Getting Your Feet Wet

[allardjd 1,853]

I'm far from an accomplished painter. I decided recently, after carefully avoiding the entire topic for years, to see if I could repaint some very low-res AI aircraft. Traffic is a great passion of mine, particularly GA traffic, and having some of my GA AI types available in several liveries is an attractive prospect.

I've done a few now, very basic, using the freeware product Paint.net. I'm essentially only re-coloring colored panels in copies of the original texture bitmaps, but it's working out OK. I already knew how to use the graphics program but this new project is getting me used to the necessary file manipulations, both with the texture files themselves and in aircraft.cfg to get it to recognize the new textures.

There are many others out there who are far better and more expeinced than I in this area, but if you're a rank beginner, fooling with AI aircraft that are already very low resolution is a good way to test the waters without diving into the deep end.

John

[mutley 4,487]

Good point John also making bespoke paints versions of the default aircraft is a good way to break the ice. Beware though the default textures can be more difficult to paint than freeware or payware versions as their textures are very limited and you can only paint one side. The system then mirrors that texture for teh other side and all the text graphics become back to front.

I hope to get some serious research done over the next couple of days on the net and my PC archives and post some links to good tutorials.

Cheers

[rob16584 42]

I toyed with repainting a few years back with the iFDG and POSKY models. Whilst very rewarding once it was done, it took soooo long to get to the final finished version. The hardest bit I found was matching all the different parts of the fuselage together to get a seamless pain scheme down the side. After a while I gave up as I wanted to focus on flying

[mutley 4,487]

The best way to get the alignment right is to look at existing textures and how they are laid out, this also helps to establish which way the writing should go too.

It can be time consuming but as you say very satisfying, I have only ever created fictional paints for my own use so the detailing only needs to go as far as I want.

/mut

[allardjd 1,853]

I have only ever created fictional paints for my own use...

...and for a certain Florida-based air freight outfit.

John

[mutley 4,487]

Oh yeah I forgot about that one!