Tips for creating aircraft repaints

There really are so many ways you can repaint an aircraft, and achieving a professional finish is easy once you know what you are doing.
In this post i will point out some of the techniques i use to get the best results with the least amount of effort, if you haven't done so already i suggest reading my guide to repaints.

This is not a step by step walk through and a basic knowledge of your image editor really helps, here I am using photoshop but most of these techniques can be transferred over to whatever editor you use.

Tip 1: Finding Photographs of the aircraft.

Unless you are doing a fictional paint scheme you are going to need some images and photographs of the aircraft to base your repaint off. I personally use Google Image search to find the majority of photos i use but there are also a number of websites that are dedicated to aircraft photography, the trick here is finding photos with enough angles to really get a good idea of what the paint scheme consists of.

Tip 2: Paint Kits

When i first started out repainting aircraft i had no idea what a paint kit was and still managed to get nice results working with a flat image, if you can get a paint kit for your aircraft though, you will realize how much easier they make your job. There are a lot of kits already out there for different aircraft, try searching for the name of the aircraft you are working on + paint kit + fsx/fs9.
If you cant find a paint kit i really suggest making one, it does take a fair amount of time to create a quality kit, but once you have, it can be used for any future repaints you do. The amount of time and effort it saves when you want to paint a new scheme is well worth the effort, take a look at my tips on creating paint kits.

Tip 3: Work with layers

Work with multiple layers making it easier to make minor changes without affecting the whole repaint, make sure to name each of your layers with something descriptive to save confusion.
Some examples of the layers i used for the "Bronco" repaint are;

Background: This is the original texture that i will be repainting, i don't like to work directly on this image.
Work Layer: This layer i use for doing the base color scheme for the aircraft, using the lasoo tool to select the shape of the aircraft fuselage or wing and then painting in the base colors with either the paintbrush or the paint bucket tools.
Graphics: I use this layer to add more detail to a paint scheme, things like logo's and patterns as well as any text.
Rivets and Labels: These two layers are part of the paint kit adding detail such as the lines, rivets of the fuselage and warning labels.
These are just a few examples, the basic idea is to work with a separate layer for each addition you add to the new paint scheme, this way when you mess up you don't have to scrap the whole thing.
To keep all of the layers separate, save it as a psd (this is useful if you want to continue working on it at a later time), saving as a bitmap image will automatically flatten the image.

Tip 4: Colors and Logos

If you are creating a real world paint scheme it helps to have a photo of the aircraft to base your design on. Another purpose this can serve is in helping you get the colors right and by using the eyedropper tool you can sample the colors directly from the photo itself (just keep in mind that the color of the aircraft will depend on the lighting and age/quality of photo.)
If you are lucky enough to get a quality image, you can copy any complex designs or logos on the aircraft's tail or fuselage directly from the photo, this saves you having to try and recreate from scratch, you can also find images of the company logos using Google Image Search.

How to: Add a smoke system to any aircraft

Holy Smokes!

Take a look at how easy it is to add a smoke system to virtually any aircraft in fsx. Not only is this a truly awesome way to add a touch of kick-ass to your air show routines but it's incredibly simple to do and better yet should work with almost any aircraft you choose.
To get started you need to add a [smoke system] section into the aircraft.cfg, you can find the cfg in the aircrafts main folder, open it using notepad and add the new section to the end.

Below is what you will be adding to the cfg file, it's taken directly from the default 300s.

[SMOKESYSTEM]
smoke.0=-10.00, -0.70, 0.0, fx_smoke_w

There are a few numbers here you can change to customize where the smoke will appear:

-10.00 - this relates to how far back from the aircraft the smoke effect will start to appear.

-0.70 - this relates to where the smoke will appear on the horizontal axis, 0.0 is the center, any number above or below will move the effect to the left or right of the fuselage.

0.0 - this relates to where the smoke appears on the vertical axis, 0.0 is the center and any number above or below will move the effect up or down.

fx_smoke_w - this is the effect fsx will use, in this case it's the default smoke effect.

You can also add more than one smoke trail by adding a second or third addition to the [smokesystem] section, below for example is what i added to get the effect of two smoke trails from each wing in the picture above.

[smokesystem]
smoke.0=-10.00, 15, -0.0, fx_smoke_w
smoke.1=-10.00, -15, -0.0, fx_smoke_w

that's it, you can play around with this section and various smoke effects to get some crazy results, pressing the [i] key in the game will turn on and off the smoke system. enjoy!

