally sound models. I don't do tubes, so GA aircraft are needed - and more of the exotic kind please. Not just your bog standard CessPips.

Just thinking out loud here... I'm not even sure I could be tempted to come back to repainting yet. MSFS 2020 still seems unfinished

[EagleSkinner 36]

SDK = "Found" - start msfs and go to settings. Turn on developer mode. There is a dropdown that points to SDK download for some PC based tools and you can use SDK tools in sim.

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

Found SDK, installed SDK, poked around in SDK, could not make head nor tail of SDK. I've looked at the textures and the ones for the fuselage and wings are just a blurry smudge. Where you'd start scribbling I wouldn't have a clue. It looks like my painting career is over. Unless of course some kind soul can do an A-B-C of the procedures.

[Steve Dra 7,574]

On 8/27/2020 at 6:28 PM, Ron Attwood said:

Found SDK, installed SDK, poked around in SDK, could not make head nor tail of SDK. I've looked at the textures and the ones for the fuselage and wings are just a blurry smudge. Where you'd start scribbling I wouldn't have a clue. It looks like my painting career is over. Unless of course some kind soul can do an A-B-C of the procedures.

I'm now at the point where I'm poking around Ron.  If I come up with anything significant I'll let you know.

I know one thing....unless we can get access to all the files in the planes from MS that are now currently encrypted, we may be able to do basic paints, but detailed paints will be another story as I'd need access to the metallic files that control PBR to properly paint a plane.  They seemed to be locked down...at least in the Caravan that I want to make a personal paint of.

 

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

If you can only do what the video showed, i.e. colour changes of original schemes then what's the point. Sheesh! I'm even going back to Carenados, in fact any old plane, in P3D just for something to daub.

But progress is a wonderful thing, right?

[Crankpin 16]

Hi Ron and Steve

Over the years I've learned the greatest respect for both your work. Steve especially for help and pointing out stupid things I've done at times. Maybe I can repay that a little bit with how I've managed to get re-started painting in MFS.

Yes there's a learning curve (challenge) or two in this, but 'Nothing changes - just the percentages' is true here too, in the end you're still just trying to wrap a 2D texture around a 3D model. And in the end the changes in the methodology will in the end lead to even more impressive results I believe.

There were 2 hardish bits for me. Where on which texture sheet to paint what. For which the UV layout is needed. Then there's the bloody confusing file/folder structure needed to master to get the repaint to actually appear in the sim.

The UV layout. I got this by using the (FREE) 'Blender' software. There's a great youtube vid by bestdani that got me there. It took many re-watchings after the first 'eyes glaze over' attempt but it's all in there. His end goal is to get people going in 3D painting in Blender (not what I want) but along the way (upto about 1/2 way) he's importing the MFS a/c model into Blender and extracting the UV maps that we can use for familiar repainting techniques in Photoshop or your paint software of choice. Get the appropriate texture sheet dds and matching UV as layers into your paint software and you'll feel instantly at home. The vid  and his thread on the MFS forum here will help. Also on that forum you'll find that others have extracted and posted the UV maps for 'some' of the default aircraft that'd let you skip the whole learning and extraction kerfuffle.

 Just enough info to be dangerous but not TLDR I hope.   The dds files.  Filenames that end in _ALBD.PNG.dds are our paint file. Filenames that end in _COMP.PNG.dds are the matching magic ones that contain metallic,roughness,shine, and I forget. My old PS 5.1 couldn't cope with the COMP ones, had to bite the bullet and goto PS 2020 to actually see the RGBA channels usage there.

The Folder/file structure (sheez) TLDR but I can offer my first MSF repaint posted yesterday on AVSIM as a working model. Sorry the repaint itself is ummm quite rough but I was just trying to achieve an end to end result rather than be proud of the repaint. Repaint here.

John

 

   

  

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

I love you John, but you're speaking in tongues. I'm laughing as I write this because I don't understand a word! I'm going to join the 'Can you just do this simple paint for me because I used to fly this aircraft when I was 12' brigade.

I'm afraid I've been left behind. But Steve'll handle it just fine.

 

[Crankpin 16]

LoL. Prolly cause I'm talking Kiwi. I could offer you some ready made UV's for C208 or Beech 350 if that'd help.

