So now all the prep-work is done we can get onto the fun stuff! Additionally, textures may be shared by multiple liveries eg the cockpit so a texture. Paint kits are usually comprehensive but sometimes might miss out on a texture or two. Then grab one of the existing textures that you are about to repaint and copy it to your working directory.
XXXX eg the aircraft we are going to be working on has the serial number AE so we will create the folder texture. The repaint that you are about to create will need its own folder and that has to be in the format of texture. For this layers, shading and opacity sliders are definitely your friends!Īdditionally, when you open them up, if they are already DDS files you will need to Flip Vertically to make it more logical to work with. Clean textures are still workable, however they take a little more finesse to get right. Paint kits are great because they will separate the little details from block color areas and allow you to not worry about painting over important things like doorframes, lights and rivets. Just Flight do not have one included in their product download but a quick email to their support desk will have one delivered to you Thanks guys! If in doubt it is always worth asking the developer politely if they have a paint kit available. GIMP is an open source program and is free to download and use, whilst Photoshop is a paid product. Having used both myself I have to say that Photoshop is my preferred option, however, it comes at a price literally. Both of these programs are excellent choices.
Best thing to get here is a program that supports layers, and for that there are essentially two out there in the community Adobe Photoshop and GIMP.
Now that we have our reference material we can get ready to start work. If your subject is a current or recent flying type, possibly the best resource is airliners.Įven if your project is fictitious a hot pink anyone?Ī short list of some of my most used reference sites include. This will take a bit of time, especially for historical repaints. In this article I will be guiding you through the some of the basics of repainting, from resourcing references through tools of the trade to allow you to create your own masterpiece.Ĭlick here here to watch it. But how do those beautiful repaints come to life?
We all love to make our flight simulator experience our own, and adding new liveries or repaints to our fleet is one of the easiest ways to do that.