Top 5: FSX tweaks

Five ways to get the most from FSX

To say fsx is demanding on your computers hardware is an understatement to say the least, there is a lot of debate as to why this is, poor outdated coding comes to mind, but for whatever reason it's a safe bet to say that you need a computer with a lot of horsepower to really get the most out of it.
All is not lost though and it is possible to get a fairly enjoyable experience from fsx no matter what specs you have and there are some tweaks and tips floating around that can really help improve performance.
Here are a few that helped me

1. CFG Tweaks

There is a huge range of tweaks that can be done to the fsx.cfg file and out of all the modifications i have tried these have probably giving me the biggest change in performance.
I found this site in particular to have a massive collection of cfg tweaks:

http://www.highflightsimulations.com/fsxcfg.html

2. Replacement Textures

I ran across this tweak whilst surfing youtube and although it did nothing for my slower laptop and only a slight improvement for my new rig it definitely shows promise on some machines.
It's a collection of replacement DDS textures for some of the main scenery folders, changing them from DXT5 to DXT1 and in theory this means your computer doesn't have to work as hard to keep up. sounds good right? well for me this has not made a huge difference and gives some textures a undesirable appearance.
No harm in testing it on your computer though, just make sure to back up the original texture in case you want to revert back to default.

http://www.mileswebsolutions.com/FSXTextureConversion/

3. Defrag, and keep your pc clean

This one is pretty straight forward, defraging your hardrive once a month and keeping your pc clean of old files taking up space is a sure way to imporve any computers performance. It's also a good idea to keep your registry clean of old registry entries, there are plenty of programs out there that will automatically scan your registry and fix errors.

4. Time to upgrade or downgrade?

Of course there is only so much these tweaks can do for a system that is bottle necked by a slow processor and/or video card. The best way to get ultimate in game performance is to upgrade your hardware, and fsx will devour everything you can throw at it.
There seems to be two main schools of thought when it comes to fsx hardware, those who believe the video card is the key and those who swear by their dual and quad cpu's, truth is both will equally affect how well the game runs. It all comes down to your budget when it comes time to upgrade.

If upgrading your computer isn't an option for you just yet then how about downgrading to FS9?

5. Not ready for the next generation?

When i use the term downgrading to describe switching to the more system friendly FS2004 i do so with admiration for FSX's older sibling. There is a huge following of devotees and developers out there not to mention plenty of add-ons available that make fs9 a great alternative for the next generation of eye candy obsessed flight simmers.

Real Enviroment Xtreme

As real as it gets

Take a look at what makes REX a must have add-on for FSX.

Microsoft Flight Simulator has come a long way from it's humble beginnings and whilst most of the basic concepts have remained the same, improvements in graphics allow us to not rely so heavily on our imaginations to become immersed in the wonders of flight.

With the release of FSX this was taken to a whole new level with super reflective shader effects, 3D clouds and an incredible capability of displaying high resolution textures.

Although the default copy of FSX is an obvious step up from FS9 it still doesn't take full advantage of these capabilities, and like all previous versions, add-ons take over where the games developers left off.

One of the most incredible and versatile add-ons available for FSX that i use is Real Environment Xtreme.

For one single package it offers a huge range of customization options, and with the easy to navigate user interface, built in weather engine and flight planner you can set up a new theme with just a few clicks of the mouse.

Once you have created a theme using the hundreds of options available, REX will install all of the necessary textures automatically, this process only takes a few minutes and when your new theme has been installed, you can run FSX as per usual. Reverting back to the default textures is equally as straight forward and takes only a click of the mouse.

Just a few of the customization options include.

• 79 photo real cloud themes including 39 HD cloud sets that will blow your mind.

• The ability to customize water textures, changing the generic FSX water themes with everything from fields of algae to pristine coral reefs.

• A huge selection of sky themes changing the entire atmosphere from dawn to dusk.

• Over 20 different wave animations whether you want calm inland lakes or raging ocean swells.

• Crisp, realistic runway and taxiway textures.

• different sun and lighting effects.

The most consistent question I get asked is if REX will effect performance at all, the good news is that REX has a configuration manager allowing you to adjust for your computers specs, meaning no performance hit at all, just mind blowing realism.

The biggest issue i have had with this software is the "installing textures" window which seems to linger longer than it should, this is a minor problem though which seems to be only cosmetic from what i can tell and closing the window manually doesn't seem to have any negative effect on the texture installations. When you take into consideration that there is no other program available that offers this kind of all-in-one package with the capabilities of taking your flight sim to the next level, then you can see why I am so enthusiastic.