John

[Leen3131cs 107]

I have been shocked like Ron was, being confronted with texturesheets looking like battle-fields without logic.
Many contemporary models have been painted in a 3D program like Blender or a very sophisticated 3D paintingprogram like Substance-Painter.
The textures and all other things like normals and speculars are being made in one workflow.
Special effects are no longer created manually in programs like SubstancePainter.
All effects are available in the program , just select a gear leg and choose for "rusty" , the texture will turn into rusty and normals and specualars are created the same time.
Repainting is for me , making these effects by myself , thats real fun, You might say real oldfashioned paintwork.
Painting with these magical programs is if you know how the program works quiet simple. (paintwise spoken) 
Back to my rusty example , making realistic rust painting the old way is not so simple it really need painting skills.
When a painter makes a paint with a program like Substance Painter he needs less compliments for his painting skills and more compliments for his knowledge about the program

As said before ,in the end its always a 2D texture spread over 3D model so painting the old way is still possible.
The major problem we have is the fact that many times textureparts wich are representing one part of the plane are spread over various  texturesheets.
The moment painting is becoming an endless puzzle , wich ends in making textures hardly recognisable as part of the complete airplane , we are no longer repainting with the fun of painting.
 

Its like painting a jig-sawed plate of cardboard, mix all different parts and then cover/paint the puzzle.
Each part individually not having them in the correct position.
Its possible with these new textures  , I have been there too.( with X-Plane , its the same there)

Must say I prefer to be a painter the old way and not a modern  "texture-effect-operator" in a 3D painting program, opening menus full of effects and pressing buttons.

Leen de Jager

 

[Ron Attwood 3,464]

If I could give you another 'Up vote' I would. Psychologically I have given up painting aircraft. I'll do one for P3D etc. just if I'm a bit bored but the enthusiasm has gone, kaput, over, done.

But we must have progress eh?

[stans 702]

14 hours ago, Ron Attwood said:

If I could give you another 'Up vote' I would. Psychologically I have given up painting aircraft. I'll do one for P3D etc. just if I'm a bit bored but the enthusiasm has gone, kaput, over, done.

But we must have progress eh?

Sorry that you are giving up on repainting, but I understand why.

[Leen3131cs 107]

Personally I am not giving up, I am still painting models for X-Plane though many of them are made in the new way and painting is sometimes a bit difficult.
Some models are not paintable the oldfashioned way. ( they are to much a puzzle to me)
On the other hand many new models are ,though painted the modern way, mapped in a way repainters can lay their hands on.
When a developer wants to see his model painted by the public he can , IF HE IS WILLING AND HELPFULL, make a mapping wich is paintable and still use the modern paint-methods.
So we can have progress and keep 2D painting the same time.

This brings us to another thing.
Repaints are making our flightsim hobby more interesting for a great group of users.
The vast majority of users in flying for leisure and are not real arm-chair pilots flying realistic on instruments and whats more.
They fly just for fun and are keen having many liveries , especially those liveries they a familiar with ( they see on the airport/field nearby whrre they live)
If such a livery is not available jet they can request one ans a hobby-painter can fullfill their wish.
Things like this make our hobby so pleasant and fora so lively

A lack of available liveries, wich will no doubt be caused by using the new 3D painting-technology, will have a negative influence on the interest in flightsim.

Developers who have the painters-community ( and the importance of having many liveries) in mind, still can provide us with models  texturised in 3D and paintable for the NOT 3D-painters as well.
Lets hope they read this.!!!!!


Leen de Jager

P.S.
A year ago I commented on a new (payware) plane for X-Plane.
I predicted this model not to be a success, due to the fact it was/is not paintable.
NO repaints were published , nobody is talking about the (very nice) model these days anymore.
I have no doubt ,the developer/vendor of the model regrets his lack providing a paintable model, having a look at the sales-figures.
A second model he published was well paintable ( making the same mistake twice was no option)  and got many liveries , boosting the sales of the model.

[EagleSkinner 36]

OK, a couple of weeks in now and I am slowly getting the hang of creating msfs repaints avoiding the decals. Mostly you can find decals through their names: the first kind seem to be the dds texturess with "decal" in their names and these are usually part of the cockpit textures. So we can edit the "ALBD" sheets and fiddle around with the cockpit...

On the outsides, the convention seems to be the use of the word "livery" in the texture name - for instance: C172SP_AIRFRAME_LIVERY_ALBD.PNG.DDS Now we really get to the annoying part played by ASOBO in this tale of woe - you CAN paint onto the normal fuselage textures and create liveries the way we are used to. But when it comes to the coloured stripes, we either have to use the fixed liveries dictated to us by ASOBO - viz a viz the ONE "Cessna Stripe" pattern or we have to fiddle around chopping up images in our graphics program and patchworking these onto our base fuselage texture.

