I've always wondered how photoreal repaints are achieved... Is it a matter of going out and getting pictures of aircraft, and literally cutting the pictures out, and putting them into position, or is it meticulous hand painting, copied directly from a photo, down to the last detail?

Would be nice to know exactly how to do it, to see what results I can come up with

-Tweek

I suppose I'll have to go about finding suitable pictures, then!

Done properly, photoreal paints look excellent... it's just a matter of being able to do it!

edit: Ok, after trying it, I seemed to have a slight problem with finding photos of certain parts of the aircraft. Unless it's a fast jet, or an aerobatic aircraft, it's extremely hard to find clear photos of the top and bottom of the wings.

This is the best picture I can find of any USAF C-130, showing the top of the wings.

http://images.airliners.net/photos/photos/8/6/2/733268.jpg

Problem is, if I put that into the paint, it will just look warped. Is there any way of getting round this, using photos, or will it just have to be painted by hand?

This is what I have so far... the tail


And yes, the flag is meant to be reversed

A good graphics editor is a big help. The old MSPaint worked but it is certainly -- nay, absolutely -- nowhere near superb.
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Before I had a scanner and no connection to the internet (actually, still don't with my personal game computers), that's basically what I did (since I like making variations, I still do some of this) but very lax on the true detail. There are many, more talented artists around but I've honestly seen worse than even my older ones.

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Much closer once I got a scanner. Hand drawing works, too. I don't have a digital camera but that would be better. In the case of a plane, it's best to have a side view (fuselage), top and bottom views (wings, elevators) and front view (windscreen, prop, radiator, engine - depending on plane type). Different angle shots give a lean as to any additional shading you may wish to provide in texturing. Prior to scanning, any cutting I did was by editing the picture (at the time, in MSPaint). That was particularly necessary for biplane fuselage textures because the wings and struts needed to be removed from the picture (although they may be seperately refered to for shading purposes).

What are you using for resolution in the edit? CFS1 will only acknowledge 256Color and MS Paint does a poor job of converting from 16M to 256. Some while ago I acquired PS Pro8 so I can convert back and forth, making use of the 16M during edit and then converting to 256 for the working texture. If you have the appropriate graphics program, 32bit color may work better than 24bit (16M) but color quality is important when converting.
I should mention that, especially with instrument panels, there may be some conflict with the set color format of the original (the basic color format is usually listed just above the overall sizing index in the panel.cfg; sizing is usually the last entry in CFS1 and CFS2).

here are some 130's i did in photoreal.

notice the difference in grey tones.  but as they were AI aircraft, i was not too bothered about sorting them

firstly the J model




the green one was a bit better

true, but i use PSP, and i can spend hours trying to get a match and never get there