If you have the money to spend on any add-on to improve the Flight Simulator world, i would put this one high on my list of recommended products.
Check out REX for yourself at The FlightSimStore

Pimp My Plane - A basic guide to repaints

One of the easiest and in my opinion most enjoyable ways to customize your flight sim experience is to create unique and individual repaints for your favorite aircraft. Whether you want to recreate a real world paint scheme or your very own charter company, painting aircraft can be achieved with relative ease using free tools and a little imagination.

Software and Tools

There are a few basic tools you will need to get started. For this guide we will be working with two variations of MSFS; Flight Simulator 9 (FS2004) and Flight Simulator 10 (FSX), the basic difference between the two is the format that the aircraft textures will be saved as. FS9 uses bitmap (.bmp) and FSX primarily uses direct draw surfaces (.dds).

It's also worthwhile to note that many aircraft developed for FS9 are compatible with FSX as are the bitmap texture files.

Image Editor

This is one of the most essential tools you are going to need, this will be your workspace for painting your schemes.

Adobe Photoshop

http://www.adobe.com

Personally I use Adobe Photoshop but any image editing software can be used in much the same way to achieve similar results.

GIMP

www.gimp.org

GIMP is a fantastic free ware alternative to Adobe Photoshop and has many similar features making it a great option if budget is an issue.

Image Conversion

Image conversion tools are needed to compile your edited images into usable formats for the flight simulator.

DXTBmp

http://www.brothersoft.com/dxtbmp-71327.html

DXTBmp is a simple conversion tool used when working with bitmap (.bmp) and direct draw surface (.dds) textures.

Aircraft textures will be a combination of a master image with an alpha channel, the alpha channel is a layer of information embedded into the texture. More on alpha channels will be explained in greater detail later on.

Locating the aircraft texture files

The texture folders contain the images we are going to be working with and are located in the main folder of the aircraft you want to repaint.

We will use the default Boeing 747 for this example.

For FSX the folder path for the default location of the 747 aircraft folder is:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft flight Simulator X\Simobjects\Airplanes\b747_400

For FS9 the Boeing 747 aircraft folder can be found here:

C:\Program Files\Microsoft Games\Microsoft flight Simulator 9\Aircraft\b747_400

Within the aircrafts main folder you will find the separate texture folders labeled Texture, texture.1, texture.2 etc. each one of these folders will contain the images used by flight simulator for each variation/paint scheme of that aircraft.

You may notice that some aircraft have many more texture files than others, these extra textures may include specular (for creating shine and reflections), bump (used for adding extra detail to an aircraft such as raised rivets) as well as separate night and day textures. These extra files are only found in more complex models, for the purpose of this tutorial we will be focusing on the basic texture files only.

Let's get started

For this tutorial I will be doing a repaint of Tim “piglet” Conrads OV-10A Bronco for FSX.

Repainting it with a modern livery used by The California Department of Forestry and Fire Protection.

First let's navigate to the OV-10A aircraft folder using windows explorer (C:\Program...\Airplanes\OV-10A) we are now going to want to create a copy of the main Texture folder (the first one) to be used for our CALFIRE repaint, this is essential as each repaint requires it's own texture folder.

Rename the “Texture – copy” to something like “texture.calfire” or “texture.cdf” it's really up to you what you name the folder, as long as it begins with “texture.”

Now let's open the texture.calfire folder and have a look at the textures we will be repainting.

The two texture files circled in red (ov10a_01_T and ov10a_02_T) are of the outer fuselage and therefore the ones we are interested in for our repaint. Since this model was originally made for FS2004 all of the textures are in bitmap format but the same techniques can be applied for aircraft with DDS textures.

Using DXTBmp

Now you have located the files you want to work with, go ahead and open DXTBmp. Once DXTBmp has opened go to the File menu and then select Open, navigate to the texture.calfire folder, find the first texture we are going to be working with (ov10a_01_T) and open it.

After DXTBmp has finished loading the image you will see the master image in the main window and a smaller window in the top right hand corner displaying the alpha channel.

The alpha channel is used to convey different information about the master image and is usually an 8bit black and white Indexed color bitmap. In the case of aircraft fuselage textures, the alpha will relate to how reflective the surface appears in the simulator, white being completely unreflective and black having an almost chrome like appearance, differing shades of gray will produce results within the two extremes. We don't need to worry about the alpha channel just yet.

Choose your Editor

DXTBmp will automatically choose a default editor for your images and a corresponding logo will appear just below the MipMaps options on the right hand side. To change the editor DXTBmp uses simply click on the logo or use the preferences menu.

