Baron livery

[Hans_Petter 1]

I'm trying to paint Ed Weber's Baron and have made some progress.Issues:There's some anomaly with the engines, one is red when viewed from below and the other has a light gray area. Where are these drawing their textures from and why don't they come out identical? I've got one bitmap for each segment and anything on the opposite side should be mirrored automatically, to texture both sides of the aircraft.I get white bay doors while the ones for the nose gear should be red. Steve requested blue bay doors some time ago -- where's the bitmap responsible for the color of the bay doors?I tried to alter the rearmost window to match Ed's aircraft. Evidently, the placement of window textures does not depend on the body textures. I tried to paint a window segment to connect two existing "Windhawk" windows -- check the image with the blue arrow. However, it works on one side only (right) and I haven't managed to make a convincing "bridge" between the windows. What controls the shape of the windows? The best approach would be to edit the windows directly.The aircraft needs a number on the vertical tail -- coming up next!I may need better external pictures of the original aircraft to get the red and the white exactly where they should go. Anyway, this is pretty close.Our Windhawk has a radar pod on the left wing while Ed's Baron doesn't. Unless it's possible to edit the Looking Glass polygons we'll have to live with this.The paint job is an *.rvs and I can send it to anyone who may want to work on it. I found an existing upload that was close (mentioned in a previous post) and started reworking it.Hans Petter

[Guest Stearman]

>I get white bay doors while the ones for the nose gear >should be red. Steve requested blue bay doors some time ago >-- where's the bitmap responsible for the color of the bay >doors? Steve was looking for the color of the wheel bay doors in the Arrow. That turned out to be controlled by one of the four pixels in the lower left corner, in Arrow file #61 (each one of those four pixels controls different areas). Guess there will be something similar in the Baron.>(right) and I haven't managed to make a convincing "bridge" >between the windows. What controls the shape of the windows? >The best approach would be to edit the windows directly. If you edit the 3D model somehow, please make it *optional*: remember some (me included) may want to use a different paintjob. This is exactly what I meant in the other thread.Thanks in advance, best regards.http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3d4afcc031a461eb.gif

[Hans_Petter 1]

The file that looks like the Archer's 64 is # 62 in the Baron. I checked out several Archers and Arrows and it does seem that the lower left four pixels determine the bay door color. I tried to edit # 62 of the Baron by putting red pixels in -- refer the image below. Strangely enough it didn't seem to effect anything. I want to paint the bay doors of the nose gear only and was expecting an "all red experience" when I entered four red pixels but all I got was the white that I had in the first place :-eek Regarding different paintjobs -- the thing is that the interior views show white wings as well as a horizontal tail with red edges. It would be quite easy to edit the red trimming out for other versions. Does your favorite livery sport white wings? We certainly do white but any far-out paint scheme would be hard to match with the wing views that Ed provided :-)best regards,Hans Petter

[Guest Stearman]

>I want to paint the bay doors of the nose gear only and was >expecting an "all red experience" when I entered four red >pixels but all I got was the white that I had in the first >placeWell, maybe it doesn't work *exactly* the same in the Baron as in the Arrow, but I bet it's still a single-pixel matter. Guess it will take a little patience to carefully scan all the bitmaps in the Baron to find it, though...>Regarding different paintjobs -- the thing is that the >interior views show white wings as well as a horizontal tail >with red edges. It would be quite easy to edit the red >trimming out for other versions. Does your favorite livery >sport white wings? Not necessarily, but a set of all-white wings (& horizontal tail) would be welcome. It's much easier adding any color trimmings on a white wing than removing an undesired trimming and giving back to the wing the original, photorealistic look it presumably had. To me anyway.Again, thanks in advance, best regards.http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3d4afcc031a461eb.gif

[Hans_Petter 1]

Stagger, the wings will be as white as I got them. The whole idea of working on a paint job is to make the external view reflect what I see in the interior views. I see red trimmings on white and if you want to see all white wings it will be quite easy to edit out the red.Now, I got some more pictures of Ed's aircraft and tried to get the paint right. It looks quite easy but the textures aren't exactly being put where one would think. Some parts control a specific area, and then a totally different part controls the adjacent areas. Please consider the red on the rear end of the engines -- I get a crescent of red by painting the engines and then I have to get the sides by painting a panel to the right of file 64. The number on the tail will have to be mirrored for the left side. In general, I'll have to move elements up, down, left and right, import them and launch FU3 to see what I get. The red trimmming on the vertical tail will be reduced (raised) a bit. This is far from WYSIWYG :-)I may choose another palette to get more shades of red / orange but right now the main thing is to get the red where it's supposed to go.I just noticed that the gray "step guard" at the base of the wing hardly shows at all. I'll have to extend it outwards....Hans Petter

[Hans_Petter 1]

