I have been playing about with a couple of repaints and being very new to this I have been reading quite a bit too. However I am getting a little frustrated at a couple of things and I am wondering if I have missed the secret as to how it is done or is it just try, try, and try again.

Firstly, once the aircraft pallet has been converted to Bitmap, we see that the aircraft is in many pieces. If as in my example, we want to repaint the fin, but the scheme has the design running down from the fin onto the fuselage, how can I ensure that the two line up seamlessly? The same question comes up when putting a nice stripe down the aircraft. We have a forward and rear portion. How can I get the design to join seamlessly or is it a case of just keep trying until I get it right? Lastly, mirroring from one side to the other. Is that a case of very careful cut and paste? or am I missing something. Or is there any 3D painting software available where I can see the whole aircraft as I "try" and paint it.

Thanks
Matt

Hagar wrote on Sep 29^th, 2007 at 4:57am:


Thanks Hagar, but FS Repaint does not work with FSX (it cannot find the aircraft folder even when manually entered)  and there is no demo for the FSX version (I would like to try and see if my skills warrant buying software or if I should remain a user before I fork out)

Matt

It pretty much is a practice, practice, practice, deal... And FSX has a few more things you need to get familiar with. The specular and bump maps are tricky... and the relationship between the specular-map and the diffuse-map (actual paint scheme(ends in a  T)) and BOTH of their alpha channels is important. You cannot just get your "shine" through simple alpha trail and error.. Now it's more important that the alpha (especially the alpha for the specular map) not only match, not just the part that you want to alter the "shine" for... but it's gotta follow the main paint scheme; not conflict with the diffuse-map's alpha... and the whole thing has to be the right "mix"...  else you'll get a filmy blurr; chrome that goes black at night; and glass that goes opaque.

You "can" just redo the "T" textures; leave the bump-map alone and not alter the existing alphas (make sure you save them as a seperate bitmap so you can re-add them come compression time), but you'll lose a lot of crispness and definition..

Anyway.. A trick I use for the painting part is to keep the original paint-job as a layer that you can hide completely while you're working, and bring up at any time, semi-transparent, as a guide to see where to continue a stripe, or logo, or whatever; from one area to another. There is no shortcut for mirroring where needed. Letters or logos, or whatever can be flipped, mirrored distorted as needed, as seperate selections, on seperate layers.

The best way to get this stuff is to accept that learning is part of the fun, and dive right in