Forgive me if this is old news, but accidentally stumbled upon this the other day. I downloaded some skins from the Commonwealth Aircraft Corporation with a view to updating the stock skins in my stock install. Anything I download with regards to CFS3 goes into the CFS3 folder in My Documents. I unzipped one of the skins(A Tempest) just to look at it in Photoshop. When I fired up CFS3, the new skin was applied to the aircraft without me actually applying the skin manually! Out of interest I looked in the actual CFS3 folder(where the cfs3.exe is located)and the stock textures had not been overwritten. Taking this a bit further i deleted the custom skin and the stock Tempest returned to normal. So, now I have a skins folder in my personal CFS3 directory and rar archives with a few skins in for each aircraft and just unrar them to overwrite as required. Hope this is makes sense and is of help to somebody.
Applying Skins
- Thread starter Dinga69
- Start date
ndicki
Charter Member 2016
CFS3 does not pay any attention to folders for textures, so it isn't like other MS flight sims where you can have several textures with the same name as long as they are in different folders. CFS3 hunts through your entire install for textures, and if you have two files with the same name, you have no control whatever over which one actually gets displayed.
So for each new texture you want to see in-game, you really need to make a new stand-alone aircraft which uses your new skin, which you must re-name.
If you go and download one of my skins, there'll be a tutorial on how it's done. Follow the instructions carefully and to the letter, and you'll discover a whole new side to CFS3.
So for each new texture you want to see in-game, you really need to make a new stand-alone aircraft which uses your new skin, which you must re-name.
If you go and download one of my skins, there'll be a tutorial on how it's done. Follow the instructions carefully and to the letter, and you'll discover a whole new side to CFS3.
Thanks for that - have downloaded one as I like to have a tweak where possible! I do have ETO,PTO,MAW and Korean Skies installed and was just looking at a way of smartening the textures up in the stock install, without over inflating it with extra kites. I also use the stock for experimenting as it's quicker to reinstall this than any of the mods! Nice work on the skins btw!
ndicki
Charter Member 2016
If you want to keep the number of actual aircraft low, then you need a skin-swopping utility from Martin Wright:
http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/
Go to CFS3 Utilities - Paint Swap
This swops the _t.dds layer around. The problem is that it gets rapidly unmanageable (I found) and it does not swop the _s.dds layer, so sometimes things look a little unexpected, with shadows showing through from the specular layer.
Personally, since I now know how to do stand-alones in about three minutes flat, I no longer use it.
The best thing about stand-alones is that they can spawn in missions, and instead of just one type of Bf109 with its one paint scheme, you get lots of different ones!
http://www.mnwright.btinternet.co.uk/
Go to CFS3 Utilities - Paint Swap
This swops the _t.dds layer around. The problem is that it gets rapidly unmanageable (I found) and it does not swop the _s.dds layer, so sometimes things look a little unexpected, with shadows showing through from the specular layer.
Personally, since I now know how to do stand-alones in about three minutes flat, I no longer use it.
The best thing about stand-alones is that they can spawn in missions, and instead of just one type of Bf109 with its one paint scheme, you get lots of different ones!