Now we are going to go to the Image menu and select Send to Editor this will open up the master image in photoshop. It is important to leave DXTBmp open in the background as it will be needed later on.

Creating Paint Kits

A paint kit consists of a master image of the aircraft texture and one or two other layers such as rivets and/or other details. Paint kits allow you to work with separate layers giving you not only more options for custom paint jobs but a better finished product.

Some aircraft will have paint kits available to download, if this is the case then you are in luck, but making your own paint kits is not as hard as it may seem.

More information about Creating your own paint kits can be found here

The Finer Points of Repainting

There are so many different methods and techniques to creating unique repaints and really what you can achieve is limited only by your imagination.

Tips for creating aircraft repaints.

Once you are happy with the repaint you have created simply Save it and exit the editor, you can now return to DXTBmp and under the Image menu select Reload after Edit.

Essentially this will refresh the master image with the repaint you have just created in the editor.

You will also notice a MipMaps section on the right hand side just under the Alpha Channel window. Make sure both the [Include when saving] and [Use 16 bit Dither] boxes are unchecked before saving.

Compiling Your finished Repaint

We can now go ahead and use DXTBmp to save/compile our repainted texture.

Go to File then Save as and we are going to want to save it as an Extended bitmap.

note: when working with direct draw surface textures you will be flipping the image (dds format images are inverted for increased video card performance, failing to flip the image before saving will make the textures appear upside down) and saving as DDS.

This will bring up the Save Extended Bitmap window and from the Save as type drop down menu Select Extended 32 bit 888-8.

(The type you save as can be experimented with, Extended 32 bit 888-8 gives me the best results so this is what I use.)

Make sure you are saving your texture into the folder you created for your new repaint (in this case texture.calfire) and overwrite the original texture (ov10a_01_T).

You may ask yourself why not just open, edit and save the bitmap/dds image directly using Adobe Photoshop? The basic answer comes down to the alpha channel, as I pointed out earlier the alpha channel will reference where and how intense the image will be reflective. DXTBmp allows us to work with the master image and alpha separately. Saving the image directly with photoshop will compile the bitmap with a completely black alpha channel, giving us a plane that appears completely chrome in the simulator.

Adding New Repaints to the Aircraft CFG

This is the final step to creating your new repaint, this process is the same for adding aircraft repaints you may download from the Internet. The aircraft CFG file can be found in the main folder of each aircraft, without adding your new repaint to the CFG it wont show up in the simulator.

You can open the aircraft CFG with notepad or a similar text program.

Open the CFG and scroll down to the [fltsim.x] sections, there will be one of these for each variation/repaint of the aircraft, it will look something like this:

Each variation will have a number, for example [fltsim.0] [fltsim.1] [fltsim.2] and so on.

We are going to want to add our own section for our new variation/repaint that we just created.

To do this simply copy the first [fltsim.0] section (circled in red above) and paste it after the last [fltsim.x] in the CFG (in this case there are five variations already, the last being [fltsim.5] our new section will be [fltsim.6])

now let's take a look at the [fltsim] section we just pasted and see what we need to change.

[fltsim.0] change the number here to the next corresponding number. (in this case [fltsim.6])

title=OV-10A the title of your new variation. (for this example I am going to change it to OV-10A_CDF)

sim=OV-10A

model= this may be different if the same aircraft has more than one model

panel=

sound=

texture= here we will add the name of our new texture folder. (in this case calfire)

kb_checklists=

kb_reference=

atc_id_color=0x00ffffff

atc_id=14649 the id/tail number used by air traffic control to identify your aircraft (in this case N414DF)

ui_manufacturer=North American Rockwell

ui_type=OV-10A

ui_variation=20thTASS,Danang,South Viet Nam1969 description of the variation (California Fire Department)

visual_damage=1

ui_createdby="Piglet's Peculiar Planes"

description=Twin Turboprop FAC\/COIN aircraft designed in late '60's for USAF, and also USMC and Navy. Also used by Morocco, Thailand, Columbia, Indonesia, Venezuela, and the Philippines.

atc_heavy=0

atc_airline=

atc_flight_number=

atc_id_font=Verdana,-11,1,600,0

prop_anim_ratio = 1.72

Everything else which has not been noted above can remain the same.

Your new section in the CFG should look something like this:

Save the CFG and that's it!

Open the flight simulator and Enjoy the fruits of your creation.