These trademark stripes are coloured by the simple expediency of a livery colour sheet that looks like a 2 x 2 checkerboard of colours. ASOBO takes the relevant colour for the fuselage stripe from this checkerboard - on the C172, though, there are only two colours: black and grey, but on other models you'l see more colours. So a lot of the current flood of paints have basically been created by simply editing the coulour fills. Pretty boring and limited unless you are happy with a white C172 that only has different stripe colours. You may also have noticed by now, that the registration numbers along the sides of the fuselage are cut off ant an angle because the ASGSX decal overlaps between the fuselage side and lower trextures. We cant edit these decal boxes that easily unfortunately. Oh, we can change the registration size and position the letters in the top left of the decal box, but changing the size of that decal box also changes the zero position for the lettering on the airframe - a long story and subject for another debate.

You can actually hide the registration number fixed by ASOBO - there are two textblocks in the panel.cfg where you can set the size of the registration decals to zero.

The thing is, ASOBO really fouled up with the use of decals for aircraft registrations etc. Each separate airworthiness authority around the globe uses different coding systems - just taking the two largest first - FAA and EASA. The FAA system is N followed by numerals and maybe extra letters. In Europe, the requirement demands a country code (G for UK, D for Germany, F for France etc...) and often the second letter indicates a weight category of the aircraft. or numbers if it is a glider... Anyway, it's convoluted and if a repainter wants to create realism he MUST be able to use the correct registration conventions. Oh of course you can define these numbers yourself by addin the reg when you set up a flight. ASOBO will place this on the model somewhere. Will it be on the authentic position though? Some authorities require a marking on the underside of the port wing or on the vertical tailplane.

Again - this is a subject for long debates elsewhere.

One of my main issues with repainting according to ASOBO is that it is so restrictive. Your average hack can repaint these models easy enough by using single colours but to get really authentic the dedicated repainter needs to work a lot harder. now if we could remove all the decal textures, that would make things easier. But... (yes, there is always "but") some model devs at Asobo have coded various features using DRM coding to prevent us editing certain parts of the plane and its textures.

It's a slow process, but I am sure we will see the workarounds turning up as the "game" grows up.

Oh and by the way - ASOBO are still using mirrored textures so what you do on one wing will appear on the other one - mirrored! Yeuch! This is sooo easy to cure by the person who did the model mapping (just a couple of hours tops - a fact I know with great certainty), but noooo... ASOBO have not learned. Plane in question - The Extra 330 so I won't be able to do Patty Wagstaff's asymetric wing livery on her 2015 black/silver livery. Nor any military camo (not that they will ever do a military paint in real life for an Extra. Or...??)

Ah well.
 

[Crankpin 16]

Hi Guys

In case you missed it there's an excellent youtube tutorial about the mysteries and use of those dds files with _COMP_ in the name.

They are the ones that manage shiny, ambient occlusion, and metal-ish-ness ,,,, cool stuff ... but I'll leave the explanation to the tute cause I only 20% understand atm.

There are some .psd  (PhotoShop) files that go with the tute, link will be with the vid.

Can't recommend this enough really, lesson quality and usefulness of the .psd resources is way above youtube average.

Link to youtube video

 

 

 

[robert young 2,897]

On 10/6/2020 at 9:07 AM, EagleSkinner said:

OK, a couple of weeks in now and I am slowly getting the hang of creating msfs repaints avoiding the decals.

Ah well.
 

Thanks EagleSkinner for that excellent primer. I think the livery decals are both a blessing and a curse. If you accept their shape you can have fun with colours. However I'm modding the DA62 at the moment and I want to get entirely rid of the default livery stripes. But even if I obliterate them by dumping the file or creating cuts or masks on the livery files, the pesky strips still appear. I wonder if this is part of what you describe as baked-in livery schemes that you cannot change? I've gone with a fine tooth comb through all the dds files and none of them contain the stripes apart from the specific livery dds, but even then there are other stripes with an unknown source. There is a "ribbons" dds that appears to have stripes on them, but editing them out does not get rid of them. 

Whatever I do the bloody unwanted stripes still appear. Furthermore the livery dds files have a completely chaotic format with no consistent logic, so a livery dds with 9 rectangles of colour or monochrome has literally endless combinations and each rectangle is variously flipped, or not flipped, or mirrored wrongly, or mirrored correctly. It can take up to ten hours work just to discover what each array of monochrome rectangles applies to.

If you have any tips about how to make this easier I'd be grateful to know.

 

Edited October 20, 2020 by robert young