This livery has proved to be a handful. I've figured out some of the tricks to where FU3 stores the paint elements but not all of them. The engines are partly covered by the top view and partly by the vertical band to the right of file 64. This makes it very hard to paint the aft part of the engine cover. Moreover, even my best shot doesn't come out identical on both sides, as evidenced by the image from above the aircraft. Both wings draw their textures from the same texture file (64) but the engine covers are still slightly different. Further, the sim has a boxy engine that doesn't really want to be turned into the curving shape of Ed's version. When I extend the red to make a rounder engine I get an edge of stray red pixels rather than a smooth transition.Another problem is the number on the tail. The left side is OK but the right side is not. At first, the number on the right side came out mirrored. Fine, I'll just mirror it to get it right! I tried and it came out funny. Then I "coded" the number on the right side by making the numbers gray to check what was going on. It seems that the right side is affected by the number on the left side. If I mirror the number on the right side it's comes out sort of right, but the first part proves to be a mirrored version of the left side. The image shows my bleached numbers for the left side starting out with the red numbers from the opposite side. I may try no numbers on the right side and check what I get. I post a picture of the real tail to show what I'm trying to accomplish.Another problem is the gray block beneath the right engine. I've tried various "color coding" of textures to determine where this is coming from. Does anyone know? I almost forgot to mention the non-skid "step guard" on the wings. It looks all right in top view now but why is it extending to the bottom view? I haven't painted any step guard below but somehow it creeps under the wing, covering the lower side of the flaps. Evidently, the various parts of the aircraft are being affected by adjacent textures in mysterious ways.Hans Petter

[Guest PeterK]

PeterK Though totally wrong ,,,A Cape Air (super chicken) would be niceas a Baron too!Well in your spare time Hans....It looks like Fu3 planes are a bit complicated to paint,,Havnt evenlooked into this adventure yet...Peter K

[Hans_Petter 1]

OK, we might try that livery as long as we don't tell the others that Cape Air really flies Cessna 402s and tend to hang around New Bedford, Martha's Vinyard and Hyannis :-)Actually, I don't really care for a zillion repaints but I dabbled into this since I got images of a complete real aircraft. With the interior views showing portions of this aircraft's wings and tail it seemed logical to make the matching paint scheme. Then I might modify these interior views to match some of the great repaints that we have. Eons ago this all started as I tried to make interior views to match Jouko Huovinen's Air Ambulance. I might fit the red crosses that I made unto the better wing views that Ed provided.Hans Petter

[Hans_Petter 1]

I hpoe that you're not getting bored with my textures :-)I've done a little "research" and may provide some info as well as asking a few questions.What I've found: The FU3 Baron mirrors the left wing textures to paint the right wing and they're supposed to come out as perfect mirror images. Well, they don't. If you look at the view from the back and compare the two areas of the engines (highlighted by blue arrows) you'll see that they don't match. I've been struggling a lot with this paint scheme and a major reason proves to be that left and the right side don't match perfectly. One reason might be that the polygon model isn't perfectly symmetrical, meaning that the placement of the engines doesn't quite match. The front view shows the same thing -- while trying to match up the red trimming on the engines I found that one engine appears to be slightly lower than the other. This makes it impossible to create multi-color textures with transitions and trim lines in the critical areas.The mirroring of textures has other unfortunate effects. For instance, we get anti-skid step guards on both wings (or none) and a door on both sides of the fuselage (or none).The tail is slightly more complicated. The left side of my vertical tail texture has the flag and the ID number while the right has the flag only. Notice how the number from the left side creeps around the back of the tail and shows on the right side. That's why I got a mess when I put the mirrored number on the left side -- both numbers showed on the left side, partly on top of each other. By comparing other repaints I've found that the front half of the vertical tail works as expected, with separate textures for the right and the left side. However, anything you put on the rear half of the left of the vertical tail will be mirrored on the right side. Thus, only part of the tail textures are being mirrored and this makes it impossible to display the number as it appears on Ed's plane. I could make a smaller number, being careful to keep it within the front section of the vertical tail. I've still got that "bald spot" below the right engine. I've got no idea what texture is supposed to cover this and it really defies the consistent (albeit slighly imperfect) mirroring of anything else on the wings. Remember, there are three left wing texture only (upper, lower w/ gear up and lower w/ gear down) and everything on the right wing is the mirror image of the left wing. Then, what could possibly make the "belly" of the right engine draw a gray texture? The first image shows it all from a good angle while all the rest of them expose the various flaws and "issues".best regards,Hans Petter

[Guest Stearman]

Hi Hans... I'm just back from one week in London (as the first part of my summer vacation) :) and was just wondering how things are going with the Baron.Also, do you have any late news from Steve and his panel?Thanks in advance, best regards.http://ftp.avsim.com/dcforum/User_files/3d4afcc031a461eb.gif

[Hans_Petter 1]

I've made some progress with the livery. I emailed Gideon and got some tips and I finally got both engines properly textured in the below view. The number on the vertical tail has to be reduced in size since FU3 mirrors anything aft of the middle to the opposite side. Apart from this I believe we can get the "Big Red" without any major compromises. I'm working on the right front quarter interior bitmap, trying to edit out some harsh shadows. This bitmap is the only tricky one since that Arizona sunrise left it in the shade. Once it's finished I'll send it over to Steve.best regards,Hans Petter