D.I.Y Paint Kits - Tips on Creating Paint Kits

Aircraft Paint Kits are nothing more than a collection of layers/images used when creating a new paint scheme for an aircraft. The number of layers created for a single image is up to you but a few of the basics to be considered might be a layer for rivets and panel joints, another layer for labels and other text you want printed on the finished aircraft and of course the master image.

If you can't find a Paint Kit online for the aircraft you are painting then making one from scratch is always a possibility.

This requires time more than skill and anyone can create a quality paint kit with a few simple steps.

As with all of these tips and tutorials, there are many ways to achieve the same results, these are just the methods I use, hopefully they can be helpful for you.

Start with the Master

For this guide I am going to be making a paint kit for Tim “piglet” Conrads OV-10A Bronco for FSX.

To begin with we are going to need the original texture file for the aircraft (like the one shown below), this will become the master for our paint kit.

For any plane you decide to make a kit for, it is a good idea to find a master texture that has little or no design on it already, plain textures make your job a lot easier. The best example of plain textures are the completely white/blank textures that come with some of the default FSX aircraft.

Not every aircraft will have this option though, so choose the simplest you can find.

Here is the texture I will be using for the Bronco, as you can see it is minimal in terms of color or design.

Clean it up

For our paint kit we want something fairly generic in terms of the graphics on the fuselage.

Take a look at the image and decide what graphics you are going to erase to achieve a clean finish. Below I have circled some of the obvious sections I want to remove in order to get a cleaner looking template for future repaints.

The techniques you will use to clean up a texture will depend on its complexity, this one is fairly simple as you can see so not much work will be needed. Two methods I use for erasing graphics from an aircraft texture are:

1. The simplest method involves selecting the area/graphic you want to remove (such as the sharks mouth in the image above) and then painting over the area with the surrounding fuselage color (in this case gray). Of course you will paint over details such as rivets and panel joins using this method but these can be simply redone using the line tool for the panel joints and the paintbrush tool for the rivets.

2. The second method is a little more complex and involves copying plain sections of panel from other parts of the aircraft that match the areas you are working on and pasting these over the the top. This requires more work in terms of getting the copied sections of panel to fit properly but saves you the need to redo details such as rivets.

hen you have a clean master texture to work with we can move on to creating our first layer.

Part two: Create a layer for the rivets

The rivets are one of the most noticeable ways to add detail to a finished aircraft repaint.

Making this layer is pretty straight forward, it just takes a fair amount of time.

The obvious first step is to create a separate layer over the top of the master, name it “Rivets” or something similar.

Now we have a new layer we can begin tracing the rivets and lines of the master image.

Using a medium/light gray and the Line Tool (U) trace over all of the lines on the fuselage where the panels meet(not the rivets).

Next we are going to do the same for the rivets, but instead of doing each rivet individually we will let photoshop do most of the work for us.

Select the Brush Tool (B) and open the brushes options (F5 should open this window) under Brush presets you should see Brush tip shape.

Select this and it will give you a few options to customize the brush, first we want to choose a brush size/diameter that corresponds with the size of the rivets we are painting (in this case 1 pixel).

The next option we are going to change is the spacing, spacing will break a single line into a dotted line which is perfect for creating lines of rivets.

Moving the spacing slider to the right will increase the amount of space between each of the dots and you can experiment with this until you get the correct spacing for the rivets of the aircraft.

Now all you need to do is click the paintbrush once on the first in a line of rivets and then, holding the shift key, click on the last rivet in the line. By holding shift photoshop will automatically fill in a dotted line between these two points essentially creating a whole line of rivets with only two clicks of the mouse!

Needless to say, this technique will save you a lot of time.

Just as you did for the lines on the fuselage trace over all of the lines of rivets you can see.

It will take a fair while to do an entire aircraft but remember in most cases the left and right wings as well as each side of the fuselage will be symmetrical, you should only need to do one side and then copy and paste for the opposite side.

Once you have finished we should have a master bitmap image and a rivets layer, it is an idea to save each layer separately as a photoshop document (psd).

Part 3: Labels

The next and final layer for our kit will be the aircraft labels, start by creating a new layer and naming it something like “Labels”.

This layer is pretty straight forward and involves using the Type Tool (T) to recreate the text you can see on the fuselage (warning labels etc.) for more complex labels such as the PROPELLER warnings on this aircraft, just copy them from the master and paste in the same position on the “Labels” layer. I also added a few other details such as the red fuel caps on the wings to this layer as I want these to show up on the finished repaints.

That's it, you should now have three separate layers including the master, Rivets and Labels.

You can save each of these separately or as one single photoshop document, just remember to keep the background of the Labels and Rivets layers transparent.